“I wasn’t expecting you, Dr. Young.” He looked down at his shoeless feet with some apprehension.

“You have just seen the clone for the first time. I thought it might be a good idea to have a talk, Mr. Adams,” she said, and motioned for him to take a seat on one of the couches. She sat on the other, directly across from him. She crossed her legs at the ankles, adjusted her computer pad on her lap and smiled at him in a way that was at once demure and expectant.

Just like the first time he’d seen her, Jeremiah was struck by the idea that she looked more like a model playing a scientist in some rock video than she did an actual scientist. She was a beautiful woman for her age, which Jeremiah guessed was near either side of forty. The fact that she sported black-rimmed men’s eyeglasses and wore her silvery-colored hair pulled back in a tense knot behind her head was an obvious attempt to work around her looks. It almost had the opposite effect.

But Natalie Young was all business and a woman of few words, as he supposed most psychiatric doctors needed to be. She seemed to be waiting for Jeremiah to say something.

“Have you seen it?” he asked.

“I have, briefly.”

“What did you think?”

“I’m more interested in your thoughts,” she said.

“Well, they got the nose just right.”

“And everything else, I’d say.”

“Yeah, everything else. It’s strange to think that thing will be going home tonight, having dinner with my family, walking my dog.”

“How does that make you feel, Jeremiah?”

“I don’t know, nervous, I guess. But this is what I signed up for, right?” He tried to smile but he had the sense it didn’t come across right.

“Why don’t you tell me how you spent the last night with your family. What was that like?” she asked.

“It was just normal, I guess. A normal night. You know, dinner, some TV.”

“I can’t imagine it felt very normal for you,” she said. “You are literally being replaced, Jeremiah. You must have been feeling something on your last night with your wife and son. Did you do anything special? What was going through your mind?”

In fact, there had been a great deal going through his mind the night before. On his drive home, he had thought of soldiers. How many times had he seen on the evening news the syrupy stories of young men or women returning home from war to welcoming crowds and weepy families? How many times had he cringed as the cameras invaded the intensely private moment when a father or mother sought to surprise a young child with a visit to a kindergarten class? He was always struck by how silent a child’s joy could be. Most of them just ran into the arms of a parent and burrowed in with hardly a word, lost in some transcendent relief. And despite the fact that he always felt like he was intruding, watching something that no one else should be witness to, he typically choked up at the sight and couldn’t look away. It was brilliant media manipulation, something he could admire.