“Oh . . . well I think that we just labeled the samples as they came so whatever order—”

“I was second,” Carmen says, sliding up to hers. They quickly sort themselves, and soon each Crick Scholar is contemplatively face-to-face with their own cerebral organoid. Kierk is squatted between Carmen and Alex. Up close his organoid is just as pale and colorless but no longer so lump-like; indeed, it has shallow convolutions on its surfaces. It reminds him of the surface of Europa, with its crags and vents and canyon lines betraying the deep ocean within. Like some Precambrian sea creature it waves slightly in the current but is sessile, anchored to the glass base by a near-invisible stalk that must be the trunk of the tree. If Kierk looks close enough, he can see the incredibly fine tips poking up through the organoid, the tops of the branches barely beyond, granting just a small amount of room left to grow. Little bits of sloughed-off brain matter bob in the slow circulation, swim by the main blob like fish passing around a great coral growth.

“So what are you going to do with our clones?” Kierk asks from his crouch.

“We don’t use that word.”

“But that’s what they are.” Kierk is still staring at the blob swaying in the current. “This is the excised neural tube of my clone that is now trying to grow into a brain. But it can’t self-organize well. No morphogenic cues.”

“Well, I mean, technically . . . yes.”

“So what’s this white bubble growing off of mine?” Carmen says, pointing. “It looks like a little cup or saucer or . . .”

“Oh,” Todd says, stopping to lean over Carmen. “It’s trying to grow an eye.”

The look on Carmen’s face. She backs away, shivering suddenly. “It’s trying to see?”

“Don’t worry! It’s not like the eye is going to be functional,” Todd says.

“Did you test it?” she asks. “I mean, it might have working photoreceptors. It might be able to distinguish light and dark, that kind of thing. Maybe even simple outlines . . .”

Todd appears disconcerted. Carmen continues—“And what about internal neural signals?”

“Oh, yes! Absolutely. Recordings definitely show neural activity.”

“What type of activity. Dreaming?”

“Dreaming of things they’ve never seen,” Kierk says quietly. “Dreams made of ancestral memories. The genetically pre-programmed connectivity of the network. A blueprint left behind by all the humans who ever lived. Ancestral memory. Predators and prey. Mother and father. Comfort and cold. Food. Lovers . . .”

“Well, I mean . . .” Todd starts to respond but no one is listening to him because Jessica has approached the first bioreactor in the line of eight, staring down at it, and soon everyone is silent, realizing. All the gazes of the Crick Scholars are drawn to the first vat and its small gray-white content, the slow stir of it, almost like it was breathing through the thrumming fans of the room.