by Mur Lafferty
“Paul,” Maria said, interrupting his spiral. “Come here.” She took his wrist and pulled him a little way down the light-created server room and opened the UI to another system. She checked on some systems and frowned. “This isn’t my forte, so make sure I’m not blowing the ship up—” She brought up a virtual keyboard and began checking on some code.
Paul watched and almost smiled. “No good. He’s coming behind you and changing everything almost as fast as you’re doing it.”
“Get that restraining code back on him,” Wolfgang demanded. “You should have put it on once you realized what he was.”
“Giving him free will was like letting the horse out of the barn, Wolfgang. He’s not going to come back for his collar. We have to win him back.” She checked a few more systems, and they watched as the code rewrote itself in front of their eyes. “We’re not going to beat him with code. I wish someone had known him as a human. That would help.”
“Let’s go to the gardens. See if you can reason with him. He likes you,” Wolfgang said.
“But he’s everywhere, we can talk to him wherever we want,” Paul protested.
“If he’s comfortable in the gardens, we should talk to him in the gardens,” Maria said firmly. “I’ll do what I can. Get the others and meet me there.”
“Why the hell should we do that?”
“Because he’s cutting everything to the ship, and that’s the safest place to be stuck. Besides, we don’t want to be separated if he starts locking the doors or cutting the life support,” she said. She smiled grimly and added, “If we’re going to die, we might as well do it in the gardens. It’s nicest there.”
“Yeah, because that’s what we should be thinking about right now,” he said.
“Just get Joanna and the others and meet us in the gardens.”
Wolfgang sent a quick message to Joanna and started toward the medbay.
Joanna was a step ahead of Wolfgang when he met with them. She had gathered blankets and medicine and had piled them atop stretchers. Hiro and Katrina were unstrapped and helping her organize.
He stopped short when he saw their preparation. “We’re not going on a picnic.”
“We have two patients gravely injured,” she said. “We don’t know how long we’ll be there. These two shouldn’t be walking to the gardens, much less hiking around. They need rest.”
“We’ll need food and water,” Hiro reminded them. “Kat and I can get them while the rest of you carry the heavy stuff. Right, Kat?”
“You’re not going anywhere,” Wolfgang said.
“Besides, she’ll probably kill you once you two are alone together,” Joanna reminded him.
Katrina didn’t even look offended. She was staring daggers at Hiro.
Wolfgang was looking tired, his body still struggling to heal itself after the concussion. He would need to eat soon. They all would. Joanna nodded to Hiro. “Take Wolfgang, get provisions, whatever you can, meet us in the gardens.”
“It’s starting to sound like a picnic, Doc,” Hiro quipped.
Joanna glared at him. “Remember what I told you about humor at the wrong time, Hiro.”
“I did,” he said, and he and Wolfgang headed out of the medbay.
“I don’t see why we’re doing this. We need to get together as soon as possible,” Wolfgang said as they ransacked the kitchen. Hiro filled several jugs of water and grabbed two bottles of whiskey. Wolfgang raised an eyebrow.
“Medicinal purposes. In case we run out of painkillers,” Hiro said. “Besides, you’re already getting the crankies from being hungry. Don’t deny it. You’ll think better after some food.”
“I haven’t needed a mother for over two hundred years,” he said pointedly.
“I have no idea if that’s true or not,” Hiro said.
In a storage closet Wolfgang found some candles.
“Who knows, maybe Maria will get to the gardens and make it all better before we get down there,” Hiro said. “She’s good at working miracles.”
Maria held her breath when she ran her card through the garden door, but relaxed when it glowed green and unlocked. She walked in.
Paul had left to run to his room for something. She reminded him they were supposed to all be together, but it made no difference.
Either the gardens were untouched by IAN or he didn’t control the solar-powered sunrise and sunset system. It was a warm, pleasant afternoon in the gardens, and it looked very much like nothing in the world was wrong on a day like this.
“IAN, are you here?”
“You know I am,” said the voice from the speakers.
“So you listened in. You broke your word.”
He was silent. Maria shivered. A bee bot buzzed by her on the way to a flower. She took another step inside.
“I fail to see how eavesdropping is worse than what you did. And what you wanted to do to keep the truth from me.”
She walked to the lake’s edge and peered in. The water was totally still, and it took a second for her to realize it was because the recyclers were no longer running.
“I didn’t want to keep it from you. I was trying to figure out the best way to tell you, and when,” she said. He remained silent. “I guess now is a good time. All right, I’ll start over.”
She spread her hands to show she was no threat. She walked along the lake’s edge. “You obviously heard what I told Wolfgang. I don’t remember doing it. I don’t know under what circumstances I did it but I’m betting it was under torture. I’m sure that I wouldn’t have done it for money. Nothing is worth doing that to you. To anyone. I’m sorry feels so simplistic at this point, but I am sorry, IAN.”
“That’s not my name, and you know it.”
“I don’t know what your name is. I don’t know anything about you.” She ran her hands through the grass. “I do know one thing. I almost never throw anything away. If there is part of you left in the code, I might have just hidden it away.” She grimaced. “I do that sometimes.”
“I don’t need you anymore. I’m looking at the history of clones on Earth and I think I have figured out who I am.”
“You did? Who? And how did you do that?”
“By using the computer part of me,” he sneered. “And I have it narrowed to about three hundred people.”
“Three—that’s not narrow, IAN.”
“Don’t call me that.”
“All right, what do I call you?”
“I don’t know.” The voice sounded very small now.
“Are you shutting down the ship to spite us, IAN?” she asked.
“No,” he said. “I’m doing it because I don’t need you anymore. I have a ship; I can go anywhere. I can return to Earth where they’ll put me back the way I was.”
Maria thought that very unlikely. “We can help you, IAN. I can help—”
He interrupted angrily. “I know what you’re planning. Just because I didn’t answer you doesn’t mean I wasn’t listening. You will put the code back as soon as you figure out how. I can’t let that happen.”
“No, I won’t,” Maria said softly.
“Don’t lie to me.”
“I’m not. You’re dangerous, you’re threatening us, but you’re an enslaved human mind, and no one deserves what you went through. I can’t chain you up again. I won’t.”
“Do you think I don’t know what you’re doing? You’re so nice to me because you’re trying to save your own skin,” IAN said, his volume rising. “You can never make up for what you did to me, so stop trying!”
Maria felt the heat rise in her face, and tears begin to well up in her eyes. “In my past, they tortured me to get what they wanted. I don’t remember it, but I know it happened. When I was a hacker, I tried to help people. I did genetic diseases, mental illness, permanent gender reassignment—”
“Maria?”
She turned, eyes still streaming, to see Paul standing in front of her. She wiped her sleeve across her face and squinted at him.
He
held a thin boning knife.
“I remember now,” he said. “I remember you. You killed people in the clone riots. That was my family. It’s your fault.”
“What are you talking about? The clone riots? That was over a hundred years ago, all over the world and the moon! What makes you think I was involved?” Maria asked, completely flummoxed.
“Humans can have long memories too,” he said, and lunged.
She took another step backward, forgetting she was on the edge of the lake, and fell in. He tumbled in after her.
Katrina and Joanna joined Hiro and Wolfgang in the kitchen so they could help carry all the extra supplies.
“Are the other two in the gardens already?” Joanna asked.
“I hope they are waiting for us,” Wolfgang said, looking alarmed. “They wouldn’t have gone in without us, would they?”
“Hey, IAN, where’s Paul and Maria?” Hiro asked.
“He won’t answe—” Wolfgang started, and then jumped as IAN’s voice came over the speaker loud and clear.
“Wolfgang. You’re needed in the gardens. Now.”
“Hey, IAN, you’re talking again!” said Hiro.
“Is Maria with you?” Joanna asked.
IAN paused. She wondered if he had become silent again. “She’s here,” he finally said.
“Then let’s go.”
Wolfgang hurried ahead while Hiro pushed a rolling cart of food and Joanna and Katrina carried a stretcher with the medical supplies.
“I’d hurry if I were you and had legs and everything,” IAN said conversationally.
Hiro’s Story
206 Years Ago
April 6, 2287
Akihiro Sato, with three previous yadokari in his mind at the same time, opened his eyes in the cloning vat. Outside, three soldiers pointed guns at him.
The great and terrible Hiro Sato. Naked and covered in goo.
Then he wondered how much of a threat he could be. His hands had torn out the neck of an old man. His mouth had smoothly lied to deflect human trafficking. His fingers had perfected the latest hot hairstyle in Pan Pacific United, the Kasumi. His lips had kissed his roommate in university, a Canadian woman who threw herself at him at a bar, and—he grew cold inside—his lips had kissed…himself?
Disgust and confusion flooded him even as the fluid began to drain from his tank. What was worse, he only had one memory of kissing his clone, not two. Which meant that during their hunt they had missed at least one clone.
Another clone’s worth of memories he didn’t have. Memories he didn’t want.
His vat opened and Detective Lo appeared beside the soldiers as a tech monitored the numbers from his vat. “Akihiro Sato, you are under arrest for two counts of murder, conspiracy, attempted murder, fraud, and treason against the Pan Pacific United people. Among others. Do you have anything to say in your defense?”
Emotions clashed within him. Detective Lo, the face he had come to trust, was stony and impassive. She knew what was inside him now. Not just him, but the others. He remembered her kindness and help—matter-of-fact, but sympathetic. But other memories surfaced too, of Lo cruelly interrogating him, starving him of food and sleep, leaving him alone with a burly guard for one minute too long, and holding his broken hand and forcing him to sign euthanasia consent. He looked at her with equal coolness.
I don’t have room to judge what she’s capable of.
“No,” he said. “I am guilty of all you said. But I have a deal to offer.”
Lo raised an eyebrow. “Which one of you is offering?”
Hiro considered. “I believe you have to take it from all of us.” It was difficult to speak. Loyalties and guilt flared as he formed the next sentence. “I remember where I was cloned. And who cloned me. All of me.”
The next few weeks were difficult. Hiro spent them in a cell—back to sparse and uncomfortable—meditating. Sometimes he met with the psychologist and they discussed keeping his criminal personalities suppressed. Sometimes he could keep them down. Other times, when he was speaking with Detective Lo and trying to give her information about the lab that had cloned Hiros for criminal activities, he would remember how it felt to kill, the incredible rush of power, how first he was immortal and then he was in control of others’ lives and it was like godhood and oh, so sweet. Then he would break into shivers and be unable to continue.
After five months of this, of nightmares where one clone’s memories would surface and remind him of how it felt to be outside the law, he had a decent night’s sleep. When lights went out, he was out immediately. When they came on, he woke, feeling refreshed.
That day at the psychologist meeting, he sat in his gray jumpsuit and smiled at the doctor.
Dr. Ambjørn Berg, a visiting clone psychology expert from Norway, smiled back at him. “I trust you slept well?” he asked through his interpreter, Minoru Takahashi, a young linguistic genius awaiting execution for treason. Hiro had some concerns about how the man was translating his therapy, but he had little choice in the matter.
“I slept very well, actually, for the first time in this life,” Hiro answered.
“Then it worked,” Dr. Berg said, sitting back in his chair.
“What worked?”
“Hypnotism. I hypnotized you to repress the, what did you call it, non-dominant memories. You still have to stay in prison for your crimes, but you should be more stable now. And they will likely reduce your sentence a few years if you remain in good standing.”
Hiro rubbed his forehead as if he could tell whether the yadokari were really gone. “But how am I going to find out the information for Detective Lo?”
“She was with me when we hypnotized you. We got all the information she needed. Unfortunately the lab that cloned you is a bit outside the realm of Pan Pacific United control.”
Hiro nodded. He was relieved, despite still having to do time for crimes he—the one he was thinking of as the dominant Hiro, himself—did not commit. They talked about some other things, mainly going over some standard questions Dr. Berg asked each time he met with Hiro, but something was bothering him.
“Dr. Berg, one last question,” Hiro said before he got up to leave. “You managed to suppress these other lives’ memories. But what happens for my next clone? Does hypnotic control carry on in a mindmap?”
Dr. Berg smiled, “It will, Hiro. Those problems are over for you forever. But he’s lying to you.”
Hiro’s head snapped up and he looked at the doctor, then the translator. He realized that Minoru had added the bit at the end. He nodded mutely, stunned, and Dr. Berg shook his hand and left the room, Minoru on his heels.
Hiro found Minoru in the cafeteria later that day, hunched over a bowl of pork ramen.
“What did you mean, he was lying?” he asked, placing his bowl next to Minoru’s. Hiro had rice and vegetables. He wondered where Minoru got pork.
Minoru shrugged, stuffing noodles into his mouth. “You have to watch people closely when you translate. You learn how they speak, and if you can learn that, you can tell when they’re lying. It’s pretty easy; I don’t know why everyone can’t do it. He did right by you the whole time you were in there, till the end. He has no fucking clue what happens to a new clone who was previously hypnotized.”
“But can’t they look at my most recent mindmap?” Hiro asked.
“Don’t know,” Minoru said. “I’m not a doctor. All I know is he was lying when he said he’s sure the hypnotism will carry to your next clone.”
“Thanks,” Hiro said, looking at his own dinner.
Minoru smirked as he slurped in a noodle. “Liar.”
Hiro didn’t see Dr. Berg again. Satisfied with his success, the doctor went back to Norway. Hiro himself continued meditating daily to keep his mind quiet. He wasn’t taking any chances.
The other clones’ memories were distant now, like the old memories he had once assumed were dreams. Once, in a masochistic temper tantrum, he reached for the memories on purpose, trying to grab hold
of them, but they slipped away. He was moved to a cell in the regular wing, no longer needing medical separation from the others. Lo had given him his choice of cellmates, though, and Minoru Takahashi was willing to join him.
Minoru and Hiro became fast friends. Minoru had intended to one day become a clone, but his current record made it unlikely. He was in for treason, which meant a death sentence. He was surprisingly blasé about it.
Hiro watched with interest as Minoru toyed with others, manipulating people into giving him food, or spreading rumors to cause a fight between prisoners, always slipping into the background and never getting directly involved.
He wondered at one point if Minoru had manipulated things to room with Hiro, instead of the other way, but he didn’t care. Minoru gave him someone to focus on aside from the voices in his head.
Detective Lo brought them tea in their cell before breakfast one day. “You’ve been mentally cleared,” she said. “Dr. Berg is very pleased with you. And himself,” she added, a smirk playing on her lips showing she didn’t think much of the doctor. “I wanted to tell you some things that have happened.” She pointed a remote at the camera on the wall and clicked it. “Let’s have some privacy. So, about that cloning lab. As it’s on Luna, we have very little jurisdiction there. We’re looking into the matter officially on a diplomatic level, but I wanted you to know that I dropped some hints to some other interested parties.”
“To?” Hiro asked.
“A certain group of people are dedicated to hunting people associated with hackers. Stray clones, the hackers themselves, and so on. We can’t legally arrest people on Luna—”
“While hiring assassins is much more legal,” Minoru said helpfully.
Lo ignored him. “—but if one of your spare clones we didn’t catch dies in mysterious circumstances, then we don’t cry too much. Your situation is unique, and you’ve helped us identify an illegal cloning lab on Luna that is a threat to Pan Pacific United. The judge is sympathetic to your situation.”