“Diana is checking her schedule. I’ll get back to you on it.” He hadn’t even mentioned it to Diana.

The last thing Jeremiah wanted was to drive four hours and schmooze with a roomful of journalists, most of whom he could have reported circles around in his day. He had no desire to banter about who got which promotion and listen to all the righteous First Amendment‒Fourth Estate pontificating. And he certainly wasn’t itching to see Walt get a second Hearst Award for Excellence in as many years. Jeremiah had been nominated himself three times but missed out on each one. If he had to hear one more person say to him what an honor it was “just to be nominated” he’d likely start throwing punches. Besides, with the Meld scandal, he’d be a goldfish in a piranha pool, and that wasn’t something he was about to walk into casually.

“Yeah, I will,” the clone said into the phone. “I’ll call you later this week.”

For the remainder of the viewing, Jeremiah and Brent watched the clone work silently in his office, lead an uneventful editorial meeting and decline an offer for lunch with two of his younger coworkers, saying he had a lot of busywork to catch up on. When the monitor switched off, he was eating a soggy tuna sandwich alone at his desk and staring, unknowingly, directly into the camera.

Chapter 6

Day 30

It was a novelty to live in the lap of high-tech luxury without the responsibilities of work and family. Jeremiah wasn’t used to so much free time, and in those first weeks he wallowed in it. He stayed up late, well after midnight, watching old movies and reruns of TV shows he hadn’t seen since he was a kid. He ate unconventional meals at odd hours and burned them off on the treadmill in virtual locales as exotic as he could think of. He read newspapers—the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, the Boston Globe, even his hometown weekly—from cover to cover. They delivered the actual hard copies, like he’d asked. He started reading the books they’d supplied him with and toyed again with the idea of writing his own novel. A year of this could go far, he figured, toward finally setting that idea in motion. But what would he write about? Titles took shape in his mind: Clone Alone; Cloney Island; The Year of the Clone. He doubted Charles Scott would approve. Still, he thought, it could make for a good read.

After a while, though, too much free time begins to feel more like empty, wasted hours, and Jeremiah got antsy, the way one does when a vacation has gone on too long. He craved his old routine. More than anything, he wanted a walk. Not the augmented reality kind he could get on the treadmill, an actual walk in the woods where he could feel the breeze on his face and the crunch of the leaves underneath his feet. It didn’t help matters that he was made to watch his clone doing all the ordinary activities he was beginning to miss. He started to fixate on things that shouldn’t have bothered him. He hated that the clone was left to choose a new car to replace the one that was wrecked. A dark blue Lincoln town car? Really? It looked like something a G-man would drive. Although he knew he would have ended up with the same car—sedate, appropriate, not too flashy—he had to wonder why he’d suddenly started eyeing a lemon-yellow European sports car while he watched the clone haggle at the car dealership. He found himself wishing the clone might at least have taken it for a test drive.