Translations:
Carrier=vehicle
Cred center=bank
Flashed=beamed
Law Enforcer=police officer
Plexi=glass, sometimes a window
Tome station=bookcase
@ John Astin (actor, he played Gomez Addams) had a part where he said he was ‘feeling much better now’.
Simon Banks stopped in front of the battered looking door and took a deep breath, steeling himself for what was to come. In all of his years as a law enforcer, Simon hated this task more than any he had ever done before. Banks knocked on the door and closed his eyes in frustration when, despite his over average size—6’4”, in the old measurement—the sound come off as more of a muffled tap than a knock. With a grimace, he tried again, and ended up overcompensating, which led to a thunderous pounding, instead. A few moments later, the door opened to reveal a much smaller man, one with long, curly chestnut colored hair and bright blue eyes.
“How can I…” Blair Sandburg’s eyes dimmed a little when he saw who was standing in the doorway. “Oh, hello Simon. Uh, Jim’s not here right now,” he added, shifting nervously.
“I know, Sandburg.”
Banks winced at the jumpy reaction he got. Once upon a time, he and Blair had been…well, not friends, but friendly, at least. That was Before. Before Blair’s loving, but rather flighty mother, Naomi, had sent Blair’s End School Summarization to a columnist friend who sent it out on the Intra-Net. Normally, the Summ of an End Schooler wouldn’t have attracted any attention, but since it included a lot of personal information about Jim Ellison, a much decorated enforcer and Sentinel, it was an immediate click sensation. Sandburg had done the right thing and stated that the information was his own hopeful imagination, which got all of the clickers off of Jim’s back, but the damage had been done.
Simon knew that his reaction had not been a good one. He’d hinted to Jim that Blair had actually sent the info off himself and had accused Sandburg outright to his face. Blair had, of course, denied the accusation and been able to prove his innocence, but the damage to Simon and Blair’s ‘friendship’ had been done. Blair had avoided Simon and his attempts to apologize. Banks had been peeved and had asked Jim not to bring Blair to the Enforcer Locality any more.
“Alright.” Blair frowned up at Simon before he gave a little laugh. “Where are my manners? I’m sorry, please come in, sir.”
Banks followed the younger man into the loft. The front roomlooked different from the last time that he had been there, which was, admittedly, several lunar cycles ago. Through the clear plexi windows at the far end of the room the sun had finally set and the first moon could be seen rising through the hover city in the distance. It was a stunning view, one that made Simon momentarily forget his grim assignment.
“Can I get you a beverage?” Blair asked politely. “Jim should be home any moment.”
“Sandburg…Blair…” the older man hesitated, a pained look on his face.
Blair’s normally tanned complexion paled rapidly. “Blair. You used my given name. But you never…” he trailed off, closing his eyes. “Jim’s not coming home, is he?” he asked in a whisper.
“No, no, I’m afraid he isn’t.”
Blair swayed, and afraid that the younger man was going to fall, Simon reached out for him, but Sandburg moved his arm out of reach, just as his legs gave way and he collapsed onto the divan. Banks sat down on the chair opposite him.
“What happened?” Blair asked, looking up at Simon, his eyes filling with tears.
“There was a break in at the local cred center, the one on Merg-X,” he elaborated. When Blair nodded, indicating that he knew where Simon was talking about, Banks continued, “Fourteen of the work force were taken hostage. Jim went in to negotiate for their release.”
“What happened?” Blair asked when Simon didn’t go on.
Banks sighed. “It was all a trap,” he continued. “The Franklins brothers wanted revenge on Ellison for his part in sending their father to the Pluto Penitentiary.” The prison on Pluto was the coldest, most miserable place in any of the galaxies; to be sent there meant that you were the worst of the worst. It was, for all intents and purposes, a death sentence. “They hit him with a laser the minute he walked into the building. He never had a chance.”
Blair didn’t say anything, he just sat there looking at his hands and after a few minutes, Simon began to get antsy. It wasn’t long before that antsiness segued into anger.
‘Little punk, he can’t even cry over his lover.’ Simon glared at the dry-eyed man. ‘Jim deserved better,’ he thought resentfully. ‘He deserved me.’
Sandburg looked up at Simon at that moment, as if he could hear the condemnation in the older man’s mind. Simon saw the pain in Blair’s eyes and felt a twinge of remorse.
‘It’s not the kid’s fault that he’s in shock. Or that I have always been in love with Jim and was too much of a coward to tell him.’
With a sigh, Simon reached out a large hand and patted Blair on the arm. This time, Blair didn’t flinch away.
*
Seven enforcers aimed their laser rifles into the sky and let off three volleys
in the time held tradition of saluting a fallen hero. James Ellison had been a
tough, but fair man and his interment service was well attended.
“He would have hated this,” Blair murmured in a Sentinel soft voice.
Simon, who was standing right next to Blair, heard him, just barely. He flicked a quick frown at the younger man, but inside, he knew that Sandburg was right. James Ellison hated being the center of attention.
“My sympathies for your loss.”
“So terrible.”
“I’m here for you.”
Banks looked up in surprise, thinking for a moment that the condolences were being aimed at him. But naturally, they were for Blair, who was James’ acknowledged spouse. For Simon, who had loved Jim just as much as Blair, there was nothing.
“Are you alright, Simon?” Blair asked when the other mourners had left.
“What?” Banks asked in surprise.
“I asked if you are alright? I know that you and Jim were very close and this has to be very hard on you.”
Simon opened his mouth, but couldn’t answer, at first. Guilt over his uncharitable thoughts had the dark skinned man blushing. Here Blair was, having a memorial for his husband, and yet, he was thinking about Simon’s welfare.
“Yeah, kid. It is tough, but even though Jim is gone, we’ll have to try and keep him alive in our hearts.”
Blair nodded. Both men turned and watched solemnly as the internment receptacle was flashed into the waiting carrier. The receptacle, with James’ body, would be taken to a holding facility until such time as Blair had it incinerated. That was the tradition that the dead were held in a controlled atmosphere for an undetermined time, to allow mourners who might be out of galaxy time to say goodbye.
“Yes, in our hearts,” Blair repeated in a subdued voice. “Jim,” the Guide whispered in anguish. Simon saw the younger man wiping his eyes and nodded in satisfaction.
*
Blair blew a frustrated breath out as he juggled the five plexi bags as he pushed open the loft's front door. "J. J., man, you couldn't have helped me?" he groused. "It's not as if you didn't 'hear' me," Blair muttered sub-Sentinelaly.
Although, Sandburg knew that the persnickety Sentinel usually got so involved in cleaning on their home that he forgot about anything and everything else. On the upside, the loft—or more accurately, the house that they had remodeled to look like the loft—had never looked more spotless. On the downside, well, that was kind of obvious.
Cough. Cough cough cough.
Sandburg spun around at the harsh coughing sounds coming from the kitchen, tiny bags of pre-shrunk and hyper-vacuum sealed veggies and fruitables went flying out of his hands, only to bounce against the front door that Blair had just shut. "J. J.!"
Blair hurried into the kitchen area and slid to his knees by his lover, who was lying on the floor, gasping for breath. As quickly as he could, Blair turned the older man onto his side, in the 'recovery position'. Unfortunately, Ellison's breathing didn't become any easier, in fact, it worsened.
"Oh, geez." Sandburg looked around the kitchen in desperation. "What happened, J. J.?" A quick sniff of the air answered that question quickly; he could smell the sour tang of the toxic mix of chlor and amoni. "Oh, man. I warned you about mixing chems."
Knowing what had happened didn't really help Blair that much. The mixing of chlor and amoni was known to put off a noxious cloud that impaired breathing in a norm, let alone a super sensitive Sentinel. Knowing the cause only added to Blair's problems, especially since J. J. had developed pneumonia, twice, since he turned 50 a few years ago. The younger Guide called out, "Vent!" which started the automatic ventilation system over the cooker area. The air cleared in an instant and the vent shut off five seconds later. In the silence, Blair heard...nothing.
Ellison had stopped breathing. "J.J.!" Sandburg screamed the older man's name, again.
*
The Guide sat on the kitchen floor, tears running across his cheeks as he looked at the body of his lover and friend, J. J. Ellison.
Nothing he had done had helped. Not using the portable vent. Not trying the cardiac defib. The epi pens lay on the ground around J. J.'s body, like extra, little bodies.
The Sentinel and Guide lived far enough from res areas that calling for medical backup wasn't practical. Hence, the extra med equipment.
"The completely worthless, and utterly superfluous med equipment!" Sandburg yelled, throwing the rebreather for the vent across the kitchen. Blair crawled over and lay down beside his dead lover, pulling the rapidly cooling body closer.
"Jim," Blair whispered into the Sentinel's neck.
A youngish man had walked into their home, just an hour ago, despite his actual physical age. Now, a much older man lay beside his beloved on the floor, aged by his grief and pain.
*
"I'm so sorry for your loss," the major from the nearby hover base told Blair as he shook his hand.
"Thank you," Sandburg muttered back.
"It's so sad," the major's wife said to her husband when she mistakenly thought they were out of hearing range. For most people, they probably would have been, but Blair had lived most of his life with a Sentinel, so his hearing was more attuned to a lower range than the norms.
Blair agreed with the woman, it was sad. Sandburg had suffered through a lot of setbacks in his lifetime. First, getting Jim to let him 'study and observe' the enforcer, then that psycho, Alexia, had murdered him. Yes, murdered him, but Blair was feeling much better now.@ Then there was the Summ mess, where Blair had been kicked out of the locality, and out of the lives of his friends on the enforce. That, in turn, had necessitated Blair and J. J. moving farther out, onto one of the terraformed moons. Then, his mother, Naomi, had died in that planetquake on Mars a few years later.
And now, his lover and husband had died. Staring at the plexi container that was J.J.'s final resting place, Blair felt his shoulders droop. An instant's worth of distraction from the hyper-cleaner and he was minus one love.
"Blair, honey." Sandburg hugged the older woman back as she clung to him. Emilie Johansen reminded him a great deal of his own dear, departed mother...except. Well, except that she was around a helluva lot more than Naomi ever was and actually considered his feelings when there were problems.
"Emilie," Blair sighed into her shoulder as he let himself droop. He knew that she wouldn't, and didn't, care about appearances and so he could let himself actually grieve around her.
“Come, my sweet. Come back to my residential dwelling. We can drink to your beloved J. J. and let ourselves think of all the good times.” Emilie linked her arm through Blair’s and slowly led him away from the resting platform. J. J.’s container would be taken to a holding facility until Blair came to collect him.
*
The mourners bowed their heads as the two old men were laid to rest. Blair Sandburg and Jimmy Ellison had both died within minutes of each other; Blair had been a weathered 128 years old when he died, while Jimmy had been several years older. Both ages were rather old, but not unheard of in this day and time. The late 23 century had seen miraculous advancements in medicine and molecular rejuvenation, so people who would normally have died in their 70's or 80's were living upwards of thirty years longer.
The two men would be missed in their small community. Blair and Jimmy had led a secluded lifestyle in their farmhouse on one of the outer moons of Mars, but not secluded enough that they didn't have friends who would miss them. Years earlier, Jimmy—who was good at woodworking—had built a coffin that was big enough to accommodate both he and Blair. A few people commented on the 'coffin built for two', to themselves, at least. Some even wondered how Jimmy knew that he and his husband would die at the same time, thereby allowing them to be buried together, but they wisely kept that question to themselves.
"It's so sad, losing both of them at the same time," one younger woman said as she sniffed into her handkerchief.
"Yes," her mother agreed with a nod. "But they were so devoted to one another, I just can't imagine either of them living without the other one."
"That's so true," another mourner stated, as he walked up to the two women. "They were inseparable, both in life and now in death." He gave the open grave a quick glance.
"How long were they together?" The mayor asked as he too joined the conversation.
"Nobody knows. I know that they renewed their wedding vows on their 50th anniversary, but that was several years ago, now. And, if I'm not mistaken, they were together several years before they finally made it official."
The group of friends and acquaintances of the two men glanced at the open grave and the overly large coffin lying inside the freshly dug hole. That was another thing that was unusual about the funeral, they were being buried in the ground! Nobody was put in the dirt any more, preferring to be incinerated instead. The archaic procedure was unprecedented and frankly, a little scandalous, but Blair had insisted and no one wanted to deny their favorite anthropologist his final request.
*
It was a good thing that the people at the funeral didn't possess the ability to look through solid matter, or they would have received an even bigger shock. Several feet underneath Blair and Jimmy's coffin, lay another casket, this one was older by several decades, the metal of the coffin still as bright as when it had been placed there years before. Inside lay...J.J. Ellison, who bore a striking resemblance to the Jimmy Ellison they were burying.
J. J., of course, differed from Jimmy Ellison in as many ways as they were similar. First of all, were their ages. J. J. was a robust man of 63 when he died, not an elderly man of well over a hundred. The slight chem burns on his face, still visible—thanks to the preservation of the plexi container—even after all these years, bore testament to J. J.’s accidental death.
The mourners would have been further stunned if they had seen down several more feet to where…another internment container resided. Inside lay an even younger version of Jimmy, namely, James Ellison. A nice, neat hole was still on his forehead, where those long dead criminals had gotten their revenge in that cred center heist.
However, the biggest shock would have come when they went down the next few feet. James Joseph Ellison, known as Jim to his friends and family, lay interred in an old fashioned coffin, one that was almost a hundred years old.
Time hadn’t been as kind to this Jim. Without a fancy plexi container, the elements hadn’t been held back, and since he had been placed in the ground, not in a reclamation center, Jim hadn’t been protected from the elements. His body had been subjected to the ravages of time and only a skeleton remained. A skeleton with a strange bit of metal in the center of his chest.
Below that level, lay only dirt. Dirt and memories.
*
Blair slumped against the loft door, on the outside of it, that is. He was gathering what little strength he had to go inside and face Ellison.
Not Jim. Ellison.
Since the Summ mess had hit the vid screens a few days earlier, Jim had morphed into Ellison; no nonsense, tough as titanium, 'I don't need anybody' James Joseph Ellison. Even after Blair had denounced himself in front of any and all deities, and the known universe, and Jim had acted all mushy at the injury ward, things weren't back to normal. In fact, since Simon had finagled an invite to become an enforcer--and who were they kidding—Jim had quickly fallen back behind his mask, or more accurately, his wall; Ellison, the jerk, had made a comeback appearance.
Blair raised a weary hand and squeezed on the hair clamper to release it, and let his hair fall down like he normally wore it. The young summ student was worn out, physically and emotionally, from the trauma of the last few days. No, make that the last several months. He had just finished clearing out his cubicle at the uni—and run the gauntlet of students and teachers who had lined up to berate him—and he literally had nothing left to give. Luckily, his mother had decided to 'detach with love'...
'After screwing up my life,' Blair thought. He felt a moment's pang of guilt, because he knew that she truly didn't mean to cause harm. Anyway, she had moved on to the next person she was going to 'visit', so Blair, and Jim, didn't have to play nice with her.
Plastering on his most sincere smile, Blair put a hand on the door lock. It automatically recognized Sandburg as one of those authorized to enter and opened the door for him. The door swung open...about ten inches...and then it bounced back, hitting Blair in the chest. He glanced down with a frown and saw several plexi containers sitting just inside the doorway.
With a sickening sense of deja vu, Blair swallowed the bile that he could feel in the back of his throat and called out,tentatively, "Jim?"
A book, a rare and precious actual physical copy, came flying out of Blair's office under the stairs. It landed haphazardly in an open plexi square, where several pages were bent under, thereby creasing them permanently. Ellison's voice called out from the bedroom/office, letting Blair know just who was rummaging through his things.
"Sandburg! Stay right where you are, I'm coming out."
A few seconds later, Jim followed his words with actions and limped out of the room. His leg, where Zeller had shot him with the laser gun, was still a little weak. After all, even in the 22nd century it takes a full day for gun wounds to heal.
"I want you out of here. Now!" Jim bellowed. He stomp/thumped over to the kitchen area and touched the cooler, which opened and allowed him to get a synthbeer. Ellison didn't offer one to Blair.
"I've had it with you, your flaky mom, and fitting you into *my* life." Ellison took a healthy drink of his synthbeer, wiped his mouth off on the back of his hand, and continued. "You wormed your way into my life, here and down at the locality. You follow me around like a lost puppy and I'm sick of it. Offering you an enforcer job was Simon's idea, not mine, and I am damned glad that you *hesitated*." Jim paused and glanced around the room. Looking up, he continued his tirade, "And you are a lousy lover. I mean, man...shit, damned, your old timey way of speaking has rubbed off on me."
Blair couldn't keep his eyes off of the molested book. He'd look up at Jim's rant, but his gaze kept straying back to those bent pages. His mind heard everything that Ellison was saying and the words kept building up, like pressure behind a dam, one that was about to crack right down the middle.
"...stupid clothes, weird hair...always getting into everything..."
Sandburg finally looked up and away from the book. He looked over at his husband and for a moment the pressure built to an unbearable (pressure) in the middle of his brain...and then the damn broke.
"You've had it! YOU'VE had it!" Blair screamed. For a moment, even Jim looked startled, his eyes widening in surprise. "I've put up with you and your stupid senses, your dumb ass rules and your screwing anything female with red hair. Oh wait, one time the slut was blond, wasn't she?" He was, of course, referring to Alex Barnes, the rogue Sentinel who drowned Blair, the same one that Jim was making out with a couple of days later. "But that's okay. I mean, it was just your senses acting up. Right?"
Ellison quickly went from startled to Really Pissed Off, in a micro-second. Blair was still talking when Jim barreled across the room, dropping his synth onto the floor, and slammed Blair into the tome station. As Blair's back hit the simulcron wood, his mind flew back to his and Jim's second meeting; the Sentinel had slammed him against a tome station then, too.
Blair gasped in pain as his ribs gave in a forceful way. Under different circumstances that would have sent Jim into his Blessed Protector mode. However, these were very unusual circumstances and Ellison had his senses dialed down low, because of the pain in his leg and the synthbeer he was drinking. So, instead of letting Blair go with an apology, he shoved harder.
The younger man’s eyes flew open and he tried desperately to suck in some air, but in his anger, the Sentinel was pushing his back into the tome station harder than before. He couldn’t breathe!
He was drowning in a roomful of air!
Sandburg pushed at Jim’s arms desperately, but it was like pushing against a boulder. Blair’s face was turning an ugly red shade—one that almost matched the color of Jim’s face—but Ellison was too pissed off to see. In desperation, the summ student’s arms began to flail around…and he hit something.
An actual wooden box.Precious, rare wood. Old wood, that splintered, spilling its contents onto the loft’s floor.
There was a deafening roar, one that competed mightily with the roaring in Blair’s air deprived ears. Jim’s hands fell away, taking Blair with them. The loft was filled with silence.
*
Blair moaned at the pain in his back and the pain in his head that was making that appendage feel like it was falling off. Opening his eyes slowly, Sandburg tried to figure out what had happened. The last thing he remembered was finishing his summ report. After that…
Memories came flooding in. Naomi walking in and ‘helping’. Jim assuming he’d sold him out to the clickers. Simon outright accusing Blair of taking advantage of Jim’s ‘natural fragility’.The broadcast, losing his job—jobs—and finally the scene at the loft with Jim.
Blair was bombarded by all of those memories in a fraction of a second. He moaned at the pain of all he had lost and tried to curl up into a fetal position, hoping to stave off the memories for a few moments. But…his head bumped into something.
Sandburg opened his eyes and saw Jim’s shoulder. Frowning, Blair tried to understand why Ellison would be on the floor. Bracing his ribs with one hand, the younger man pushed himself up into a sitting position with the other.
There was blood everywhere!
“Jim!” Blair called out to his lover.
He reached out one hand, but hesitated a moment before touching him. There was a hole in Jim’s chest, on the left hand side, and the older man’s eyes were open and staring. Despite Blair’s earlier observation, there really wasn’t all that much blood. A quick finger to Jim’s neck provided proof of what he knew…Jim was dead.
There was no telling how long Blair sat on the floor in shock; he did know that by the time reality reasserted itself, shadows had moved across the floor and it was well into nighttime. Sandburg finally shifted and realized two things, one his butt and legs had long since gone numb and another, he had hit his head, probably on the floor, when Jim dropped him. Nausea, from the head injury, but also from the shock of his husband dying, had the younger man leaning over and throwing up on the floor next to the tome station.
“What happened?” Sandburg wondered aloud.
He looked around the area and spotted the shattered wooden box, of which remnants were lying on the floor. With a frown, Blair recognized Jim’s antiques box. It was an actual wooden box, an antique itself, filled with vintage weaponry, etc. from an ancestor of Jim’s.
The paraphernalia belonged to a great, great, great, great grandnephew of Ellison’s father who used to be a police officer—back when they were called that—also named Jim Ellison. The man had lived, and died, in Cascade, WA, several hundred years ago. The box contained his badge, a shoulder holster and…a gun, which Jim kept well oiled and loaded.
Hypothesizing, Blair reasoned that his flailing around while Jim had him shoved against the tome station had broken the fragile box and sent its contents to the floor. Which, in turn, had caused the older weapon to discharge, accidentally killing this Jim Ellison. He also realized that his recent trouble over the summ, and the fights with Jim over the last several days, meant that no one—meaning Simon and the clickers—were going to believe his innocence.
Don’t be mistaken, Blair wasn’t coolly and logically thinking over Jim’s death while sitting on the floor like nothing had happened. No, Sandburg had been a multi-tasker since he was a baby, so he was more than capable of thinking over what had happened, while still clutching Ellison’s cool body to his chest and crying, while hysterically calling out Jim’s name.
By the time Blair had calmed down enough to think clearly, he surmised that the building must be exceptionally empty tonight. Either that, or no one cared to come see what was happening. Actually, it was a combination of both; several people were attending a concert on the next block—one which Blair and Jim had planned on attending…Before—and the rest of the building had learned to ignore any yelling of either man’s name since they became rather vocal lovers.
“If I call the enforcers and tell them what happened, they are going to call Simon, who, let’s face it, doesn’t like me all that much at the moment.” Looking down at the man in his arms, Blair felt the tears threatening to fall anew. He blinked hard, trying to stave them off for the moment, because, not only did his swollen eyes hurt from all the crying he had already done, but he also needed to think clearly for a moment. “They’re going to wonder why I didn’t call them a long time ago, as well,” Sandburg realized with a grimace. “No matter what, I’m going to end up alone, and most likely, in prison.”
“Ray! Get in here and clean up this room!” Although shouted, the words barely made it through the loft’s concrete block walls as Mrs. Davies hollered at her son.
Her cloned son.
Raymond Davies had been hit by a landing hovercraft almost two years ago. Devastated by the loss of her only child, Sophia Davies did something radical…she had him cloned. The young man, who was aged to 11, the age her son was when he was killed, wasn’t a duplicate of the original Ray, but he was accepted for himself, just the same.
Surprisingly, Jim had been more than receptive to the idea. In fact, he’d insisted that he and Blair leave multiple DNA samples some place safe, so that they could clone one another if the worst happened.
Blair looked over at their linen closet, which housed a secret refrigeration chamber. Inside were multiple samples of blood, saliva and hair from both men. The chamber was super-secret, because the ability to clone either a Sentinel or a Guide, or both, would be worth billions on the open market.
“I could clone Jim, dispose of…him,” Blair paused and looked down at his lover and felt guilty for thinking that way. Then, he remembered that Jim had been in the process of throwing him out, literally, when he was killed and hardened his resolve. “And no one would be the wiser.” With that thought in mind, Blair touched a finger to his temple, thereby activating his phone chip imbedded there, and called his cousin, Robert.
*
Robert was invaluable. He owned a holding facility—one with a somewhat shady reputation—so, really, Blair didn’t have to do much of anything.
Jim was on leave for a month, due more to the emotional trauma he had suffered than the physical, so his being missed at work wasn’t a problem. Everyone expected the two men to avoid the clickers, so it wasn’t a surprise that they stayed in. Luckily for Blair, cloning only took about a week. That was the only place there was a snag in the process.
*
“What do you mean there are three Jims?” Blair asked incredulously.
The small Asian man wrung his hands and looked scared. That could have been due to the snafu with the cloning process…or it could have been because Robert was standing to one side, glaring at the older man in a way that just screamed just how ‘shady’ Rob’s dealings were.
“I’m so sorry, sir. We try several different clones, because it generally takes several times for a viable specimen to take hold. Amazingly enough, all three tries have begun to grow.”
Blair looked at the plexi containers that each had a Jim in them. Three Jim’s. It was too much to take in, all at once.
“I am so sorry, sir, but you must make a decision, and very quickly,” the cloner interrupted Blair’s thoughts.
“Decision?” he asked with a puzzled frown on his face. “What decision is there to be made?”
“Which clone to keep. We can terminate two of them.” His finger was pointing at a black button and Blair gasped in pain.
“I’m not going to kill Jim!” Blair expostulated.
The older man’s eyes widened at the vehemence of Sandburg’s statement. “Or possibly, give them up for adoption,” he amended hastily.
“N-no. I want all three of them. Aged to the same age, 41.”
“Very well, sir.”
*
So, Blair ended up with three clones. To be certain, they weren’t like Jim, exactly. James—Blair refused to call them Jim—was very devoted to his job…so, he was the one who went to work with Simon. J. J. was even more of a neat freak than Jim had ever dreamed of being, so he kept their home clean. Jimmy was more of an outdoorsman; he and Blair often went off camping, and later on in life, had a farm.
One by one, the Jimclones died off, leaving Blair to live out the rest of his life with Jimmy. Blair lived just a few minutes longer than Jimmy.
*
The last of the ground covering was packed on top of the grave and the final mourner had departed the plot. Because the ground was repaired so quickly, a gravestone was immediately erected at the head of it. Two men walked down the hill overlooking the final resting place and read the stone.
Blair Jacob Sandburg
And
James (Jim, J. J., Jimmy) Joseph Ellison
Together For Eternity
With a smile at one another, the taller man with pale blue eyes reached down for the hand of the smaller man with cobalt blue eyes and long, dark curly hair. Turning around, they walked off.
The End?