(MSRP: 2.0000)
You know he is somewhere out there. Your soul mate. Your other self. All you need to do is find him and you'll feel complete the way you've never felt complete before...
Except that finding him is strictly forbidden.
Finding him would break the Seventh Taboo.
And then, one night, you meet him. Every hormone and every cell in your body shouts that he's the lost half of yourself you've been searching for. Your logic disagrees. Which are you going to believe? The primeval instinct or your training? Your heart or your mind?
To what lengths will you go, what risks will you take, to prove to yourself that he is the one?
Enter the world of cloning, scientific experiments and toying with people's lives. Enter the world in which your every movement, online as well as offline, is scrutinised by your live-in Monitor. Enter the future which could well be ours one day.
24 Pages, Sweet
Excerpt:
Just before midnight, I managed to hoodwink my live-in Monitor into thinking I was asleep. I left a virtual image of myself in my bedroom and slipped out of the apartment. When I entered the game centre, six pairs of eyes turned towards me.
Only one made me suddenly aware of my miniskirt and tight jersey.
Five pairs belonged to my colleagues, and even though I’d seen them often enough on video-mail screens, it took a while to put the faces to the names. People look different in real life, no matter how good 3D computer depiction is nowadays. Of course, it didn’t help matters that Castor and Pollux were clones and looked identical anyway.
They were the lucky few who grew up together. Part of the experiment’s control group, the authorities said. The rest of us were destined (forbidden by the Seventh Taboo) never to find our clone.
The sixth pair of eyes belonged to a stranger. Of them all, those were the ones that felt the most familiar, even though I was convinced I’d never seen that curious mix of grey and gold before.
It’s him, something whispered at the back of my brain.
“Ping,” we said, then grinned, embarrassed. Pinging is retro and, as a greeting for strangers, it’s illogical in the extreme. Yet for some reason we both did it, and a connection was established.
It was that connection that made me look at the stranger more carefully. The triangle of chest I saw in his unbuttoned shirt quickened my breath and awakened every inch of my skin. My hormones screamed erotic scenarios straight into my brain and it took all my willpower to ignore them.
Nobody bothered to introduce us. We discussed the rule variations for the night’s session and began the game. As usual, I felt the excitement that comes from doing something forbidden. Especially doing something forbidden by your employer.
