Gene Drifters: The Clone Soldier Chronicles-Book III

by Takemoto, D. J.

  Chad stopped at an opaque wall, allowing the final slime layer to pass over Max. This time no voice welcomed him, and no nano-drones checked for contamination. This time, the slime smelled like something vaguely familiar to Max. He couldn’t identify it. But it was reflective, like a mirror, not see through. So Max got a full look at himself. He screamed in terror, before he fainted. All he could think, as his world went black was, who was that one-hundred-year old, hunched over, white haired old man staring back at him?

  Then, everything went black.

  Chad watched from the other side of the slime wall, as the Uns grabbed Max and took him to his very own cubicle. He then turned around and passed back through the door, leaving Max behind in his very own personal Dante-divined ninth circle, the one for treachery.

  Much later, Max woke up in a very dark place. At first, he thought he was in hell.

  And two days after her surgery, Rose awoke, fully repaired and regenerated, in a sunny room, with her head in the lap of Leo Songtain, who was singing to her, in his best Van Morrison;

  …In the misty morning fog, with our, our hearts a-thumping, and you, my brown-eyed girl, you, my brown eyed girl….sha la la la la la la la la la la de dah…..

  And, at first Rose thought she was in hell.

  She tried to get up, but gave out a pitiful moan. No, she felt fine, but remembered she was in regular dog disguise, and unfortunately, back with Leo Songtain. Oh shit, not another escape plan. On the other hand…there is the Kobe beef.

  “Oh, my sweet Rose, you’re awake. My physicians said you can have food today. Would you like another slab of Kobe beef?” Rose moaned, and she moaned some more. Then, she noticed another individual in the room, Michael Segev. “Okay, everything’s gonna be alright,” she thought.

  “You can’t keep her Leo. You know that now, right?” Segev was standing with his back to Leo’s bar, drinking a chilled Fueblaster, and eating some left over pink abalone steaks in huge chunks, with his hands. He looked scruffy, had not changed his clothes or shaved for days, but otherwise looked unruffled, in other words, like typical Michael Segev.

  “Why not? She’s my pet,” Leo protested, and stamped his red satin encased foot.

  “Because she’s Roxanne’s co-pilot, the one who watches her back. Look what happened to Roxanne without Rose. You want her snatched by some other competing Triad, Leo? This could bleed you dry, paying out ransoms to every Triad in China.” Michael was not always romantic, but always logical.

  “Yes, I suppose you’re right. Roxanne needs her co-pilot to watch her back. You’re right, she has to go back. But I do hope she visits me someday. Are you going to visit me, Rosie, sweetie?” Leo whined. Rose thought she would vomit. But hey, the food was not too bad…so maybe.

  Leo looked resigned, like he was weighing a pet versus his cash flow. But actually, he was thinking about Roxanne. He’d almost lost her. What would have happened if she took the bullet and not Rose? She could have been killed. Leo was so happy his Roxanne was alive! And Max had been dealt with. Although Michael Segev had not told him exactly how. Leo only knew Max would be staying in #5 for a long time.

  Leo walked to his desk, turned his back to Segev and Rose, and thought of all this as he looked out his penthouse window over the Hong Kong Harbor. He had no idea that he was in the same room with the only man Roxanne Smoot would ever consider being with. No, he thought he would be noble, and then maybe Roxanne would love him. Thus for the first time ever, in Leo Songtain’s bottom-line, CEO-driven, trickle-down life, he did something unselfish. It was a tiny light, in a dark world of supply and demand.

  Rose went home the following week, on one of Leo’s personal hoverjets to Tokyo, then by way of Morton’s rig, eastbound to San Fran, for a long Thanksgiving visit at Eldridge Smoot Bubble-stop #4. She had to get back to the bar; she was a bridesmaid at two weddings. No, it wasn’t Roxanne and Michael; that’s not in the cards for this story, (sorry folks). No, Rose had to walk down the aisle for Eldridge and Irma, and for Gimlet and Chad, in that little church/whore house, in bubble-stop #4. Roxanne was the maid of honor for both couples.

  The reception was at the bar, of course, with copious quantities of Green Weenies and Fueblasters imbibed by all. Food was provided by a mysterious donor, a sumptuous banquet sent all the way from Tokyo, care of a clueless mid-level manager who got only half his holiday bonus that year. It meant he would only get a two carat diamond for his mistress, not the bigger one. Dorian was in perfect form on that sat-hack.

  Just after the ceremony, but before the dancing started, Dina walked over to a fairly nervous Chad Yac, gave him a hug, and presented him with an old pre-WME black leather rebel jacket, worn by her dad, the famous Jordan Nampeyo, in the battle of Kyoto. It was full circle. But not quite, because somewhere, deep in one of the bilge #2 tanks, just off Lanai, a group of nano bacs heard the wedding music playing over the com…and they began to think…and sing to the music. But that’s another tale of trouble...in sewer city.

  Two individuals were notably absent from the wedding at #4. Dorian had things to attend to in his control room at Donner Pass, including getting those vaccines to #3, blowing up a warehouse of robots in Kuwait, sending #5er-refurbished sonic weapons to that rebellion in Mibu, spreading those modified nano-drones over a couple of cities, and overseeing the graduation of his latest class of Un rebel fighters.

  The second absent individual, to Roxanne’s regret but not surprise, was Michael Segev. But Michael sent a present…to Roxanne. The morning after the wedding, Roxanne woke up inside one of the satin lined coffins used for those rig-ryders to sleep in, because she had given up her room as a honeymoon suite to Chad and Gimlet. Under the pillow inside of the coffin was a small envelope. It had her name written on it, in Michael Segev’s hand. Roxanne slowly tore the envelope open and peeked inside.

  Two official forms were folded inside the envelope, one was a round-trip hoverjet ticket from San Fran to Amsterdam, and the other was a paid-up voucher for the study sessions, exams, and licensing fees for Master level III rig-ryder status. She was enrolled for spring session.

  If anyone ever thought Michael Segev was not romantic, that thought would be finally dispelled by the next objects under that pillow. One was a humongous diamond, and it was crap-wrapped to a single white sheet of paper with a picture of an Ultrajock 8500 with the newest upgrades added. On the paper, again in Segev’s handwriting, were two words, “Drive Fast.”

  And at the moment he was; Michael Segev was barreling across that open stretch of up-top highway between Ulan Baatar and Bulgan, racing the global warming sun rise, like a specter out of Sana’a, his amber eyes glowing like tiny lights in a dark world. (Obviously, that’s another story.)

  Someplace in the back zone of bubble-stop #5, Max woke up sitting in front of a tiny light, in his very own dark world. He had no idea where he was; he seemed to have lost his memory.

  He tried to get up from his chair but could not move. Max’s body was useless, except for his hands and fingers, which seemed to pass automatically and non-stop over one of those old fashioned keyboards. At first he had no idea what it was, and then he realized he was sitting in front of one of those old thingies, a lapstop, no, a laptop computer.

  “Where the hell am I?” he thought to himself. But, he could only think it; he could not speak and his body would not move, even though his mind was completely lucid. When his eyes adjusted to the semi-darkness, Max realized he was not alone. There was that familiar smell, the same as what he’d noticed when he passed through that opaque security wall with Chad.

  “Where is that fucking clone? For that matter, where is anybody? Why can’t I move? And, what is that smell?” Max asked himself, mentally.

  Now he recognized it, it was latte, chai latte; that was the smell. It was all around him, in old white plastic cups stuck permanently to each table. Max tasted a little through a straw which reached his mouth. The cup seemed to refill itself, after each drink.

  He was not ab
le to focus on the computer screen yet; his vision still blurred, making the words fuzzy, unreadable. And besides Max rarely actually read printed words, anyway; he used the audio versions. He tried to rise from his chair again, but his legs would not move, or his hands, except to pass non-stop over the computer keyboard in front of him.

  Just to confirm he was awake he glanced down, to be sure he was still wearing his charcoal grey suit. Satisfied, he then looked again at the screen in front of him. “Odd, there is nothing but pages and pages of endless job ads, mostly for temp jobs, or unpaid internship positions, or for volunteers, ditto unpaid,” Max said to himself, speaking in his mind.

  He tried to yell, to get someone’s attention, but found he could not open his mouth; he could only just mumble slightly from the left side of it, and words like opening, job fair, and temp poured forth. He spent the next several minutes trying to say something else, anything else. Then he noticed his companions staring at him, no, at his charcoal grey #42 suit.

  In a flash of realization Max looked down at his suit, and remembered when a #42 suit should be worn.

  “Oh No, I’m wearing an official job interviewer suit!” Max looked up quickly, at the reflection coming off his computer screen. There was a shuffle behind him, a slow movement of people coming towards him.

  There were hundreds, thousands of them. They were starting to surround him, moaning with outstretched arms, and hopeful pleading eyes, with resumes in their hands. The horror dawned upon him. He was with the…uns! He glanced from side to side, noticing he could still move his eyeballs back and forth, just across the computer screen. It produced just enough light to reflect the faces of the thousands of half-dead, but still hopeful individuals behind him, in front, on either side, slowly moving towards the newest addition to the mindless mass…Max, in his official #42 interviewer suit.

  They were all there mumbling, the living dead, tied to their computers in an endless, useless, chai latte drinking, hopeless cycle of…..Oh no! Not that. They were sending out job applications, hundreds, thousands of endless, hopeless, useless, unanswered job applications, all over the world; applications that were channeled into a giant archival storage vault, buried inside an abandoned salt mine, near Yekaterinburg. It was not unlike that quaint seed bank built over one hundred years ago in Greenland, back before the WME took over, back when people still felt the need for planetary biodiversity. Deep inside the vault was a mega-computer with a single purpose; answer all the ads with a rotating message:

  Dear Sir/Ms,

  Please be advised that your application (insert the word resume or manuscript, if applicable) will be read by a qualified individual on our staff. Your applications (insert the words, novel, essay, list of qualifications, or resume as appropriate) will be given full consideration by our staff. Should we wish to consider your (insert as above) you will be contacted. While we try to be expedient, please understand that our volume is large, thus, please expect a reply within (insert time as backlog in computer memory banks dictates). Thank you and have a nice day.

  Max was with the Uns… The Unmanageable, the Unmutated, the Undesirable, the Undefinable, the Unemployable…the Undead! And, of course, all those clone soldiers.

  He froze, just long enough to notice he’d finished half of his application to work for a summer, as an unpaid permanent temp volunteer, cleaning kangaroo poop, in a zoo near Coober Pedy. Using every ounce of strength, Max opened his mouth, pushed out the words and screamed. Unfortunately, he said the one thing you never said in the back zone of #5. Max rose up in his charcoal grey interviewer suit, just before he collapsed permanently (well, for now anyway) and yelled,

  “Stop, I should not be here; I am a job creator!”

  As Dorian watched on his sat-com, from his control room at Donner Pass headquarters, a solid swarming mass of mumbling, chai latte drinking, palm tablet holding, painfully, hopeful-looking unemployables swarmed over Max.

  “Shall we save him?” Dorian asked Dina, while drinking hot chocolate in the control room at Donner Pass.

  “No don’t worry; he will be re-trained like the others. But keep a watch over him, Dorian. I have a feeling that someday Max will return,” Dina replied, and went for some more hot chocolate.

  POSTSCRIPT

  In the weeks following Max’s demise, things finally returned to normal in the under-water tunnels. Roxanne and Rose continued their rig hauls, Irma and Eldridge ran the bar, and Leo Songtain plastered a fresh set of bounty posters all over Hong Kong, and on the ceiling above his bed. Max’s assistant, Ms. Vandercline took over the job as chief legal counsel for Stemworm, Inc. While she never tried to poison a rig-ryder, she did have some serious sexual encounters with her very own clone soldier. But, again that’s another story. Chad and Gimlet stayed on at #5 for three full years, to help his clone clan become established in their new home, and later to deal with the abovementioned issues in those bilge tanks.

  And finally, I know you are all anxious to learn what happened between Rose Smoot and Darcy Segev. We canines have a fondness for literary allusion; I bet you didn’t know that. Thus I must end my tale with the famous sentence from Jane Eyre, chapter thirty-eight, canine version, concerning the fate of Mr. Rochester, Darcy Segev, in this case, and I quote,

  “Reader…I boinked him.”

  About the Author

  My love of science began in high school where I attended a now nonexistent all girls’ Catholic convent school…the same one that the former Mayor of San Diego went to. I wanted to be an oceanographer, but alas, my father moved us all back to the Midwest during one of those many recessions, where I attended, and partied, at Ball State University, receiving my BS in 1971. I got one D, in a sewing class, hence science, which is closer to cooking, was my future direction. I learned skiing, backpacking, Microbiology, and Chemistry, in random order, at Colorado State University, obtaining the MS in 1973. But California called me home…we Californians are not unlike salmon. Once back home, I attended the University of Southern California, and mostly that was all I did, leaving with a PhD in Molecular Biology in 1979. After the birth of our first daughter, it became apparent that a small town would be easier for a two-career family ( my husband is also a scientist), so we accepted offers as faculty, back in the Midwest again, and away from my home. We remained at Kansas State University for 32 years as faculty in Biochemistry (me), and Biology (him). We added another daughter, were tenured, published, and even received those pat-on-the-back faculty awards, mostly for bringing in a chunk of money from grants. But, the salmon instincts took over once more, and in 2011 we retired and returned home to California. I kissed the ground upon driving over the state line; the border patrol said it happened all the time. I always wrote fiction, but publishing anything but hard scientific facts was frowned upon, and besides, I was supposed to be working 25/7…right? I still work, but much less, as a freelance science editor for three different firms in Houston, Beijing, and Ireland, making currency conversions a daily online event in itself. I do miss the lab, but find that I can do much more cutting edge research at my computer, in my novels, and in a global warming future. Plus, I’m not constrained by those nasty experimental results…virtual data are so much easier to obtain. Too bad there is no Nobel for imaginary science (although some of my colleagues often said a lot of it was just that).

  For the last three years, as a retired Professor Emeritus of Biochemistry, I still had one graduate student, got a patent (real, not virtual), and continue my science editing. But mostly, I have been busy creating that world of clone soldiers and courageous new-worlders that must live in the mess we have left for them.

 

 

 
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