Breaking the Chain

By: Ben Bielert

I rested my head against the vizpanel and watched the world as it whipped by outside. I told myself I’d never come back to this shithole of a planet, but I must have lied. The magrail cart raced along at speeds so great I would be vaporized in seconds if it lost the track. Inside, despite the illusion of translucent walls, I felt like we were hardly moving at all. I could never sleep in a vehicle with vizpanels; I wished I could turn the goddamn things off. There wasn’t much to see anyway. Mars is a fucking wasteland. Rusty brown and red soil as far as the eye can see. If you get lucky there’s a hill or a mountain to break up the monotony, sometimes a ravine.

God, I hated that place, still do. But then it wasn’t my choice to come back.

I received the news of my homecoming in the living room of my apartment on Eden 3, covering my nakedness, water dripping down my legs and onto the rug. I don’t usually make it a habit of answering video calls naked, but there were a few things in the view of my camera that I didn’t want my predecessor to see. I’d have just let the thing ring, but I’d done that twice before. After the third attempt by your predecessor to contact you, they just patch them through whether you want them to or not.

Some things are eternal; your predecessor being able to get a hold of you anywhere in the universe is the new incarnation of the intrusive and needy mother. Our progenitor used to catch hell from his mother if he forgot to call her. I wouldn’t know, personally. I never had a mother to sing me to bed or make me chicken noodle soup when I was sick. All I had were the progenitor’s time-stained memories, scrubbed and remastered to make them good as new every generation. All this really did was give them an inauthentic feeling, like it was some corny setup show.

“The people you are seeing are all actors. These are dramatizations of real events.”

All I had were these shiny cellophane memories of a real childhood, those and a predecessor who was at that moment staring at me disapprovingly through a viewscreen as I dripped water on my carpet and tried to cover myself from the waist down with a towel.

My predecessor looks how one might expect, exactly like me except for being thirty years my senior, an inch shorter, and having blue eyes to my hazel ones.

“You aren’t an easy man to get a hold of,” he said.

“Well, you know, travelling the known cosmos, experiencing all I can first-hand… I’m sure it makes it hard to know where to send my birthday card.”

“Funny,” he said, his features not betraying even the slightest hint of amusement. “You always did have a sense of humour.”

I turned around and scooped up the pills of Anthrozam off my coffee table. “And oddly, you never did. Really makes me wonder exactly what they tweaked between you and me.”

“Much, it would seem.” He said dryly.

“Look, you can keep talking,” I said, going into my room to grab clothes. “I can hear you.”

“I’ll wait.”

I came back a few minutes later, fully dressed. “Okay, that’s better. I mean, it’s nothing you haven’t seen but…”

“I’m recalling you,” he said.

“Recalling?” My breath caught in my throat. I managed to ask, “what for?”

“We need to talk.” He said, finally looking the slightest bit amused at my discomfort.

“Aren’t we talking now?”

“In person would be better.”

“I’m pretty busy with everything right now. I mean, a jump all the way back to Mars will take weeks, maybe even a month depending on subspace trajectories. I was planning on finishing up here on Eden 3, and then—”

“Spending another three months on another paradise world doing whatever you please?”

“And then completing the Eden class with Eden 4 and moving onto the Olympus planets. Fascinating class, unbelievably mountainous, but they’ve developed the most incredible forms of life to compensate.”

“Fascinating, I’m sure,” he said, dryly.

I smiled. “These are all valuable memories and valuable knowledge and data. Think of how well-versed the next generation will be on close-range exoplanets.”

“Yes, I’m sure your ‘work’ is quite valuable to the lineage. You can resume it after you come home,” he said.

The Anthrozam was starting to kick in; it wasn’t like I could put those shiny red beauties away without having one. “Fine, fine. Look, I’ve got some stuff going on here right now, could I wait a week?”

“I want you on the first subspace liner tomorrow morning.”

“What if the trajectories work out better for a delay?”

“Tomorrow,” he said with finality, and the screen flicked off.

So, there I was. Two weeks later, sitting on a shitty magrail cart and on my way to his, our… whatever, the mining colony in the Lunae Paloae. I remember when the progenitor started our Mars colonies, what it felt like to be the first to break ground here. The promise, the excitement. It was a different age. Back then there was a tremendous promise for what Mars would become. We were going to terraform it, we said, they said. That was before they figured out the subspace gates. After that, there was no point in growing vegetation on a lifeless sphere. They still mine it for minerals, but Mars is always going to be a frozen desert. There’s just no money to be made in pissing resources into it when there are so many worlds out there already teeming with life.

By the time the cart pulled into the station, I was really hoping that it would derail to spare me from our impending reunion. There was only one other passenger on the cart, and it was just a Joe Repeated Archetype. Most of the workers on a planet like Mars were RAs, clones that were considered less than human. Unlike scions like me, where only one copy was made and maybe a backup or two that were left in stasis, the RAs were based on a useful original and then made in the thousands, sometimes millions, and shipped around the universe wherever they were needed.

Joe RAs are a dime a dozen, cheap and effective workers. This one looked like a Joe II.  Naturally born workers were edged out by RAs several lifetimes ago, in the predecessor of my predecessor’s time the idea to mass produce specialized clones became wildly popular. At first, there were a few different companies, but one rose above all the rest, Parthenotech. Their archetypes proved to be the best. Well programmed to be competent, but also with docility and servitude worked right into their memory banks. The average worker just couldn’t compete with a clone that came pre-programmed for a job and was happy and servile.

“Where are you headed to?” I called to the Joe II.

Slowly, he turned to me. He blinked and spoke thickly. “I am going to my job at the factory.” The Joe replied.

“How about you forget about that, and we go grab a drink?” I offered.

“No, I must report to my shift.” He said, and he looked ahead again.

I didn’t feel bad about my wish for immediate death. It didn’t matter if that Joe died, he probably never even really lived.

I got off the cart in a hurry. A giant dome loomed overhead, encasing the sixteen-by-sixteen city blocks that made up the colony. Behind me and in the distance there hung two hazy curtains over the two breaks in the dome where atmospheric shields allowed the passage of the carts and other vehicles, but kept the area sealed off from the Martian air outside. Everything in LP colony was so industrial, so practical. It was exactly how I remembered it. The buildings were hard steel, built exactly as they needed to be to accommodate their purpose. There were no statues, no unnecessary ornamentation, and the closest thing to art I could see were advertisements. Even though some Martian colonies utilized their terradomes to grow all sorts of plants, LP colony didn’t. They grew mostly genetically modified crops in condensed hydroponics facilities. I saw two bushes in the entire colony as I walked to my childhood home.

The house hadn’t changed a bit, completely like every other habitation dwelling in LP colony.

I once asked my predecessor why we didn’t have a bigger house. “We own this and half the other colonies on this planet—we should live in a palace,” I argued.

“That’s impractical,” he said, with a look of disgust. “Really, you shouldn’t be so frivolous with money.”

Obviously, his attitude hadn’t changed. I couldn’t blame him though; mine hadn’t either. I wouldn’t be living in that rusted-out old habitation unit if I oversaw the lineage resources. Hell, I didn’t even have control of the resources and I still refused to live in that hovel. I guess if we had one thing in common it’s that we stick to our convictions, even if those convictions were completely opposite.

I pressed the button for the buzzer and waited.

A woman’s voice answered from the intercom unit onside the door. “Who is it?”

“Simon,” I said, “er, Simon Crenshaw the Fifth.”

“Ah yes, young Master Crenshaw, of course. Come in, please.” There was a two-note chime and the door locks released. The door slid to the right, concealing itself in the wall.

I crossed the threshold, and the drab interior greeted me, unchanged as though it were a museum of monotony. The doors closed silently behind me. In the entryway, there was a small alcove for coats and shoes and things. I didn’t bother to take anything I was wearing off and I stepped inside. The entryway led into a central hall. Although everything was drab and old, it was very clean. To my right, there was a set of stairs leading to the next storey, to my left there was a common room of sorts, and at the end of the hallway, there was a door that led to the back of the house, where I knew there was a modest kitchen and storage room. Bedrooms were upstairs, three in total.

I was startled by a voice saying “Hello.” I looked up and there was a young woman standing on the stairs. She must have been the woman I spoke to on the intercom.

“Hello… miss?”

She was curvy, but it wasn’t obvious under her grey suit and knee-length skirt. She had blonde hair, pulled back into a ponytail, and full lips. I knew right away that she was an RA, but I was surprised that my predecessor sprung for a model with looks.

“Sherry,” she said, “I’ve worked for your predecessor for the last two years.”

“What happened to Debbie?” I asked, eyebrow raised.

“Debbie was getting old. She needed a replacement,” Sherry said.

“I see. Just out of curiosity, was there not an updated Debbie model?”

“There was, but he opted for me,” she said, coming down the stairs.

She was beautiful, with perfect bone structure. High cheeks, blue eyes. “Tell me, Sherry, why do you think that was?”

“The Sherry line has better interpersonal skills training,” she said. “Ever since we started investment on the Titan expeditions, there has been a far greater need for networking and regular meetings with other CEOs. The Crenshaw group required an assistant who could handle these new duties. I should take you to see Mr. Crenshaw.”

“In a second,” I said. “Are conference calls and social networking your only interpersonal duties, Sherry?”

She flushed. “I… I have many duties.”

“Stop harassing the girl, Five.” I turned to the direction the voice was coming from. It was my predecessor, standing at the top of the stairs and watching me intently.

“Quatro!” I said, knowing full well he hated the nickname. “Oh, come now, I’m sure she’s used to a little harassment.”

“Sir,” Sherry said, shifting her stance, “I would have brought him to see you.”

“It’s quite all right, Sherry,” Simon Crenshaw IV said, walking down the stairs and stopping in front of the two of us. “My scion can be a handful at times. If you aren’t direct with him, he can be elusive, not your fault at all. You may leave us.”

She nodded her head, looking at me and then him before turning and starting up the stairs.

“Nice upgrade,” I said, smirking.

He gestured towards the common room and we both headed for it. “Debbie had been in our service for over thirty years, it was time.”

“I bet it was,” I said, still grinning.

The common room, like the rest of the house, was small and cramped. The furniture was at least as old as I was, some pieces older. Two worn, once-plush chairs roughly faced each other with a coffee table between, a heater sat along one wall and made a soft hum as it spewed out stale, warm air, along the opposing wall to the heater there was a sagging couch.

“Whatever you think is going on here, it is only because that is what you would do, not what I would do.” He sat in the large armchair that once belonged to his forebear, and steepled his fingers.

I flopped down on a chair on the other side of the room, but not before dragging it into position so I was facing him head-on. “C’mon, Quatro, we both know that there’s not that much of a difference between us.”

“Agree to disagree,” he said, sitting back in his seat and placing one hand on his armrest and the other poised at his chin.

“Well, as nice as these little heart-to-hearts of ours are, I have a hard time believing you called me here to bicker,” I said.

“Astute as ever,” he said, straightening up in his seat. “And quite to the point. It is no mystery to either of us that you will not be taking over the management of our Martian colonies as my replacement.”

“No,” I said, and I picked up an old copy of Brave New World off the table and started leafing through it. The spine of the book was barely holding together, I was surprised the yellowed and creased pages didn’t fall out. “I believe the way you once put it was, ‘Your contribution will be the uniqueness of your experience, not your management of our affairs.’”

He chuckled softly, watching me. “Quite right, and I think to the best interest of everyone involved, yourself included.”

“I get it,” I said, and I toss the worn paperback onto the little table. “I’m your Daytona Beach, spring break. The 1960s. The equivalent of an experimental phase in college. I’m not the kind of girl you bring home to mother.”

He gave a little snort of derision. “I wouldn’t put it so crudely, but yes. Your NEUR6 modification… it doesn’t lend itself well to the glamorous life of conglomerate management.” There was a Kylaxian sphere on the table, a sort of puzzle that is supposedly a good way to exercise the logical processes of the mind. It’s a child’s toy, really, akin to a Rubik’s cube. He picked it up and turned the central ring, lining-up several symbols that ran along the middle of the metal ball.

I smiled grimly. “NEUR6, right. One tweak to one gene that affects learning, and bam. I’m defective. My great shame, isn’t it, Four?”

I wasn’t sure if he even heard me as he continued playing with the sphere. Finally, he answered me, softly. “It makes you a liability to the welfare of the lineage.”

“It makes me smarter than you and you don’t want to admit it,” I said.

There was a satisfying click as he solved the central rings of the sphere. “In some ways perhaps, but not in those that we value,” he replied coolly.

“I speak 16 languages, how many do you speak again? Oh, that’s right, a paltry four.” I sneered. His eyes flitted up from the sphere and he tried to speak, but I cut him off, raising my voice. “As I recall, you would only speak one language if it were based on your personal achievements. I’ve earned doctorates in Quantum Mechanics, Xenobiology, Xenogeology, and Subspacedynamics. Three doctorates I inherited, four doctorates I earned. I don’t think you’ve earned any, Quatro. I earned more than all of you put together. No need for me to stand on the shoulders of giants.”

“Impressive,” he said. In all honesty, he looked bored with me. He examined the sphere. He rotated the lower part of the sphere gently and there was another satisfying click. “Your pride and arrogance don’t make you any better of a candidate to take over the lineage.”

“What would? Being another living robot like you?” I asked, my voice a snarl. I got to my feet; I just couldn’t sit anymore. “Maybe a freshly minted version with a tweak more in line to be the will of the progenitor?”

Sherry poked her head through the entryway of the common room. “Is everything okay?”

“It’s fine, Sherry. Leave us, and please don’t come back unless you’re summoned,” he said. She looked uncertain for a moment but went when he shot her a withering look. “The modification to NEUR6 does make you smart, that’s true, Five. It also makes you unstable, emotional, and impulsive. Tell me, when was the last time you took a long ride on the Anthrotram?”

The expression is one used mostly only by users of Anthrozam, it’s slang for having an Anthro binge. He continued to poke and prod the Kylaxian sphere, but I saw him sneak a look at me as he worked away at the little puzzle. Undoubtedly, he was gauging my reaction, waiting for me to try to deny it.

I didn’t give him the satisfaction. I clenched my fists, wanting nothing more than to send them crashing into his placid face. I took a deep breath and paced the length of the room, running my fingers through my hair. “So, what, you brought me here to remind me that you aren’t going to leave me in charge?”

“You already knew that,” he said.  “I brought you here because it’s time for retirement.”

The ground felt like it dropped out from under me. Retirement? At this point?

“I’m only 24,” I said.

His eyes met mine. “Yes, and it’s thought that you’ve learnt much but that a memory upload at this point and a fresh scion might be the best approach.”

“You want to limit my influence,” I said, hollowly. I walked back over to my chair and slumped down. Anything less than 27 years is an insult, an option reserved for the deranged, defective, and damaged.

“We just think you would enjoy your freedom.” He said, there was a final click and then a hum. For a moment the sphere glowed. “If you upload now, you can do whatever you please, go as far as you want. You’ll never have to come back to Mars again.”

“And you don’t have to worry about me fucking up the memory core anymore. Why don’t you just skip over me, upload yourself again, and try a Simon Crenshaw V, mark II?”

He set the sphere on the table and smiled, only slightly. “Come now, Five. We both know that’s not how it works. I’ve uploaded once, I picked my save point. No take backs, the neuromap isn’t without its risks, but it gets exponentially more dangerous every time. Besides, you DO speak 16 languages, and you’ve earned four doctorates I never had. You are brilliant, and you’ve learnt a lot… nobody’s denying that.”

“I’ve got it,” I said through gritted teeth, “you like the hard-drive, you just want a new processor. This one is defective.”

He steepled his fingers again and regarded me over their tips. “Not defective, just not well-suited for the task at hand. You don’t want my life, and I can’t blame you. You aren’t built for it. There’s nothing wrong with that, but it’s time to pass the torch. We’re prepared to offer you a generous sum, and a yearly stipend to support your lifestyle.”

“And if I say no?”

He shook his head and sighed heavily. “I really hope it doesn’t come to that. We’ll disown you, and we’ll be forced to use my outdated upload. I will not speak a word of you to the new scion, and I will name him Simon Crenshaw V. If you do not cooperate, it will be as though you never existed.”

“You can’t do this,” I said, but I knew he could. “I have a right to be acknowledged. I have a right to a portion of our earnings—I’m as much you as you and then some.”

“You are being acknowledged, and you are being awarded a portion of our earnings. Just because you don’t like the acknowledgement or the award, doesn’t mean they don’t exist. As for you being more me than me, are you? I am closer in temperament to the three Simon Crenshaws that came before me. You may have our collective memories, but you’re a one-off, Five. If there is a me—and really, it’s more of an us—then I am truer to form than you can ever hope to be. Take the deal, son.”

“Don’t call me that, you’re no father,” I spat.

“There’s that temper again. Look, Five, think this over.” He was putting on the part of the negotiator now, handling me. “You don’t have to answer me today.”

“My answer will be the same on any day,” I said. I rose from my seat again. “Get bent.”

He got up too, but I had begun pacing restlessly like a caged animal, he remained still as a statue. “This is the best you could hope for, Five. You never have to come back to this barren mess. Never have to put up with me.”

“A consolation to be sure,” I said, glowering at him.

“Listen,” he said gently, “you don’t want this.” He gestured to everything around us, and I couldn’t help but cast a disdainful gaze about “You just can’t stand the idea of someone else having it. Last month you wouldn’t even so much as answer my phone calls.”

I walked the length of the room twice, back and forth, raking my fingers through my hair. “You can’t punish me for not answering your calls.”

“It’s not a punishment, Five, it’s a mercy.” He said, and he dared a gentle smile. “Think about it.”

I shook my head and glared at him.

He sighed. “It’s been a long trip, get some rest. We’ll talk about it in the morning. Sherry!”

In seconds, the perfectly symmetrical face of the personal assistant RA popped around the corner. “Yes, Mr. Crenshaw?”

“Please escort my scion to his room.” He said, gesturing towards me.

“Yes, Mr. Crenshaw,” she said, and she started toward me.

Before she could close the distance, I was already brushing past her. “I know the way.”

My predecessor looked angry, and Sherry looked shocked, but neither followed or tried to stop me as I hurried up the stairs and headed to my old room.

***

Little had changed in the room; the basic furnishings were still there; a thin mattress overtop a steel bedframe, a dresser lined one wall, and tucked into the far corner there was a simple desk. Any decoration I adorned the walls with had been stripped away so that the place was once again as dreary as the rest of the house.

In the privacy of my own room, I opened my stash compartment. The little space was no more than 3”x3”, but it can fit more than 30 Anthrozam pills in it. It also just so happens to be in my gut. When closed, the compartment is virtually undetectable and can get through gate customs no problem. The surgery cost a few thousand credits, and if anything had gone wrong, like an infection or rejection, I would have been screwed. Having a stash compartment is an indication of guilt, so most people would rather suffer through their body rejecting it or die of infection before seeking help. Sure, you can go to the back alley docs who install it as a hail Mary, but they’re not exactly experts at installing them let alone fixing one gone awry. But that’s what happens if things go wrong. If all goes well, you have a fully concealed compartment that you can put absolutely anything into. I got lucky, everything went well with mine.

I made sure the locks on my door are activated, and I tipped three of the shiny red pills into my mouth. They crashed over my tongue and slid down my esophagus. I felt them all the way down. I hadn’t eaten since before the magrail cart, 6 hours previous. The drugs were going to hit me fast, and I knew it.

It wasn’t long before my surroundings and my thoughts melded together. Shapes and ideas both cascaded over each other and into one another. It’s said that Anthrozam is so named because it’s taken directly from people. They extract it directly from the engorged pineal glands of a line of RAs that are specifically engineered for the purpose. The world around me morphed and changed, but I wasn’t troubled by it. As always with the old human drug, a strange calm came over me, a sort of disembodied tranquility.

The lights in my room grew dimmer and then brighter, and then they were moving. They were forming all sorts of patterns.

The patterns started to form images, bubbling to the surface like a picture rising from the depth of a pool of bright and swirling liquid. I saw a man sitting in a chair, hooked up to a machine.

Let them take my memories and upload them into a biological robot, programmed to be exactly how they want him to be.

Let them rob me of my birthright and the better part of a fortune that should be mine.

A snake appeared and struck the man in the chair, and he writhed in pain.

I don’t need them.

The lights were moving, morphing, changing.

For a moment I wondered if this isn’t really the best thing. Shouldn’t I be happy? They’d have what they want, and I’d have what I want.

Who’s to say which way is the better way? Enjoy life now had always been my philosophy. Saving day in and day out, for what? To live in the same shit heap, invest your money in making more money, and for what?

Fuck you, Quatro. Fuck the whole lot of you, One through Four. You’re too much of a prude to even fuck your hot secretary.

The lights were dancing now and forming shapes of animals upon the walls. The ark of Noah, animals being led two by two. Two by two, meant to breed, meant to mate, to create new combinations. That’s the way it was intended. The scene with the ark plays over and over, a copy of a copy of a copy.

I felt a pang of sadness, not for myself, but for my scion, destined to be raised by Four, taught always to thirst but never how to slake it. The ceaseless seeking of wealth, but the reluctance to ever use it. Greed for greed’s sake. He could terraform Mars, make it a paradise like we used to talk about, an Eden on the back of the God of War, but that would be deemed a frivolous use of his money.

I saw the long line of Simon Crenshaw behind me, I looked back at their disapproving faces. The ark was sailing away, and the rains were coming. There was an infant bundled in front of me and I picked him up so the water wouldn’t wash him away.

I’ve been the only unique or authentic creature since the progenitor. The rest are just facsimiles of replicas. Someday, Simon VI is going to think back to these memories, is going to remember all that I understand, and he’s going to know that his life is the reflection of an echo, a repeat of a story that was tired three lifetimes ago. He’ll wish he could feel as alive as I do, but he won’t, and he won’t ever be able to fix it. I feel guilty for the poor bastard; he didn’t ask to be created by these narcissistic megalomaniacs. He won’t even have the defect in his brain chemistry that gives him an iota of free will.

I lifted the child over the water, but it continued to rise. It was washing over the both of us and I was trying to swim but without my arms, I couldn’t. I had to let him go.

I can’t fight against the rising tide of the will of the others. I can’t rise against my lineage. My only hope is to escape it, and maybe leave some imprint there.

The image of Eden—not Eden 3 or any of the paradise planets, but the biblical Eden—danced before my eyes. I saw Adam, the first man, reaching for the red flesh of the apple. He took his bite, and the choice was wrong, but he still had the choice to make. Were all of us damned by that choice thereafter?  

Do any of us truly have free will or has everything just been predetermined?

No. I still have a choice to make. What choice will I make? Which one is right? If you never leave a record, if there is no trace of you, then did you exist? Will I choose my legacy over my progeny, sell him into slavery so I can avoid total annihilation? Will he understand why I made my choice? If I remove myself from the line, that what hope is there for him? What hope is there for any of us? Maybe this way, someday, we might end up breaking the chain.

The world spun, and I saw the faces of all the predecessors and the progenitor floating around me, laughing, laughing.

***

I woke up wrapped in my sheet and lying on the floor. My head hurt, and my mouth was dry. That wasn’t my first Anthro hangover, but it would likely be Simon VI’s last.

Breakfast was simple, a slice of synth-grapefruit, coffee, nutrawafers. I drank ample water, but even still the thin, calorically dense crackers were like swallowing a mouthful of sawdust. They broke down readily but still clogged my throat as I tried to swallow. I drank mouthful after mouthful of water and coffee to choke them down. Simon IV watched me from the other side of the dining table but said nothing as I ate.

When I finished, he spoke. “I trust you slept well.”

“It was okay. I had a lot to think over.” 

“I’m certain you did,” he said.

“I’ve decided to take the deal,” I said.

He smiled broadly, the proverbial cat who has eaten the canary. “Very good, I knew you’d make the right decision.”

“I’m still not sure it is, or that there is a right decision,” I said quietly.

“Well, I knew you’d make the decision I wanted you to,” he said.

I should have told him that he’s a bastard or cursed him out—he deserves it—but he didn’t care. It would have been a waste of breath. The time for protests had passed.

 Already he was busy with the preparations, pushing a contract in front of me to sign, calling Sherry in and telling her to arrange the upload. I’m sorry, I thought, as I signed the triplicate pages in front of me. My scion will know that I regretted this before it was even done. He would likely come to hate me most of all. I felt numb.

The rest of the day passed quickly, and before I knew it, I was being marched through LP colony. Simon IV, Sherry, and two gruff-looking Bruno RAs escorted me along to the Anthroinformatics and Neuro-Mapping Facility, owned by none other than Parthenotech. The building was three storeys that housed an impressive host of labs and servers creating a facility that could serve all one’s cloning needs. From the outside, the ANMF looks just like any of the lifeless buildings in LP, but I knew what awaited me inside. I drudged inside like a prisoner heading to the hangman’s noose.

The average human life consists of about 50 terabytes of information. When uploading and giving information to a new generation, these 50 terabytes normally contain about 10 terabytes that are universal, i.e. what the colour blue looks like, or how to walk and run, things like that. That means that subsequent clone generations will add, on average, 40 terabytes. My initial download, when I was still a squalling infant, was 180 terabytes.

Well before my pudgy and untrained legs could walk, I was well-aware of how to run and jump. My vocal chords were not developed enough, nor my tongue dexterous enough to speak, but if they were I could have spoken a countless number of words in four languages. My eyes could not focus, could hardly make out distinct shapes and colours, but I was aware of the work of Raphael, Rembrandt, and Vermeer.

 When the dull metallic doors of the ANM Facility glide open, there was a small, mousey man with thinning brown hair standing there. He was rubbing his hands together incessantly; I recognize this nervous tic as one common to the Don line of RAs. Judging by his slouching posture, pocked complexion, and broad physique, I would guess this is a Don III, a line I always thought of as “Donnys”.

“Hello, Mr. Crenshaw,” he said, addressing Simon IV, then turning to me, “and, Mr. Crenshaw.” He grinned at his own half-joke.

“Hello, Donald,” Simon IV said, smiling congenially.

“You managed to get him to sign the release?” The Donny’s eyes passed over me quickly and then flicked back to my predecessor.

“Oh yes, we managed to reach an agreement, didn’t we, Five?” Simon IV said, still smiling.

“Yes,” I replied. I wouldn’t say any more; I refused to give him the satisfaction. He was openly gloating now. Even if I said no at that point, with the forms I’d signed, they could force me to do the neuromap, and I had no doubt they would. Those Brunos weren’t just for decoration. Four had no use for decoration.

“Donald will show you to the upload chamber, Five. You’ll need to be anesthetized for them to put the interface in,” Four said, putting his hand up to the back of his neck for a moment. He realized what he was doing, fingering at the scar from the stint to his brainstem, and he lowered his hand. With a hint of embarrassment, he looked away from me.

“This way, please,” The Donny RA said, smiling with crooked teeth. I followed him.

Our footsteps clacked and echoed as we walked down a long hallway to the upload chamber. Behind us, the Brunos followed at a close distance. Sherry and my predecessor had hung back. As we walked, I wondered idly what the first Bruno and Don were like. Was the original Don as ugly as they made him, or did they tweak that? Modifying it so that it suited his social status? Was there ever even a real Don, or did they start with an attractive scientist named Jim or something that they gradually made more and more like this unassuming version? Were these RAs walking amongst me true to form, or were they outliers like me?

“You know,” the Donny RA said, “you’re the first success anyone’s had with the NEUR6 modification.”

“Always dreamed of being a success,” I replied.

“I’m serious,” he went on, “normally they go crazy, or commit suicide, or just flat out refuse to sign the upload release. They’re brilliant one and all, but most just aren’t willing to play ball.”

“So, I’m the sellout version. Great to know,” I said, still feeling sorry for myself.

“No no, I’m not saying that at all,” he said, suddenly aghast. I could almost see his internal struggle, his eyes darting about while looking down as he weighed what would happen if the word got back that he was the one who fucked all this up. “I’m just trying to say that…”

“Don, don’t worry. I get it. I’m not about to refuse the mapping. I signed the release, didn’t I?”

The Brunos were still waiting nearby, just waiting for me to try to run. They showed no sign of interest in our conversation, but I had no doubt they were listening intently. I knew detaining me would have been the most exciting thing that happened to them all month.

He chuckled a little. “Yeah, I guess you did.”

“I’m committed to this thing, for better or for worse. So, let’s get that stint in. I’ve been through this four times before; I know what to expect. I know what I agreed to. Get that stint in, get what you need, and let me get out of here. I don’t want to talk about it. I don’t want to make any chit-chat at all, to be honest. Let’s just get this done.”

And he did. He knew what he was doing; it was built right into his DNA. He punched that digital stint into my brainstem, and there was a hot, blinding pain that was almost too much, even with the anesthesia. Somehow, I endured without screaming or sobbing and within the hour I was hooked up and they were downloading the full pull of my mental data. The Donny delighted in telling me that it weighed in at 240 terabytes grand total. I surrendered that little gem, and I wish I could say I felt something more, but I didn’t. I was numb, a man resigned to his fate, and I knew what I was signing up for as soon as I surrendered to Quatro over breakfast.

***

I left that horrible place like a nun leaving her lover. I didn’t return to my ancestral home; it didn’t matter anymore. I left a forwarding address and caught the first magrail out. Before the week was through, I was on Olympus II. I skipped the first because the second was on the farthest reaches of known space.

I buried all thought of that place; I forced myself not to think of what I’d done. I lived the next six years of my life on the Olympus and Eden planets, and after that, I travelled about the cosmos for a decade and a half in a small schooner that I won in a game of Baccarat and named the Five Alive. I avoided Mars like the plague and heard little from home except for the constant flow of credits into my personal account, my blood money, the stipend I bought with my integrity. I discovered several different systems and even created a new planetary designation, so I suppose word got out. No word came from home. I told myself I was happy not hearing from my predecessor or my scion. Nothing was all I want to hear from back home.

The Five Alive was destroyed by Aldasian raiders—luckily, I managed to get away in an escape pod. I ended up on a desert planet for a few months. To say it was rough would be a gross understatement. I’ll spare you the gory details, but it changed me.

I finally got in contact with my people and arranged transport, and well, long story short, for the next eight years I lived on the moon of a gas giant that’s about the same size as Earth. The moon is called Callipso, and it’s a beautiful paradise planet with a constantly warm and tropical climate and mostly flat topography. I bought a little ranch there, finally sick of travelling, and I decided I wouldwile away my remaining days alone and in obscurity. That’s where I still am today.

And then, the unthinkable happened.

***

One morning I was outside collecting the ripe dewmelons from my garden. I only really grew enough for myself and to share with a couple of my neighbours, but they needed to be picked as soon as they were ripe. While I was plucking one particularly juicy melon from the vine, I heard the distinctive whine of an approaching ship, and I began to scan the skies for the source of the noise. There, far above, was a fleck of silver that I watched grow larger and larger until I was certain it was a ship that was quickly approaching my patch of land.

The ship was a large and boxy thing, several times larger than the Five Alive was, but not even half as sleek. It hovered to a spot that was bare of buildings, crops, or animals and gently set down on the earth with a “thwump”.

My small herd of Grabblebuffs guffawed and ran to the far end of the meadow.

A platform extended from the ship and hit the ground hard enough to dig into the soft soil. I looked at the sunken landing gears and the platform with distaste and then peered up for the face of this intruder. A panel opened above the platform, revealing the legs of a figure. When the panel finally rose above the head of the figure, I took a deep breath. I was expecting Quatro, and he looked a good deal like him, but he was younger, taller, and better-looking than Quatro. He looked a little like me, but he was again younger, taller, and better-looking than me as well.

Immediately, I thought the worst of why he had come to my Podunk little world. I looked about frantically. I had a phase pistol in my bedroom but only tools out in the field. Would the ion tiller work if I could get close enough?

I made a break for the house.

“Relax, Simon,” he called. “Relax, my predecessor. I’m not here to hurt you.”

I slowed a little, eyeing him and moving so that my pneumacycle was between him and me. He was still standing at the top of the ramp and holding his hands in the air. That meant nothing—someone must have been piloting the ship from the inside and they could target me with the ship’s lasers even where I was standing. On the other hand, that also meant that as they were landing, they could have blasted me. I was somehow calmed by the thought that if they wanted me dead, I already would be.

“What do you want?” I called.

“To talk, just to talk, and to make you an offer.”

I snorted. “The last time one of you made me an offer it didn’t work out so well for me.”

“I know, I remember,” he said with a grim smile. “Number Four died, you know.”

“I didn’t know that,” I said. I stepped out slightly from behind my bike. “Does that make you in charge of the lineage now?”

“It does, as a matter of fact. I’m a little different than him, Five. I remember what it was like to be you, after all,” Simon XI said, and he began to walk slowly down the ramp.

“Is that a good thing or a bad thing?” I asked.

He walked to the end of the ramp but stopped there and held his hands out. “The blind man who has seen what red looks like knows something the man who has always been blind can never know.”

I shook my head. “What the hell are you babbling on about?”

He cracked a smile and continued approaching. “You’re just how I thought you’d be.”

I took a few tentative steps toward him, still eyeing him and his ship suspiciously. “And you’re nothing like I thought you’d be, so where does that leave us?”

We stood not ten feet apart then, and I could see the subtle ways they made him look more like Four than me. “I’m saying that I understand you, respect you, more than Four or any of the others did.”

 “Oh good, does that mean that I’m welcome back in the ancestral home? I miss those bare walls and the homey girders oh so much.” I jibed.

He smiled. “Of course, but it means something else too.” He looked back to the ship and made a “come here” motion.

Two children appeared in the opening of the ship’s side and peered at us. One child was a boy, and so like the two of us that his identity was no mystery. The other was a girl who at first only struck me as vaguely familiar.

“What is this?” I asked.

The children were young, appearing no more than four or five years old. They trundled down the ramp and trotted over until they stood in front of us. “You mean who are they, Five. This is my scion, however, he’s been gifted with a NEUR7 modification, more stable but with many of the same benefits as the NEUR6. I was hoping you’d spend some time with him.”

“And the other child?” I asked.

“Young Mary is a companion for little Simon. It’s been argued by experts that it is best to raise your scion with a companion to ensure less sociopathic tendencies.  She’s a customized Sherry, slightly tweaked and upgraded in several ways. She also has a neural upload to give her a wider knowledge base and make her a reasonable companion.”

“You couldn’t have called?” I asked with a grin.

“Would you have answered?” he replied. We both chuckle.

I shook my head.

“They’re my responsibility now, then?” I asked.

Simon XI nodded and tousled the hair of the young Simon XII. “They are for a time, if you want them, Five.”

I can feel all three pairs of eyes on me. “Of course,” I said.

“Good, good,” Simon XI said, clapping his hands together. “Children, go play, but mind the livestock—they may charge if they feel threatened.” The children took off towards a small pond by the side of the house.

“What’s this really about?” I asked when they are out of earshot.

He looked at me, weighing me for a moment. He said I was just like he thought I would be, but was I truly? I’m sure he had built me up to be something in his mind, and now he was seeing how his vision of me compared to the reality.

He took a deep breath. “You were right.”

I laughed a little. “About what?”

“About all of it,” he said, raking his fingers through his hair. “But mostly about the lineage. Four never knew how to take a risk. We’ve lost a lot because we never changed, but everything changes. Our companies have struggled to make a profit for the last decade, for the last twelve quarters we have had losses. I know we needed to do things differently, so I made sure Seven was different. We butt heads a lot, though.”

“History repeats,” I said. He smiled.

I peered back at my grandscion. He had caught a greb, a slippery sort of froglike creature, and it slipped through his fingers and back into the water, splashing him and Mary. The children laughed. “That’s why you need me. You need someone who can understand him.”

“I understand him, I understand you, I’m just… not like you two.”

I smiled sadly. “You think that who we are is just determined by some pre-programming?”

“Yah, I do,” he said, nodding his head assuredly. “We’re the combination of our experiences and what we come to the table with genetically.”

“Never underestimate the power of free will to fuck up that whole outlook,” I said with a grin. “We may be a combination of things, acquired baggage, be it in our genetic code or in our neuropathways, but at any time we can throw off the yoke of that programming. At any time, you can say fuck it and derail from the track that’s laid out in front of you.”

“And precisely because you think so is why he has to spend some time with you. I can’t believe that. I wish I could, but I don’t see things the way you two do. Paths are predetermined. The world is finite for me, but it’s not for the two of you.” He places his hand on my shoulder and smiles warmly at me. “Take good care of them, will you?”

***

He left the next morning, promising to be back before the next harvest, but after several years we decided we won’t be seeing him again. He sent the odd word or asked the odd question about how the children were doing, and in time they stopped being children. After fifteen years, we stopped hearing anything from back home. No word had come, no digital messages, no letters, no video messages, no transmissions, but the payments arrived in my account monthly like clockwork. Then, one day, the payment was ten times its normal size, and then the money simply stopped coming. I didn’t need to ask to know that my scion has either gone broke or died, and I didn’t raise any issues about the cessation of my allowance.

Our land is bigger now. With Seven and Mary helping me we’ve built more buildings, a second house, and managed to expand the property significantly. A team now works for us, some are escaped RAs, but we even have some who come from good old-fashioned lovemaking and babybirthing.  Near the center of civilization, it’s said, that Parthenotech hasn’t been doing so well. More and more, RAs are demanding their freedom and the general populace is pushing back against the practice of cloning. Planets like these are some of the most progressive, where families have existed for decades and Parthenotech never really got their claws in, but the powerful lineages are losing their stranglehold even on the old worlds.

We aren’t afraid of a collapse of the central economy. We are making money and can produce nearly everything we need to survive.

Simon VII and Mary were friends while they were children growing up, just the way Six had wanted. But, when they reached their teenage years, something changed. It started small at first; my grandscion spent his allowance on little things for her, baubles and treats from the traders that came about. I thought little about it at first.

Then one hot and humid day in the late Callipsan spring, Mary dropped a bracelet that Simon VII bought her inside the Grabblebuff pen, and she jumped in to retrieve it. The only problem was that the Grabblebuff recently birthed a new calf and took exception to this trespass. I came around just in time to see the Grabblebuff charging Mary, and Seven, the idiot that he is, leapt into the pen and put himself between her and the beast. He yelled and waveed his arms and at the last moment, the angry mother reared up short and snorted before running off.

I yelled at Seven, chastising him, telling him not to risk his valuable life for one so easily reproducible. He glowered at me.

“She is not easily reproducible,” he snarled. “If you ever say anything like that again, we’ll leave, and you won’t see me ever again.”

His reaction shocked me.

That summer the two often wiled away their nights staring at the starry sky, sitting on the porch and watching the celestial sprawl with their fingers intertwined. Mary’s head resting on his shoulder, the two would murmur soft words back and forth to each other that were too quiet for me to pick up what they are saying.

As they grew older, their love grew.

Now, they’re in their early twenties, and they live in the second home on the property and I have assumed the role of the elder who lives on the same homestead and sometimes visits for coffee or tea in the afternoons when all our morning chores are done.

On one such afternoon, we are sitting around drinking coffee, talking about the weather and the crops, the upcoming harvest, and sharing a spot of gossip here or there.

“Did you hear about Evan Driskall II?” Simon VII asks me.

“Yes,” I say, finishing the last spot of coffee in my cup, “trashed his predecessor’s Harvester and kept quiet about it for a week.”

Mary is up and fetching the pot before I can even set my cup down. “It would be a tough position to be in. I bet he was just waiting for the best moment to break the news,” she says as she poured me a fresh cup.

I drop two lumps of sugar into my cup and stir it gently. “With big things like that, you’re best to just come clean.”

“You think so?” Seven asks.

I lean back in my seat. “Absolutely, best to get it all out in the air, no beating around the bush. I mean, he might get disowned or replaced by his contingent, but at least he doesn’t have to live in dread and he can make an argument for being honest.”

“Well, I’m glad you think so,” Seven says.

“Don’t tell me you broke the harvester,” I say, and he and Mary both chuckle nervously. We’re sitting in their kitchen; it’s simply built and mostly made of smooth and polished wood. The floors, the countertops, even the chairs and table are made from fine Callipsan Oak that has been sanded and varnished so that it’s smooth and shiny.

“No, but we do have something to tell you,” Seven says, getting up and placing his arm around Mary’s shoulder. She put the coffeepot back but has been hovering nervously ever since. He places one arm around her shoulder, but the other he folds in front of him and places his hand on her stomach.

I narrow my eyes. “You’re not… no, there’s no way you’re…”

“Pregnant?” she asks, eyes wide and with her voice reaching a sharp pitch.

I try to speak but my mouth is too dry. I simply nod.

“Yes, she is,” Seven says. He has a look of resolve on his face. “We were never sterilized.”

Everyone in our lineage sterilized. Everyone, even me. What does this mean? We are so far from the Imperium now that we can get away with it—besides the central government and economy is collapsing. But how did this even happen? I know right away who’s handiwork it was. Seven was designed by Six, I can’t help but be a little angry and impressed.

“That son of a bitch,” I say.

“It was my idea too,” Mary says, misunderstanding who I’m talking about.

Simon VII knows who I meant. “He once told me that it was all your idea,” he says, “he told me, ‘my predecessor knew the truth, new combinations are necessary for life to remain robust, otherwise we’re just copies of copies.’” I didn’t need him to tell me that though. I remember. I remember thinking it, feeling it, knowing it to my core. I guess he took more from me than I realized.

“Then I guess this is my fault,” I say, shaking my head in disbelief.

Thin beams of sunlight shine through the window, and outside lazy clouds float through the sky. “Tell me you wouldn’t have done the same if you had been able.”

Slowly, I sip my drink and nod. “I would have.”

“Then what’s so wrong that he did?” Simon VII holds Mary at his side.

I grin and shake my head. “I just thought he was a lot more like my predecessor.”

“No, he turned out to be a lot more like his predecessor.”

“None of us are too far off, you know. We’re all just the same old same old in so many ways,” I say.

“No, but this,” he says, gently stroking Mary’s belly, “this will be something new.”