This journey was always going to be a one-way ticket. I traveled two hundred and seventy years to my destination, Paris, in 1923. I had one chance to get through the wormhole at the correct curvature in the space-time continuum. Were my calculations wrong, I’d be fragmented into tiny pieces or pulled into a black hole’s dense gravity.

 

The light is fading, and autumn leaves are scattered on the ground. I’m in a park, the Jardin des Tuileries, and the pale moon rises above the large glass ceiling of the Grand Palais. I’m covered in dust with blood seeping through my trousers. Time travel is new to me.

 

The streetlights are lit with the low glare-luminaires of old, the same ones depicted in the manuscripts. A couple on a bench hold hands, but all I notice is her smile; it lights up her face. I can’t remember the last time I’ve seen someone smile like that.

 

I follow the Seine until I reach the Pont des Arts, past stalls of vendors and a man playing the accordion under the glow of the Eiffel Tower shining with a thousand lights. Paris is everything they’ve said and more — the air is vibrant in this post-first World War era. Little do they know that danger is looming ever so close.

 

I’m near my final destination, 32 Rue Soufflot, just off the Boulevard Saint-Michel. This is where I’ll find Louis Claude — I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for him.

 

Rain starts to spit, and a young boy runs into me. I stumble, narrowly avoiding a fall.

 

“Renoir!” a woman shouts.

 

The boy stares right through me. “You’re not real, are you?”

 

“Pardon, Monsieur!” the woman says, bidding the boy away.

 

I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror of a café. There is nothing unusual about me. Perhaps the boy was a psychic; I’d read about them. He’s right, of course, I don’t really exist. In the future, I’m known as Clone Number 222 and I’m about to meet my progenitor, the original copy.

 

I grew up in a facility where all the children looked like me. I thought nothing of it until a couple from headquarters came in with their two girls. They weren’t clones or copies, and seeing them stirred something within me.

 

They had me earmarked to become a scientist, but I became unfocused and belligerent and escaped the only place I’d ever known. I wouldn’t have survived if Henrik hadn’t found me. He was a retired physicist who gave me the tools to get here. Clones are not supposed to engage in time travel; it’s reserved for specially trained Time Travel Agents.

 

I knock on the door, and my hands are shaking. A woman greets me and drops her tray. “Monsieur Claude!” the woman shouts.

 

“Impossible,” Louis Claude says, folding the paper. He has a small scar above his upper lip, but we look the same.

 

My words come out in fragments; I have difficulty remembering my French.

 

“A doppelgänger — fascinating,” Louis Claude says.

 

“Professor Claude, I am you. Rather, I’m a perfect copy of you. I have traveled from the future to meet you.”

 

“Who put you up to this?”

 

“Nobody. You must have read about Friedrich Miescher, who discovered a new substance in cells, which he calls the nuclein. In the future, we call it DNA.”

 

“I don’t have time for charlatans.”

 

“Please — take a leap of faith, like you did with Edwin Hubble. Your collaboration will confirm that galaxies exist beyond the Milky Way.”

 

“How could you possibly know that? Have you been spying on me?”

 

“Thirty years from now, a scientist called Rosalind Franklin takes X-ray diffraction images of DNA’s crystal structure. Over time, scientists everywhere learn how to manipulate it. They experiment with animals first, and it takes them two hundred and seventy-six times to create a successful sheep clone. That discovery opens the door for human cloning — identical and perfect copies of the progenitor.”

 

Louis Claude comes within an inch of my face, scrutinizing every line and crease. He’s skeptical, and I don’t blame him.

 

“I have an unusual talent for knowing if someone is lying, and you, sir, are not lying. So, either you’re telling me the truth, or you’re delusional.”

 

He raises an eyebrow when I mention Einstein’s theory of space-time and wormholes. I am proof that stands before him, but we keep returning to the impossibility of cloning and time travel.

 

“If you are who you say, then why me?”

 

I tell him of the Moon and the Mars landings and how we develop nano-biotechnology and cellular agriculture, but I don’t tell him that he’ll end up in a ditch two years from now. How they’ll identify his DNA and harvest his cells in a future in dire need of gifted men.

 

“Enough, take the guest room. We’ll do this tomorrow. I'm sorry, I didn’t even ask your name.”

 

“I am 222.”

 

“That won’t do; you’re not a number. Pick a name.”

 

No one has ever bothered to ask. “I like Vincent.”

 

“Good night, Vincent.”

 

* * *

 

The sunlight shimmies through the window, and I can’t get enough of the Paris skyline. I find the library and reach for Pythagoras, but the more I read about his theory on the divine origin and essence of the soul, the more I question my existence.

 

“Find anything?” Louis Claude asks.

 

“If I’m an engineered copy, do I even have a soul?”

 

“Does it matter? Are you religious?”

 

“No.” The system forbids all religious teachings; it threatens the rule of law.

 

“If the future falls into darkness, this might be your purpose, Vincent. Teach me, guide me to avoid the pitfalls. Give humanity a chance.”

 

I’m tempted; no, hell, I’m thrilled. This is a chance for a new beginning. If you’re reading this, I hope it means I’ve succeeded, and that the future will shine a little brighter than the one I left behind.