Six Wakes by Mur Lafferty
For Connie Willis and James Patrick Kelly
International Law Regarding the Codicils to Govern the Existence of Clones
Established October 9, 2282
It is unlawful to create more than one clone of a person at a time. Each clone is one person. Cloning will be used for longevity of life, not for multiplication. If a clone is multiplied by their own hand or others, the most recent clone has claim to the identity, while the other(s) are extraneous.
It is unlawful for a clone to bear or father children. A clone is considered their own child for the rest of their life, including where it affects inheritance law. Clones must be sterilized upon rebirth.
It is unlawful to put a mindmap onto a body that does not bear the original DNA.
Clones must always have the most recent mindmap of their consciousness on a drive on their person. They and their mindmaps are subject to search by authorities at all times.
It is unlawful to modify any DNA or mindmap of any clone. (Codicil 2 being an exception.) Clones must continue with the DNA of their original bodies and their original mindmap.
The shells a clone leaves behind must be disposed of quickly, hygienically, and without ceremony or ritual.
It is unlawful for a clone to end their own current life in order to be reborn. (Exception one: A clone can sign a euthanasia agreement, if a qualified doctor agrees that death is imminent and they are suffering. Exception two: See Codicil 1.)
Wake One:
The Dormire Crew
This Is Not a Pipe
Day 1
July 25, 2493
Sound struggled to make its way through the thick synth-amneo fluid. Once it reached Maria Arena’s ears, it sounded like a chain saw: loud, insistent, and unending. She couldn’t make out the words, but it didn’t sound like a situation she wanted to be involved in.
Her reluctance at her own rebirth reminded her where she was, and who she was. She grasped for her last backup. The crew had just moved into their quarters on the Dormire, and the cloning bay had been the last room they’d visited on their tour. There they had done their first backup on the ship.
Maria must have been in an accident or something soon after, killing her and requiring her next clone to wake. Sloppy use of a life wouldn’t make a good impression on the captain, who likely was the source of the angry chain-saw noise.
Maria finally opened her eyes. She tried to make sense of the dark round globules floating in front of her vat, but it was difficult with the freshly cloned brain being put to work for the first time. There were too many things wrong with such a mess.
With the smears on the outside of the vat and the purple color through the bluish fluid Maria floated in, she figured the orbs were blood drops. Blood shouldn’t float. That was the first problem. If blood was floating, that meant the grav drive that spun the ship had failed. That was probably another reason someone was yelling. The blood and the grav drive.
Blood in a cloning bay, that was different too. Cloning bays were pristine, clean places, where humans were downloaded into newly cloned bodies when the previous ones had died. It was much cleaner and less painful than human birth, with all its screaming and blood.
Again with the blood.
The cloning bay had six vats in two neat rows, filled with blue-tinted synth-amneo fluid and the waiting clones of the rest of the crew. Blood belonged in the medbay, down the hall. The unlikely occurrence of a drop of blood originating in the medbay, floating down the hall, and entering the cloning bay to float in front of Maria’s vat would be extraordinary. But that’s not what happened; a body floated above the blood drops. A number of bodies, actually.
Finally, if the grav drive had failed, and if someone had been injured in the cloning bay, another member of the crew would have cleaned up the blood. Someone was always on call to ensure a new clone made the transition from death into their new body smoothly.
No. A perfect purple sphere of blood shouldn’t be floating in front of her face.
Maria had now been awake for a good minute or so. No one worked the computer to drain the synth-amneo fluid to free her.
A small part of her brain began to scream at her that she should be more concerned about the bodies, but only a small part.
She’d never had occasion to use the emergency release valve inside the cloning vats. Scientists had implemented them after some techs had decided to play a prank on a clone, and woke her up only to leave her in the vat alone for hours. When she had gotten free, stories said, the result was messy and violent, resulting in the fresh cloning of some of the techs. After that, engineers added an interior release switch for clones to let themselves out of the tank if they were trapped for whatever reason.
Maria pushed the button and heard a clunk as the release triggered, but the synth-amneo fluid stayed where it was.
A drain relied on gravity to help the fluid along its way. Plumbing 101 there. The valve was opened but the fluid remained a stubborn womb around Maria.
She tried to find the source of the yelling. One of the crew floated near the computer bank, naked, with wet hair stuck out in a frightening, spiky corona. Another clone woke. Two of them had died?
Behind her, crewmates floated in four vats. All of their eyes were open, and each was searching for the emergency release. Three clunks sounded, but they remained in the same position Maria was in.
Maria used the other emergency switch to open the vat door. Ideally it would have been used after the fluid had drained away, but there was little ideal about this situation. She and a good quantity of the synth-amneo fluid floated out of her vat, only to collide gently with the orb of blood floating in front of her. The surface tension of both fluids held, and the drop bounced away.
Maria hadn’t encountered the problem of how to get out of a liquid prison in zero-grav. She experimented by flailing about, but only made some fluid break off the main bubble and go floating away. In her many lives, she’d been in more than one undignified situation, but this was new.
Action and reaction, she thought, and inhaled as much of the oxygen-rich fluid as she could, then forced everything out of her lungs as if she were sneezing. She didn’t go as fast as she would have if it had been air, because she was still inside viscous fluid, but it helped push her backward and out of the bubble. She inhaled air and then coughed and vomited the rest of the fluid in a spray in front of her, banging her head on the computer console as her body’s involuntary movements propelled her farther.
Finally out of the fluid, and gasping for air, she looked up.
“Oh shit.”