Legacy of Seconds

by Edge O. Erin

  The situation took Jon back to when he was first recognised for his expertise in the integration of minds and thence directed to help launch a cloning project. While he had heard of the accident that put Mariot Grey-Ghan in a coma, he was unaware that she was envisaged the ‘Ghan of Ghans’ before the tragedy. Said individual would lead the Ghans to unquestioned global governance and ultimately become ‘Queen of Earth’. Letting that dream die proved impossible.

  On a personal level, Mariot’s parents desperately wanted their star daughter back. The wishes — familial, fanciful, and fantastic — came together in the Cheriot Wheel programme. Perhaps the prophecy was wrong, and Mariot wasn’t the ‘Ghan of Ghans’, but an individual “in her image” could still help them achieve global governance.

  Having expediently resolved that accelerated growth was safe, they tackled brain function. AI cyberneticists felt the integration of ‘faculty chips’ — downloaded memories and capabilities, in addition to mission-specific knowledge and abilities —in covert operators, could be adapted to clones.

  While AI had fallen into disrepute, primarily due to job loss and the worry — born out of real events — that it could not be adequately controlled, it saw advancements out of public scrutiny. Predictably — and Jon knew a lot about prediction and probability — it took more time and trials than others had forecast to engineer a specimen that could walk and talk and almost pass for a legitimate human. But ‘almost’ was totally unacceptable, and M105 was scrapped. It took another four months to crank out M106, and while she convinced almost everyone, relatives and psychologists found her wanting. Consequently, M106 was culled. Finally, after another six months, fourteen units were deemed ‘cyxcellent’ as all passed a host of rigorous and real-world trials, including the ‘parent test’. Nearly identical physically, each clone was developed a bit differently. After extensive deliberation, Cheriot was selected as the best ‘Mariot’. Yes, she was distant at times, but that could be explained away as someone who had returned from a long coma and would need time to rediscover her authentic self.

  Unfortunately, one day, Cheriot was found repeatedly assembling and disassembling a puzzle. She couldn’t and wouldn’t stop doing it, and they had to sedate her. They analysed her and diagnosed a Process Interface Portal or ‘PIP’ issue. They fixed it, but a few months later, she again exhibited peculiar and repetitive behaviour. Admitting defeat, they replaced Cheriot with Mary, the ‘feelings’ unit.

  The Ghans wanted to destroy Cheriot; the parents said she should be in a mental institution, and programme managers urged her to be studied to determine the source of her malfunction. The managers argued that they could use the findings to inform and ensure Mary’s success, and they ultimately won the day. It proved a wise decision for Mary had been serving admirably, and without fail, for many years.

  The other clones, save for one that disappeared, were to be further studied, tested, and, if necessary, upgraded. Of all the difficult decisions and doings, it was particularly heart-wrenching, after so many years of study, to wheel Cheriot into a cell in Bang Block. The whole enterprise was creepy. But given Jon’s station, any reluctance, act of defiance or insubordination, would be noted and acted upon. Not being a Red of ‘impeccable lineage’ also meant he couldn’t delegate a subordinate to carry out classified acts without the approval of a female Red of equal or higher standing. This further hamstrung his ability to act ethically and sensitively. Still, to his knowledge, no other MEM operative had risen to such heights in the Eastern Block’s bureaucracy. The intelligence he gathered was invaluable, and due to his talents and position, only he could modify the selection matrix such that his sister-in-law’s daughter might become a Wakee.

  But right now, Mary was the priority, for if the Ghans sensed their legacy clone was having issues, they would not hesitate to remove her. And the most likely replacement would be the clone known as Riot, and she could be a raging storm.

  As for the undeployed microbots, it was just another day in the tackle box.

  ***

  They showed her the door. Her. All the years she had stood by them — stood with them, in fact, to consolidate their status as the preeminent Ghan family, and they showed her the door! Marrying outside of the elite had certainly ‘pinked’ her status, but it wasn’t meaningful in the grand scheme. If not for her, the Red Articles would not be the esteemed guide to actions, codes, colours, clothes, foods, songs, literature, liturgy, and so on that were properly ‘Red’ and befitting the genetics, colour, and creed of the world’s aristocracy.

  All she had done, all the faithful acquiescence suddenly seemed like such a waste! Taking a drink from the hallway fountain, she tried to calm down. The water was cold and filtered and fine as ever, but it tasted tainted. Was she over-reacting to this slight, or was it that this insult illuminated what always lurked in the shadows; the Ghans were not, in fact, morally superior and that she had been weak and followed too faithfully for too long? She sat down by the door, thought about listening in, then abruptly got up, walked to her quarters, and started packing her belongings.

  Unbeknownst to her, a pair of knowing and sad eyes carefully watched, empathised and did the same.

  Chapter Three

  Claire didn’t like chipping at the coral, but after all, it was dead. So many lifeforms were dying; with all the death in the world, it seemed birth itself might eventually succumb. As she was an apathetic environmentalist and hardened cynic, the truth sat on her conscience like a flatulent bureaucrat; pollution, exploration, overfishing, freighter traffic, and unbridled desalination were devastating the world’s oceans. Most near-shore coral reef sites were bleached and exposed. Save for those co-opted for aquaculture, the nurseries of marine life were mostly childless. The price of Corallium Rubrum had fallen to levels where even those in the middle-socioeconomic class could afford to don jewellery made of the “precious” red coral. Despite efforts to crush underground and illegal markets and curb its sale at jewellery stores, red coral adornments were as prevalent as MEM supporters, and MEM was using it to help fund the fledgling organisation. It was rumoured the Yugon crime family also contributed to the coffers, but true or not; it meant little to her.

  Aside from gender, her being and background also set her apart in MEM. Few genuine Reds found themselves divorced from privilege, on their own, and attached to a group of dissidents. She was ‘special’. It almost made her laugh. Instead, she bit down on her lip and mumbled a curse. ‘Special’ all right, eyes not symmetrical, red hair too curly and ‘blessed’ with one foot that was a stump which required a prosthesis. Even the colour of her eyes — a brownish-green — was not remarkable and she was positively not as captivating as her sisters were, or at least had been. Claire chipped angrily at the coral, and bits bounced vengefully off her shield. Not only was it strange to be in MEM, but being a mom, loving so much — and at times hating more — added an element of ‘weird’.

  A chip found a gap between her shield and thick work-shirt. “Crux of a whipscrew!” Another miner paused for half a second and then continued working; they were accustomed to her frequent cursing. She secured her prosthesis, launched the carrier, and started walking back to shore.

  Predictably, her prosthesis began to loosen and chafe after just two hundred feet of the tough going. “Whipscrew me with a dirty branch of a son-of-a-whore tree!” A passing miner stifled a snigger, which was good for he would’ve received a not-so-polite retort, or worse.

  With her mining done and product delivered, she turned down the offer of a ride from one of the others. She caught a worker’s shuttle using a fake ID saying she was Pleya Powy and a Ghan philanthropic organisation gardener.

  Some knew the Ghans only practised philanthropy to keep the family name at the forefront of everything while others lived vicariously through the red-skinned elite. Despite being born on the Ghan Garden estate, Claire firmly believed most of the legends surrounding the Ghans’ sacred bloodline were concoctions. Her husband’s mentor — an e
minent academic — had said there was nothing to evidence the ‘Royal Families’ were special or ‘cultivated’, let alone founded thousands of years ago. But royal or not, Ghan and related indigenous fertility were mostly responsible for humanity rising from the violent abyss of the past.

  The shuttle slowed to a crawl, then stopped. Up ahead, a large air-shuttle signed ‘Abigailius Ghan School of Commerce’ was parked. Air-scoots, fuel-bikes, and ‘boings’ were all navigating around it as students disembarked to look upon the silver-and-red statue of a former Ghan matriarch and the related park dedicated in her name. She knew this as she had often walked by, stole a flower or two, and spat upon the plaque.

  The temptation this time was the air-scoots the driver was offloading so those students too tired or lazy to walk the five-hundred-foot circle could hover around. These floaters were new ‘Ghandors’, and they could, when tweaked, carry a person at speeds of thirty mph. She walked up, stood beside one of the trees near the circle’s exit, and watched. Predictably, there was a careless one in the lot; a pretty, entitled girl with an ‘oh-so-proper’ Red-article scarf reached the end, stepped off her floater, and impudently waved to the driver that he could take it away. But the driver was busy and had not seen the girl. Claire walked over to it, footed it deftly under a bench, and beneath the swooping branches of a juniper bush. She set her backpack on the ground, opened it, and began fishing things out as if she were repacking or looking for an item.

  She knew the attendant was counting the number of Ghandors being stowed as the driver tallied the students.

  “Forty-three Mick. Forty-three!” The driver yelled out.

  “I think I onlyz got 42 Relph. I have to count them again.”

  He started unloading to recount, and an old lady popped out of the bus like a champagne cork. This one was a pure Ghan-a-wannabe.

  “We’re running late!” The cranky old lady scolded the man.

  “But I think we maybeez one short Mrs Gujbert-Ghanless.”

  She looked away from him and towards the entry and exit of the park.

  “I don’t see any others, do you?”

  He looked where she glanced; there were just two people at the plaque and a working woman sitting on a bench sorting out some of her belongings.

  “Well, I, I don’t see it there,” he said anxiously.

  “Please just give me a few minutes to recount ma’am… I-I,” he pleaded.

  “I, I, all right! By the time a man like you counts to forty-three, we will have wasted time enough to miss our next appointment, and I am not going to let that happen!”

  The man shrugged and climbed into his cubbyhole in the storage area as the shuttle left off. Claire let the traffic that had piled up move on by, and when there was a gap in pedestrians, casually grabbed the air-scooter and set off down the street. She would tweak it later; for now, fifteen mph was excellent, and as her long red hair flowed behind her, she allowed herself a smile.

  ***

  A section of razor wire had been cut off, and the motion-activated security drone, now hardly recognisable amongst all the other soaking-wet litter and garbage, lay smashed on the ground. The perimeter cams were clouded over, and alarms disabled; the advance team had done its job.

  The empty records hall was a relic and repository of the past, but it also contained a door to a future Cooper wanted to walk through. But the other man wanted to maintain the status quo, and thus, after two chaotic minutes, the future yielded to breathless and bloody inertia.

  A wild swing put one man off balance, and the other grabbed him mid-torso and slammed him into a bookcase. Books fell, with a large volume striking the elbow of the man on top just as he was about to deliver what could have been the decisive blow. Blow deflected, the man on the bottom elevated his hips, twisted, and pivoted the top man off. The man previously disadvantaged, and with a splinter of bookcase piercing his back, mounted the other man and boldly tried to strangle him. But the man on the bottom had trained for this and curling back, shot up his left leg outside the other man’s left arm, curled his knee-pit around the man’s neck and with the strength of his own leg and core — and a twist — levered the man off.

  They both scrambled up, panting, sweating, and bleeding.

  “Crux Sakes Coop! Enough is enough; it isn’t worth dying for!” the man heaved.

  “We’ve no way of knowing that,” Cooper replied.

  The man reached behind him and pulled a three-inch-long piece of wood out his back.

  “Goddess dammit that hurt!”

  “How ironic! You’re stabbed in the back as you’re in the process of trying to do that to us.”

  “Cooper, I just want to help… never mind… MEM doesn’t stand a chance!”

  “We’ve made it this far, Beriit, and there’s every reason to see it through.”

  The man wavered, then found his resolve.

  “It has to end here. You walk out that door with that data biscuit, and my mom and dad will die without dignity.”

  “At the expense of your integrity and many lives? Look, we can look after your parents.”

  “No, you can’t! They promised my parents a place in High Town. Stay in MEM and what, see them chewing on stale, modified bread, and fake beans? And for what? This gambit is going nowhere square.”

  “You’re in the wrong Beriit. You know this is more important than any of us, or ten of us for that matter. Now back off! Last chance.”

  “Sorry, Coop. Give me the biscuit. I don’t want to kill you. Even if you survive me, do you reckon they won’t know who you are? We’ve spilt blood all over,” he motioned to the wreck and ruin around them.

  It was true, they had. “I won’t mind torching the place.”

  “Be that as it may, I’m sure as man-nuts not stepping away friend. Walk away now; leave the biscuit, and I will light this joint up to cover you.”

  “You know I can’t do that, Beriit.”

  “Goddess damn Coop! OK, how about this? We destroy the biscuit together, here and now, and go our separate ways. Shatz the intel! Shatz this whole arse-sucking thing!”

  A knife lay on the floor between them, they both looked at it, at each other, and simultaneously dove for it.

  Jop Baturu-Heim was a mean, cruel, arrogant man, but his knife skills — and instruction thereof — were excellent, and Cooper was a great learner. His training and expertise resulted in him wresting control of the knife and guiding it deep into Beriit’s chest.

  “Arr!” Beriit yelled out and then, after reality set in, looked at him and said softly, “Ah, damn… my parents…”

  “We’ll do what we can.”

  “Thanks, Coop.”

  Beriit Dolshni, unmarried, no children, and a traitor to the cause lay dead at his feet. Still, he had sat across a MEM table from the man, even told him about his son for Red’s sake, and a part of him felt guilty. But a more significant part of him felt relieved.

  He tucked the biscuit into a shielded pocket before pushing papers and volumes of books together under the desk and setting them alight. As expected, the old fire-suppression system was inoperable, and no water came out of the ceiling’s sprinklers.

  He jumped out the window to the ground below. The advance team-cum-signal crew picked up his biosignature and the coded transmission that indicated the package had been acquired and met him in the dark and defunct boiler room of a collapsed skyscraper. It was the second time this site had been chosen as a mission review room.

  Generally, there were just three or four people present, so having a fifth person and someone he did not know, lurking in the corner, made him uncomfortable. The man’s dark pants and jacket couldn’t hide his thickset frame. His hoodie was pulled low, making it that much harder to make out his features in the near-dark environment.

  There were typical questions and standard answers. That a traitor was killed, and a building set ablaze meant additional questions, and he did his best to remain patient, but he was getting frazzled.

  �
��You did an exceptional job, Coop, couldn’t ask for more,” the man he knew as Scorp said.

  Scorp had always been fair, but firm, and plugged-in to the moment. And the moment told of a tired and sore man who needed a slap on the back before he went home.

  “Thanks, sir. If no more questions, I’d like to go.”

  “I think we’re done here.”

  He turned to leave, but the hooded man spoke up.

  “So, Mr Rand, there was absolutely no way the traitor could’ve been captured and detained for questioning?”

  He’d thought this ground covered.

  “If he could’ve been, he wouldn’t be dead right now,” Copper replied testily.

  “Perhaps not. Clearly, you did a fine job, but alive, Beriit might’ve revealed more on—”

  “That’s enough, Wezer,” Scorp intervened.

  “Yes, certainly. I was just making sure,” the hooded man offered.

  “It’s understandable; I’m just tired, sorry,” Cooper offered diplomatically.

  “No worries. Sometimes my exuberance gets the better of me. MEM is lucky to have you.”

  As he made his way home with a fresh set of clothes provided by Scorp, he wondered if he would come to know if what was on the biscuit was worth fighting for — and nearly dying. It was a long walk, so he started to wax hypothetical, but before long, a notification of an encrypted message pulsed on his Wristpad.

  Like all with a Wristpad, its use had become a habit. Installed as a soft veneer to the inside of one’s less dominant wrist and powered by kinetic energy, it allowed for calling, social networking, banking, biomonitoring, and a host of applications. It also served as a recognised form of ID, at least for those that enabled the government tracking feature, and Cooper did not. Initially, it required licensing, but over time licenses were swapped and stolen, forged, and duplicated, and it had proven too difficult to regulate. With MEM’s cutting-edge units, the veneer could be removed, replaced, and reapplied, allowing for the use of fake IDs.