Stronger, Faster, and More Beautiful
‘Will send shivers down your spine’Teen Vogue‘A work of unforgettable vision and imagination. This book is everything I love about science fiction’Jay KristoffBlack Mirror with a touch Westworld re-wiring, STRONGER, FASTER, AND MORE BEAUTIFUL is a novel in six interconnected parts about what it means to be human – and where those boundaries lie.Set in our world, spanning the near to distant future, the author, Arwen Elys Dayton, explores the possible consequences of advanced medical breakthroughs and how they may shape and reshape humanity. From organ donation to plastic surgery to full bodily reconstruction, these stories take you by your (for now, organic) hand and lead you into a future where the line between person and machine becomes increasingly blurred.Deeply thoughtful, poignant, horrifying, and action-packed, this novel strikes new ground while also seeming so strangely… likely.Just try to disconnect.
Читать Stronger, Faster, and More Beautiful онлайн беплатно
HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
Published by HarperVoyager
an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 2018
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins 2018
Copyright © Arwen Elys Dayton 2018
Cover design by Mike Topping © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2018
Cover images © Shutterstock.com
Arwen Elys Dayton asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Source ISBN: 9780008322380
Ebook Edition © December 2018 ISBN: 9780008322397
Version: 2018-10-25
We have got to the point in human history where we simply do not have to accept what nature has given us.
—Jay Keasling, professor of biochemical engineering, University of California, Berkeley, in Wired, 2009
A few years from now …
Human!
Stop!
… is what I’m thinking. As if I’ve already become something else, a different species, and I’m tired of hearing all of his worn-out, human-person logic.
The man is reminding me that Julia’s heart will be combined with my own heart, so it’s not like I’m “taking” hers. It’s a synthesis. The new heart will fuse both in a way that’s better than either of the originals. A super-heart, I guess you could call it.
He is reminding me of this, and every time I say “But—” he cuts me off by continuing his explanation, only more loudly. Now he’s almost yelling, though he’s just as cheerful as he always is.
Did I mention that he’s my father? And he’s only repeating what my doctor has explained so many times. Although, let’s be honest, my doctor explains the same things very differently. She discusses recovery rates and reasonable percentages and acceptable outcomes. She tells me about other patients, though of course, my case and Julia’s case—the case of Evan and Julia Weary, semi-identical twins—is unique, so we are, as she likes to say, “medical pioneers.” I’ve come to think of us as the season-finale episode of a show about strange medical cases. Tune in for the outrageous conclusion!
I’m in my hospital room, but I’m sitting in a chair in the corner, because it’s dangerous to stay in the hospital bed, which can be wheeled away for CAT scans or blood draws or surgery, or whatever, so easily. You have the illusion of control if you’re sitting in a chair.
Julia is in the adjoining room. She’s on the bed, of course. And though I can hear our mother in there with her, she’s only saying a few quiet words to my sister, and my sister is not saying anything in reply.
“This is fortune smiling on us, Evan,” my father says, using what has become one of his favorite phrases. He looms over me, because I’m sitting down while he’s standing and also because he’s six foot five. “Years from now, you’re going to look back on these weeks and wonder why you ever hesitated. Julia would want her heart and yours to be joined.”
Whenever he senses me becoming skeptical about what we’re going to do, my father finds a new angle to convince me. This is the new angle for today: Julia’s fondest wish is for our twin hearts to become one.
“But I’m the only one who will get to use the heart,” I tell him. “It’s not like we’re turning into one person and sharing it. I get the heart. She gets nothing.”
He raises his voice another notch as he says, “Would you rather put hers in the ground? Alone and cold? To rot?” Even he can hear the hysteria that has snuck into his argument. He lowers the volume to something like normal conversational level and adds, “You know she wouldn’t want that. She does get something. She gets you, alive.”
“I’m the one who gets that!”
“She gets it too, Evan.”
I hope that’s true.
“You sound out of breath,” my father says. “How about we keep our voices calm?”
This is an infuriating suggestion since he’s the one who’s not calm, but his observation is accurate; I’m having trouble catching my breath. I concentrate on forcing air in and out of my chest.
