Whatever was supposed to have happened, he was fairly sure he wasn’t supposed to have been cloned. That wasn’t part of the deal.
The crew would suspect him. They already did. All of their problems had to do with the computer: his job to keep running. They were all bonding together in this crisis, while all he wanted to do was fix IAN. Even the crazy attempted murderer Hiro had more friends than Paul. Wolfgang and the captain clearly hated him. He was surprised they hadn’t recycled him already.
Was IAN watching him now? Did the cameras work in his room?
Paranoia was not the way to deal with things. The real problem was he had no idea what to do now. He didn’t know what had happened to them. Or why. He was as much in the dark as the rest of them, and that wasn’t supposed to be the case either. He knew that the mission was not supposed to end with slaughter and rebirth. It was a horrible, disorienting feeling, but none of them seemed terribly bothered by it. Not as much as he was, anyway.
But he felt different, still.
He scrubbed himself with a towel, his skin stinging as he abused this new body. He paused to look down as he dried himself. Before, by twenty-five he had already begun to gain the weight that had blocked his feet from view for the past several years of his memory. The years of sedentary work had kept his muscles weak. But this body was different.
The muscles were tight, with very little fat. Still not as strong as Wolfgang, obviously, but this body was definitely fit. He had often resented clones’ ability to erase bad decisions made in one life with a new life, but for the first time he saw the allure. He had never looked this ripped.
But that’s what cloning was. An allure. A lure. Unspeakable temptation to a world of abomination—that was what the anti-clone priest, Father Gunter Orman, had called them. That phrase had stuck in Paul’s mind. He had known so many people who wanted to be cloned, who desperately wanted to live again, skip puberty, and try to “get it right” this time. Whereas most people who were cloned kept making the same mistakes, he had read.
He shook his head firmly and went to his closet to fetch a new jumpsuit to cover the body he wanted to deny. He ran his hands through his hair and left it standing up in a mess. He stared into the mirror and started at the wild look on his face. He didn’t look like a human plant on a clone ship. He looked like an unhinged man who needed hospitalization.
But he wasn’t human. Not anymore.
How did the others just accept this way of living right away?
More important, how was he going to acclimate to it? And most important, how was he going to continue his mission from here on out, now that the plan had gone completely off the rails and everyone was suspicious of everyone else?
He started to hyperventilate. He sat down heavily on the foot of the unmade bed and took some deep breaths, closing his eyes, willing his dizziness to slow down. Nausea rose again, and he swallowed, his mouth suddenly full of saliva.
No more dry heaves, please. No more any of this.
I have to find that journal. Before someone else does.
I just want to go home.
Paul’s Story
49 Years Ago
November 1, 2444
Sallie Mignon, trillionaire clone, patron of Obama University in Chicago, looked a lot smaller than Paul anticipated.
“Mr. Seurat,” she said as he entered her office. He extended his hand over her desk. She didn’t rise to shake it, and he pulled it back nervously.
She gestured to the leather chair facing her desk. “Have a seat.”
He did so.
She considered him for some time and then rose from her chair. “I have to say I’m curious as to why you’re looking for a job here. Your reputation precedes you.”
He swallowed. “I don’t know what I have done to get your attention, ma’am. I—”
“Don’t bullshit me, Paul. We haven’t had an anti-clone crusader as vocal as you since Gunter Orman.”
He swallowed. “I don’t—”
“You think I don’t vet every person who works here?”
Paul stared at her. “Every person, at the whole university?”
“Everyone who gets to your level of the interview process. I’m close to firing the assistant who passed me your résumé. Did you sleep with him to get the honor? I can’t imagine why anyone like you would want to work here.”
“I need a job,” he began, and handed her his résumé.
She threw it away. “Do you think I haven’t read this? Here. Let’s do something interesting. Get up.”
Baffled, he got to his feet. She walked around the desk to face him and he had a dizzying fear she was going to hit him. She pointed to her chair. “Sit.”
He moved, stumbling slightly against the cherry desk. He sat in her desk, not knowing where to put his hands.
She sat down in the interviewee’s chair. “Now, Ms. Mignon, I’m a vocal clone-hater. Why should you hire me?”
His mouth hung open and heat rushed to his face. He swallowed his objection and tried to play along. “Ah, well, the job is running the computer lab, and the politics of cloning don’t enter into it. You look very qualified to take that position.”
“But many clones go to school here,” she said. “There’s a less-than-zero chance of me avoiding interacting with the unnatural abominations.” Her voice remained perfectly calm, but he could hear the malice behind it.
He swallowed, grasping for any reason for her to hire him. He finally went for the truth. “Times are tough, uh, Mr. Seurat,” he said. “When you need a paycheck suddenly the opinions your church has taught you about clones seem less important than having an apartment.”
“So I only want a job from clones when homelessness is the alternative? Wow, I must be pretty shallow.” He opened his mouth to disagree, but she continued. “But to be honest, I haven’t been to a church service in twenty-seven months. Not even for Christmas. I’m as holy as a chocolate Easter bunny.”
He flushed again.
“You see, ma’am, I come from a long line of firefighters and police officers. Burly, dominant, honor-driven men and women. But many of them died during the clone riots seventy years ago.” She paused, looking out the window. “It was a terrible time on Luna, in Mexico City, in Chicago, all over. So much blood, so much death. Hundreds of humans. Hundreds of clones. And hundreds of emergency personnel. They didn’t have a dog in that race, they just wanted to keep the peace and protect the innocents. And they died for it. And since many were humans, they didn’t get to come back. All the clones did, like the riots had been nothing.”
“And then you built your hypocritical memorial atop their graves!” Paul said, losing the game. “My family’s blood spilled on that street, for absolutely nothing.”
“Were you there, Ms. Mignon?” she asked coldly. “Did you see how that day changed everyone? Did you share in my family’s experience of dying in a fire, with your hair burning up and your skin burning and flaking away?”
He didn’t answer. His face felt hot, while his neck felt clammy.