The Clone Sedition

by Steven L. Kent

  Apparently, the authorization came through quickly. The officer glared at Watson, scrutinized him, then told him to pass through the posts.

  “The posts,” a security device that identified people right down to their DNA, looked like a postmodern attempt at re-creating an ancient Grecian archway—two ten-foot pillars, spaced six feet apart, topped by a ten-foot rectangle, all made of polymerized metal.

  The pillar on the left side of the posts was known as the “sprayer” because it shot a fine mist made of oil and water vapor. The sprayer dislodged flecks of skin, dandruff, and hair, which the column on the right, the “receiver,” vacuumed and analyzed.

  Watson stepped between the pillars, felt the gust, and was admitted through. The process took under a second. The bodyguards passed through the posts also, the security team checking their identities as well.

  After his last visit, Watson knew his way around the archive. He found a computer station and made himself at home. His bodyguards remained on their feet, standing a few feet behind him, their arms by their sides, their hands near their guns.

  The inside of the archive was a three-story vault with a domed ceiling and a circular balcony. The walls were square, but the computer stations were arranged in concentric rings.

  Watson sat down. He typed a security access code, the last gate between the archives and a break-in. The leaders of the Enlisted Man’s Empire considered the archive to be a temple of forbidden knowledge and admitted only its highest of high priests to enter. In this library could be found information for assembling a broadcast network, creating clone farms, and undermining nations.

  The clones needed to retain this information if they hoped to extend their empire beyond the current generation.

  Tactile sensors in the keyboard of the computer verified Watson’s DNA and fingerprints every time he tapped a key. A discreet retinal scanner in the screen confirmed his identity 120 times per minute. Watson did not notice the additional security precautions as he trolled for information about Howard Tasman.

  A menu appeared.

  Tasman, H—Biographical Information

  Tasman, H—Liberator Project, Linear Committee Briefing—June 24, 2453

  Tasman, H—Neural Programming Code—March 8, 2454

  Tasman, H—Need for a Death Reflex—August 17, 2461

  Tasman, H—SECURITY PROFILE, Updated 2506

  Watson started with the security profile and discovered that if Howard Tasman was still alive, he was an exceptionally old man. He’d been born on a planet called Volga in December, 2428. That made him eighty-nine years old.

  Watson read the name of his home planet and stopped. He’d heard of Volga, but he was not sure where or how, maybe in school. It was not one of the big planets, not one of the capitals of the six galactic arms.

  The file included a birth picture, fingerprints, a footprint, photographs of Tasman’s parents, and a DNA sample. Watson skipped all of that. He scrolled through the file, stopping at a picture of Tasman as a young adult, just finishing college. He’d studied gene replication and neural enhancement before being hired by the Unified Authority to work in the military cloning program in 2448.

  Pictures of Tasman showed a man who could blend into any crowd. He was average height—five feet nine inches. He was slightly on the thin side and weighed 162 pounds. He had short brown hair, brown eyes, no tattoos, no scars, no identifiable markings. Watson examined a photograph of Tasman at the age of twenty-one. He had a soft, doughy face. He had narrow shoulders and long, skinny arms.

  In 2452, after a fleet of ships had been lost in the Galactic Eye region of the Milky Way, the Linear Committee drafted Tasman to work on a top secret cloning project.

  Top secret, Watson thought. It was possibly the worst-kept military secret since the atomic bomb. Thinking that aliens had arrived in the galaxy, the Linear Committee—the executive arm of Unified Authority government—commissioned a team of scientists to create an army of superclones that would be known as “Liberators.”

  As he began work on the Liberator program, Tasman proposed a method for making the clones more effective in battle. He suggested creating a gland that would release a combination of testosterone and adrenaline into their blood. He called this a “combat reflex.” He also proposed a rudimentary version of neural programming that would include two sets of active instructions:

  1) Inability to commit suicide.

  “These clones will be inserted in a bleak, hostile environment and forced to battle an enemy with superior technology and weapons. There will be a high rate of suicide among them unless we render them incapable of suicide through programming.”

  2) A diminished sense of conscience.

  “Since we will not have time to properly train these clones for battle, we will need to make them especially aggressive to make up for their lack of combat skills.”

  He’s talking about creating sociopaths, thought Watson. The next picture showed the naval officer in charge of the Liberator Project—a skinny beanpole of a man named Captain Bryce Klyber who later rose all the way to the rank of five-star admiral. Klyber held an iconic place in the history of the Unified Authority. He had created a supership called the Doctrinaire, which would supposedly protect Earth from invasion.

  Watson was still in school when the Morgan Atkins Fanatics attacked Earth, but he remembered the destruction of the Doctrinaire. The Mogats destroyed Klyber’s ship with a single shot. By that time, though, Klyber had already been assassinated.

  If Klyber created the Liberators, he had been behind two disasters. The Doctrinaire did not survive her first great battle, and Congress outlawed Liberator clones after they massacred the civilian populations of several planets.

  The last remaining Liberators were sent to the farthest ends of the galaxy and banned from the Orion Arm of the galaxy. In other words, they were banned from Earth…eliminated by attrition. Watson did not know the particulars about how Wayson Harris came into existence, but he had been created decades after the massacres.

  According to the profile, Tasman proposed using neural programming to build safeguards into future generations of military clones after the Liberator-clone disasters.

  Watson watched a video feed of a young Howard Tasman speaking to the Linear Committee. Looking out of place in a suit and tie, he spoke before the committee in a high, monotone voice. He said, “Theoretically, there is no limit to the amount of instructions we can program into their brains, but if we input too many sets of active instruction, we run the risk of creating fundamental conflicts in their programming. Even if there are no conflicts in their programming, overprogrammed clones may lack the initiative to act on their own.”

  Watson went on reading Howard Tasman’s theory of programming. He said, “It does not matter how many sets of dormant instructions you place in a clone’s brain because dormant instructions do not impact behavior. Only active instructions matter.”

  According to the “Tasman Theory,” clones could hold an infinite amount of dormant instructions that could later be activated should new situations arise. Technology that had not been available during the creation of the Liberators, he believed, would play an important role in designing later models.

  Watson read this and thought about Harris. He’d known about some of the programming. He’d said he could not commit suicide because of his programming. What would it be like to know that someone had programmed your brain? Watson wondered. You would never know which of your thoughts were really yours.

  He thought about the Night of the Martyrs. Harris had killed three men. He’d butchered them. His diminished sense of conscience had been in fine form on that evening.

  In 2451, the Liberator Clone Program was discontinued.

  According to his psychological profile, Tasman blamed himself for the program’s shortcomings. After winning the war in the Galactic Eye, the Liberators were sent out as peacekeepers; but the programming that ensured their success in the Galactic Eye made their term as galactic po
licemen a disaster.

  When Liberators were sent to stop a riot at Albatross Island, a galactic penal colony, they became addicted to the hormone from the combat reflex and killed all the convicts, including convicts that had turned themselves in. After they finished with the convicts, the Liberators butchered guards and hostages.

  In 2457, at the age of twenty-nine, Tasman returned to his home planet of Volga, where he received a hero’s welcome.

  Volga had been one of those planets that never caught a break. It had no undiscovered minerals, no famous actors, no remarkable athletes. Its economy limped along, and it produced enough food for its inhabitants, but nearly 15 percent of the population emigrated once the Unified Authority relaxed its ban on planetary migration.

  Tasman married a local girl in 2458 and moved to the capital city of Niva, where he continued his neural programming research. He and his wife had their first child, a girl, in 2459. They had a boy in 2460.

  Somewhere in the back of Watson’s mind, a memory stirred. He tried to ignore that memory, but he could not ignore the chill running down his spine. It wasn’t the name, Volga, that dislodged the memory. Twenty-four sixty was a year students memorized in school.

  The Volgan economy finally failed in 2460. Toxic storms spread around the planet, killing crops and destroying property.

  Populations never starved during the golden age of the Unified Authority. The government sent food and terraforming specialists who claimed they could fix the environment. By the time they arrived, 80 percent of the population had submitted emigration forms. The kind of mass migration that the U.A. Congress had always feared was about to begin.

  The U.A.’s first response was to bribe the people to stay. Along with food and tractors, the Unifieds sent the latest line of mediaLink glasses, built sports facilities, replaced automobiles, and sent enormous stores of luxury foods.

  It was too little and too late. When the U.A. Congress began rejecting all emigration requests, the people protested, and then they rioted.

  None of this information was in the files. Watson had learned it in grade school. He learned about the outcome of the riots in grade school as well. The watered-down stories had caused him nightmares when he was a boy.

  The Unified Authority responded by sending a battalion of Liberators and the Volga Massacre began. Seven hundred thousand people died.

  Watson expected to read that Tasman’s wife and children were killed, but he was wrong. He and his family survived the siege. The government relocated them to another planet.

  Probably a good idea, Watson thought. When things go wrong, people need a villain. On Volga, the people probably blamed Tasman, their former hometown hero.

  The Unified Authority moved Tasman and his family to Olympus Kri.

  In 2461, after three more Liberator massacres, Tasman appeared before Congress with designs for a new class of clones that would not know they were clones. His design included a gland that secreted propafenone—a neural toxin. The programming and the gland would ensure that no clone would discover his origins and survive.

  Tasman proposed programming the new clones to believe they were natural-born and raising them in orphanages. Liberators and earlier models started life in adult bodies.

  Watson watched a video feed in which Tasman told Congress, “Clones must never realize that they are separate and, therefore, different. If they do, they may rebel. Cloned soldiers who realize they are not human may decide that they owe no debt for their creation.”

  Tasman’s wife died in 2484. He did not remarry. His children and grandchildren were killed during the first wave of the alien invasion. The date listed was 2514.

  According to the file, nobody knew Tasman’s identity on Olympus Kri. About that they had been wrong.

  Somebody must have known.

  CHAPTER

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  Without realizing it, Watson had spent four hours in the archives. He sat at the computer thinking about Tasman, realizing how much he disliked the man. Thinking that clones were no different than computers, Tasman had created a generation of clones to be sent into the nether regions of the galaxy for a brutal war, then taken away their only means of escape: the God-given right to suicide.

  No matter what they ran into in the Galactic Eye, the Liberators would have fought to the final man and suffered every last privation because it was written in their “instruction set.”

  Watson looked back at the two clones who had entered the archive as his bodyguards. Tired or not, they stood alert, their hands near their weapons, ready to die in the line of duty. Synthetic or not, they were honorable men.

  Until that moment, Watson had thought of his bodyguards simply as “BG1” and “BG2.” He didn’t even know their names. He wondered if he was just as antisynthetic as Tasman.

  Watson asked BG1, “Are you ready to leave?”

  The bodyguard did not speak, he nodded.

  Watson thought about thanking these men for protecting him, but he knew better. His gratitude meant nothing to them.

  The hall that led back to the security station was long and curved, with marble walls and a black granite floor that sparkled in the bright light. There was an odd, biting scent in the air, something sharp that reminded Watson of the smell of ammonia. He wondered if a cleaning crew had arrived, and tried to imagine the security protocol for admitting janitors to clean the archive bathrooms.

  Up ahead, he could see the soldiers manning the security station. One of the guards drew his M27. He started to raise the gun.

  Because of the bend in the hall, the bodyguard to Watson’s right had the clearest view of the station. The clone Watson had always thought of as “BG2” stopped walking, drew his pistol, fired two shots, hitting the security guard both times—once in the chest, once in the head. The back of the guard’s head seemed to explode, splattering a yard-wide burst of blood and tissue onto the bulletproof glass behind him. His hands still holding the M27, the guard fell to the ground as the rest of his team opened fire. Because of the curve in the wall, Watson only saw two of the soldiers, but he had counted six guards when they first arrived.

  BG2 kept firing. He took a shot in the left shoulder, a shot in the stomach, a shot in the chest before he slumped to the ground, gun still out, finger still working the trigger. He opened his mouth to say something, and blood poured over his lips.

  BG1 pulled Watson backward as another bullet tore into BG2’s chest. Blood seeped from his wounds forming a puddle around him. Bullets scraped the wall above him, carving gouges in the smooth marble.

  BG1, a combat-tested MP, understood what was happening, but Watson had never experienced a gunfight. Frantic thoughts flashed in his brain while primal fear paralyzed him. He heard the gunshots, saw the blood and the body of the clone he’d called BG2, but he did not comprehend what was happening. He tried to run to the dying clone and help him. BG1 closed a hand around his arm and wrestled him back.

  “Move!” the clone snarled.

  Still staring at the body, Watson stumbled backward as his remaining bodyguard dragged him into the vault. Bullets ricocheted off the wall. A bullet hit a curve in the wall and looped around it like a train going through a tunnel. A bullet hit a light fixture in the ceiling, sending an electric arc into the air. Tiny shards of glass spread through the air like confetti.

  One of the guards ran around the bend in the hall. Aiming his pistol over Watson’s shoulder, BG1 shot him twice, once in the chest and once in the head. The sound of the shots echoed in Travis Watson’s ear.

  The archive guards fired a long stream of bullets down the hall. By this time, Watson and his bodyguard had retreated into the research area. Pointing at a door across the floor, the bodyguard said, “Once I hit two of theirs, run for that door.”

  A soldier sprinted out of the hall. Not seeing where Watson and the bodyguard were hiding, he stopped and waved his gun. As he turned to the left, BG1 shot him. The bullet passed through the man’s throat. He dropped his M27 and man
aged to get a hand to his throat as blood sprayed from the wound splashing everything around him. Still holding his throat, the man crumpled to the floor.

  Having seen what happened, the next guards knew where the fatal shot had come from. Two of them dived into the room with their M27s already firing, hitting the wall, hitting the doorway, hitting BG1’s left arm and chest as he pushed Watson out of the line of fire. His eyes wild with pain, the bodyguard shoved his gun into Watson’s hands and died.

  Watson crouched behind a computer, holding the bloody gun in trembling hands. When he heard the last three shots, he did not know what happened. He continued to cower and stare at his pistol.

  His driver, BG3, stepped into view. He held a pistol in one hand and an M27 in the other. He said, “It’s me,” and placed his pistol back in its holster. He eased the gun out of Watson’s trembling hands and said, “Wilder sent me a distress signal.”

  Slowly standing, Watson looked down at the dead bodyguard. He looked at the dead soldiers, their blood forming a pool of red syrup that stretched into the hallway.

  Two days later, after the drugs had finally calmed his nerves, Watson asked the driver, “How did you know to come get me?”

  The clone’s name was Simpson. He said, “I told you, Wilder sent me a distress signal.”

  “Who is Wilder?”

  “Tim Wilder…your bodyguard…he was killed in the hallway,” Simpson said.

  Watson thought about that. He had considered the man who had died saving his life so unimportant that he had never bothered to learn his name.

  CHAPTER

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  “Have you met Glen Healer?” asked Cutter.

  “He’s an admiral, right? Isn’t he the head of Naval Intelligence?” asked Watson. Watson cursed himself again. He didn’t know Curtis Jackson from Martin Riley from Glen Healer from Joshua Simpson. They were all clones. All men who stood five feet ten inches tall, had brown hair, brown eyes, and the same face. He couldn’t tell them apart.