Kauai

We left the shop satisfied, strolling away, his tiny hand in mine and a paper bag of groceries balanced on my hip. My timepiece started vibrating outside a cafe so I set down the bundle on an iron table and laid my thumbprint on the screen to answer, shifting the three-year-old to the other hand. 

"Hello?" I sang, bringing the piece up to my face. Sergey's handsome eyes looked back at me from the screen. I smiled. "We just left," I said. "Do you want us to meet you at the beach?" Kaspar looked up at me expectantly. I knelt down and wrapped an arm around him, let his fingers wander across the watch frame. 

"Daddy," he said, a baby-toothed grin appearing from under his shocks of blonde hair. 

We walked three blocks down to the sea, his little legs fumbling along in tow, where we approached the check-in. I swiped my card smoothly and the purple light went off. “Aloha,” it said. We stepped through to the sand and I released his hand. He ran ahead of me, stumbling towards where Sergey was standing with a blanket rolled under his arm. The tyke reached him just before falling and he clung to his father's leg, resting his head on Sergey's knee. I caught up and smiled wide. My husband gives me a kiss that betrays how much he's missed me. I sigh and push that excitement to the back of my mind for later. We lay out our commodities for a picnic dinner, gnawing on sticks of hot korean meats and watching Kaspar sitting silently, cleaning sauce off his face, eyes on the ocean. I pull out the pineapple we'd picked out at the store and set it on the platform I brought from home. It immediately peeled and sliced the pineapple with efficiency, little invisible blade-like lasers cutting through it. Kaspar took the leafy top to play with. 

I turned to Sergey and asked him how the trip went, what happened, what did you do? He'd been at a two week conference on the mainland, restricted clearance. Sergey had revolutionized the film industry years ago and he occasionally attended seminars to see and sample new technology that would be used alongside his invention. He told me all the details, and although I didn't understand a word of it, I sat captivated. When Sergey speaks of something he's passionate about, it's like poetry. I had no doubt that Kaspar was absorbing all this information much better than I was. We'd spent those two weeks together reading in the garden, repainting Kaspar's room, and going on day trips all around our province of Kauai. 

"He's picked up more pidgin," I said, leaning into Sergey's arm, laying my head on his chest. 

"How can you tell?" he asked, looking over at Kaspar arranging his pineapple leaves on the blanket. 

"He understands," I said. "He doesn't speak much, but he understands." 

We settled into the familiar aura of melancholy that’d enveloped our family for so long.

That night we sat in our villa telling stories until Kaspar fell asleep. Sergey carried him to bed, tucked him in, then lifted me off the couch and carried me to our bed. We made love quietly, watching the stars through the skylight, our bedroom windows cracked to usher in the warm breeze. 

"So you had a good week?" he said, cradling me afterwards, running his fingers along my arm.  I nodded, blissfully exhausted. "Do you think he'll make it?" I hugged him tighter, pressing his ribs to mine, and let the silence we'd become so accustomed to take over until we fell asleep. 

The next day we slept in, Kaspar quietly crawling into our bed in the wee hours of the morning. I chopped vegetables for lunch as Sergey showered. With the laser slicer going I went into Kaspar's room and retrieved Monkey, an A.I. assistant that had powered itself down a couple days after Sergey left. It needed an update. Kaspar had dressed himself and I found him looking the spitting image of his Dad. Blue eyes and shaggy hair, outfitted in miniature vintage converse, black jeans and a plain t-shirt. I took a clip (manually, since Monkey wasn't operational) to send to Sergey's parents. They were in the Caribbean on a cruise. Seemed we all had south beach blood despite our European heritage. Sergey sat and tinkered with Monkey while we ate. My timepiece vibrated and chimed a reminder. 

"The shuttle will be here in five," I said. 

Sergey had taken this trip because it miraculously didn't coincide with any check-up days. I was happy for him that he got to go, but I wasn't envious. The mainland was a sterile city, there were no gardens or beaches there. They built sky high condominiums and put parking lots right over the sea. He set Monkey down just as we were heading out the door and replaced the space in his arms with Kaspar. The blue steel of the shuttle rolled to a stop and we climbed in, watching the short ride over the bridge with the calmness all parents of a sick child have mastered. Self driving cars were quick, and we arrived outside Hanalani Center in less than ten minutes. Kaspar held both our hands as he walked between us into the building. They placed him in a room with music so he could nap. As I watched I realized he had figured out the mirror was a window. He watched back. Tests were run painlessly and unobtrusively in this room by a series of automatic scans. We awaited the results as always, expecting no change. Then a voice rang out. 

"Cloning confirmed. No detection of spherocytosis remains."

When we had our first baby, Mischa, we were young. I was severely anemic throughout the pregnancy and my blood disorder was passed onto her. She didn't live to see her first birthday. A couple years later beta testing opened up for child recreation. We signed up under the impression it would bring our daughter back, but we never made it through the screening process. You can't clone sick kids, they said. But the technology has changed since then. We were transferred to a program in the Hawaiian Republic, on the mainland. I hated it there. The way the buildings blocked the ocean view reminded me of the lost hope we had when we thought they could give us Mischa. I couldn't handle the environment, and after Kaspar was born, Sergey found us a temporary apartment on the beach in Kauai, and later a private villa where we could donate all our time to him. 

Sergey raised his eyebrows in disbelief and I stood, looking around in shock. 

"Congratulations," said the voice. The purple light dinged on and Kaspar stepped through the door. He'd been a toddler for six years. We were finally going to see him grow up. I bent down and picked him up, hugging him tightly between myself and Sergey. I tried hard not to cry, thinking about how many times we had lost him, countless grieving nights before they'd returned him, looking as if nothing had happened. He'd never go the same way as Mischa again. 

We all left the cloning facility together with a new vigor for life. Sergey and I couldn't keep from beaming at each other. Kaspar slept on the shuttle home, and we spent the afternoon making calls via the now functioning Monkey all over the world, spreading the good news, that our son was cured. I replaced the photo of Kaspar in the digital frame next to Mischa's with the one I sent to Sergey's parents earlier that day.