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sixteen in a month.”
    Grayson smiled and it went all the way to his eyes like my mother’s smiles. I hadn’t seen an expression that honest since I left home. Impassiveness is something the government instills in all workers.
    “How are you getting along so far?” Grayson asked me.
    “Good … I mean … this is my first mission, but it’s been pretty exciting these last couple of months.” I got a good look at Grayson’s face now that he had turned toward me. His hair color was light brown like Thomas’s and his eyes were also blue like both Thomas’s and mine. The similarities were too great to ignore. It was like seeing what I might look like in ten years with Thomas and in twenty years with Grayson.
    “But it must have been hard for you,” Grayson said. “Leaving home. I was nineteen and already on my own. Thomas was raised in the White House, he didn’t need any adjusting. But you’re just a boy.”
    Thomas rested a hand on my shoulder again. “That’s why Dr. Ludwig is taking it slow with him. It’ll be a while before he’s doing his own missions.”
    Grayson stared at me for a long moment, then his face formed the emotionless smile I had become used to in the last couple of months. “Well, let me show you what we’re doing here today.” He turned to Thomas, who dropped his hand from my shoulder and removed the vials from his pocket. “Thank you. Now, Blake, we have sixteen women who will undergo a procedure called in vitro fertilization in this hospital today. Basically, traditional methods of conception, in this year, anyway, haven’t been successful for them and they’ve sought the assistance of a fertility doctor.”
    Grayson pointed to his chest, indicating that he was the fertility doctor these women sought out. He walked over to the center lab table and pointed to a small dish with clear liquid in it. “All of the women today have husbands who have donated specimens—sperm—to be joined with their wives’ eggs. You understand how this process works, correct?”
    I gave a quick nod and felt my face heating up at the mention of conception, though this was a very technical scientific version that didn’t seem to involve contact between the two parents at all. But still, my mind couldn’t help but wander to thoughts of more traditional methods, and I hoped with all my power that these thoughts wouldn’t show up in the mission report.
    “What we’re going to do today,” Grayson said, “is supplement the fathers’ specimens with that of a man carrying the Tempus gene in your present.”
    “Do they know this?” I asked. “The parents? Won’t they know that there’s no genetic link between the real father and the child, at least after it’s born?”
    Grayson nodded his approval. “Very good. You’re a smart one. All my patients sign a clause as part of our research program. The procedure cost is more affordable for a larger percentage of families, and in return, we get their permission to use a substitute specimen as needed to increase the probability of successful conception.”
    “In other words,” Thomas added, “we tell the families that the father’s semen has a low sperm count, whether it does or not, and they consent to a donor because having a child is that important to them. Something I can’t even fathom, but it’s a very useful motivation for the purpose of our experiment.”
    I was so blown away by the complexity of this project and the importance of our missions that I barely spoke for the rest of the trip. I watched Grayson carefully as he went through the steps to prepare each specimen for the procedure.
    Later, when Thomas and I returned to our apartment, after being debriefed in the White House by Dr. Ludwig and his team, I finally asked him the question that had been on my mind since first being introduced to Grayson.
    “So, is Grayson’s mission a long one? Like a few months? He seemed very comfortable in 1987.”
    “He’s been on the same