“You tipped the balance for cloning laws,” she said. “I remember seeing the news reports about you, and the more detailed report from some operatives we had on Luna. That night the Codicils passed.”
He continued. “I was relieved when they passed, even though my new masters were not. I had been programmed to not care what had happened to me, but I saw enough of what they were doing to disagree with them. I broke from the group, took on a new name, got some protection, and started the University of Luna clone studies program. The church was no longer for a soulless man. I colored my hair and started wearing lenses, but I’ve dropped those in later years, certain no one would recognize me after those times so long in the past.”
Joanna looked as if she wanted to hug him, and he very much hoped she wouldn’t. Thankfully she stayed in the chair. “I’m sorry for what you’ve been through,” she finally said.
“Thank you.” He felt slightly lighter for some reason. “It’s not your fault. I’m over it now.”
“I had a hand in it. If we hadn’t spent so much time debating all those months, maybe they wouldn’t have done that to you. I remember the news stories about you. It broke my heart that someone had to suffer like that in order to get a law passed.”
“I wasn’t the only one.”
She smiled slightly. “But you’re the only one here, now. So I’m apologizing to you. Politics is almost never violent toward the people who are actually making the political decisions.”
“That is an understatement,” he said, frowning. He retrieved his cup and filled it again.
“I need to know the rest,” she said. “I heard the rumors. You were a vigilante, weren’t you?”
Shame flooded him. He hated that word. It made him sound like he had been dressing up in a child’s costume and pretending to be a hero. He had called himself a hunter at the time. Even now that sounded silly.
“One of the few things I appreciated about cloning was the patience it gave you. I waited a few decades, learning how to protect myself. Keeping an eye on the people that kidnapped me and cloned me. And then, yes, I went after them. They fought back of course, and killed me seven times. I just wanted them to know what it was like. I killed the people who kidnapped me, the man behind it all, and whatever hacker I could find.”
She cocked her head. “How do you feel knowing we have a hacker on board?”
“Furious,” he said.
“Knowing what was done to you by a hacker, why don’t you have more sympathy toward Hiro, who is clearly a victim of the same thing?”
“Because logic doesn’t drive the desire for revenge,” he said.
Her eyes grew wide. She stood up, swaying slightly on her prosthetic legs. He saw then how tired she was.
“Wolfgang, logic has to be the dominant factor here, or else we’re all vigilantes.”
“You know my stance on clones. I preached that they had no souls, that they were less than walking dead people. I never thought I was committing a crime when I removed a clone.” He rubbed his face with both hands. “Besides, as I said, my faith was effectively gone by then.”
“‘They’?” she asked, tilting her head. “You’ve been cloned more than anyone on this ship.”
He rubbed his hands over his face. “Thinking about that time is difficult. The hacking, it turned my past life into a dream or someone else’s memory. Occasionally I’ll get strong feelings of who I was. I tried to tap into that when I hunted. One thing I remember is that we’re not meant to be God,” he said. “I don’t know if cloning kills the soul or not, but I do know the act of cloning is against His will.”
Joanna now threw her own cup against the wall, startling him. “I’m so sick of that argument. I’ve been hearing it for centuries. Playing God. Wolfgang, we played God when people believed they could dictate their baby’s gender by having sex in a certain position. We played God when we invented birth control, amniocentesis, cesarean sections, when we developed modern medicine and surgery. Flight is playing God. Fighting cancer is playing God. Contact lenses and glasses are playing God. Anything we do to modify our lives in a way that we were not born into is playing God. In vitro fertilization. Hormone replacement therapy. Gender reassignment surgery. Antibiotics. Why are you fine with all of that, but cloning is the problem?”
She continued before he could answer. “And you should know, you should know, that you’re no different. Traumatized, yes. Horribly treated, of course. Abused. You could probably benefit from a few decades of therapy. But you’re still you. Your soul hasn’t gone anywhere.”
“How do you know?” he asked, his voice tight. “It amazes me how people who have no faith in a higher power seem convinced that they know the absolute truth, that their opinion will sway thousands of years of deeply held belief. How do you know what’s in my soul?”
“I know because I went through it too! I’ve been cloned multiple times, sometimes through difficult circumstances, and I know that I’ve remained the same!”
His voice was low, his eyes narrow. “Have you ever been hacked?”
Joanna stopped. She opened her mouth, then closed it.
“That’s a no,” he said softly.
“Not to my knowledge.”
“Then you don’t know what it’s like. You don’t know how it feels to be changed.”
“It’s only numbers. If the concept of the soul is so powerful, then how can you reduce it to numbers and then allow math to fundamentally change who you are?”
“I think we’re done here,” he said, retrieving both hurtled cups from their spots on the floor. He returned them to the kitchenette.
“You came here! You wanted to unload secrets! Why are you letting your temper get the better of you?” she asked, staring up at him with her arms crossed.
“This isn’t a discussion any longer, this is a religious persecution,” he said.
“Clones have already been excommunicated! You fought for that yourself. You’re talking out of ten sides of your mouth! You’re a priest, but you’ve been thrown out of the church, but you still believe, but you don’t have a soul. You follow the religion that says ‘Thou shalt not kill’ but you hunted hackers. How can you reconcile all of those sides? Would a man with a soul worry about having one?”
He took a deep breath, feeling rage unravel in his chest. “A man with no soul will mourn its loss, every day of every life. A man with a grudge and nothing to lose can hunt; it’s not like he fears hell anymore. I’m beyond saving, Joanna. You can’t confess the loss of a soul. You can’t do penance when there is nothing to heal inside you.”
She did something unexpected, then. She put her arms around him. He froze, unsure what to do, but she held him. She was much shorter than he was, her head coming up to his chest. Her hair, in a soft halo, just managed to tickle his chin.
“You’ve been hurting for so long,” she said.
He sat at the edge of her bed, awkwardly placing her next to him. He felt like something had broken inside him, something that had been pulled tight forever.
“You shouldn’t be alone right now,” she said. “Why don’t you stay?”
He nodded numbly, and she eased him up to put his head on the pillow. He was asleep immediately.
Day Four