Six Wakes

by Mur Lafferty

  “July twenty-third, 2493. The captain is getting more and more paranoid. She’s gotten it into her mind that we must all confess our crimes so she can know who to trust and who not to. She said if we don’t confess, she will tell our secrets to the rest of the crew.

  “I don’t know how she got them. The only people with access to those files are the doctor and, well, me, although I’m not supposed to have them. But I’m not the only one who could be in big trouble with the crew if I’m found out. Hiro’s past is messed up, poor guy. Wolfgang I wouldn’t cross, but I would pay for a front-row seat if he and Katrina ever have a cage match.

  “July twenty-fourth, 2493. I keep wondering the point of this timekeeping. Aren’t we going to come up with a new kind of time when we get to Artemis? It’s the day after yesterday anyway.

  “Okay, I’m stalling. The captain was attacked today. All I know is it wasn’t me. Joanna found her outside the door to the gardens. She’s in a coma. Even with the tech we have on board, the doc may not be able to heal the brain injury. We can clone a new body, we can alter a personality, but we can’t fix an existing brain. Something wrong with that.

  “I suggested we euthanize her and wake up her new clone, but Wolfgang says we won’t have any idea who attacked her if we lose her. So we’re keeping her around for a week to see if she wakes up.

  “Look, we all know who the big suspect is. No one has forgotten Paul’s little deep-space freakout our first year into the mission. No one but Paul, of course. Wolfgang hit him so hard he didn’t remember what happened. We watched him for years. He healed, but never showed any sign of violence again. I suppose even for clones twenty-four years is a long time to watch someone for signs of violence. That kind of vigilance gets exhausting.

  “But anyone could have done it. Katrina has been alienating everyone the past few days, long interrogations, accusations, demands that we all reveal our secrets. I’ve been angry, of course. She doesn’t trust anyone, and I think Wolfgang is going to talk to Joanna about relieving her of duty.

  “Of course, she’s been relieved now. And we don’t know who did it.

  “Dinner was quiet. Joanna was in the medbay with the captain. Wolfgang, Hiro, Paul, and I just sat there, picking at leftovers—God, I’ve had a lot of leftovers recently, I hate wasting them even in the recycler. Hiro’s pale and won’t meet anyone’s eyes, but he’s been like that for weeks, ever since we woke up his last clone. Paul is sullen, but again, what’s new? Poor bastard has never fit in, not before his episode and not after, and we’ve got a long way to go.

  “Wolfgang announced he would start interrogations tomorrow. I left the table.

  “I don’t care if that incriminates me. I need to figure this out. I’m going to go over the files again tonight. I’m locking my log files under another layer of security, Aunt Lucia–style.”

  “Hang on,” Maria said, and the recording paused. “Are those files also within these locked logs?”

  “No, just your ‘dear diary’ moments,” IAN said. “There’s one more. Want to hear it?”

  Maria chewed her lip and tried to make sense of it. “Go ahead.”

  “July twenty-fifth.” Maria’s voice was breathless and panicked. She sounded in pain, or ill. “It’s the fucking end. IAN’s been hacked, we’ve lost a ton of data, including our own mindmaps. He’s losing data faster than I can fix. We’re going off course. Grav drive is off, we’ll be weightless soon. We’re scrambling to fix things, but I think someone put something in my breakfast. Feel like shit.” A pause, a few shuffling steps. Then vomiting. Her voice, strained and tired, returned. “I think it’s poison. I’d ask IAN but he’s not here. I don’t have lo—”

  The recording skipped and immediately picked back up, her voice strained and frightened. Screams sounded in the background. “Hiro’s fucking hanged himself. I am definitely poisoned. We’re not the only ones who need a wake-up. One last log, oh, please don’t lose this. Remember where you squirrel things away, next me. I copied the first mindmap backups we made when we got on board. Old habits and everything. I think I can get”—she paused a moment to gasp for breath—“to the resurrection button to wake us up before I’m gone. We’ll be confused, but at least we’ll wake up. If you’re hearing this, I guess I succeeded.”

  The recording ended. Maria sat, listening to the chug of her steamer beside her, making her think of her own gasping breath as hemlock shut her body down.

  She blinked, bringing herself back to the present. “So after that I guess I ran down here, hit the switch, threw up, and someone finished killing me.”

  “That sounds about right, based on what you’ve told me,” IAN said. “Isn’t this great?”

  “Isn’t what great?” she asked numbly.

  “You’re not the murderer! And neither is Hiro, if he was dead before the slaughter began. Congratulations!”

  “Yay,” she muttered. She wondered if she should put the restraining code back into the AI.

  So Many More than Five

  Wolfgang woke up when Joanna slid his bed away from the two captains and Hiro.

  “What are you doing?” he asked, voice thick with exhaustion.

  “Giving you each space. Go back to sleep.”

  He groaned slightly. “I’d rather vomit.”

  Joanna had been prepared with a metal basin at his feet, and she handed it to him and continued pushing. He grasped it tightly but wasn’t sick. His upper lip beaded with sweat.

  “You should sleep. Don’t talk, or think, or move. Brain injuries are nothing to sneeze at. Especially in our current state.” She got him situated against the far wall and then put a small table beside him with a cup of water.

  He put his basin beside the water and leaned back and closed his eyes. “I’m doing better, I think.” He was lying. His jaw ached, and his head hurt. “How am I not supposed to think? We’re trying to solve a murder and figure out what went wrong with Hiro.”

  “We know what went wrong with Hiro. He has implanted personalities that are fighting for dominance. It’s not proof that he was behind the slaughter, despite what Paul thinks.”

  “Paul and myself. It’s very possible for Hiro to have killed us and then hanged himself.”

  “A lot of things are possible. Get some rest.”

  “No, we need to talk. Now’s as good a time as any,” he said, sitting up and swinging his legs over the side of the cot.

  “Now is the worst time,” Joanna said, collapsing onto a stool.

  “Don’t we still have to get rid of those bodies?” Wolfgang asked.

  Joanna groaned. She had forgotten the biohazard nightmare they’d left in the side hallway when Hiro had attacked Maria.

  “Let’s go,” he said.

  The bodies were where they had dropped them earlier just inside the large recycler door. Had it only been a few hours? Even in body bags, the bodies had already begun fill the hall with a fetid odor.

  As per the matter-of-fact practice of hundreds of years, she and Wolfgang carried each naked body into the lock, dumped it without ceremony, and returned for the next one. They didn’t include the body bags; no reason to waste them.

  Wolfgang winced a bit at the smell. “If I could go back in time and slap whoever thought this ship didn’t need a proper morgue…” He left the threat hanging there as they dropped Hiro’s body, the last one, beside the rest.

  They left the lock, shut the interior door, and opened the chute to the recycler. The floor dropped away and the bodies tumbled down a chute to the outermost ring.

  Joanna turned and started to walk toward the medbay.

  Wolfgang stayed behind, looking through the window in the door, which now showed an empty lock, complete with floor. His lips were moving.

  “Wolfgang? You all right?” Joanna asked.

  “Fine,” he said, walking to catch up to her.

  “You looked like you were praying,” she said.

  He flushed, extremely obvious on his pale skin, and said, “They’r
e the first clone deaths that I mourn. They’re strangers to us all. It’s an odd feeling.”

  Wolfgang, mourn? “What do you mean?” she asked.

  “It feels like a real death. And it seems disrespectful to dump them in the recycler.”

  Joanna frowned. He was right about it feeling like death. “We’re a closed system, Wolfgang. We can’t afford to lose resources for sentimentality.”

  “Yes, and sentimentality brought on by stress, probably,” he said, picking up the remaining body bags. “We’re going to have to clean these out.”

  “Dump them in the cloning bay and we’ll just add that to Maria’s cleaning list. Along with an apology.”

  “It is her job,” he reminded her.

  “I really doubt biohazard cleanup was part of the job description.”

  “I think Katrina was intending cleanup to be a punishment,” Wolfgang said, catching up with her. “But she got tired of waiting for someone to make her angry.”

  “Haven’t we all fallen under that category at some point or other in the past couple of days?” Joanna asked. “Except maybe me.”

  “You won’t let her kill her predecessor,” Wolfgang reminded her.

  “Fair enough.” She put her key card against the medbay door sensor and the door slid open for them. Hiro, the new captain, and the old captain lay unchanged. Joanna took their vitals and nodded, satisfied.

  Their next stop was the cloning bay to drop the body bags, waving to let Maria know they were there. She waved halfheartedly at them.

  They trudged to the theater, a recreation room they hadn’t had a chance to even consider enjoying since they woke up. They sank into the soft chairs and sat in silence.

  Joanna was wondering if he had fallen asleep when he spoke, his eyes closed. “How many lives have you had?”

  “I am on my sixth life,” Joanna said. “I was born in 2147 and went to med school as my first line of study.”

  “Did you never want to get your legs hacked for your next clone?”

  Joanna sighed. This always came up. “I was born with a rare form of tetra-amelia, which causes babies to be born with missing or deformed limbs. Sometimes it’s caused by trauma during pregnancy, but mine is genetic. Before the Codicils passed, I had one life with modified legs, but my next clone reverted to my original one.”

  “Why?”

  “The Codicils had passed. And the legs didn’t feel like they were mine.” she said. “What’s with the questions?”

  “I realized I don’t know much about you,” he said. “You’re older than I thought. Older than me, even. Did you ever learn any hacking yourself in your dupliactric studies?”

  “No,” she said.

  “So six lives of living, and you were a doctor the whole time?” Wolfgang said.

  She sat back. “Well, as far as I know, number five was a doctor, but I’ve lost most of her life. I have only had this one for a few days, but it’s safe to say, yes. Off and on.” Joanna was relieved to be free of one uncomfortable line of questioning, but unhappy to go straight into another one.

  “And when you were off? What did you do?”

  “I did some public service, some volunteer work, took cloning technology to some poorer countries. Traveled a bit.”

  “Did you ever spend any time on Luna?” Wolfgang asked, opening his eyes.

  Joanna frowned. “Er, no, the trip to board the Dormire was the first time I had been there.”

  “Before you became a clone, did you have any reason to dislike, or resent, them?”

  Joanna smiled slightly. “You’re not paying attention to your dates. I was born in 2147—cloning humans was still new and exciting when I was a young woman. No riots, no excommunication, none of that had come yet.”

  He stared at her. “You’re from the first years? I thought those had all gone to the hills to live as wealthy hermits, bored with the relative children of Earth.”

  “Not all of us. Some of us wanted to help.”

  “So you knew all the famous clones of that era? The doctors Grindstaff and Kelly, and Sallie Mignon?”

  Joanna laughed. “It wasn’t like I was buddies with Nobel Prize–winning cloning scientists in high school. I met Dr. Grindstaff once, at a conference. She was speaking, so she didn’t have a lot of time to chat. Kelly I never got a chance to meet before she went underground. Mignon, I knew.”

  “Did you know any of the Dormire crew before this mission?”

  “This is starting to sound a little less like you’re getting to know me and more like an interrogation,” she said. “I didn’t know the crew.”

  Something dawned on her. “You want to know what my crime was,” she said. “You’re trying to piece together all of our pasts.”

  “Can you blame me?”

  “After I patched up half the crew, you’re wondering if I killed us all?”

  He remained silent. She sighed. “My crimes are political, not violent. I’ve harmed no one. Like you all, this post is my way out. As a favor, Sallie Mignon helped me get this job.”

  “Really. Sallie Mignon.” It wasn’t a question. He was thoughtful.

  “Is it my turn?” she asked.

  “For what?”

  “Questions. It’s only fair.”

  He sighed and leaned back in the chair. “Go ahead. The captain says I’m an open book.”

  “Start with your first life, your experiences as a clone, and where you stand politically. Let’s expedite this.”

  “That’s to the point,” said Wolfgang. “All right. As you know I was born on Luna. Became a clone as an old man.”

  “Several generations of the family were on Luna, correct?”

  “How did you know?”

  “The fact that you wake up needing lunar gravity. Also your height and skin tone. But your story skips a bit,” she said. “If your records are right, you became a clone in 2282, right in the middle of the clone riots in the days before the Codicils. What made you decide to become a clone during that time specifically?”

  Wolfgang looked past her, unfocused. “I didn’t decide. The decision was made for me. I was cloned against my will, and then escaped my captors. I joined the Luna military, piloting crew shuttled between the Earth and Luna.” He shrugged. “I did some stints as a personal guard, some more as a pilot, studied when I could, made it to head of a private security firm on Luna, and then got hired for the Dormire. Is that what you wanted to know?”

  “You’re leaving something out. Something big?” she asked, rubbing her chin. “You’re officially on, what, five lifetimes?”

  “I’ve had many more than five,” he said softly. “Most of them during the first day of my cloned life.”

  Wolfgang’s Story

  211 Years Ago

  September 25, 2282

  My children, we have come so far within God’s world. We have taken the Earth He has given us. We have taken Luna and made her our home. Through science, He has given us multiple gifts.

  Unfortunately, the Adversary gives us temptations through science as well. The snake is the one who developed medicines to stop pregnancy and kill the Lord’s unborn. The snake lies, and the snake whispers. And the snake is the one who gave us cloning. Because who else better to spread the word of the Adversary than an army of soulless?

  People have asked me. The Luna News Network has asked me. On Earth, CNN has asked me. Some of you, bless you, have asked me. And I will tell anyone the same thing I have told all of you: When a man dies, his soul goes to be with God, or the Adversary. If the man returns, do you think God gives the soul back? Of course not. And the snake is not likely to give up his ill-gotten gains. Those who return as clones are without souls, without the guidance of God.

  Countless challenge me! Debate rages! Are they legally human? Can they inherit from themselves? Is killing one murder? And it’s an unpopular stance, but I believe it is not murder to remove from this world a man or woman who is not a child of God, whose soul cannot ascend.

  [Pause
for protests to die down]

  The greatest gift is that of sacrifice. Christ gave his life for us. A clone would never sacrifice; it means nothing because the next day they can wake up and do it all over again. Nothing has meaning when you are a clone. Not love, not death, not life.

  The Lord says Thou Shalt Not Kill, not Thou Shalt Not Murder, so no, I am not suggesting you create a clone hunting army. But if you meet a man who tells you he is a clone, pity him. Know you are staring into the eyes of a soulless man. Do not listen to his arguments about anything, because he is not arguing from a place of morality. He has no place in God’s heaven. Even worse than the amoral, the non-believers, the breakers of the Ten Commandments, is the clone, for the soulless’s actions stem from a place neither good nor evil. They stem from a place we don’t even know yet, and that is what scares me the most.

  Father Gunter Orman stopped writing and sat back in his chair, sighing. His office was simple, as simple as any of the buildings on Luna could be. Unlike the monks who embraced poverty on Earth, Gunter had to accept the luxuries of colony life, or die. His walls were made of bricks that were a fusion of plastic and moon dust, using plentiful material up here, but outrageously expensive on Earth. The walls were a light gray, since he had refused paint to brighten it up. His furnishings were simple, bed and desk made from Luna resources except for his wooden desk chair, which had been a gift from his grandparents on Earth. His church was fancier than he’d like; the Vatican had spent a great deal to bring God’s glory to Luna, even shipping stained glass to the moon. It couldn’t catch the sunlight the way glass would on Earth, but it was a nice gesture.

  Gunter judged his phrasing on his sermon. Everyone knew his stance on cloning, but he hadn’t made it an actual homily yet. The cardinals back home would be upset, he knew. Pope Beatrice I was severely anti-cloning, but even she hadn’t gone as far as to suggest it wasn’t a sin to kill them.

  It was hard to live so far from the governing body of the church. He had only visited Earth three times in his life, each time a dizzying physical hardship because of the gravitational strain on his Luna-born body. He had seen the Vatican in its opulence and met the governing cardinals. They vetted carefully the priests who took their message to Luna, as they were far from the church’s control. But Gunter was different; he had been born on Luna, understood the people there, and was the first to enter the virtual seminary set up by missionaries. He had become more and more radical as his years had gone by, and he was due a visit from a cardinal soon. He expected this visit would end with gentle encouragement to retire.