Prologue, 2050

Public Relations Release at Time of Claude Recalls: "Genetic engineering is a field we have almost conquered; however, the key word there is ‘almost.’ There are often mishaps, as is the case of the Claude series. We are in our state of deepest regret when we have to recall some of our ‘children,’ so to speak, but what must be done will be done. These will be taken to a place where they can be nurtured to their own specific needs. Do not worry over their fate; the company will take care of their every need until their genetically predetermined death, at the age of 46.3 years of age, plus or minus a standard deviation of 5.3 years, not accounting for accidental deaths along the way.

"The defect is a hormone imbalance that cannot be found in the ‘Celia’ model, the ‘XX’ counterpart of ‘Claude.’ This hormonal imbalance causes the ‘Claude’ to turn viscously violent around the time of puberty, which is 12.3 years of age, give or take a standard deviation of 2 months. We are unsure of what has caused this, but we will attempt not to allow it to happen in the future. Do not house a Claude. Do not attempt to retain your Claude. We know what they look like and will be able to track them down. A recall is final."

* * *

It is New Orleans during Mardi Gras, which has become all year round. Thousands of people gather around the Amp to watch the annual jetboarding contest, with different competitions based on speed, style, choreography, general impressiveness.

The style competition is always the most impressive. The jetboards are sleek black metal things with antigravity features, internal magnets, and built-in rockets, controlled by a probe connected to the user’s temple. It amazes the audience, and often the competitors themselves, how well they have control of the boards, how they never fall to their death.

The crowd is jostling, cheering, yelling for their favorite stylists. Most of them are wearing masks; the scene is like Halloween in New York, but all year round. A surreal mix of demons, clowns, angels, superheros, and presidents are swaying like anemones staring at the spectacle above.

Most popular this year are the clowns, by far. They are roaring as the winners are selected. In second is Celia Calle.

[ID Number: 185705922

Name: Celia Calle

Model: "C" model, version "Celia," copy 16

Year Produced: 2038 (currently aged 17)

Sold to: Alicia Calle, Bernard Calle

Price: 2.8 million dollars (3 million now, inflation)

IQ: 118

Height: 5’5"

Weight: 130 pounds

Hair: Red

Eyes: Blue]

She is laughing, clinging to her jetboard, accepting the cash prize. She is the youngest to have ever won a prize for style. As the crowd yells, she pulls her long red hair out of her ponytail and whips it behind her. She sticks her tongue out at them. They become louder.

The winners stand there for a few moments longer, then leave the stage and escape into the night through the back doors. The rest of the evening is for the amateurs to practice in front of the dissipating crowds.

Celia was walking along the practically abandoned streets to get back to her home when she heard someone walking behind her. Instead of running, she turned to face the antagonist.

"Can I help you?" she asked the creature with the clown mask. It was twitching, shaking a little.

"Good... job," it said at great length. It reached into its pocket and pulled out a card which had a number on it. Then it turned around and stumbled into the darkness.

Celia wasn’t used to admirers, but she couldn’t help grinning at the clown (in more ways than one). She put it in her pocket and went home.

The company makes a lot of mistakes. The incident with the Claudes was pretty bad, but the populace was glad that they were taking away hormonally imbalanced, violent males.

The incident with the Beauties was worse. The 2044 "Beauty" model was found to have psychic powers. They were pulled out of their homes, with a public recall and apology made after they were all within the hands of the company. There was a public outrage, but the company asked the people if they wanted the "Beauty" models taking over the world with their powerful minds. The Beauties were kept in their labs while the scientists tried to figure out what they had done with their DNA to make them so special.

Celia’s little sister was a "Beauty" model, except her name was Belle. Somewhere there had been a mistake made; some Belle had probably been studied and killed as a Beauty. The two makes that year had been very similar, appearance-wise. It was a family secret that Belle could see not only the future but the present with perfect clarity. No other Belles had been reported capable of this.

Celia pushed her door open and saw Belle sitting on the floor, waiting for her.

[ID Number: 268560794

Name: Belle Calle

Model: "B" model, version "Belle," copy 12

Year Produced: 2044 (currently aged 11)

Sold to: Alicia Calle, Bernard Calle

Price: 2.89 million dollars (3.4 million now, popularity of model)

IQ: off charts, apparently, in this case

(standard IQ for belles: 102)

Height: 5’

Weight: 95 pounds

Hair: Red

Eyes: Blue]

"Congratulations," Belle said.

"Thanks," Celia replied, sitting down next to Belle.

"Are you going to call him?"

"No," Celia said, laughing. "It was sweet, though, wasn’t it?"

"You should. He needs your help. He’s a Claude."

Celia stared at her younger sister, knowing that she had to be right. "But weren’t they all found?"

"Not Claude Copy 16. You know that. They searched for Copy 16 for years. They still haven’t found him. You met him tonight."

"Why me? Because I’m Celia 16?"

"Yes. He knows something that he wants to tell you. I can’t tap into what, but it’s important. You should call him."

The apartment building was huge. It was one of those places where people could stay for a few weeks in hiding, very scummy, very anonymous. The pay was by credit card; the superintendent came along with maids to clean only after the inhabitant had left. This was exactly the sort of place mothers warned children to avoid.

A boy in a clown mask was waiting for her. They went upstairs.

[ID Number: 185705921

Name: Claude Hampshire

Model: "C" model, version "Claude," copy 16

Year Produced: 2038 (currently aged 17)

Year Recalled: 2050 (aged 12 then)

Sold to: Joseph Hampshire, Adrian Hampshire

Price: 2.8 million dollars (company will currently pay 7 million for copy 16)

The following are projected because he is missing:

IQ: 106

Height: 5’9"

Weight: 156 pounds

Hair: Red

Eyes: Blue ]

His apartment was basically empty. There were two plastic chairs of the type that people put on their decks, and a bed in the far corner. Lined up on tacks on the walls were clown masks, tons of clown masks.

"Take off your mask," she said to him. She had never seen a Claude, the XY version of herself, up close, only the twelve-year-olds on television.

He shook his head. The clown mask was frightening her and she was wondering whether she had been right to follow Belle’s intuition on this one. But Belle’s intuitions were never wrong, not yet.

"Why not?"

He stared at her for a long moment, then shrugged and pulled it off. She put her hand over her mouth.

"My parents burned my face off," he replied. "And dyed my hair black. So I could escape."

She felt sick. If she had had a Y...

"Why did you bring me here?"

"The company is doing things that should not ethically be done."

Celia motioned for him to go on.

"As I’m sure you well know, they sell genetically pre-made children to the rich at pretty crazy prices. This way, the rich can have the exact children they’ve always wanted without the infinite chance of natural genetic sexual reproduction. Each ‘model’ as they call them is only made once, and is only run for a year. They company watches their development and if it is standard or better than standard without any ‘glitches’ by the age of twenty, they’ll try running it again, this time with a guarantee. The Celia/Claude model, similar with the difference of sex, is on its first run, not guaranteed. For the recalled children, the company compensates the parents with a half-refund and their choice of next year’s models." He sounded eerily robotic, like a robot or someone who had practiced the speech too many times.

"I know this," Celia said impatiently. She’d been told this millions of times. She was a clone, a pre-bought model. It didn’t bother her as much as one might think it would.

"What you don’t know is that the people who usually breed - the poor - are having fertility problems," he told her, angrily.

His whole body was twitching. She was suddenly able to place why. He was medicating himself. He was on tranquilizers for his violent impulses, and uppers to stay awake. She’d seen that on shows about prisons. It looked painful.

"Are you going to hurt me? Should I go?"

"No, my muscles aren’t working well enough for me to do that, though I do have the urge to," he told her truthfully.

That was not comforting; however, Celia didn’t move from her seat.

"The poor aren’t reproducing because of the lack of ozone layer and the early onset of cancer, much of which is ovary cancer," she said.

"The poor aren’t reproducing because the company makes food products," Claude replied.

"What?"

"The company makes food. Popular food, ‘Kool Chipz’ for example. It makes people sterile."

"I eat Kool Chipz," Celia whispered.

"So does everybody. But you will probably never be able to reproduce."

She stood up, glaring at him. "Bullshit."

"No. The scientists who study foods have all been killed. The company is covering its tracks very well. They want a monopoly on children."

"I refuse to believe this."

"You should. My younger sister was a hacker Beauty. She found out. Parents like to buy Beauties and Belles to go with their Celias and Claudes. It’s kind of a red-headed, blue-eyed set. You have a Beauty, too, one in hiding. I’ve seen her."

"You must be lying."

"Go to the company; see for yourself."

She did. The tour guide was chattering away at the group, pointing out colorful exhibits against pastel walls. "The company is struggling to make the world a better place. It not only makes ‘wonderchildren,’ as they’re called by many happy parents, but lines of food and medicine as well. Although there are the occasional recalls, on average, one should consider that Ford has about three times as many per year. Recalled children are taken to rehabilitation centers where they work for the company. Their parents are given half-refunds and the promise of another child of their own choosing from that year’s catalogue."

The people on the tour nodded agreeably, only suspecting at the edges of their minds what really happened to the recalled children: the company’s intense, and often painful, studying period of the recalled, trying to figure out what they did differently.

Celia followed her tour group into a glass hallway which overlooked the incubation chambers. Rows of children, next year’s batch, were incubating, many copies of about sixty models. She stopped walking and the tour walked along without her.

A few minutes later, she sensed someone behind her.

"There’s nothing you can do about it," a voice crackled into her ear. She jumped and whipped around to face an aged man with a manacle.

"Do about what?" she asked with faked innocence.

"What we’re doing. I hear that Claude 16 has resurfaced to tell some dirty truths about the company... to his Celia counterpart."

"I don’t know what you’re talking about."

"We followed you," he informed her. "We invaded his apartment only a few moments after you left. He had to be put down."

"Are you going to do that to me?" Celia whispered, looking for a way to escape and seeing none.

"The next tour guide comes along in half an hour. We are completely alone," he said, as if reading her mind. "And, by the way, the answer is no. Before he died, we managed to get out of him that your Belle is, in fact, a Beauty. For as long as you stay quiet, she will stay alive... But you should catch up with your tour."

Celia weakly nodded, turned around, and began to run. As she did so, he pulled a gun out of his pocket, flipped off the safety, and aimed.

But he couldn’t do it. He, the CEO and founder of the company, had a Celia of his own, Copy 11, and the resemblance was too strong. He instead went through a hidden door and into the basement, where the recalled children were stored.

One with a burned face and dyed black hair was lying on the floor, staring at the ceiling miserably. "You can’t do this to the world," he snarled.

"It will be better afterwards. It will finally reach the ideal. Beautiful children, a smarter, better world. No more petty reproduction, no more abortions or childbirth deaths. No more defects, retardation, stupid people, ugliness."

"Everyone is going to be the same. You’re going to run everything. Something is going to go wrong. People are going to realize and revolt."

"After a generation, there won’t be any more ‘people’ as you know them. The only children will be those that we have produced. By the way, did I mention what we did with the other Claude models? Their violence is actually an asset to us. We’re building an army. I presume you wish to join the winning side?"

"Never."

The CEO used his gun this time, and the Claude recall was finally complete.