"I don't know," Francis said honestly. "I don't know how they would react, but I doubt Seth is going to tell anyone you know now, and I won't tell, either. You can go on living your life, but now you know how fruitless it is." That made him angry at Seth all over again, because even if Christine had been living a lie, at least it was easier than going on knowing everything she was doing meant next to nothing. "Is that what you want?" The question was rhetorical, because of course it wasn't, and he knew that.
"What did Seth tell you I do? He can't talk; he's left out of even more than I am, and I only tell him some things. The only way to find meaning in this life here is to work with the scientists. Whatever Seth thinks, I do good work. I heal people when they tell me to. … Dietre Abendroth needed a home after his parents were killed, and I was asked to take him in. Does that seem evil to you?" Francis's posture became more rigid as he spoke about Dietre, unable to help thinking about how uncomfortable things had been lately. They had healed a bit, maybe, but it still felt strange.
"I don't pretend to know what the point of this project is. I'm not authorized to know that, but I do know the government is funding this. Some of the kids are adopted, but a lot are children of the scientists – they don't want to hurt them. We've been given a gift."
That was what Francis had to think to be okay with everything. It had been eerie growing up on an island that was more or less empty before the babies started coming in. The older twenty-somethings had very few other age-mates. The town was growing, but it had been very small before the project had gotten into full swing.