“Life became so cheap,” Joanna said. “Euthanize yourself and just skip over terminal illness. Rage Kiddies inventing impossible sports, taking massive risks with their lives because who cares? The law is even on your side with your desire just to throw this living woman into the recycler.” She gestured to the body in front of them.
“I see,” Katrina said, looking up at the slightly curved ceiling. “But life was always cheap, wasn’t it? People stabbed each other for video game loot. Shot each other for traffic violations. Political assassinations. Corporate assassinations. I think cloning actually made us appreciate it more because it was in plentiful supply. Did you hear about the corporate assassinations in Latin America in the years around 2330? People would pay assassins to bump off clones at parties. They called it an inconvenience. Embarrassing in some social circles. The most regrettable thing that happened was you missed a good party. Maybe got some blood on a dress. People would go to a party, die, and then wake up the next day figuring it had to have been a pretty exciting night.”
Joanna nodded, remembering. “In America we called those killings the Worst Hangover. Highly illegal, technically murder. Strangely enough, once cloning was cheap enough, gang violence was almost eradicated. The thrill of taking a life wasn’t there anymore. And the kids had to get more creative with their revenge.”
“The Latino assassins had their own codes, you know. No torture, no fear, and definitely no killing regular humans.”
“How civilized,” Joanna said drily.
“The codes were important. I’ve been on the front lines in wars, Joanna. I saw combat. I killed people—humans. I have seen the senseless waste of life before and after becoming a clone. And yet I’ve never wanted to kill anything or anyone more than this person right here.”
Joanna slowly wheeled to face her. “I can’t pretend I know what you’re going through, Captain. But why do you hate her so much?”
Katrina leaned forward and glared at her own face, as if she could wish the patient awake. “Because she has nothing for me. I’m not going to get her experiences, her secrets. She stole those last years from me, months that we could have used in order to figure out what the hell happened here. She didn’t die like the rest of you. She’s a living thief.
“She owes me. Just like I owe the clone that comes next. And so on. Regular humans say they owe their children better lives than they had, but I think clones owe our next selves everything. Literally. And she’s left me with nothing but confusion.”
“It’s not her fault. Besides, we’re in the same boat,” Joanna reminded her gently. “All of them died without giving us any info. They all stole from us, with that logic.”
“But yours are dead. This one holds on.” Katrina said “this one” like she was describing a bug she had stepped on. “I wish you would respect that and let me get rid of this.”
“I respect the living, Katrina,” Joanna said, turning back to her computer. “I don’t know why you don’t want to find out what she knows. She could solve it all when she wakes up.”
“And then there will be two of me. Two captains. Once she’s awake do you think she’s going to abdicate because I’m here? That she will give up her rank, and her life?”
Joanna shook her head. People got PhDs in cloning ethics and hadn’t found a good answer to that.
Katrina shook her head. “You don’t have anything to worry about tonight. I’m going to my rooms to rest.” She got up and stretched, looking as if she relished having a young body again. She headed for the door, then paused and looked over her shoulder. “And Joanna?”
“Mm?”
“I’m sorry about what I said before.”
“I know you are, Captain.”
She left, and her clone was just as she had been: comatose, her secrets locked away in a head so close, but—without the mindmapping hardware working—so untouchable.
Paul stood in his rooms, heart rate increasing, panic rising in his chest. He’d come here for a bit of privacy and to see if he could figure out what had happened, at least where his story was concerned. He was still having trouble focusing, and his thoughts kept returning with terror to waking up amid so many dead bodies. His one area of comfort, the server room, wasn’t even a good place for him. It held too many blinking red lights and errors and the fear that the captain, the demonic captain, would be looking over his shoulder at any time. With her hellhound, Wolfgang, ready to chew Paul’s throat open. Paul had breathed a sigh of relief when everyone finally left the server room. It was so much easier to think without them watching him, yelling, judging.
If they’re always such assholes, why did it take twenty-five years for us to die? He figured they’d be dead within the first year with such volatile personalities.
His room was a wreck, which only gave him a vague sense of disappointment. He always meant to be a neater person. Someday. He kind of hoped that he had managed it during the past few years, with no effort on his (current clone’s) part. But no, the bed had only a fitted sheet; the top sheet and blanket had been kicked off. Bad dreams, probably. That was nothing new.
He tried his personal console with little hope. It had been wiped. He looked through his belongings. He had some pictures on the wall of old Earth landscapes, some photographs of famous engineers, and some movie posters of films he supposed now were considered classics. He wondered what had changed back home. He feared he would never know.
He ransacked his room, looking for his personal belongings. Some things were missing, which frightened him, but he rationalized he’d had twenty-five years to lose items or place them in different places around the ship.
He found his personal tablet containing books, movies, and games, more than he would ever have time to consume, even spending hundreds of years in space. Thank God those hadn’t been wiped. He looked for any personal log file in his tablet, but found nothing. He threw it onto the bed in disgust.
He wondered if the other clones had left messages for their future selves to find. Detailed logs didn’t make much sense; they all assumed they would lose no more than two weeks of memories, tops.
Paul went into his small bathroom and stared at his thin, young face in the mirror. He had been twenty before, but he hadn’t looked this good, this healthy, in a very long time. He might as well be a stranger. He reached into the shower, turned it on as hot as possible, and watched the steam cloud his reflection away.
The computer terminal beeped as he was undressing. He almost didn’t hear it over the water, but he poked his head out of the bathroom and heard it beep again. He zipped up quickly and turned off the shower.
IAN was awake.
Should he let the captain and Wolfgang know? No, he wanted to see IAN first, before anyone else. He dashed back to the server room.
The UI still blinked where he had left it. The various servers still showed red in several places, but the sleeping yellow face that was IAN’s user interface had opened its eyes and was looking around.