Echo- First Pulse

by C Scott Frank

  “Forget the evidence, there’s so much we don’t know.” Gibbs remained standing, locking eyes with Damien. “Any one of us could be a clone, for all we know. There’s that doctor who thinks clones might be living among us, Kubitz or something like that. He could be on to something. I’m tired of dog-sitting that animal in the infirmary and watching it suck all our resources dry. Let’s find out who or what it is, and put it down.”

  “I’m not going to euthanize a human being. Besides, we have more resources than we know what to do with. It’s not like we’re going to run out by helping this one man.”

  “That’s what you can’t get through your thick skull: it’s not a man.”

  “You are irrational. I’m not having this conversation with you.” Damien waved a hand dismissively. “You’re ignoring basic human rights, and common reason. Edward, come on man, don’t entertain this buffoon’s lunacy.”

  Damien and Gibbs turned to Edward for his opinion, but Edward simply looked away nervously.

  “You too, huh, Ed?” Gibbs grumbled. “Screw this.”

  “We’re supposed to stay—”

  Gibbs stormed from the room leaving Edward alone at the chess table once again and Damien with a cold cup of coffee.

  Day 363 - 09:14

  “Waking sequence initiated,” Keri announced. “Start the clock.”

  “That’s fine. Emily, make sure we’re recording everything here. The more data we have, the better.” Lincoln eased himself into a chair. The team stood in the lab where they normally conducted tests. Lincoln had rarely found himself on this side of the glass—he much preferred a bird’s eye view.

  “Can do.” Emily pulled up her datapad. “While we wait, I’d like to see if I can match any of our data to Dr. Fuller’s hypothesis. I’m very interested to see if the linguistic studies I’ve done might help clarify some things for us.”

  “Perfect.”

  The trio settled in around the lab, waiting for the clone to wake up. The observation deck above the lab remained empty for this procedure; Lincoln wanted the civilians on the team tucked safely away in the mess in case anything went awry. It should prove to be uneventful for the most part, but it paid to be cautious.

  The only reason he’d asked Emily to stay was her knowledge of the medical equipment. Damien knew more, sure, but he was far more valuable. As much as Lincoln hated to admit it: Emily was the more expendable. He hoped it wouldn’t come to that. He hated himself for even thinking it.

  The only sound in the lab as the team settled in was the low hum of monitoring equipment and the station’s air handlers. After a few silent moments, Edward Amin came into the lab with a frazzled look on his face. “Unbelievable,” he said and crashed into a chair near the entrance.

  “What’s going on, Ed? You’re not supposed to be in here.” Lincoln spared a glance at the unconscious clone. “We don’t know if it’s safe, yet.”

  “Gibbs and the good doctor.” Edward shook his head and hissed. “Those two can’t even be in a room together. Gibbs is particularly violent this morning, I thought for sure he was going to attack Damien.”

  “Violent?” Lincoln had known Gibbs to be hot-headed, but violent? “Where is he now?”

  “His quarters, his lab, the gym—well maybe not there. But who knows?” Edward sighed and leaned back in his chair.

  Lincoln hadn’t exercised his authority much during the team’s tenure on the station. Maybe that hadn’t been wise. If they couldn’t follow one order… he looked again to the clone. He hoped nothing would happen when the man woke up. If his team was scattered all over the station, they would be that much harder to keep safe. He debated checking his firearm again, but he didn’t want to raise undo concern.

  “What should we do?” Keri asked.

  “We can’t exactly leave him.” Lincoln nodded toward the clone. “But we can’t have the team wandering all over the station either. Ed, can we pull up the locations for Damien and Gibbs?”

  “Yes, it will just take a second.”

  “You know…” Keri trailed off and turned to her datapad. Lincoln was about to ask her if she planned to finish that sentence when she turned the datapad around to face him, showing Gibbs’ profile. “I never thought much of it until now, but Gibbs’ family is from Midas IV. Or was. The whole moon was wiped out about two years ago.”

  “Okay,” Lincoln considered. “So we all have some baggage or other in this God-forsaken war. What are you getting at?”

  “We all have baggage, sure, but Gibbs was the oldest in a family with eight kids. His youngest sister was only eleven at the time. According to his interview, it was random chance that he wasn’t on Midas IV when the attack came.”

  “So you think this explains his attitude and pure hatred of the clones?”

  “I think it has to.”

  “You’re better at reading people than I am,” Lincoln conceded. “Maybe we can try and talk to him and calm him down. Think you’re up for it?”

  “Yes, I think so.”

  “Okay, Ed, did you find Damien? Where is he now?”

  “Looks like he’s in the infirmary. Want me to pull up video?”

  “No, that’s fine. What about—” he cut himself off as the realization struck him cold. Video. Of course. “A little after oh-eight-hundred, Keri and I ran into Gibbs in clone storage. I would very much like to know what he was doing down there.”

  “One moment, let me pull it up.” Edward dialed into the station’s network. “Interesting.”

  “What’s that?” Lincoln asked.

  “The cameras and sensors only record when there is motion, to help save data. I am showing four minutes of recordings in clone storage at about oh-five-hundred this morning.”

  “What? Can you play it back?”

  “Sure, here we go.”

  The team huddled around the terminal to see the video playback. The first few seconds simply showed a black screen. Then, with a bright flash, the lights came on in the clone storage chamber. The camera quickly adjusted exposure, and the rows of stasis pods were visible in the pale glow of the lighting. After a few seconds, Gibbs walked into the room. He seemed to peruse the pods for a few moments, before finding one with an inhabitant that faced away from the door.

  The monitor showed him keying a few commands into the display at the head of the cylinder, looking around nervously between each command.

  “Can we see what he’s doing?” Keri asked.

  “No, he’s blocking too much of the screen,” Edward answered.

  Gibbs finished typing commands at the console, looked around once more and left the chamber.

  “I wonder what that was about,” Emily spoke quietly, as if her voice might be projected into the video for past-Gibbs to hear. Lincoln had almost forgotten the girl was there.

  “There’s more, here’s the next clip,” Edward said as he keyed in the appropriate commands. “This is stamped about oh-seven-thirty this morning.”

  The screen once again was black, followed by an illuminated chamber full of stasis pods. Once more the team watched Gibbs enter the room and look around, as if someone might spring a trap on him.

  “Wait a minute,” Keri interjected. “I think I saw movement in that pod.”

  “I think you’re right,” Lincoln agreed. “Zachary you stupid…”

  “Look, he’s opening the pod,” Emily interrupted. “Oh—he has a gun!”

  Lincoln grimaced. “How did he get that?”

  On the small screen, Gibbs opened the pod and held the handgun up to the clone. The clone seemed a little confused, but held his hands up in surrender. Gibbs raised his voice, tension visible in his neck. The clone remained silent, watching the gun as Gibbs waved it around like a sparkler on Unification Day.

  “Is there any way we can hear what he’s saying?” Lincoln asked Edward.

  “I’m not sure. The cameras don’t record audio. Our datapads record and transmit everything they hear to keep for records. Maybe if he had his with hi
m, I could try and pull a recording off that.”

  “Do what you can.”

  The monitor now showed Gibbs insistently pointing the gun at the clone. The clone shook his head emphatically, waving his hands.

  “I want to know what they’re saying,” Keri insisted. “Look, the poor guy is clearly pleading with Gibbs about something.”

  Lincoln watched in horror as, with a bright flash, Gibbs shot the clone in the head. The clone crumpled back into his pod, lifeless before his body hit the cold surface. Gibbs stepped over the pod and fired four more times into the clone’s body.

  Edward took his glasses off and rubbed his eyes. Emily sobbed quietly and sat back down. The screen showed Gibbs cleaning up around the pod, closing the cylinder, and initiating the stasis program. Gibbs walked out of the chamber with a cold determination in his gait. The screen went black for a few moments before showing the room once again. Keri and Lincoln walked into the chamber talking and looking over their shoulder.

  “We just missed him.” Keri’s voice trembled. “By a few minutes. I can’t believe it.”

  Lincoln swore. His leadership had got them there. His hands-off approach. Now Gibbs was unhinged. Lincoln had allowed the infection to fester, and now there was a serious problem on the station.

  “Edward,” Lincoln said, his voice stiff. “Where is Zachary Gibbs now?”

  Day 363 - 09:37

  The dim lights of the large storage room cast odd shadows on the walls and floor from the softly humming cylinders that lay around the room. Zachary Gibbs walked among the large pods, glancing over the unconscious bodies inhabiting each container. He walked to the back of the room and stopped at the pod farthest from the entrance and looked at the body lying inside.

  He stared at the crumpled form curled inside the tube, covered in blood. His own breathing was tight and echoed through the chamber. He stood stiff, clenching and unclenching his fist before finally snarling a few curses and walking to the nearest stasis pod.

  He keyed the display and the machine thrummed to life, waiting for commands. He entered a few commands and cursed when the screen turned red with a harsh beep. He tried his credentials again to the same effect.

  “We’ll have to play it that way, then,” he seethed, pulling his datapad and syncing to the machine. He grimaced up at the camera in the far corner of the room. He could barely make out the small glass eye invading his privacy with mechanical observation. He wondered if Lincoln was watching him even know. Unlikely. They would’ve done something to stop him by now.

  The rest of the team was almost a hundred meters above his head, in the station proper. The clones were held in a detachable pod connected only by life support couplings and the service lift. Another safety measure. Gibbs couldn’t help but wonder at the hypocrisy. The disconnect. The team and whoever signed their checks certainly knew how volatile keeping clones around was, yet they still wanted to save them? He grunted at the lunacy.

  He eyed the camera again and wondered if they were considering ejecting the pod with him in it. That would be one way to stop him. The clones were too valuable to the idealists upstairs, though. At any rate, if there was any indication that Lincoln knew what he was up to, the boss hadn’t shown his hand yet. Except for locking him out of his own blasted system.

  He hammered away at his datapad, angry fingers pounding the screen. He wrote the software for these stasis pods, and the team thought they could keep him out? Lincoln should’ve known better. How many times had he proved his merit? Lincoln had never trusted him.

  Every good programmer builds themselves a back door. And just like that, Gibbs waltzed through his threshold as if he were invited. The display on the stasis pod turned blue once again. He placed his datapad on the ground and resumed navigating the pod’s display. The screen turned red once more, but this time he smiled in grim determination and looked at the pod’s inhabitant.

  She was a brunette female, in her mid-twenties. Her eyes were closed and she looked like she was in a deep sleep. Gibbs shook his head and pushed the terminate button on the red display. The woman’s hair moved almost imperceptibly as the oxygen was removed from the pod. Her eyes never opened as her chest began to heave and constrict. After a moment, her body began to tremor as the muscles throughout her body strained for every last atom of oxygen.

  Gibbs watched as her body finally settled and the machine went silent. He picked up his datapad and stalked to the next cylinder.

  Day 363 - 09:44

  Lincoln stepped off the lift and strode toward the large storage room. He tightened his grip on the cold weapon in his hand. He entered the dimly lit room full of stasis pods, surveying the situation. His eyes fell on the pod toward the far end of the room, blood a dark stain visible inside the dark cylinder.

  He scanned the rest of the room, his breath falling heavy with anger. His hand trembled more and more as his eyes found each lifeless clone inside their stasis pods. Glass coffins littering the expanse.

  A blur came from his left and he found himself on the ground, a large body on top of him. Gibbs. Lincoln’s gun hit the metal floor with a loud clang and slid under one of the pods. Before Lincoln could make a grab for it, the large programmer punched him hard in the side of the head. There was a sickening crack at the impact.

  “Ow!” Gibbs yelped and rolled off him. “Screw you!” Gibbs grabbed his hand and winced in pain.

  “You idiot.” Lincoln rubbed his head where the programmer struck him and cursed. “Have you ever even been in a fight?”

  “Yeah, they don’t teach you how to hit people in computer science. You should know that,” Gibbs said through a grimace, holding his broken knuckles. He stood up and squared up to Lincoln. “I’m not going to let you stop me.”

  “Come on, Gibbs.” Lincoln shook his head. Gibbs had lost it. Lincoln needed to keep the man talking so he could get to his gun. “Don’t be stupid.”

  “They all deserve to die. They’re animals.”

  “How many subjects have you terminated, Gibbs?”

  “Not enough. There’s still a few left. Including that dog Fuller has as a pet in the infirmary,” Gibbs said with an inhuman coldness.

  “Surely you can’t believe what you’re saying.” Lincoln stepped to the side, toward his weapon. “I mean, look at them. They’re flesh and blood, Gibbs. They’re just like us.”

  “They’re nothing like us, and you know it. They’re glorified service animals. They have been trained, programmed, and conditioned for one purpose: to kill us all. How can you stand by and wait for them to squeeze the life out of humanity?”

  “You’re irrational.” He continued to make his way toward his gun, under the pod to his right. “This morning, when Keri and I found you down here. What did you say to that one? The clone you shot?”

  “I wanted to see if maybe our illustrious doctor was right. I woke up a clone from one of the colony attacks. I wanted to ask him if he wanted to kill people. I asked him if he was sorry.”

  “And what did he say?”

  “He said he didn’t know what I wanted from him. He said he didn’t understand why he should feel sorry for defending himself.” Gibbs’ voice cracked with some emotion between rage and sadness. “Can you believe? He thought he was defending himself against us. While he was killing our people. They’re animals, Lincoln, can’t you see that?”

  “They’re confused.” Lincoln held his hands out. “They were raised in a test tube and implanted with memories. They’re out of time and out of place, don’t know why they are here. They’re only following what they know, and following orders.”

  “Yea, right.” Gibbs stepped behind the closest pod and keyed the display with his good hand. “You have to decide, oh noble knight: are their lives worth killing me over?”

  “Gibbs, stop.”

  “Yeah? Make me.” Gibbs bent over and picked the gun up from underneath the pod with his good hand. “Looking for this?”

  “Gibbs, you don’t have to do this,” Lincoln s
aid firmly.

  “You don’t get to make demands when I have this.” Gibbs waved the gun around. “I’m no southpaw, but I think we’re close enough for me to get this to work.” He raised the gun and pointed it at Lincoln’s head.

  Day 363 - 09:46

  “This is fascinating,” Emily Shepherd said excitedly. She studied the chaotic diagnostic screens monitoring the clone as he gained consciousness. “I mean, now that I know what to look for, it’s almost obvious. Dr. Fuller is clever. Look at these patterns here.” She pointed to the screen at a series of jagged lines.

  “Emily, I have no idea what any of this means.” Edward shook his head and squinted at the screen. “But I’ll take your word for it.”

  “Oh. Right. Well, it’s pretty interesting anyway.” Emily sat back down, deflated, and considered the screens.

  “Have you figured out any way to use that information, Emily?” Keri asked. “Can we talk to them? Reprogram them?”

  “You know, I think Damien brought up some great points about that,” Edward interjected. “They are people. Instead of reprogramming them, what’s to stop us from broadwaving the truth to them, and letting them decide?”

  “That’s actually not a bad idea.” Emily turned from the monitors to face Edward and Keri, chewing on a pen, happy to have something else to be excited about. “Now that we know some of the differences in their brain function, we can impress the full weight of the truth upon them. We wouldn’t be reprogramming them, per se, but we would be allowing them to experience the truth in a very real way.”

  “Okay, say we do this, what kind of conversion do you think we could see?” Keri wore skeptical eyes. She was a pragmatist through and through, and Emily liked that about her.

  “Impossible to say, really,” Emily responded. “We would likely experience results from all over the spectrum. Some would be quite receptive, some might deny it and claim that we were brainwashing. Still others may go mad trying to battle the discordant feelings pushing on their minds.”