by Mur Lafferty
“Just one year?” Hiro asked. “That can’t be enough. I’ve had a few lifetimes and I still don’t understand it sometimes.”
The medbay closet held several jumpsuits, a small overturned plastic table, and a collection of shoes. The legs the shoes were supposed to be on were nowhere to be found.
“Where am I supposed to find these legs?” he asked.
“If they’re not there, they’re in my quarters. If they got displaced because of the grav drive failure, they couldn’t have gotten far.”
Joanna was making notes from the machines the captain’s clone was hooked up to. She didn’t look up when Hiro joined her, merely reached her hands out and kept reading digital charts.
“No legs, sorry,” Hiro said, going to the other side of the captain’s bed. Everything in the medbay was meticulous; anything that wasn’t bolted to the floor or magnetically held down was in containers already secured using such methods. “You’re apparently not a messy person, so there’s not a lot of places for the legs to hide.”
The captain, now that Hiro had time to look at her, did not look well. Her long black hair was gone, shaved so that her head wound could be treated and bandaged. Tubes of all sizes came from her body, pumping things in or taking things out.
“She was attacked only two days ago,” Joanna said, looking at the machine’s display. “That’s how far back the data goes, anyway, but from the looks of the wounds, it sounds right. I won’t know until Paul gets IAN online and we can get the locked computers going. Then I hope we can access our logs.”
“They’re fully locked down?” Hiro asked. “But the engines and the nav system had an override.”
“Apparently it’s an emergency lockdown that happens with the resurrection switch. To give everyone time to acclimate before making any rash decisions,” Joanna said, frowning. “Although it could just be another safeguard to avoid sabotage.”
“It seems every single safeguard failed,” Hiro said, shaking his head. “Cutting us out of the computers doesn’t seem like good planning.”
“I’m with you. But they thought that IAN would be around to help make these decisions. We weren’t supposed to be needed. Hopefully Paul can find my logs concerning the captain’s status. Once we unlock Wolfgang’s logs, that should help us identify who attacked her, and we can learn some more.”
“Then I guess it’s safe to say that she wasn’t the murderer,” Hiro said, “unless she’s good at beating herself up.”
“I don’t think it’s safe to say anything right now,” Joanna said. “You’d be surprised what people are capable of.”
Hiro swallowed back his reply. Not really.
Even with the grav drive turned back on, the doctor hadn’t removed the old clone’s restraints. Hiro tested one and Joanna shook her head at him. He raised his eyebrows. “You afraid she’s going to run away?”
“She’s our only witness, if she wakes up,” Joanna said. “And our only suspect if she is somehow involved in the carnage out there.” She jerked her head toward the cloning bay. “It’s safest for everyone if she stays strapped to the bed.”
“What about the captain? The current one, I mean?” Hiro asked. “She gave you an order.”
Joanna sighed and leaned back in her chair. “When it comes to medical disagreements, I have jurisdiction. We may need to protect this one from her. Have you ever had your clones overlap?”
Hiro shook his head, the often-repeated lie coming to his lips. “My lab was ethical to the point of being boring. Have you ever broken clone law, had your clones overlap or anything?”
The doctor was silent for some time.
“This should be an easy answer,” he said. “It’s a yes, no, or I don’t want to talk about it, Hiro, let’s talk about what you think’s been happening in rugby for the past twenty-five years kind of question.”
“Just considering how much to say,” the doctor said. “Memories grow hazy.”
“And we don’t know yet who to trust. Fair enough,” he said.
Memories. He had many. His childhood was crystal-clear. The details of his various lives tended to blur together, though. He was usually grateful for that.
“I’ve lived a long time,” Joanna finally said. “Before the Codicils, even.”
Hiro whistled. “No kidding? So you must have had multiples at one time, or lived in the golden age of hacking.”
“That’s a funny way of describing the time when people would mess with a clone’s DNA as if it were a cake recipe instead of the fundamental matrix of a person,” Joanna said sternly. “It was not a good time. Bathtub baby incidents were cropping up, along with hearings on the ethics of DNA hacking and the even more questionable ethics behind mindmap hacking. One of the greatest technologies in history was outlawed because of opportunistic fatcats and outlaw hackers with no principles. Is that ‘golden’ to you?”
Hiro remembered the stories from history class, having been born after the Codicils were in place. Bathtub babies was the term for children born with undesirable genes, the wrong gender, or a disability. The parents would record the DNA matrix and the mindmap, then pay extra for a hacker to change the gender or disability, or even—he remembered with discomfort—to make a mixed-race baby favor one parent’s race over the other’s. Once the new, shiny, perfect clone was programmed, the parents would “dispose of” the damaged one and wake the new clone.
It went beyond children. World leaders were kidnapped and modified to fit a rival government’s needs. Lovers were modified to fit a partner’s needs. The sex trade grew in leaps and bounds. Eventually the penalty for hacking was death.
“I don’t mean that the bathtub babies were good. But if something needed to be fixed, something genetic and deadly, then the hackers could do it instead of forcing someone to die from MS over and over again, right? The really good ones could modify a sociopath, I heard. And the Codicils put an end to that, to all the good hacking. I understand why they did it, but it seemed like overkill to ban all hacking.”
“Loopholes would have been found if we allowed even a little bit through. Even after the laws passed, some hackers went underground and kept working. You can’t catch all the roaches.” She sounded bitter. She put her hand on the captain’s and patted it twice. “I was never for the pointless killing of an older clone in order to benefit a newer one. And it happened far more often than the history books say it did. I will do all I can to protect this one.”
“You may need a guard,” Hiro said.
“Katrina’s upset, but I don’t think she’ll act. She has other things to worry about, after all,” Joanna said. She sighed and checked the reading of a blood sample a diagnostic machine had taken. “All vital signs are steady. She’s suffered some severe head trauma. Honestly. If we were back home, we’d activate the DNR and just euthanize her. But we need her alive for now.”
“Playing God isn’t as exciting as you’d think,” Hiro said. “Why can’t we just take a mindmap of her brain?”
“And put it where?” Joanna asked. “We don’t have a hacker on board, and it’s even less ethical to grow a new clone just for her memories, which are likely damaged. Where does that put our captain, then?”
“Probably pissed as hell at us. Then she can recycle us and replace us with clones of herself,” Hiro suggested.
Joanna smiled. “There you go. Seriously, without IAN to watch her while I rest, I’m going to need to sleep in here. Can you give me a hand making up the other hospital bed?”
Hiro started looking about the medbay for linens, but found none. “I guess there will be sheets in storage. Or I’ll see if they drifted down the hall or something.”
Joanna nodded, focused on the captain’s clone again. “Thank you.”
“Doc?” Hiro asked as he snagged a chair with magnetic casters on the legs and slid it across the floor to the captain’s bedside.
“Mm?” Joanna said, looking at the readout of the numbers again.
“You never said whether you
had met a previous clone of yourself,” Hiro said.
“Actually I haven’t. My lives have been fairly boring. I like it that way.”
“Until now,” he said.
“Until now,” she agreed softly. “At least our cargo is safe. Otherwise the mission is pointless.”
“True!” Hiro said brightly, and then realized how ridiculous he sounded. “Kinda like finding a diamond in a pile of shit.”
The intercom above their head crackled to life with the captain’s voice. “All crew to the cloning bay. Now.”
He sighed. “Why do I think the pile of shit just got a little deeper?”
Depths
Hiro missed swimming.
He knew it was ridiculous, given that whatever had happened, his last memory of Earth was only a few hours ago in his time line. The last time he went swimming, according to his memory, was a week ago. But this body had never touched a pool or ocean, and probably never would. He’d thought about the freedom of swimming several times after waking up. Diving down into the black water, away from the horrors that surrounded him. His mood, his quips, felt like autopilot while he submerged inside himself.
Like all older clones, he understood how to deal with his own death. It no longer shocked him; he’d experienced it in many ways.
But he’d never killed himself. He couldn’t imagine why he had done so this time. So he dove.
He resurfaced when Wolfgang grabbed his arm roughly. “Pay attention, Hiro,” he said.
Paul and Maria stood at the two cloning bay terminals, Paul still looking ill and shaky, Maria’s lip bloody where it looked as if she had bitten it.
The captain faced them, her arms crossed.
“While we have basic computer use and access to navigation, we have some serious problems. IAN remains offline. Our logs—all logs, personal, medical, command—are gone. No backups.” She took a deep breath. “And we have discovered sabotage here in the bay itself. Beyond the apparent erasure of all our more recent mindmaps, we can’t make any new mindmaps. And the cloning bay’s software has been wiped. It’s just a big empty computer attached to some vats. No new bodies.”
They were silent, letting this sink in.
Hiro continued to sink.
“This is death,” Joanna said from very far away.
“Yes. Unless we can figure out how to fix these machines, we’re all dead at the end of these clones’ lifetimes,” Katrina said. “Now. Options.”
Hiro’s ears were buzzing. He wanted to move, to run, to find a weapon and take full revenge on anyone and everyone. His fists balled up.
Wolfgang took a step toward Paul, and the smaller man looked up from the terminal in alarm. “Fix it.”
“I’m doing what I can,” Paul said, his voice stronger as he tapped on the terminal. He was in his element, apparently, and getting a bit more energy.
“Our first goal is to get IAN online,” Maria said. A drop of blood had fallen onto her chin.
Hiro stared at that drop of blood. It centered him. It felt like all that had gone wrong that day was contained in the drop of blood. He stepped forward and dabbed at her chin with his sleeve.
“You’re bleeding,” he said quietly.
“Oh. Right. So I am,” she said. “That’s the least of our problems right now.”
“But it’s one that we can fix.”
She gave him a quick glance, then turned back to the terminal. “Fair enough.”
“Maria,” Katrina said. “Do you have experience with reprogramming an AI?”
Maria paused, then looked up again. “No, Captain.”
“Then if you’re not going to help here, go to the kitchen and see if the sabotage has reached that far. We’re going to need food soon.”
Maria frowned as if she was going to argue, but when she saw Wolfgang’s face she nodded once and left.
The captain ran her hand over her face. “Now, Wolfgang. We need to talk.”
“I think we do,” he said. “Paul, keep working.”
“I need to go to the server room to access IAN at the source,” Paul said, and left the room.
Hiro stood, alone in the room where many of them had died. He wanted to dive again. But he looked at the drop of blood on his sleeve and shook his head. No one had given him an order. So he followed Katrina and Wolfgang.
It hadn’t been Maria’s decision to join the starship Dormire’s crew. It certainly was a great opportunity; it was the first human generational ship to leave Earth for better skies. It wouldn’t be the last, or that’s what her parole officer had said. But she had said a lot of things.
Things like, “Help crew this ship, don’t mess anything up, and you’ll be pardoned at the end. Your entire record will be wiped.” And, “Of course your crewmates aren’t all dangerous criminals. The AI is designed to take over if someone decides to mutiny. It’s completely safe.” And, “All right, there may be some violent criminals aboard, but remember we have several safeguards in place.” And, “Hey, for a clone with three life sentences on your head, this is the best prison you’ll ever get a chance to be in. And full pardon!”
It sounded like a great deal, but she knew the timeless reason criminals crewed this ship: cheap labor. Anyone reputable would have charged a fortune to crew a starship for generations. Financiers had to cut costs where they could.
And now they were well and truly alone out here. With the first death sentence any of them had experienced.
“No one aboard will know your crimes. Think of this as your new start,” the parole officer had said. She couldn’t have known the irony of that statement, but it still burned Maria.
“Is keeping that secret a rule or guideline?” Maria had asked, quirking an eyebrow.
“It’s a rule. No one is to discuss their pasts.”
“And how will they police that?”
“The AI will be listening.”
“Lovely.”
But it still sounded better than prison.
Maria had wondered if part of her punishment was to be the lowest-ranking person on the ship. Everyone else had a good job, while hers involved general maintenance, cook duties, and common-area cleaning. A janitor/cook/handywoman. Although admittedly she didn’t have experience at any high-level military ranks, or driving a spaceship. Taking care of the incidentals was something she could do.
And there were a lot of incidentals.
The Dormire consisted largely of engines, a mile-square solar sail, water and air scrubbers, server farms, recyclers, bio spaces, and millions of gallons of a synthetic, protein-rich material called Formula CL-20465-F. Trademark Lyfe.
The creation of Lyfe had done much to help with starvation problems on Earth, because if a town could afford the specific printer and a supply of Lyfe, which was very cheap to make, it could print almost any food. The printer was a highly sophisticated machine that could break down food, study it on the molecular level, and re-create it almost exactly, provided it had the right protein and vitamin strands. The up-front cost was huge, but long-term cost was minimal.
Religious arguments against cloning started early when scientists used Lyfe—previously considered to be just a food source—to create the first clones in actual adult human bodies that waited for mindmaps to wake them. The clones, however, were grateful to avoid childhood and the pain of puberty multiple times.
Considering the trip to their new home was going to take several lifetimes, the clones needed enough Lyfe to cover all their organic needs on the ship as well as for any new bodies they would grow to continue their lives. When they arrived at their new planet, the crew’s mission changed to start the massive job of printing bodies for all the new clones and waking up the sleeping humans. Then they would be free citizens.
The Dormire was a cylindrical ship that created gravity by spinning. The crew lived on an inner ring that had a gravity slightly above Luna’s, and below Earth’s. This was primarily for the Luna-born Wolfgang who would be in constant discomfort if they resided on the outer
rings, which rotated between one and two g’s, depending on the floor. As the size of each subsequent concentric floor grew, so did the speed it traveled around the hub, and so did the gravity. While the innermost floors were comfortable, the middle floors that held the massive computer banks and the air and water scrubbers were closer to Earth’s gravity; the outermost ring held more cargo needed at the other end of the voyage.
In Maria’s opinion, the most important cargo they carried was the biomass Lyfe from which all the newly cloned bodies came.
Of course, Lyfe was next to useless if they didn’t fix the cloning bay. Her stomach growled and she realized it still had one very good use. She headed for the kitchen.
If she couldn’t help, at least she could cook.
Failures
Neither of them sat. They sized each other up, backs tense, as if waiting for the other to strike first.
Hiro had followed at a distance. The captain and her first mate had spoken with such gravity that he couldn’t resist. He stood just outside the door and listened.
The captain spoke first. “I am very close to placing you under arrest. Tell me why I shouldn’t.”
“Really,” Wolfgang said.
“You are the only confirmed murderer on board. Don’t try to be surprised that I recognized you. It’s funny you don’t try to hide yourself. You don’t really blend in,” she said. “I know who you are and what you did. The murder of five people, and then—the really telling point—the sabotage of our cloning tech points entirely to you.”
Hiro took a step back from the door. The captain knew Wolfgang and his crimes. Why was she keeping it a secret? He’d also been right to be afraid of the intense security chief. Hiro tried to think of a famous clone who was Luna-born tall with white hair. That was the problem with being alive for generations: You see a lot of people.
Wolfgang sounded tense but not worried. “Funny that you point the finger at me. I’m not the one wanted in seventeen countries.”