Frequency

by C Scott Frank

  “A flaw? Please. I designed this system. Do you know anyone else who can churn out the amount of code that I’ve written in the last year? I’ve solved problems you guys would have never dreamed of—safety checks down every possible blockchain. There’s no flaws in my software.”

  “Remind me what you’re doing down here, then?” Keri asked, stepping up to match Lincoln.

  “I like to check all the stasis pods once in awhile. I helped design that software too, you know. Just quality control.”

  “I thought you wanted to help us?” Lincoln asked. Gibbs had walked into a trap.

  “That’s part of it. I wanted to make sure you wouldn’t have any surprises is all,” Gibbs said. “Look, I just remembered I’m supposed to play a game of chess with Ed this morning, so I’ll go ahead to the mess.” Gibbs pushed past Keri and Lincoln and squeezed into the lift behind them.

  “You’re to stay in the mess with the rest of the team, understand? No one leaves,” Lincoln said.

  “Yea, sure, whatever man.” Gibbs shifted his weight. “I’ll tell everyone.” The lift door closed leaving Lincoln and Keri alone in the corridor.

  “Did he seem off to you? I don’t buy that at all.” Keri asked.

  “Gibbs is always off, Keri.” Lincoln turned toward the storage room. “But you’re right, something is up.”

  “Has Gibbs ever bothered to come down here?” Keri’s long legs made easy work of matching Lincoln’s pace.

  “No. He hasn’t. But we have a bigger concern here.”

  They entered the large storage chamber. The room was mostly occupied by large cylindrical pods and heavy wiring. Each pod had an assortment of wires running to it, and a large display mounted near the head. The display showed various measurements for monitoring the condition of the inhabitants. Many of the displays were blank, indicating that those pods were empty. The shuttles usually exchanged the empty pods with the pods that they delivered, but the most recent shuttle still had no pilot, so empty pods filled the room.

  Eleven of the pods had displays scrolling an endless stream of technical and biological information. The clones who inhabited the pods lay still and silent, visible through the slightly frosted glass under the subtle glow of the overhead lighting. Lincoln absently wondered if this was not unlike how the clones had begun their life in the first place: waking up in a sterile tube, disoriented and confused. Of course, no one really knew what the clones experienced in their early life, but it was interesting to imagine anyway. Now he and Keri would be waking one of these clones up, asking them questions, and possibly putting them in mortal danger.

  Like any good scientist, Lincoln desperately tried not to think about the moral ramifications of their objective. It was hard—almost impossible—to stay completely objective when looking at these peaceful, sleeping faces.

  His own tired face peered back at him in a faint reflection on the glass. He shifted his weight so his face lined up with the sleeping clone’s and wondered how different they were. He sighed, resigning himself to his duty and his mission.

  Lincoln pulled out his handgun and checked the weapon once more to make sure it was ready to fire. “Well, Keri, where do we begin?”

  Day 363 - 08:41

  “How long do they want us to stay locked up in here?” Emily asked nobody in particular. The team, sans Keri and Lincoln, waited in the mess hall with the door sealed. Emily tapped a pen on the table.

  “Until they’re sure it’s safe.” Damien busied himself with fixing a cup of coffee. He preferred tea, like any good Brit, but the station only had coffee and water.

  “Yeah, because waking up one of our enemies is a hallmark of safe decisions,” Gibbs jeered over the chessboard.

  “I don’t think we need to worry about it.” Damien took a sip of his coffee. The drink was watered down, bitter, and too acidic. But it was better than nothing. Maybe. “The guy probably won’t even know he’s a clone. But we need to get some baseline readings of a conscious subject before we run another test.”

  “If I die on this station, I’ll kill you.” Gibbs smirked and Edward chuckled.

  “That doesn’t make any sense,” Damien responded and sat down with his datapad.

  “Learn to take a joke, man.” Gibbs slid a bishop up to take one of Edward’s knights. Edward smiled and moved his queen to take the bishop.

  “Check.”

  “I wish they would’ve included me,” Damien said. “I’d love to be there when he wakes up. Much to learn.”

  “Yeah, I bet—”

  “Emily.” The intercom in the room pierced the growing tension in the room, cutting off whatever Gibbs was going to say. “Emily, report to the lab, please.”

  Damien stood with a yawn. “Well, apparently it’s safe.”

  “Be sure to send us a postcard,” Gibbs said to Emily’s back as she left the room.

  “I hope this works. To be able to end the war without weapons of mass destruction… that’s the dream. No more humans have to die. Do you see the importance of what we’re doing here?” Damien smiled at Gibbs and Edward. A warm smile born of knowing that what they were doing was right. “We are saving lives. We could be saving millions of lives by our work here. Not only physically, but emotionally. Freeing these clones from the bondage of their masters, giving them license and freedom and their own rational thought. We are one step—”

  “Look, you pompous Brit, before you get all sanctimonious.” Gibbs’ voice rose. “Try and remember that these are killers. They’re not wounded puppies in need of rescue—they kill women and children and destroy worlds, all in the name of some supposed ignorance? I don’t buy it.”

  “Why do you insist on bringing a fight? I simply imply that we are doing great works, that our team has importance, and you seize the opportunity to attack. It makes little sense.”

  “Because I can’t tolerate ignorance. It’s that simple.” Gibbs stood, almost knocking the chess pieces off the board. “You parade around like the paragon of morality and science, as if these clones weren’t bred for killing children. Whether they’re ignorant to their purpose or not, echoes are not innocent. Blood is on their hands. My fam—” he cleared his throat, his voice cracking. “Their blood is on your hands if you insist on handing out absolution like there’s no cost.”

  “Regardless of what might’ve—”

  “‘Might’ve?’ Don’t give me that.” Gibbs slammed a heavy fist on the table, knocking the recently captured bishop onto the floor. “‘Might’ve’ implies an if. There’s no if on the news when they share footage of burning moons and raining fire. ‘Might’ve’—” he waved an errant fist, nearly backhanding Edward.

  “Perhaps you should calm down a little,” Edward offered as he dodged the meaty hand.

  “Stay out of this, you camel—“

  “That’s quite enough!” Damien yelled at Gibbs before he could finish his racial slur. “Look, I’m sorry for whatever happened that hurt you so—”

  “I’m sure you are.”

  “—but you have to believe that we’re trying to right some wrongs here. We’re trying to fix this. One step at a time.”

  “And the clone in your lab? Which step is that?”

  “We don’t know anything about what happened. And we never will if we had your way. There’s simply no evidence that he’s a clone.”

  “Forget the evidence, there’s so much we don’t know.” Gibbs remained standing, locking eyes with Damien. “Any one of us could be a clone, for all we know. There’s that doctor who thinks clones might be living among us, Kubitz or something like that. He could be on to something. I’m tired of dog-sitting that animal in the infirmary and watching it suck all our resources dry. Let’s find out who or what it is, and put it down.”

  “I’m not going to euthanize a human being. Besides, we have more resources than we know what to do with. It’s not like we’re going to run out by helping this one man.”

  “That’s what you can’t get through your thick skull: it�
�s not a man.”

  “You are irrational. I’m not having this conversation with you.” Damien waved a hand dismissively. “You’re ignoring basic human rights, and common reason. Edward, come on man, don’t entertain this buffoon’s lunacy.”

  Damien and Gibbs turned to Edward for his opinion, but Edward simply looked away nervously.

  “You too, huh, Ed?” Gibbs grumbled. “Screw this.”

  “We’re supposed to stay—”

  Gibbs stormed from the room leaving Edward alone at the chess table once again and Damien with a cold cup of coffee.

  Day 363 - 09:14

  “Waking sequence initiated,” Keri announced. “Start the clock.”

  “That’s fine. Emily, make sure we’re recording everything here. The more data we have, the better.” Lincoln eased himself into a chair. The team stood in the lab where they normally conducted tests. Lincoln had rarely found himself on this side of the glass—he much preferred a bird’s eye view.

  “Can do.” Emily pulled up her datapad. “While we wait, I’d like to see if I can match any of our data to Dr. Fuller’s hypothesis. I’m very interested to see if the linguistic studies I’ve done might help clarify some things for us.”

  “Perfect.”

  The trio settled in around the lab, waiting for the clone to wake up. The observation deck above the lab remained empty for this procedure; Lincoln wanted the civilians on the team tucked safely away in the mess in case anything went awry. It should prove to be uneventful for the most part, but it paid to be cautious.

  The only reason he’d asked Emily to stay was her knowledge of the medical equipment. Damien knew more, sure, but he was far more valuable. As much as Lincoln hated to admit it: Emily was the more expendable. He hoped it wouldn’t come to that. He hated himself for even thinking it.

  The only sound in the lab as the team settled in was the low hum of monitoring equipment and the station’s air handlers. After a few silent moments, Edward Amin came into the lab with a frazzled look on his face. “Unbelievable,” he said and crashed into a chair near the entrance.

  “What’s going on, Ed? You’re not supposed to be in here.” Lincoln spared a glance at the unconscious clone. “We don’t know if it’s safe, yet.”

  “Gibbs and the good doctor.” Edward shook his head and hissed. “Those two can’t even be in a room together. Gibbs is particularly violent this morning, I thought for sure he was going to attack Damien.”

  “Violent?” Lincoln had known Gibbs to be hot-headed, but violent? “Where is he now?”

  “His quarters, his lab, the gym—well maybe not there. But who knows?” Edward sighed and leaned back in his chair.

  Lincoln hadn’t exercised his authority much during the team’s tenure on the station. Maybe that hadn’t been wise. If they couldn’t follow one order… he looked again to the clone. He hoped nothing would happen when the man woke up. If his team was scattered all over the station, they would be that much harder to keep safe. He debated checking his firearm again, but he didn’t want to raise undo concern.

  “What should we do?” Keri asked.

  “We can’t exactly leave him.” Lincoln nodded toward the clone. “But we can’t have the team wandering all over the station either. Ed, can we pull up the locations for Damien and Gibbs?”

  “Yes, it will just take a second.”

  “You know…” Keri trailed off and turned to her datapad. Lincoln was about to ask her if she planned to finish that sentence when she turned the datapad around to face him, showing Gibbs’ profile. “I never thought much of it until now, but Gibbs' family is from Midas IV. Or was. The whole moon was wiped out about two years ago.”

  “Okay,” Lincoln considered. “So we all have some baggage or other in this God-forsaken war. What are you getting at?”

  “We all have baggage, sure, but Gibbs was the oldest in a family with eight kids. His youngest sister was only eleven at the time. According to his interview, it was random chance that he wasn’t on Midas IV when the attack came.”

  “So you think this explains his attitude and pure hatred of the clones?”

  “I think it has to.”

  “You’re better at reading people than I am,” Lincoln conceded. “Maybe we can try and talk to him and calm him down. Think you’re up for it?”

  “Yes, I think so.”

  “Okay, Ed, did you find Damien? Where is he now?”

  “Looks like he’s in the infirmary. Want me to pull up video?”

  “No, that’s fine. What about—” he cut himself off as the realization struck him cold. Video. Of course. “A little after oh-eight-hundred, Keri and I ran into Gibbs in clone storage. I would very much like to know what he was doing down there.”

  “One moment, let me pull it up.” Edward dialed into the station’s network. “Interesting.”

  “What’s that?” Lincoln asked.

  “The cameras and sensors only record when there is motion, to help save data. I am showing four minutes of recordings in clone storage at about oh-five-hundred this morning.”

  “What? Can you play it back?”

  “Sure, here we go.”

  The team huddled around the terminal to see the video playback. The first few seconds simply showed a black screen. Then, with a bright flash, the lights came on in the clone storage chamber. The camera quickly adjusted exposure, and the rows of stasis pods were visible in the pale glow of the lighting. After a few seconds, Gibbs walked into the room. He seemed to peruse the pods for a few moments, before finding one with an inhabitant that faced away from the door.

  The monitor showed him keying a few commands into the display at the head of the cylinder, looking around nervously between each command.

  “Can we see what he’s doing?” Keri asked.

  “No, he’s blocking too much of the screen,” Edward answered.

  Gibbs finished typing commands at the console, looked around once more and left the chamber.

  “I wonder what that was about,” Emily spoke quietly, as if her voice might be projected into the video for past-Gibbs to hear. Lincoln had almost forgotten the girl was there.

  “There’s more, here’s the next clip,” Edward said as he keyed in the appropriate commands. “This is stamped about oh-seven-thirty this morning.”

  The screen once again was black, followed by an illuminated chamber full of stasis pods. Once more the team watched Gibbs enter the room and look around, as if someone might spring a trap on him.

  “Wait a minute,” Keri interjected. “I think I saw movement in that pod.”

  “I think you’re right,” Lincoln agreed. “Zachary you stupid…”

  “Look, he’s opening the pod,” Emily interrupted. “Oh—he has a gun!”

  Lincoln grimaced. “How did he get that?”

  On the small screen, Gibbs opened the pod and held the handgun up to the clone. The clone seemed a little confused, but held his hands up in surrender. Gibbs raised his voice, tension visible in his neck. The clone remained silent, watching the gun as Gibbs waved it around like a sparkler on Unification Day.

  “Is there any way we can hear what he’s saying?” Lincoln asked Edward.

  “I’m not sure. The cameras don’t record audio. Our datapads record and transmit everything they hear to keep for records. Maybe if he had his with him, I could try and pull a recording off that.”

  “Do what you can.”

  The monitor now showed Gibbs insistently pointing the gun at the clone. The clone shook his head emphatically, waving his hands.

  “I want to know what they’re saying,” Keri insisted. “Look, the poor guy is clearly pleading with Gibbs about something.”

  Lincoln watched in horror as, with a bright flash, Gibbs shot the clone in the head. The clone crumpled back into his pod, lifeless before his body hit the cold surface. Gibbs stepped over the pod and fired four more times into the clone’s body.

  Edward took his glasses off and rubbed his eyes. Emily sobbed quietly an
d sat back down. The screen showed Gibbs cleaning up around the pod, closing the cylinder, and initiating the stasis program. Gibbs walked out of the chamber with a cold determination in his gait. The screen went black for a few moments before showing the room once again. Keri and Lincoln walked into the chamber talking and looking over their shoulder.

  “We just missed him.” Keri’s voice trembled. “By a few minutes. I can’t believe it.”

  Lincoln swore. His leadership had got them there. His hands-off approach. Now Gibbs was unhinged. Lincoln had allowed the infection to fester, and now there was a serious problem on the station.

  “Edward,” Lincoln said, his voice stiff. “Where is Zachary Gibbs now?”

  Day 363 - 09:37

  The dim lights of the large storage room cast odd shadows on the walls and floor from the softly humming cylinders that lay around the room. Zachary Gibbs walked among the large pods, glancing over the unconscious bodies inhabiting each container. He walked to the back of the room and stopped at the pod farthest from the entrance and looked at the body lying inside.

  He stared at the crumpled form curled inside the tube, covered in blood. His own breathing was tight and echoed through the chamber. He stood stiff, clenching and unclenching his fist before finally snarling a few curses and walking to the nearest stasis pod.

  He keyed the display and the machine thrummed to life, waiting for commands. He entered a few commands and cursed when the screen turned red with a harsh beep. He tried his credentials again to the same effect.

  “We’ll have to play it that way, then,” he seethed, pulling his datapad and syncing to the machine. He grimaced up at the camera in the far corner of the room. He could barely make out the small glass eye invading his privacy with mechanical observation. He wondered if Lincoln was watching him even know. Unlikely. They would’ve done something to stop him by now.

  The rest of the team was almost a hundred meters above his head, in the station proper. The clones were held in a detachable pod connected only by life support couplings and the service lift. Another safety measure. Gibbs couldn’t help but wonder at the hypocrisy. The disconnect. The team and whoever signed their checks certainly knew how volatile keeping clones around was, yet they still wanted to save them? He grunted at the lunacy.