Adam
By Mary Beth Lang
“Sorry, kid, you weren’t born here in Dauphin County,” said the bored, gum-chewing clerk. Adam left the records office, dejected, but still determined.
He had come to request a copy of his birth certificate—the one he had never seen. Adam had brought his best buddy, Louis, along for moral support, and now the two were walking home.
“What the heck else can I do to find out?” Adam said, exasperated.
“I don’t know, man, but we’ll think of something.”
Adam’s phone dinged with a text message. Dad asked, “Steak or pork chops for dinner?” Adam smiled. It was a running joke that neither of them would ever survive as a vegetarian. He typed back, “Surprise me.”
“Hey, Adam!” said a sweet, sing-song voice from across the street. It was one of the many varsity cheerleaders who wanted to be the one Adam asked to the homecoming dance.
“Hey,” he called back with a wave, but not slowing down to indicate wanting a conversation. He needed to get home and work out a new plan.
Louis smirked. “Geez, Campbell, at least revel in your hotness for a few seconds—or stop and talk to your groupies so I might have a chance to console them after your heartless rejection,” he said, clutching his chest dramatically.
Adam rolled his eyes.
Louis had been his closest friend for as long as the two could remember. They were as different as two high school seniors could be: Adam was a handsome jock, head of the class, serious about everything. Louis was skinny, pale, a mediocre student, the class clown. And he was the only one Adam trusted to share in his most personal quest.
Louis peeled off toward his own house. As they parted, he said, “Time to try the DNA?”
“Yeah,” sighed Adam. “It’s time.”
Finally reaching the privacy of his room, Adam spent the next hour doing research on DNA testing companies.
#
“How was school today, kiddo?” That question started almost every night’s conversation when Dad got home from work. An only child, Adam had been raised by his father, Dr. Leonard Campbell, chair of the biology department at the Penn State School of Medicine. Well. . . he’d been raised by his father and a series of nannies until he turned sixteen.
“Great. My counselor said if I keep taking all AP classes this year, I can skip lots of intro stuff when I go to Penn.”
“Absolutely,” replied Dad. “You won’t have to spend your whole freshman year in classes of a hundred or more. You can get right to the fun stuff.”
Adam looked at his father for a moment. He squirmed a little in his chair as he tried to work up his courage yet again. “Dad?”
Dr. Campbell, who had begun chopping vegetables, looked up with concern at the hesitation in his son’s voice and lowered the knife. “What is it, Adam? Don’t tell me you want to go to Stanford or someplace thousands of miles away.”
Adam laughed. “And give up playing football at Penn State? Not in this lifetime.”
His father relaxed. “So, what’s up?”
“Dad. . . I know this is the one thing you never want to talk about.”
Dr. Campbell tensed again, knowing what was coming.
“I really need to know, though, Dad. Who was my mom?”
#
Adam loved his father and was much-loved in return. They shared many interests and Adam could honestly say he still enjoyed spending time with his dad, an apparent oddity to most of his friends.
Dr. Campbell often took Adam to work with him on school holidays and was clearly proud of his son. Adam would watch the lab rats chase each other, and chat with the young assistants, who treated him with some deference despite his age. Every year, Dad even let Adam try out all the fancy health monitoring equipment at the lab. He’d say, “Now and then we need to see how it works when it’s measuring a perfectly healthy person.” Adam felt some pride at being the ‘measurement standard.’
In the past year Dad had insisted they tour several colleges and universities even though Adam had his heart set on the hometown school. That trip had given them great memories, though.
Topics during the trip ranged from which was the best version of Star Trek (Next Gen, said Adam, no contest, as Dad continued to tout the original) to whether life existed on other planets (well, duh, of course—they both agreed on that part, just not what that life would look like or how close it was to Earth).
The only solid granite wall between Adam and his dad was the topic of “Mom.” Where was she now? Why had she left? Did she die? Were she and Dad divorced? Adam had tried every question he could think of to get Dad to say something—anything—about her but was gently shut down every time.
“You have me, Adam. That’ll have to be enough.”
Adam had suspended the questioning while the two were together 24/7 for two weeks, but now it was haunting him more than ever. Kids around here accepted that Adam didn’t have a mom, and nobody asked questions, but what would he say to the strangers in a dorm whom he wanted to befriend? What about when he was dating someone and it got serious?
Until now, Dr. Campbell had always accompanied Adam to school registrations, his driver’s license test, and to the passport office. Dad always held onto the official documents being used for these adventures in bureaucracy, but how much longer before Adam—now officially an adult—got to take possession of his own, personal paperwork?
Adam had no memories of his mother. He had never found a picture or any other evidence of her, no matter how hard he looked. This had led to the desperate effort that had him sneak off to the county records office in a futile attempt to get a copy of his own birth certificate.
That night he decided on the last resort, nuclear option: DNA testing.
To ensure he could differentiate his mother’s relatives from his father’s, he also had to get Dad’s DNA tested. Adam began researching DNA testing companies and soon knew how to accomplish his mission, immediately setting the plan in motion.
#
A week later, Adam sat reading through the instructions he had received along with the two kits that came in the mail.
“Sorry, Dad,” he said aloud as he set about following those instructions.
Dad used an electric toothbrush. Adam carefully removed the head of the brush, placing it into a special plastic bag that had been supplied by the company. Replacing the brush head with a new one, he put the implement back in its usual place and hoped Dad wouldn’t notice the difference.
He then sealed the brush head and a tiny vial of his own spit into the company’s prelabeled envelope and dropped it in the mail.
#
Adam asked Louis to come over before clicking on the link he had received with the results. At first, it was like reading a foreign language; Haplogroup, mitochondrial, allele and locus were all words he’d heard before, and even learned individually at some point, but it took him a while to bring the dense writing into focus.
“That’s some heavy-duty mumbo-jumbo there, dude,” stated Louis.
Soon, Adam had created separate accounts for himself and his father, under fake names of course.
“How about Fred Flintstone and Barney Rubble?” suggested Louis, helpfully.
Adam linked the accounts in order to compare the two sets of DNA to each other as well as to any others that had been submitted to the same company.
As the comparison data populated the screen, Adam stared.
Louis let out a low whistle, and said, “Well no wonder you two look so much alike.”
Adam glared at the screen with dangerously growing frustration. This crackpot company was claiming that he and his father were the same person.
“You share 100% of your dad’s DNA? Isn’t that, like, kinda freaky, man?”
“It’s more than freaky,” said Adam in a low voice. “It’s impossible.”
“Are you sure you sent two different samples? Maybe you sent your own toothbrush by mistake. Our valedictorian can’t keep his toiletries straight. . .”
But Adam wasn’t listening. He was remembering.
“Time for the annual calibration of the equipment,” Dad would say, jovially. But then at least four different lab workers would spend an hour measuring every possible statistic about Adam imaginable. As they did so, they seemed to be comparing the numbers with another set.
“The latest honor for Dr. Leonard Campbell, expert in the field of genetic engineering,” announced at the latest awards dinner.
“I’ve never seen a father and son look so much alike,” said store clerks, teachers, and total strangers everywhere they went together.
Often when he looked in the mirror, Adam felt like he was seeing a younger version of his dad: same dark, wavy hair with a cowlick on the left side, same cleft chin and crooked smile, same dark green eyes, even the same height after Adam’s recent growth spurt. Old pictures of Dr. Campbell confirmed the uncanny similarities at every age.
“Adam?” Louis, no longer joking, sounded genuinely concerned. “Where’d you go, man? You’re sure not here in this room anymore.”
Adam shook his head, banishing the memories, and focused on his friend. He knew the next words he spoke would not end the mystery, but only create new ones.
“Louis,” he said hoarsely, “I’m a clone.”
###
