All Chapters of An Experiment Gone Wrong: Chapter 1 - Chapter 8

"Why does this caviar smell so fishy? I'm not eating it! It's disgusting!" An elegant glass plate was violently swept to the floor. Black caviar splattered across the carpet, looking just like the eyes of the sparrows I had seen frozen to death that winter. I floated in midair, watching the young man in a handmade suit tailored just for him throw a tantrum. His face was identical to mine, which made me realize he was Ethan Howard, my older twin brother. The middle-aged couple sitting beside him were trying to calm him down, their expressions full of affection. They looked exactly like my parents before my supposed transmigration. "It's all right, Ethan. We just had it air-flown in. There might be something wrong with this batch," My dad, Dave Howard, said as he gently patted Ethan's shoulder in his casual outfit. "Then don't eat it. I'll have someone bring you something else. What would you like? Gallic food or something from Seabrook?" My mom, Dr. Jillian Howard, a renowned

"Next, we'll go live to the site and have a livestream," my mom announced. She swept her hand through the air, and the image on the screen changed. The edited footage stopped playing, replaced by a live surveillance feed. A vast snow field filled the screen. As the wind howled, it whipped up loose snow from the ground. It was the wilderness section of the film set, where I had collapsed. The audience off-stage held their breath, waiting to see something shocking. Perhaps they expected to see me robbing people in a frenzy or screaming hysterically. My mom held the microphone, a confident smile on her face. "According to our tracking system, our test subject Evan Howard should now be on his way to the Lord's manor to beg for food. We've instructed the actors to refuse him and humiliate him." "Our model predicts that he should be overcome with rage by now. He may even pick up a weapon and attack the actors. That will be the perfect conclusion to our experiment, irrefutable proof

Uproar filled the presentation venue. Camera flashes went off wildly, and the sounds of shutters never ceased. Every photograph captured the panic and ugliness of these supposedly elite parents. Ethan finally realized something was wrong. He stared at the face on the screen, identical to his own, and turned pale. The cherry in his hand fell to the floor. "Dad... Is he... Is he really dead?" He turned toward our dad, fear showing in his eyes for the first time. He felt no sympathy. It was simply because he just sensed that something was about to collapse. My dad slumped in his chair, and the monitor slipped from his hands. "Impossible... Jillian's model is perfect... How could he die? How dare he die?" Even then, all our dad cared about was the experiment and the model. I floated overhead, watching the farce unfold. Suddenly, I felt very tired. In the end, I had never managed to bring my mother half a loaf of bread. But it did not matter anymore. She had never been my real

Slap! The sound of a sharp slap rang out. With a trembling hand, my mom slapped Ethan hard across the face. The slap cut off his hysterical outburst and shattered the last trace of false warmth in the family. "You little piece of…!" My mom's chest heaved, her eyes red with fury. "We gave you the best education and the best life we could, and this is how you repay us? Your brother died out there for this family... For this experiment, you haven't shed a single tear! Yet now, all you care about is your credit card? Your party?" Ethan held his cheek and stared in disbelief at the mother who had never so much as spoken harshly to him in his life. A few seconds later, he exploded. "I'm ungrateful? You're the ones who taught me to be this way!" Like a madman, he swept everything off the coffee table and onto the floor. "Ever since I was little, you've told me it's every man for himself! You said compassion was for the weak! That the elite only had to look out for their own inte