The Tomorrow Clone (The Tomorrow Gene Book 3) Read online

  Table of Contents

  The Tomorrow Clone

  Copyright

  The Tomorrow Clone

  FREE BOOKS!

  Chapter 1 - The Inevitable Ends

  Chapter 2 - The Change

  Chapter 3 - A Well Mannered Shove

  Chapter 4 - For Protection

  Chapter 5 - Only Pretending

  Chapter 6 - Riley Jacoby

  Chapter 7 - According to Reports

  Chapter 8 - You of All People

  Chapter 9 - What do You See?

  Chapter 10 - Extradition

  Chapter 11 - The Same Thing

  Chapter 12 - The Big Man Himself

  Chapter 13 - The One Thing ...

  Chapter 14 - Hide and Seek

  Chapter 15 - The Dromes

  Chapter 16 - A Birth Certificate

  Chapter 17 - A Damn Good Reason

  Chapter 18 - Rogue Cloning

  Chapter 19 - Proper Experimental Protocol

  Chapter 20 - The Greatest Scientist in the World

  Chapter 21 - The First Experiment

  Chapter 22 - Out of Options

  Chapter 23 - Jubilee

  Chapter 24 - A Pair of Objects

  Chapter 25 - The Dark Space Inside

  Chapter 26 - Surprise

  Chapter 27 - The Only Shot

  Chapter 28 - Except For the Truth

  Chapter 29 - A Day to Procession

  Chapter 30 - A Master Liar

  Chapter 31 - A Terrible Idea

  Chapter 32 - Going Deeper

  Chapter 33 - In Exchange For the Quarry

  Chapter 34 - Down in the Tunnels

  Chapter 35 - Whatever Clone

  Chapter 36 - Same as Before

  Chapter 37 - Final Preperations

  Chapter 38 - Upholding a Legacy

  Chapter 39 - Waiting For Something to Happen

  Chapter 40 - The Building Under Surveillance

  Chapter 41 - Lively the Last Time

  Chapter 42 - The Wrong Ephraim

  Chapter 43 - Bang-Bang

  Chapter 44 - A Strange Game of Chicken

  Chapter 45 - Away From Prying Eyes

  Chapter 46 - The Most Important Thing in the World

  Chapter 47 - A Long Time Coming

  Chapter 48 - Incredibly Broken

  Chapter 49 - The Thing About Fire

  Chapter 50 - A Fatalist Thought

  Chapter 51 - LIke a Real Person

  Chapter 52 - Signs of Civilization

  Chapter 53 - Among the Humming Machinery

  Chapter 54 - The Way of the Future

  Chapter 55 - Exactly the Opposite

  Chapter 56 - Out of Options

  Chapter 57 - A Secret Weapon

  Chapter 58 - Message Left

  Chapter 59 - To Have Faith

  Chapter 60 - Another Body to the Count

  Chapter 61 - To Change the World

  Chapter 62 - Up Ahead ...

  Chapter 63 - Troublesome Thoughts

  Chapter 64 - Tweakers Will Tweak

  Chapter 65 - The Cause of All That Was Happening

  Chapter 66 - A Gong Demanding Silence

  Chapter 67 - Until the Darkness Fell

  Chapter 68 - An Excellent Reason

  Chapter 69 - Five Minutes

  Chapter 70 - The One Thing ...

  Chapter 71 - Like Lennon Promised

  Shit from Brains

  So What's Next?

  Learn the Story Behind The Tomorrow Gene

  About the Authors

  THE TOMORROW CLONE

  by Sean Platt &

  Johnny B. Truant

  Copyright © 2017 by Sean Platt & Johnny B. Truant. All rights reserved.

  This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, businesses, events, or locales is purely coincidental.

  Reproduction in whole or part of this publication without express written consent is strictly prohibited. The authors greatly appreciate you taking the time to read our work. Please consider leaving a review wherever you bought the book, or telling your friends about it, to help us spread the word.

  Thank you for supporting our work.

  Get books 1 and 2 in the bestselling series for FREE!

  The discovery of objects approaching from Jupiter orbit immediately sets humanity on edge. NASA doesn't even bother to deny the alien ships' existence. The popular Astral space app (broadcasting from the far side of the moon and accessible by anyone with internet) has already shown the populace what is coming. So the news has turned from evasion to triage, urging calm and offering the few facts they have: The objects are enormous, perfectly round spheres numbering in the dozens, maybe hundreds. They are on an approach vector for Earth. And they will arrive in six days.

  GET INVASION AND CONTACT FOR FREE:

  http://sterlingandstone.net/rsfb

  THANK YOU FOR READING!

  Sean Platt & Johnny B. Truant

  Chapter 1

  The Inevitable Ends

  “Someday she’ll regret it.”

  Timothy looked up from the keyboard. Or actually, not from the keyboard; more beside it. Timothy was already wimping out. Any keys that needed pressing today would be Wallace’s to press. Fine. So long as Timothy played along. And kept his mouth shut.

  “Who will regret it? You mean your mom? About the divorce?”

  Dammit, Tim. It was a throwaway comment, but now Wallace would have to explain.

  Or not. Timothy rolled his eyes, seeing Wallace’s expression.

  “Not your mom.”

  “Never mind.”

  “Are you not going to let it go?”

  “I said ‘never mind,’ Tim.”

  “Uh-huh. But if you meant it then you wouldn’t keep mumbling about it. You want my attention. And you want to talk about it. Or maybe you just want me to agree with you.”

  Wallace grumbled. He moved the mouse, then clicked.

  “It’s okay, Wallace. You’re right. She’ll regret it.”

  “Don’t patronize me. Just because you’re in AP psychology and think you’re Freud doesn’t mean—”

  “If you don’t want me to patronize you, stop bringing it up.”

  “Fine,” Wallace grunted in reply.

  They worked in a gnarl of silence. Wallace felt Timothy’s superiority like heat on his skin.

  The silence built.

  Timothy smirked from Wallace’s peripheral vision just like any another teenage asshole.

  “I’m just saying she had her shot with me and fucked it up,” Wallace blurted, his words tumbling out like toppled blocks.

  “There it is,” Timothy said, satisfaction in his voice.

  “You know it’s true. You know we’ll both be billionaires. If Bailey doesn’t want to hop aboard with me now, fine. She’ll regret it when our company owns half the world.”

  Timothy smiled. “Delusions of grandeur much?”

  “I’m just saying.”

  “I know.”

  “Come on. Was she not a bitch today? Are you seriously saying she wasn’t a total—”

  “Yes.” Timothy held up a hand. “She was kind of a bitch. But put yourself in Bailey’s shoes. She doesn’t know you’ve been into her for like six months, or that you’d built her up in your mind like she was the one true thing. She only knows that you asked her out and wouldn’t take no for an answer.”

  “I took no for an answer.”

  Timothy was kind enough to say nothing. Wallace had taken a no; she’d left no gray area for him to think otherwise. He realized now that if he’d asked her out, been denied, then moved on like it was
no big deal, maybe he’d have enough dignity left to try again later.

  But Wallace hadn’t done things so simply. He’d asked if she was sure she wanted to say no. Then he’d tried to sweeten the pot on the proposed date, offering to take her to the best restaurant in town even though he couldn’t afford it. Then, — humiliation of all humiliations — he’d asked her to explain why she wasn’t interested. Letting Wallace down gently had taken Bailey Davis a full half hour, and now there wasn’t a chance she could look him in the eye again, in school or anywhere. Ever.

  “She will regret it, though,” Wallace said, his voice low.

  “Maybe.”

  “Definitely. When we blow up in a few years and are rolling in dough and fancy cars and living in mansions? Fuck yeah, definitely.”

  “Okay. Definitely.”

  Timothy said nothing more. Wallace knew he, of all people, understood. The boys were brothers without the blood. Timothy only had a girlfriend that one week at camp. Neither was smooth. They had other talents.

  “Hey Wallace,” Timothy said.

  “Yeah.”

  “That’s not why we’re doing this, is it?”

  “Doing what?”

  Timothy’s eyes ticked toward the monitor, the keyboard, the mouse.

  “You’re kidding,” Wallace said.

  “I’m just asking.”

  “You think I spent all that time planning this out because of some stupid little, ungrateful, short-sighted sixteen-year-old bitch?”

  For a moment Wallace thought Timothy might correct him — interject that he, too, had had a hand in planning this stunt. “No,” Wallace answered, not waiting. “This has nothing to do with Bailey. But I am supremely motivated to make it work, to prove to her and the others that they missed the boat.”

  “So, this is a grudge.”

  Wallace exhaled and rolled his eyes, swiveling his chair away from the monitor toward Timothy. “You agreed to this, Tim. If you want out, you’d better say so now.”

  “I want out of this.”

  Wallace’s head tipped back. “Oh, for Christ’s sake. If you’re going to pussy out on everything, why do you—?”

  Timothy interrupted to argue, so Wallace called Timothy yet another name — which Timothy protested. The back-and-forth faded into the familiar arguments: safety versus security, vision versus the norm, risk versus reward, and Wallace’s usual egoist arguments about intellectual superiority.

  Most people were stupid — why was Timothy determined to be stupid as well?

  The spat raged in partial sentences for thirty or forty seconds. Then, just as Timothy seemed ready to turn from jabs to well-reasoned arguments, Wallace held out both of his hands, palms up, to stop it.

  “Tim. You were the one who found the ransomware. What changed between then and now?”

  Timothy sighed, then didn’t precisely answer. “We’re ruining someone’s life’s work. No matter how you slice it, that’s what this comes down to.”

  “Fortune favors the bold.”

  “Bold, fine. But your ideas have moved from ‘bold’ to ‘crazy.’”

  “A lot of great ideas seem crazy at first,” Wallace said. “And you’re supposed to be my business partner.”

  “We’re sixteen! We don’t have a company or investors or money or—”

  “It’s only a matter of time,” Wallace said calmly. “Our dads weren’t much older than us when they started Wowzers. Well, I guess it wasn’t Wowzers yet, but you know what I mean.”

  “And my dad says that yours was just as out of control. Always with the great ideas, and the terrible ones. The problem was, he couldn’t tell the difference. I’ve talked to him about the stuff we want to do after we graduate and—”

  “‘Graduate,’” Wallace scoffed. Another area they argued about. If this company had its feet in science, at least one of them would need a degree. But neither of their fathers had even graduated high school before striking out on their own.

  “Look,” Wallace said, making his voice pacifying, seeing Timothy’s always-hesitant, always-too-cautious expression. “We’ve been through this. Locking Aphrodite with ransomware won’t change a damn thing. Those chuckleheads will drive it into the ground. And you know what happens from there, down to the timeline. My dad makes an offer to buy it. Wowzers takes over, then positions and markets it properly. There’s no scenario where Emma and Ralph keep their stupid little app and make it fly. We’re saving them six months of heartbreak. Probably more. We lock it down; Aphrodite becomes a lost cause and is forgotten.”

  “It could take off, Wallace. You don’t know it won’t.”

  “It won’t, Timothy.”

  “What if what we’re doing costs them their livelihood? I heard my dad talking about it when they were scoping it out for purchase. They’ve sunken their life savings into its development. But if you put that ransomware on it …”

  “That’s exactly right,” Wallace said, nodding. “Why would Wowzers be scoping the app for purchase if it had a chance of surviving on its own? Sure, Emma and Ralph will be disappointed that their work will appear to be gone. But in the long term, what costs them more? Losing it now, or after pumping even more money into the vain hope of keeping it alive?”

  “Then we should let it go. Our dads can buy it out after it fails.”

  Wallace shook his head. “I love my mom, but she’s vindictive. Whatever Dad buys now, she’ll try to get half of, and their lawyers will get it all. Aphrodite is a great app and you know it. Emma and Ralph don’t know what they have, and they’ll run it into the ground. If Wowzers buys it, my parents’ divorce will suck all the money and ruin the chances of a proper relaunch. And you know Wowzers is an inch from losing everything; if they try to buy and launch Aphrodite while my parents are hashing it out, they’ll go bankrupt trying to save it. That leaves us, Tim. The only way to make anything out of this amazing, high-potential app and save Wowzers is to make it look like Aphrodite is dead, so they don’t chase it.”

  Tim met his oldest friend’s eyes. Eventually, he said, “And then we unlock Aphrodite, disabling the ransomware, and give it to our dads when the divorce is over, right?”

  Wallace shrugged.

  “What, then?”

  “I’ve been thinking about that. If Wowzers suddenly comes out with Aphrodite a year from now, won’t that look suspicious?”

  “You just want to kill it? To save Emma and Ralph from ‘wasting their money,’ if that’s what you think, and to keep your dad from going bankrupt fighting for it?”

  Again, Wallace shrugged.

  “What, Wallace?”

  “Maybe we could keep it.”

  “Us?”

  “Why not? We’re basically a company already. That was always our plan, right? To build something together? We just need a product to sell.”

  “And you want to steal one? How is that ‘building something together’?”

  “Seems win/win to me. Nobody else can do anything with the Aphrodite app. Someone might as well benefit from it. I know how to reposition it, change it up. Same as my dad. I figure we launch it, flip it, and take the money as our seed capital.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “Why would I be kidding?”

  “Because it’s stealing.”

  Wallace shook his head. The computer screen waited, ready to launch the virus that would cripple Aphrodite and assure their new company’s future in one fell swoop.

  “How the hell do you expect to achieve anything if you won’t step outside of the nine dots? Nothing ordinary has ever created anything extraordinary.”

  “That’s convenient.”

  “How does this hurt anyone?”

  “It locks up software that two people have spent years and millions of dollars creating.”

  “Other than that. Their time and money are already spent. Nothing is ever going to get it back. We talked about all of this already, Tim. What’s changed between yesterday and today?”

  “I didn’t
think you were serious.”

  “Bullshit! You were all aboard until—”

  “You bullied me into it. You don’t know how you are. It’s not like I had a choice!”

  “Of course you had a choice!”

  “Yesterday this was a maybe. I got you the virus, and we were going to screw with their SSL. We were going to delay the deal, not kill it.”

  “Delaying it doesn’t solve anything, which is why, yesterday, I told you it had to be this or nothing.”

  “I didn’t see the whole picture. You just did what you always do, Wallace. You said, ‘Oh, it’ll be fine; stop being spineless.’ Disagreeing with you doesn’t make me weak. It makes me sensible. I think. Sometimes, you don’t.”

  “This is how it has to be.”

  “And when did you decide that?” Timothy asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “When did you decide that this was the only way this little plan could work out? When did you miraculously realize that the only way we could ‘help all these people out’ was the way that might make us millions of dollars?”

  “Why does that matter?”

  “Was it after you asked Bailey out, and she turned you down?”

  A red-hot bolt of lightning shot through Wallace.

  “You said she’d regret it. You said Bailey and the others would see how awesome you became and know they’d made a mistake. Is this about deciding the very best plan of action? Or is it about the size of your dick?”

  Wallace said nothing for what felt like forever. Then finally, he spoke. “We’re doing this.”

  “No. If you’re doing it, you’re doing it without me.”

  Wallace felt his eyes darken. “You know I need you, Tim. I’m ideas, and you’re details. Just like my dad and your dad.”

  “Find someone else to help you with the details. Find someone else to make your world-changing company with.”

  But Wallace could only stare, his blood boiling. Timothy claimed he wanted to make his mark on the world; it was something they’d both been dreaming about out loud through most of their lives.