“Uh…”
“They don’t like backups,” Dugan said. “They believe it’s one soul to a body, and once your original body dies, your soul is dead as well.”
“Right,” Bree said. “Which means that a bio-printed body with a personality imprinted from backup is, in fact, a soulless monster.”
“Yeah,” Dugan said. “An abomination, you know?”
“Not fully human.”
Dugan nodded. “Not human at all, really.”
“Huh,” I said. “That’s…”
“I know,” Bree said. “Unfortunate.”
“But hey,” Dugan said, “just because you’re the Expendable doesn’t mean you’ve been expended yet, right? I mean, you’re still the original you right now, aren’t you?”
“Well, yeah,” I said. “I just signed on to the expedition two days ago. I’m not even sure how this whole backup thing is supposed to work. For now, at least, I’m still in the same body I was born in.”
“Great,” Dugan said, and clapped me on the shoulder. “All you have to do to stay on Marshall’s good side is keep it that way.”
That was some solid advice, brother.
Can’t imagine why I didn’t think to follow it.
007
I GENERALLY TRY not to be late for things, particularly when lateness might threaten my food supply. I’m not a big fan of early either, though, and that goes double when the thing I’m early for is a dressing-down from Hieronymus Marshall. I take my time walking the corridors, actually stop to chat with a couple of people along the way, then loiter in the hallway outside Marshall’s office door until the chronometer at the edge of my field of view hits 10:29 before knocking.
“Come.”
The door swings open. Marshall sits behind a squat metal-and-plastic desk. He’s leaning forward in his chair, elbows on the armrests, hands folded across his belly. Berto is sitting across from him, turned half around to see me.
“Close the door,” Marshall says. “Take a seat.”
I pull a chair up next to Berto and sit. Marshall stares us both down wordlessly for a painfully long time.
“So—” Berto begins finally, but Marshall cuts him off with a glare.
“You,” he says. “Barnes. What iteration are you?”
“Uh,” I say. “Eight?”
He raises one eyebrow in question. “You don’t sound sure of this.”
“It’s not stamped on the back of my neck, sir, and I don’t remember most of the dying. I only know I’m Eight because you guys tell me so.”
“You remember coming out of the tank, do you not?”
I glance over at Berto. He’s staring straight ahead.
“Not really, sir. I don’t generally regain consciousness for a few hours afterward. Mostly what I remember is waking up in my bed and feeling really hungover.”
Marshall’s face darkens, but his expression doesn’t change.
“Considering that you have no access to alcohol here on Niflheim, Mr. Barnes, I think we can take it as a given that such experiences are more likely to indicate reboots than the results of three-day benders, wouldn’t you say?”
I have a smart-ass answer to that, but I’m sensing that this probably isn’t the time.
“Yes, sir,” I say. “I believe that’s a fair assumption.”
“So how many times has that happened, Barnes?”
“Seven times, sir.”
“So you are in fact the eighth iteration of Mickey Barnes?”
“Yes, sir,” I say. “I am the eighth.”
Marshall stares at me for a while longer, then turns his eyes to Berto. “Gomez. Why is this man the eighth iteration of Mr. Barnes?”
“Well, sir,” he says. “Protocol states that we have to have a functioning Expendable at all times.”
“And?”
“And as of last night, the seventh iteration was no longer functional. Therefore, per protocol, I submitted a request to initiate the production of Mickey8.”
“Thank you,” Marshall says. “That was very officious, Gomez. You actually managed to sound as if you gave a shit about protocol for a second there.”
“Sir—” Berto begins, but Marshall shakes his head.
“Save it, son. Just explain to me, please, in normal words that don’t sound as if you pulled them from a field manual, exactly how you managed to flush seventy-five kilos of protein and calcium down the toilet last night.”
I’m actually only about seventy-one kilos, and most of that is water, which we have more than enough of piled up in drifts outside, but this doesn’t seem like the right moment to raise the point.
“Right,” Berto says. “Well, sir…”
Marshall leans forward, props his elbow on the desk, and rests his chin on one palm as his eyebrows creep up toward his hairline. Berto clears his throat. This may be the most nervous I’ve ever seen him.
“As I stated in my reboot request, Mickey was lost at approximately—”
“The seventh iteration of Mr. Barnes, you mean.”
“Yes, sir. Mickey7. He was lost at approximately twenty-five-thirty last night, while exploring a crevasse roughly eight kilometers southwest of the main dome. This exploration was in compliance with your standing orders regarding reconnaissance of the colony’s immediate surroundings and surveillance of the local fauna. After I had confirmed that his body was not recoverable—”
“Confirmed how?”
I glance over at Berto. He keeps his eyes straight ahead. This should be good.
“Sir?”
“I thought that was pretty clear,” Marshall says. “How did you confirm that the body could not be recovered?”
“Well,” Berto says, and then shoots me a quick glance.
“Don’t look at me,” I say. “I was the body, remember?”
“If this is making you uncomfortable, Barnes,” Marshall says, “you can wait outside until I’m finished with this line of inquiry.”
I shake my head. “Oh no. I’m as interested in hearing this as you are.”
Marshall’s eyes shift back to Berto. “So?”
“Well,” Berto says, “he fell down a hole.”
Marshall leans back in his chair and folds his arms across his chest.
“He what?”
“He fell down a hole,” Berto says. “An extremely deep one. By the time he stopped moving, the signal from his transponder was practically nil.”
“Practically? So you could have located him.”
“I mean…”
“You could have located him,” Marshall says, “which means that you could have retrieved him. Is this not correct?”
“Huh,” I say. “That sounds pretty reasonable to me.”
Marshall and Berto shoot me simultaneous glares. Berto clears his throat and tries again.
“In my judgment, sir, it would not have been safe to attempt a landing in the area where Mickey went down.”
“I see,” Marshall says. “And yet, you felt it was safe enough to drop him there in the first place. Is that correct?”