Chapter 18

It was nine days after Meghan's first feeding, eighteen days after Ken's first feeding. Ken had now fed from the carotid arteries of human females thirty-five times. Meghan had fed from the carotids of human males eighteen times. Both had more or less gotten the hang of the actual feeding maneuver by this point. Ken was now at his optimum weight of one hundred ninety pounds and had been pronounced a fully fit cognate by Dick. Meghan still had five more pounds to gain but was well on her way, putting on just under a pound per feeding.

The clothes that Gertrude and Harold had bought for them back before the propagation now fit pretty well. Jo called them 'hunting clothes', as most were of the sort designed to allow their respective pheromones to spill out into the surrounding air. As of yet, however, they had not been out hunting. They were still too inexperienced at the art of being cognate to leave the house and venture out among humanity. There were lessons they needed to learn first.

Jo was also regaining her baseline cognate strength and health, although not quite as fast as her two children. Despite feeding at least three times a night and sometimes as many as five, Jo was still only one hundred eight pounds and still more emaciated looking than not. She had also put on the twenty years of apparent age that came with post-propagation. It had happened quite rapidly in the first five days after she started taking human blood again. Her facial features and her skin had lost the smooth luster of youth. Her hair had lightened in color and thinned just a little. Her hips had taken on a somewhat rounder and wider appearance. Though she still looked like a young forty to forty-five year old, humans would not bat too much of an eye when they heard Ken and/or Meghan calling her Mom.

"Okay you two," Jo told them now, as they sat on the living room furniture, sipping from ice water. "You understand the whole concept of avoiding photography when feasible, correct?"

"Yes," said Meghan, nodding. This was something they'd been over several times now at these daily learning sessions. "We should always avoid having our picture taken if we can."

"Including..." Jo prompted.

"Including video cameras, cell phone cameras, internet based web cameras, and especially red light cameras," Meghan said.

"Very good," said Jo. "The fewer permanent photographs of you floating around, the better. I'm not saying you should dive to the ground when happenstance puts you in the camera eye or that you should use your pheromones to compel the human photographer to smash the camera or delete the shot, but you should avoid getting yourself into situations where permanent photographic record might be made. You never know when someone might put one of those shots on the internet somewhere and when someone who used to know you from your past life might just happen across them."

"It's really hard to avoid cameras these days," Ken had to point out. "There isn't too many of them here in Christchurch maybe, but in the States they're in every building, every place of business, every bank, every convenience store, every parking lot. Hell, anytime you use a credit card or your debit card your picture is taken. He can we avoid all that?"

"You can't," Jo said. "I'm not suggesting you even try. Security cameras are a threat to the Subterfuge in their own way—you have to always make sure you're not caught feeding by one—but, quite frankly, casual photography is actually the greater threat. Security cam shots do not, for the most part, end up in internet databases open to anyone doing a Google search. Casual shots do end up there. And it's even worse if the shot in question is of the two of you together. Worse still is if it's the two of you together and your names are attached to the photo. Remember, we change our last names with every identity switch but we generally keep our first names. Imagine, if you will, your human mother or brother or one of your human friends—people who think you died in a plane crash and who attended your funeral—surfing the internet one day and happening across a picture of 'Ken and Meghan' on one of your new human friend's or co-worker's blog or MySpace page and seeing that this Ken and Meghan look exactly like their Ken and Meghan did fifteen years ago."

Both of Jo's new children nodded thoughtfully at this. "I guess that would cause a bit of a sensation," Ken said.

"Yeah," agreed Meghan.

"It would put our entire society at risk," Jo said. "Remember the First Commandment?"

They remembered it. Their very first lessons in cognate life had been to learn and understand the Cognate Ten Commandments, a set of laws that had been put in place more than three hundred years before. The first and most sacred commandment, the only one punishable by death for a first offense, read: Cognate will protect and maintain the Subterfuge at all costs. Nothing is more important. This will take precedence over all other rules, laws, and commandments in both human and cognate society.

"Letting one of your friends or co-workers snap a picture of you with their digi-cam will not technically violate the First Commandment in and of itself," Jo said, "but it could lead to a situation—such as what I just described—that does. Avoid such situations as much as you possibly can. Tell your friends and co-workers that you're camera shy, that you have a self-esteem problem, that you have a phobia about photography. Tell them whatever you need to tell them but make sure they know you don't appreciate having your photo taken."

Meghan and Ken looked at each other, not speaking, but both knowing what was on the other's mind. Before finding out that Jo was cognate, they had had several discussions about her strange aversion to having her picture taken. Even though she had taken several shots of each of them, and even of Hannah, with her cell phone, she always insisted that she herself not be photographed. She had never explained exactly why she didn't like her picture taken but had implied that it was a psychological/self-esteem issue. They had accepted this at face value, as just another little quirk from a woman who had several of them, but now it made perfect sense. She didn't want her picture floating around in cyberspace where someone from an earlier life might see it.

"Of course you don't want to be too mysterious or phobic about it," Jo warned. "That can have the opposite effect intended. If you trigger the suspicions of the wrong person, you might end up with him or her looking into your background. We go to great lengths to make sure our identities are as solid as we can make them, but always remember: a false identity is still a false identity. There is always the danger that someone, somewhere will find out that it is false. This may not cause a Subterfuge violation—probably won't, in fact—but it will draw the wrong kind of attention to you."

They talked for a few more minutes about the dangers of photography and protection of the Subterfuge. Jo walked them through a few likely photography-themed scenarios they were likely to encounter once out on their own: what to do when you were a member of a group that wanted a group photo shoot (make sure your face was obscured or hidden when the shot was taken), what to do when at an acquaintance's wedding, funeral, graduation, etc and photographers were everywhere (avoid going to such events, leave before the photography if you can't avoid it). Jo then went over official governmental or employment related photos such as driver's license pictures and pictures for work security badges. These types of shots, she explained, were a necessary part of living among humans in this day and age and that, for the most part, they didn't have to worry too much about them. DMV pictures and most work security shots would not pop up on the internet because of a Google search. Furthermore, whenever cognate switched identities the Cognate Subterfuge Protection Department in Fairbanks would hack into the databases where old identity pictures were stored and corrupt all photos of the allegedly deceased.

This discussion ate up nearly an hour of the late afternoon daylight. Jo then tried to open up the subject of security cameras but she could see that she was starting to lose her audience.

"Something distracting you two?" she asked lightly.

They looked at her a little guiltily. "Sorry, Mom," Meghan said. "It's just that I can smell that spaghetti sauce simmering away in there and it's kind of getting to me."

"Yeah," agreed Ken. "It's making me drool."

Tonight was the night that Jo was planning to take her children out on their first hunting trip. Per cognate tradition, once they returned from their first hunt they would be treated to a feast in their honor, their first human food and drink since the Last Supper. When Gertrude had asked them two days before what they wanted to eat at the First Hunt Feast, Meghan, Ken, and Jo had all answered quickly and unanimously: "Spaghetti!"

"Spaghetti?" Gertrude replied, clearly disappointed. "Why in the world would you pick that? I am fully prepared to go track down live Maine lobster, Beluga caviar, filet mignon, or anything else that you might desire."

"Are you kidding?" Ken asked. "I can have all that stuff anytime. The smell of your spaghetti sauce is one of the things that got me through the propagation without giving up."

"My spaghetti sauce?" Gertrude said, shaking her head. "It's a very simplistic recipe I've had for decades, maybe even a century. I only made it so many times during the propagation because it is so easy to put together."

"It smelled wonderful, Gertrude," Meghan put in. "Even before we got our cognate senses I was in love with it. It would simmer all day long in there and make the whole house smell like garlic and onions."

"And oregano," said Ken. "Don't forget the oregano."

"Yes," Meghan said, her eyes shining. "Oregano."

"I must agree with them, Mom," Jo said. "Do you have any idea how maddening it was to smell that all day long, knowing you couldn't have any of it?"

"I ... I never thought about that," Gertrude admitted, warming to their idea by the second.

"I vowed during that whole miserable experience," said Ken, "that the first thing I was going to eat if I made it through was some of your spaghetti."

"Well," said Gertrude, smiling, "since you put it that way..."

And so, their First Hunt Feast was now a work in progress in the kitchen. The sauce had been constructed about two hours before and was now on a slow simmer on the kitchen stove. The exquisite, almost heavenly aroma was permeating the entire house. Part of the enhanced cognate olfactory sense was the ability to consciously ignore individual scents to keep from being overwhelmed and distracted by them. While Gertrude had been peeling the tomatoes and mincing the garlic and chopping the onions and the fresh oregano, they'd used this ability in order to keep their attention on their lessons. But now ... now they could no more ignore the smell than they could have ignored a man with a gun kicking in the front door.

"All right," Jo told them. "I know when I've been overruled by oregano. We'll talk more about security cams when we go out tonight. The important thing to remember is that visualization is the only reliable way to account for security cameras. You can hear the ones that pan, but only when they're actively panning. You can't smell security cameras at all, or at least you can't differentiate them from any other piece of electronic equipment in your vicinity. You will have to learn to spot them wherever they might be and you must always always always make sure you're feeding in an area with no camera coverage."

"It sounds like modern technology is making it harder and harder to maintain the Subterfuge," Meghan said.

"In a way, it is," Jo confirmed. "But, at the same time, many aspects of technology have actually made it easier to maintain. The internet for instance. While it does make us have to worry about our photographs floating about, it also makes it quite easy to switch in and out of identities when necessary. Cognate realized that back in the early eighties and, as such, the best computer hackers are now cognate and the best computer hacking software ever developed was developed by cognate engineers and programmers for exclusive use by cognate."

Ken and Meghan both nodded thoughtfully at this.

"And that," Jo said, before they could start sniffing the sauce again, "brings us to the subject of Dick. He has asked us to step into his office once your lessons are done for the day."

Ken's brow clouded. "He's not going to use a thermometer on us, is he?"

"No," Jo said. "No thermometers. He thought you might enjoy a briefing on your new identities."

"Yay!" Meghan said, clapping her hands. "Finally."

"Yes," said Ken. "Finally. I can't wait to find out who I am."

This remark, while semi-humorous, was actually quite heartfelt. For the past nine weeks now, ever since the rented Cessna had been smashed into the Pacific Ocean off Tasmania, all three of them had effectively been un-persons. They had been declared dead by human authorities. Death certificates had been filed. Funerals had been held for them. Obituaries had been written. Jo's estate had already been settled. Ken and Meghan's estate was entering what would undoubtedly be an extended probate since both of their families had contested their will (although, thankfully and predictably, neither side had contested Hannah's custody with Mrs. McAdams). To the human world they were officially and irretrievably deceased.

The thing was, they weren't really deceased. They were still living, breathing, thinking beings. Their old identities had been destroyed and it was not possible for them to go back to being Ken and Meghan Patterson. But their new identities hadn't been created yet. There was no record of their existence in the human world. They had no social security numbers, no dates of birth, no birth certificates, no money, no bank accounts to put money into even if they had it, and no means to open a bank account even if they tried. They didn't even have last names. All through the propagation and its aftermath, Ken and Meghan had asked numerous times just when they were going to get their new identities.

"It takes time to set these things up," had been Harold and Jo's standard reply.

"Be patient," had been Dick's. "The hackers in the Subterfuge Protection Department have to make sure everything is coordinated in more than two dozen different human databases. They can't do all that overnight."

Ken knew there was a considerable amount of truth to these statements but he was also smart enough to know it wasn't the whole truth. Part of the reason their new identities had not arrived yet was undoubtedly security related. Until they were complete cognate fully integrated in and acclimated to cognate life, they weren't trusted enough to be assigned new identities. Without identities there was no way for them to simply wander off into New Zealand and disappear if they decided to change their minds.

"It's going to be odd having a new last name," Jo observed nostalgically. "We've been Baxter since 1966, ever since we left Bangor. And it'll be the first time I've had a different last name than Mom and Dad."

"What if we don't like the name?" Meghan asked.

"Too bad," Ken said. "We're stuck with what they give us."

"Hmmph," Meghan grunted. "I still don't see why they don't let us pick our last name."

"Because that's the freakin' rule," Ken told her.

"Well it's a dumb rule," Meghan said.

"Children, please," Jo said, rolling her eyes. "Can we go see Dick now?"

They went and saw Dick now. He was in the room that had been his medical office, sitting behind the desk, waiting for them. All of his medical equipment had been packed up and was now in shipping boxes stacked near the door. Similarly, his three suitcases containing his clothing and personal belongings were by the door as well. He was leaving shortly after the First Hunt Feast, flying first to Auckland and then to Santiago, Chile. From there, he would make his way to Punta Arenas, Chile—the southernmost city on Earth and the place where the cognate government set up shop during Fairbanks' late spring and summer months.

"Well now," Dick said as the three of them took seats around the desk. "It was a bit of an exciting propagation—a little more exciting than I really cared for, I must say—but all three of you pulled through in the end and you're looking healthy and good. Now there are just a few final pieces of business for me to take care of—happy business for the most part. Let's start with your Cognate Identification Numbers, or your CIN. This is the number that will be your identifier to all cognate computer networks, financial programs, and anything else that is stored on a computer system. This number will always remain the same no matter how many human identities you assume. It will be your number for the rest of your life."

"So it's kind of like our social security number?" asked Ken.

"In a way," Dick said. "Although you will still have human social security numbers which will change from identity to identity, or like Gertie, Harold and myself, who are fairly stable in a long-lasting identity because we don't associate intimately with humans, will be updated every ten years so that humans don't start to notice the same number being active for decades on an apparent forty-year old."

"I think that makes sense," Ken said slowly.

"It does," Dick assured him. "Trust me. In any case, social security numbers are just part of your human identity—part of the Subterfuge, if you will. Your Cognate Identification Numbers are much more important. They are your very identity among our race. Meghan, your number is 0415197405162012. Ken, your number is 0923197005072012. Never, under any circumstances, are you to physically write these numbers down or enter them by keyboard onto anything other than a Zale's computer in cognate mode."

Meghan was looking at him as if he were mad. "I'm supposed to just memorize that number?" she asked. "I can't do that without writing it down, Dick!"

"Me either," Ken said. "And you rattled it off so quickly that I didn't even get a chance to absorb it."

Dick smiled. "Oh, I think you'll find the number pretty easy to memorize," he said. "The first half of it is your human date of birth. The second half of it is your cognate date of birth."

Both of them looked acutely embarrassed at not picking up on this. "Uh ... oh," said Meghan.

"I ... uh ... guess that does make it easy to memorize," said Ken.

"Just remember, it's full years, not just the last two digits," Dick told them. "Cognate live for hundreds of years. We figured out that whole Y2K thing long before any humans even conceived it was going to be a problem. Now rattle off your CINs for me real quick, just so I know you have them down."

They each did so. It took them a few seconds to think their way through the digits, but they managed.

"Very good," Dick said, nodding. "Of course, your cognate internet log-on code and password will not be something so easy to memorize."

"They won't?" Meghan asked.

"No," Dick confirmed. "We cannot take the chance that a human hacker will somehow learn of our existence and try to get into the cognate internet as proof. Your log-on code will be an eleven digit string that contains two upper case letters, two symbols, and seven numbers. Your actual password is even more complex. It will contain sixteen digits, of which you must have at least three upper case letters, three lower case letters, three symbols, and six numbers, none of them repeating. And, like your CIN, you are to never write these down and never type them into anything but a Zale's cognate computer system."

"How are we supposed to memorize a sixteen digit password full of numbers and symbols without writing it down?" Ken asked.

Dick simply shrugged. "I didn't say it was easy," he told them, "but it's not impossible. Every other cognate in the Western World manages to do it so I'm quite confident that you two will manage."

"When do we get these numbers?" Meghan asked.

"When Josephine starts teaching you the basics of the cognate internet," Dick replied. "She will make contact with cognate from Zale's at that point and they'll get your fingerprints and retinal scans recorded. That's part of the log-on process as well. Once that's done, they'll assign you the numbers."

"Fingerprint and retinal scans?" Ken asked.

"Jesus," Meghan whispered. "Isn't that a bit overboard?"

Dick looked at Jo, letting her field that one. She did. "Nothing is too overboard when it comes to protecting the Subterfuge," she said firmly. "Always remember that. The First Commandment takes precedence over everything."

"Exactly," Dick said. "I couldn't have said it better myself. Now then, let's move on to your new identities, shall we?" He reached down below the desk and pulled up a briefcase. He dialed a number on the front of it and opened it. He then removed three gallon-sized zip-lock baggies. Inside of each were leather passport holders, various forms of official American identification, and a multitude of other documents. He distributed one baggie to each of them. "Go ahead and open those up."

They did so. Ken pulled out a Texas driver's license with his picture on it. It was a post-propagation picture that Dick himself had snapped a few days after Ken's first feeding. The name on the license was Kenneth James Thompson. The date of birth was March 25, 1987. The address was 2166 Corbin Way, Apartment 33, in Dallas.

"Thompson?" Meghan said, trying that on for size. She was looking at her own Texas driver's license, which declared she was Meghan Louise Thompson.

"We prefer that cognate assuming new identities keep their first names constant and have fairly common and generic middle and last names," Dick explained. "This allows you to blend in and out with relative ease. If you Google the name Meghan Thompson, I'm sure you'll find there are hundreds of them. That is just the way we like it."

"And I'm Josephine Marie Wright," Jo said, looking at her Texas driver's license. She nodded. "I like it. It has a nice ring to it."

"I rather thought so," Dick told her. "Meghan, Wright will also be your maiden name since we're going with Josephine being your biological mother and Ken's mother-in-law. This will explain why both of you refer to her as 'Mom'. You'll notice in your packet that there is a birth certificate with your maiden name on it and that the marriage certificate has this name as well. The two of you were married on October 14, 2011 in Dallas, Texas."

Meghan found the marriage certificate and smiled as she read it over. "Oooh," she said, looking at Ken. "We're newlyweds again, baby. How cool is that?"

"Well, you certainly copulate like newlyweds," Dick said sourly. He, like every other cognate in the house, had been kept awake during many a daylight hour by the enthusiastic experimentation of the two nestlings up in their bedroom.

Meghan blushed, as she always did when their amorous couplings were brought to their attention.

Ken was too fascinated to blush. He had just found a diploma from Minnesota State University at Mankato. It declared that Kenneth James Thompson had been awarded a Bachelor of Science degree in Aeronautics on June 11, 2009. "I have a BS in Aeronautics from Minnesota State?" he asked.

"You do," Dick said. "Cognate law states you may continue to hold any degree that you honestly earned in a previous life. Since you had a BS in Aeronautics as a human, you were given the same in this life. Our hackers inserted your exact grades into the MSU computer and any check of your background in the future will reflect this education."

"No shit," Ken said, amazed.

"No shit," Dick confirmed. "Meghan, you will find that you also have a degree identical to the one you earned as a human."

Meghan dug around for a moment in her packet and soon came up with her own diploma. It was from the University of Montana at Missoula and declared that on June 12, 2009, she was awarded a Bachelor of Arts in Journalism.

"We started your back stories in those particular parts of the world," Dick explained. "Ken, you'll note that your birth certificate and high school diploma indicates that you grew up in Minneapolis. Meghan, your birth certificate and diploma indicates you were born and raised in Billings, Montana. Both of you need to study those cities, as well as the college campuses where you allegedly got your degrees. Study and know them well enough that you can discuss them intelligently and convincingly if you should happen across any humans who attended those schools or lived in those cities. This includes basic city and campus layouts, names of instructors and basic quirks of them, weather conditions for those cities, and a dozen or more other details. There are websites on the cognate internet that will help you with these particular issues."

"So Ken was born in Minneapolis and I was born in Billings," Meghan said. "Where did we meet? How did we end up getting married in Texas?"

"That will be up to you two," Dick said. "Josephine will help you with this part, but you need to come up with a story that puts the two of you together. It needs to be a simple, easy to remember story. Once you come up with it, you'll send it off to the Subterfuge Protection Department and, if it is approved, the hackers will go to work inserting the details into the various databases so that anyone looking into you will find exactly what they're looking for."

Meghan and Ken were both confused by this one. "How's that?" Ken asked.

"Yeah," said Meghan. "What do you mean ... a story?"

Once again, Jo handled this one. "It's not that hard to do," she said. "Suppose you wanted to say ... oh ... that the two of you met in the Denver Airport while you were waiting for a connecting flight somewhere. You felt some chemistry with each other and started a long-distance romance. Then, when Ken graduated and moved to Dallas, you decided to move out there as well. You fell in love and got married. Since you're my only daughter and since Ken and I get along, I decided to move to Texas as well. The SPD will approve that story and insert all the necessary details. They'll hack into the various databases and insert addresses, phone numbers, driver's license changes, job history, and anything else necessary to back up the story. They'll even put it into the record that both of you were on that particular flight in case someone really takes interest in you and looks that deep."

"Exactly," Dick said. "And, as you can probably imagine, the simpler the story, the better. The more plausible and ... well ... boring the story is, the better too. Don't start coming up with things like he saved you from a shark attack while vacationing in Cancun or anything like that. Short, sweet, believable, and easy to memorize. That is the key to a good back story."

"Always remember," said Jo. "We live in a world of lies. The entire foundation of our society is based on lying to every human we get to know on more than a casual basis—even those we grow to love intimately and deeply. The problem with lying is that lies are harder to remember than the truth since lies are not based on actual memories. Thus, the simpler we make our back stories, the less likely it is that we'll forget a key point or contradict ourselves in front of humans."

"Very well put," Dick said, nodding. "You must memorize every last detail of your basic back story. Trick your mind into thinking it actually is a memory if you can."

"How far back does our back story go?" Ken asked. "There's a birth certificate here that lists my mother as Sharon Elizabeth Jones and my father as Michael Ray Thompson. Do these people actually exist?"

"They do not," said Dick, "although to anyone looking into your background it will appear that they did. They have birth certificates and death certificates on file in the Hennepin County hall of records."

"Death certificates?" Ken asked. "Aren't they a little young to be dead? If they allegedly had me in 1987 they'd only be in their early fifties now, right?"

"They were killed in a car accident in 2005, shortly after you graduated from high school," Dick said. "Your father was driving along the Minnesota River and, for reasons unknown, the car went out of control and entered the river. Both were drowned. The accident took place on a stretch of the river notorious for such things. There is a police report on the accident in the Minnesota State Police computer. There are autopsy reports in the Hennepin County Office of the Coroner. This is a small article about the accident as well as obituaries in the morgue files of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune. There are probate reports regarding the disposition of the estate to their only child—that would be you—in the State of Minnesota's archives. There are work records, property deeds, state and federal tax records, social security records, medical records, school records, vehicle registration records, credit reports, and many other relevant records on both of them. Anyone taking a casual look into your background and upbringing will find pretty much what they expect to find regarding your parents."