“Brain injuries are beyond the capability of most nanobots, except in specific centers on Earth, and they’re amazingly expensive. Like a lot of things, we didn’t think clones would need them.” She glanced up at Maria as she secured the bandage. “How are you really?”
“I don’t know. Scared. Worried about Hiro. I thought we were becoming friends. This isn’t his fault.” Her left hand shook as she brushed her hair back.
“But you shouldn’t be alone with him again,” Joanna said, looking through her cabinets for a sedative. She found one and broke it in half.
“God, no,” Maria blurted, and then laughed nervously. “I’m not stupid.” Maria took the sedative Joanna handed her and held it in her palm. “Do I have to?”
“You’re a mess. It’ll help the pain and let you get some rest. I’ll leave you in here to sleep, door locked.”
Maria nodded and dry-swallowed the tablet. Then she fished around in her pockets. “Oh, and I need you to test it, but I’m pretty sure that I found hemlock growing in the garden.”
“Why would this be growing there?” Joanna took the herb gingerly and held it up to the light.
“To give the food printer something to copy?” Maria guessed. “They’re not preprogrammed to print poison, you know.”
“I’ll test it, but you’re very likely right,” Joanna said.
“I can take a look at that for you,” IAN said. “Hold it up to my cameras. The working one, not the one you taped over in your office, Joanna.”
“I guess you have more eyes now?” Joanna asked, feeling her face grow warm.
“Getting there.”
She held the herb up to the camera on the wall, turning it slowly so he could see all sides.
“Definitely hemlock,” IAN said.
“I suppose teaching the food printer how to do it was a redundancy in case the plant didn’t take in the garden,” Joanna said.
“Whatever. Let’s burn it,” Maria said, her eyelids growing heavy.
“Let’s not set a fire on a spaceship,” Joanna said gently, encouraging her to lie back on the bed. “We can dig it out.”
“Joanna, do you think Hiro did it?” Maria asked as she settled back on the pillow.
“It doesn’t look good for him, but we don’t have all the information yet,” Joanna said, not voicing her doubts. “Let’s find him first. But that’s not your job, you need to get some rest.”
“It wasn’t him. I’m sure of it. He’s stuck inside there with that thing. No wonder he sometimes was an asshole just out of the blue. But I don’t trust him anymore.” Maria drifted off to sleep.
Maria has a thankless job. We should be more grateful to her.
Maria’s Story
211 Years Ago
July 10, 2282
Dr. Maria Arena smoothed the gray suit over her thighs, then sternly told herself not to be nervous. She was over one hundred years old and had dealt with clients before. Not necessarily in this case, admittedly. She was dabbling in some serious business now, but she knew her trade, and even in a fancy pantsuit, she was still herself.
A disgraced and unemployable pariah, but still herself.
The self-driving limousine stopped and a doorman hurried to help her out of the car. The silk-blend clothing caressed her skin, making her shiver. She accepted the help, feeling ridiculous, considering she wasn’t wearing heels or a dress.
“Dr. Arena,” the doorman murmured. “Welcome to Firetown.”
Firetown was the tallest building in the world, one full kilometer tall, built like a city so that no one ever had to leave. It had a shopping mall, hotels, grocery stores, hospitals, nightclubs, theaters, parks, fitness centers; it even had a homeless population squatting on the fifty-first floor. It did not have any places of worship.
Firetown was built in New York City at the site of the first clone uprising. The owner of the building, Sallie Mignon, had built it as a safe haven for clones. One-third of the world’s population of clones lived in the building. Maria had never visited it before, and was in awe.
They walked through the foyer, which looked a lot like a hotel, with a reception desk staffed with smartly dressed people and mirrored walls. Maria caught her reflection and stood a little taller. She stopped by the desk.
“Dr. Maria Arena, I should be expected,” she said to the short, brown-skinned woman behind the desk.
The woman, whose name tag said GAJRA, smiled, brushed her long sheet of black hair out of her face, and nodded to Maria. “You are, Dr. Arena,” she said. “Please let me show you to our VIP lift.”
She led Maria past a mass of at least twenty elevators, where people waited patiently in a long queue, and down a hallway decorated with red-and-gold damask wallpaper. She opened a door with a key card and ushered Maria in before her.
A smaller lobby was here, looking like an outdoor grotto with plants, stone floors, a fountain, and a couple of beautiful people lazing about. Maria wondered if they were paid to make the place look desirable, and thought it would be an easy, but dreadfully dull, job.
One elevator stood in the center of the far wall, and Gajra used her key card again and smiled. “Right this way,” she said when the doors opened.
“Which floor?” Maria asked, stepping into the elevator, which, with blue carpet and mirrored walls, was as posh as the rest of the place.
“There is only one choice,” Gajra said, pointing to the button on the console. It said “95.” The doors closed on Gajra’s smile, and Maria took a deep breath. The console didn’t even have OPEN DOOR and CLOSE DOOR buttons, and no emergency phone, but she had to trust in superior architecture. She pushed “95” and prepared herself for the ear-popping journey.
After two floors, the back wall disappeared and she saw that the elevator was glass, mirrored only on three sides, and open to the world on the fourth. She rose with an odd sense that it was the city moving away from her, not herself rising above it.
She closed her eyes against the vertigo, higher than she had ever been aside from planes. She faced the doors and took another deep breath. You’ve got this.
The doors opened into a penthouse that defied logic. It looked more like a museum, complete with priceless paintings and statues and marble floors, but in a disjointed way, sippy cups and toy trucks sat on tables and a half-eaten energy bar was on the floor. Maria was surprised; clones were sterilized on a DNA level, and most were happy to be. Cloning was an inherently selfish action, after all; you left your inheritance to your next incarnation. But they could be stepkids, or children of a family member, or fosters, or adopted kids. She then remembered something about Sallie’s human partner having children.
A small gray shih tzu hurtled down the hall, screaming at her, and she nudged the discarded energy bar at it, distracting it. It got its teeth into the bar and dragged it away, growling.