Dr Jew

Adam.
    She felt so real inside her and her hands rubbing the wrinkles on her knuckles, so authentic this experience, but now she was being told that it all came through parts an d craft from that doctor whom she never wished to see again but here they were seeing things she didn't want to see and hearing things that hurt her ears. It didn't have to be true. It shouldn't… and even these thoughts? Somehow planted and placed or at least sown and fertilized by that man, their father now, in some sense of the word.
    She moaned in situation, situation, her situation that leaned into her and wrapped around her, filled her lungs with air and became her. Situation. She and it were inseparable, defining and demanding the other, matching the contours of the other's cavities. There was no escape from situation.
    She fell to the floor.
    "Eve!" said Adam.
    Ueda steadied her but she shook violently.
    "Eve, stop!" said Adam. "It will be okay."
    He had never seen her so hysterical, shaking like a mad dog. Her voice sounded older and not the Eve he knew at all. "It is us, Adam. Don't you see? It is us. We can't go back."
    "What do you want to do?" said Ueda.
    "Let's get out of here," said Adam. "This file's making me sick. And those dead animals… there's nothing we can do for them. I'm trying to wrap my head around it and hold it together, Ueda, but only because one of us has to. If it were just me I would've cracked by now. Let's get out of here."
    "Alright," said Ueda.
    "Do you want this file?" said Swan, pointing to the blueprints on the desk.
    "For God 's sake, no," said Adam. "We've seen enough. Let's go."
    Swan didn 't know why the file upset Eve. He was happy to leave the vile thing.
    They left as they had come, the lockles s door latched, the files lingering, the animals rotting in their cages forever without answer. Situation, with its many forked tails, was playing with them like a cat with a toy. It looked like an ugly moment, this. The bottle knocked from the shelf, falling, and they could nearly hear its crash, its coming crash when it would shatter into shards and spread its contents on the floor.

XXXVI.

    The bus rolled on through the miles. Dry desert night and the passage of time. The phone Sergio had given him rang nearly every hour. He ignored it, and thought, and planned, and rethought, and planned again.
    Tricky, this. Tricky.

XXXVII.

    She had been in the bathroom half an hour, and each time Adam knocked he heard her breathing but she said nothing. Crying, no doubt. His best guess. He never cried and understood it as a woman thing. On TV men only cried if they were going to be beaten up later in the show or if they were homosexuals.
    The things they 'd seen at Dr. Jew's that night had affected Adam, but not as it had Eve. He didn't feel any different. It was just an idea, or a philosophy, being human. A cat could think it was human, so why not him and Eve? They looked human, smelled human, and could relate to human beings. If Dr. Jew had designed them that way, was it really so different from being born that way or learning it from other humans? Surprising? Yes. End of the world? Nah. Not for him anyway.
    "Eve?" he said again. "Everything cool in there?"
    He heard a gasp and a whine, and there at his feet the thick red gel of blood coming toward his toes. Again it felt like he was watching it on TV and there was no need to worry. But in that bathroom was his Eve.
    He tried the handle, locke d, and said, "Unlock the door, Eve! Let me in!"
    He felt some relief when he heard the doorknob rattle and when he tried it again it opened. Eve inside sat on the toilet lid naked. In her right hand was a steak knife, but there was no steak. The wrist of her left hand was a ragged canyon of blood and torn skin, like a rabid beaver had been chewing its way inside her. Her face was flushed red and her eyes were red and she looked worse than he had ever seen her. He went to her. She shook.
    "Look," she said. "Look at it. Look inside my arm. It's all true."
    She lifted the skin back with the knife and she burrowed in until a CLINK sound was heard and she raised it with the knife, and Adam saw instead of tendons or bone – stainless steel and plastic wiring. Covered with blood or something like it, the workings of factory and lab, manufactured with a coat of warm skin to present something like a woman to the world.
    "It 's all true," she said.

XXXVIII.

    When Dr. Jew 's bus arrived the next night he ordered two of the