by Mur Lafferty
He opened it and saw a picture of himself. In a place he had never been. Doing a thing he had never done. A very bloody, violent thing.
A hysterical voice in his head wondered if he had just tried to cut the man’s hair and ended up cutting his throat instead. And then forgotten completely about it.
There was a lot of blood in the room, over the bed, dripping onto the floor. Not a drop of blood stained this Hiro’s hands as he, over several security shots, slit a man’s throat, laid him on the bed, and left the room. The last shot had him looking directly at the camera, his eyes slightly wide as if he had just realized that he’d been watched.
“That’s not me—” The words dried in his throat as he realized they were the worst defense in the world of defenses.
“Mr. Sato, through these photographs we can ascertain a few things. Either you are lying to us and are a killer on the side to supplement your haircutting business,” she said, quirking an eyebrow. “Although if you were, I’d hope you would live in a better place than the shithole we found you in.”
“I’m not—” he started, but she interrupted him.
“Or you are an illegal clone, breaking Codicil One of the international testament.” She pulled another sheet out of her briefcase, a beaten leather deal that Hiro guessed had been an heirloom from a cop relative, and squinted at it. “It is unlawful for a person to make more than one clone of themself at a time. Cloning is to be used only for lengthening life, not multiplying it.
“Or,” she continued, finally picking up Hiro’s memory drive and holding it like it might crumble in her fingertips, “you could have a twin. Who is also a clone. But this should tell us that.”
Without looking, Detective Lo held the memory drive over her shoulder, where a short uniformed officer took it. “Mitsuki, print out the pertinent information on this, please.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Mitsuki murmured, taking the drive from the room. Hiro wondered if she was going to try to print off his entire personality and memory. There wasn’t enough paper in the world. Humans never had any idea how much data was needed to create a proper clone.
Detective Lo sat and watched Hiro as he sat miserably rubbing his head. “You’re not saying much,” she said at last.
“What is there to say?” he said. “If I deny it, you won’t believe me. If I stay silent you’ll take that as admission of guilt, but at least I won’t say anything stupid that you can use against me later.”
“Is this you?” she asked, pointing at the very-Hiro-looking man in the photo.
“No.”
“Is it a twin?”
“No.”
“Is it your illegal clone?”
“It sure seems that way,” he said. Her eyebrows shot up, and he laughed bitterly. “Oh, come on. I know what it looks like; I’m not an idiot. Did you ever think that while it does look like there’s another me out there, I may not be the one in charge of the cloning? My DNA is in several databases. You know those databases, the ones that sometimes get hacked?
“Hell, for all I know,” he added, looking at the door where the cop had left with his memory drive, “your cop is making a copy of me right now. You know I’m not supposed to allow that drive out of my sight, right? By law?”
“I’m going to need proof of your whereabouts last Wednesday night,” the detective said.
Wednesday night. He’d had three clients that night. Finding them for statements shouldn’t be a problem. “I can do that,” he said.
She handed him a tablet and stylus to write his alibis’ information down. As he was writing, she said, “You seem pretty calm for someone who could be in a lot of trouble.”
“I know I didn’t do anything. And if there’s an illegal clone out there, it’s him, not me,” he said.
“But if we catch him, one of you will be erased,” she said.
He looked up into her bland face. “I hope you’ll erase the murderer,” he said.
“The law states we have to erase the duplicate, not the criminal,” she said. “Apparently the creation of an unlawful clone is worse than the death of a normal person.” She looked at him with open dislike. “I didn’t write the rules.”
“Well, lawmakers are assholes,” he said faintly, trying to remember the name of the client with the hair he regularly dyed green. He only thought of her as the “dyed armpits lady,” but he doubted the police would be able to track her based on that.
Detective Lo shrugged. “On that, we can agree.”
She watched him for another moment, and then said, “How about the fact that something inside you can do what we just saw? Without even breaking a sweat? How do you explain that?”
“What do you mean? It wasn’t me.”
“But something in you is capable of doing that. Or they could put someone else’s personality in your body,” she suggested.
“Hackers can do a lot of things, but they can’t do that yet. Not without making you go insane.” He gestured to her arm patch. “Surely you learned that in clone hunting school?”
She smiled. “Sure. Just wondered if you knew it. Was throwing you a fake lifeline.”
“Thanks,” he said. “I’m fairly sure that clone was hacked. I wouldn’t do that.”
“We’ll see,” she said.
Three days later, face-to-face with his clone, Hiro tried to control the cold sweat breaking out on his brow.
His clone just watched disdainfully. Why wasn’t he as upset by this as Hiro was? Facing yourself was something that wasn’t supposed to happen to a clone.
Clones don’t usually see their own dead bodies, and if they do, well, they’re dead. Not walking around, supposedly killing other people. Once they die, their old bodies are called shells and disposed of like trash.
Hiro had thought it would be like looking in a mirror, but this man in front of him, with the clean haircut, the stronger body, and the sardonic smile, screamed I am the superior, dominant, real Akihiro Sato.
They were alone in the room, but Hiro knew they were being recorded. He supposed the illusion of privacy was enough.
The woman with the dyed armpits’ name had been Auzuma Tanaka. She had given him an alibi and a sinking feeling in his stomach when she said she’d seen him on the subway just an hour before the police came by.
His clone had been caught the next morning.
“I am Akihiro Sato, the third of this line,” Hiro said.
The clone laughed. “No, you’re not. You’re seventh, at least.”
Hiro recognized the humor. Where he used his as a defense, this version of him had learned to use it as a weapon. He refused to rise. “What is your name?”
“I am Akihiro Sato, the ninth of the line.”
Hiro rubbed his ear. “Then who are all the others?”
Ninth grinned. “The others are dead except for Eight, who’s getting the rest of the mission done. The mission that you started.”
“No,” Hiro said. “I don’t know what you’re—” He glanced up at the cameras and his spine went cold.
“Come on, Seven, you’re the straight man, you provide the alibis while Eight and I get the work done. Don’t pretend, you can’t get out of it now that we’re caught. Once they catch Eight, then you and he will be erased and I’ll probably go to jail. But that’s all right. The mission is nearly done.”
“What mission?” Hiro cried. “I am Third, I remember my first life, I was born in Tokyo, I lived for sixty-eight years, I learned tailoring from my father”—Ninth began to laugh at this point, but Hiro continued desperately—“and in my second life I was a journalist and a fiction writer, but I died before I finished my first novel. I was shot in the Tokyo clone uprising. It’s in my memory drive, all of it!”
This last sentence was pleaded to the cameras. His life had been dutifully logged and recorded: He was an unimpressive man who had been curious about cloning, and figured that immortality might make him braver and more willing to take risks. Since he covered gardening and weather for the district
news, the ambition he had craved had not blossomed. His memories of his mother and father, of his first love as a human, and then his loves as a clone—they were all etched clearly into his mind.
Nausea grabbed at him again, and he heard a click as a speaker turned on. Detective Lo’s voice came over, clear and strong. “Mr. Sato, Third, we have caught another clone that claims to be you. He gives his number as Eighth.”
Akihiro Sato, ninth of the line, spread his hands and smiled. “And now the mission is done.”
Hiro stayed in jail for three weeks while Detective Lo did her investigation. He asked for a blank book and pen, and once they determined he wasn’t suicidal, they gave him one.
He began meticulously writing his memories. They came clearly and obviously, his parents, his sisters, his happy life in Tokyo, time in school, dropping out of school, witnessing the clone riots, cutting the hair of clone activists, learning more about immortality. He wanted it.
Hiro’s second life was short and brutal, ending in losing his money in bad investments and dying in the second clone uprising.
The memories were clear, so clear.
Aki-HIRO!
Her voice cut through his memory again, and he hunched his shoulders instinctively. Grandmother. She had raised him, beaten him, and tried to “make him a man.” He had run away at sixteen and gone to live with a couple in a small apartment in Tokyo. From there he had learned cosmetology from a drug-addicted madam. He’d also learned about sexually transmitted diseases.
Hiro put down his pen and rubbed his forehead. Two memories, very different, wrestled for control of his head. He remembered his parents as clearly as if he were watching a television show, but he could feel the belt on his bare legs, and knew that the memories of his grandmother were real.
He dropped the book and called for Detective Lo.
Lo handed him a half-full stoneware mug of tea. He had been shaking so badly that he had spilled the first paper cup of tea and burned his hand. The heavier mug helped him control the tremors, and he sipped the sweet heat and took a deep breath.
The detective hadn’t had anyone clean up the tea he had spilled earlier. A cynical voice in Hiro’s head wondered if that was some kind of psychological game. He wasn’t entirely sure it was his voice.
Lo was sitting back in her chair, reading his journal while he drank. She flipped through to check something on a previous page, and then put it down. She removed her glasses and rubbed the bridge of her nose.
“Either you’re a masterful fiction writer or you’re in big trouble,” she said at last.
“I was a failure as a fiction writer,” he said dully. “Second time around. Remember?”
She pointed to the journal on the table, placed carefully away from the tea puddle. “Makes sense. That’s not actually any sort of story structure I’ve ever read before, so I wouldn’t quit your day job.” She paused, then said, “But you don’t know what your day job is, do you?”
Hiro stared at her blankly. “But that can’t be. Hackers aren’t that sophisticated, are they?”
“The underground hackers have gotten better. They used to have several restrictions on them. Now there is one restriction: Don’t do it. This has actually freed them up to do whatever they like. They can invent a powerful memory and the brain fills in the blanks, as our brains do when we only remember half of an event.”
“I don’t even know who I am, then,” Hiro said, staring into his mug.
“You are a unique kind of victim, Mr. Sato,” Detective Lo said.
Hiro looked up, and she smiled, not unkindly. “This is not me letting you go, understand. The law doesn’t let me do that. But I’m starting to believe you didn’t have much to do with the crimes here. It’s not just because you seem to be a soon-to-be erased clone, if the other two were woken after you. It’s apparent that whoever has the matrix of Akihiro Sato has created several of you, and then merged the mindmaps of more than one into a later, single clone. You have the mindmaps of at least two of your clones that lived at the same time. It’s really fascinating once you think about it, figuring how your different clones acted under different nurturing environments.”
“It’s fascinating until you live it yourself!” Hiro said, feeling hysterical laughter bubbling up. “I am remembering terrible things, things I haven’t let myself think about. I thought they were nightmares, but now—it was me. Somehow I was conditioned to do—terrible things,” he repeated, not wanting to elaborate. He was in enough trouble.
“Tell me of the things,” Lo said, leaning forward.
“Murder. Torture. And I sometimes used a knife. But I preferred unarmed.” He stared at his clean hands. “Surely this has come up before, right? Multiple clones, some committing crimes, the rights of each in question? I can’t be the first.”
“You may be the first on record who is unaware that he has been duplicated against his will,” Lo said. “We’ve looked at the mindmaps of your clones, Hiro. They are confirmed to be younger than you. You are essentially without any rights right now. We could legally euthanize you.”
Hiro felt the tea threaten to come back up. He had never considered this aspect of the clone laws. “Then would you take my mindmap? Would you bring me back?”
“That’s not for me to decide,” Lo said. “This seems to be a very strange loophole that could be abused. We could kill you and the other spare, clone a new you, and then have the right to euthanize the killer for the crimes committed. That seems wrong. And what to do with all of the mindmaps?”
Hiro looked at his hands, remembering the things they had done, choking people, rooting around in open wounds to hear the screams, taking eyes. “I don’t want their memories. I have enough already pushed on me.” He rubbed his ear and finally met her eyes. “Why do you believe me, anyway? I thought you were supposed to be skeptical of everything I say?”
She shrugged. “Gut reaction. Your story checks out. Your mindmap is all over the place; clearly you’ve had some serious hacking. Duplication is there, making a huge mess. But I’m not the one who has the ultimate decision, you know. This is already way bigger than my desk. Still, I want to believe you. Anyway, if you were lying, you would probably try to lie your way to be the newest clone, not the first one on the chopping block.”
Hiro winced.
“So I’m on your side as much as I can be. But even if you’re a bona fide saint, you are still an older clone with no legal rights. And I can’t change that.”
Detective Lo tried to bring in a clone psychologist, a judge, and the manager of the clone lab for each of the Hiros. The problem was, no one could find the manager of any of the labs Hiro had information on. Two of them no longer existed, apparently. While the labs’ digital stamp was supposed to be set in the clone’s mindmap, none of the Hiros had any of the required data.
“I told you that you’d been hacked,” Lo said, fuming.
Hiro was still in a cell, but now it was called “protective custody” because he’d been given whatever comfort he had asked for in exchange for his cooperation.
Any comfort except for freedom. Or telling any of his friends where he was.
Hiro didn’t look at her as she paced inside his cell.
“They’re calling it yadokari, the act of putting something inside someone’s brain to live there, like a hermit crab. Clever bullshit.”
He stared at the ceiling and kept trying to figure out which memories were his, the Hiro that had gone in a straight line. The good one. But he hadn’t gone in a straight line, had he? Somewhere he had split into at least two different Hiros with two different lives. One of them was what he had thought of as his memories, everything he remembered from childhood, and the other was what he had thought of as dreams.
“One will be dominant,” he said out loud.
“What?” Lo asked. Her footfalls ceased.
“I’ve had two clones’ worth of memories in my head for all my current life. It never bothered me before because I just assumed that one s
et was my memories, and pushed the rest to the side as dreams I once had. It wasn’t until all this started that I realized those are real memories. But I chose which one was dominant.”
“Have you talked to the psychologist about this?” she asked.
“No, I just thought of it,” he said, still staring.
She sat down at the chair opposite his bed, a comfortable place where he liked to read the books she brought him. “Hiro, in studying your case the judge has found another law that almost never has to be enforced. A clone’s consciousness can’t be abandoned.”
“What do you mean?”
“We can’t just get rid of the spare Hiros. When the three of you are dead, the newest Hiro clone will have to have all three personalities. I mean legally you’re all Akihiro Sato. If one of you dies, and we don’t mindmap that one and put him into the new Hiro, that’s murder by clone law.”
“What is that supposed to prevent?”
“If a clone disappears, either by their own actions or by someone kidnapping them, we can’t ever clone that person because we’ve lost their most recent consciousness. We can’t wake a ‘do-over,’ as it were. That might accidentally create a duplicate. That’s what the law was created for, but it fits your situation too.”
Hiro swallowed as the realization came upon him. “So…the answer is to—”
“The judge isn’t sympathetic to you. Your other clones have caused a lot of havoc recently.”
“What did they do?”
“There were major diplomatic events, the murder of several ambassadors,” she said. “The effects of which have international repercussions. It’s damaged the treaties we have with other nations. We don’t think it’s going to go as far as war, but we are in a lot of trouble with some allies.”
Hiro let out his breath in shock. “They’re going to do away with all of us, aren’t they?”
“The other clones have to be punished for their crimes. And while you’re not legally a person, you are blameless. So they want to put all of you into one body and try you that way, since you are still the same person.”