“I don’t understand,” Ocampo said.
I’ve had control of the Chandler for weeks. I could have tried for an escape long before now. But I needed your data to take back. And I needed you to back it up. You’re going home, Secretary Ocampo.
“You don’t understand what you’re doing,” Ocampo said.
Sure I do.
“No, you don’t,” Ocampo said. “Don’t you understand that what we’re doing here is saving humanity—”
Everything after that point was cut short by the whoofing sound Ocampo made as Vera Briggs walked the couple of feet separating the two of them and kneed her boss square and hard in the balls.
I don’t even have balls anymore and I felt that.
Ocampo collapsed, groaning. Briggs kicked him several more times in the ribs and face, inexpertly but enthusiastically, until he stopped doing anything but lying there in a ball.
“Motherfucker,” Briggs said, finally backing away.
You didn’t kill him, did you? I asked.
“Trust me, I’m going to make sure he lives,” Briggs said. She spat on him; he didn’t even flinch. “Make me look like a fool by perpetrating treason behind my back? For years? Kill a ship full of people and give me the choice of death or being kidnapped? Make me an accomplice to killing even more people? No, Mr. Daquin. This asshole lives. And I’m going to make sure the Colonial Union knows everything I know, too. So you just get us back. You get us back. I promise you I’m going to take care of the rest of it. And you,” Briggs said to Ocampo. “You so much as move an inch between now and then and you’re going to wish I kicked you to death. You understand me, sir?”
Ocampo didn’t move a muscle for the entire rest of the trip.
* * *
“Let’s talk about the future,” Harry Wilson said to me.
It had been a busy week.
I had skipped the Chandler into existence roughly ten klicks from Phoenix Station itself, setting off every single proximity warning the station had. Which was the point; I didn’t want them to miss me.
As soon as I skipped I started broadcasting that I had Secretary Ocampo and critical information about an alien attack, which got everyone’s attention. Less than an hour after that the Chandler was swarming with Colonial Defense Forces, Ocampo and Briggs were taken off the ship—Ocampo to the infirmary of Phoenix Station’s detention facility and Briggs to high-level debriefing—and then the CDF tried to figure out what to do with me.
That’s when Wilson showed up.
“Why you?” I asked him—asked him, because he connected directly to me with his BrainPal, the computer inside his head.
“Because I’ve done this before,” he said. He explained that later, during his debriefing of me, during which I told him of my experiences and gave him all the information I had.
“The future,” I said, back in the present.
“Yes,” Wilson said.
“What I want for the future is to have a body.”
“You’re going to get that,” Wilson said. “We’re already working on it. The Colonial Defense Forces have already authorized growing a clone for you.”
“You’re going to put my brain in a clone?”
“Not exactly,” Wilson said. “When the clone is grown we’re going to transfer your consciousness into it. You’ll leave this brain behind and be put into a new one.”
“That’s … unsettling,” I said. My brain was the only part of me left, and now they were telling me that I was going to leave it behind.
“I know,” Wilson said. “If it helps, I’ve been through the process. You’re still you after it happens. Promise.”
“When can we start?” I asked.
“Well, that’s up to you,” Wilson said. “That’s what I want to talk to you about.”
“What do you mean?”
“They’ve already started working on your body,” Wilson said. “If you wanted it—and no one would say anything against you wanting it—we can get you one in a few weeks. But for someone with an already existing consciousness that we need to port into the new brain, it’s not optimal. They’d rather build your body slowly and pre-prime the new brain to accept your consciousness. That way the transfer goes off without a hitch.”
“How long will that take?”
“Less time than making a body the natural way, but still a few months,” Wilson said. “Honestly the longer we take prepping the body for consciousness the better it will be.”
“And in the meantime I’m stuck here on the Chandler.”
“‘Stuck’ is a relative term,” Wilson said.
“What does that mean?”
“It means that if you want, I might have a job for you. And the Chandler.”
“What’s the job?”
“The job is to be you. Both you, Rafe Daquin, and you, the brain running the Chandler. We want the various species we talk with to be aware that you’re real and that your story is real.”