As I Stare Into The Void

There isn’t far to go now. I hear the hydraulic bay doors slide closed behind me. A quick scan of my surroundings tells me that I am alone.

I keep walking although my feet feel numb. If I stop now, I might not make it in time. I only have a limited window for my hop.

I’m waiting for the intercom message paging me to the bridge. If they haven’t found my letter yet they will soon. It may seem dumb to leave a letter if I’m hoping to avoid getting caught, but for some reason all hoppers do it. I never understood why until I became one myself.

I didn’t think I was like all the other Mod-clone hoppers who have committed suicide like this over the years, but I guess I am. Just one step out of the moving space cruiser and through the atomizer, and we are ripped apart into a stream of atoms. But it’s so much more than that. All of us are escaping from our own lives.

Panic threatens to devour me whole, as I contemplate a future lived in apathy. I can’t stay living like that -- I just can’t.

I suppose no human or Mod-clone ever expects, when life is good, to end one’s own life. When I earned my certificate as a Planetary Surveyor, I was on top of the world. I remember stepping, fresh-faced, onto the shiny metal floors of what would become my beloved ship. To the System, she was just #PS45. But like me, she was brand new, with no experience and everything to prove. So in my own mind, I christened her the Adventure. We’ve been together all these years. She knows more about me than any of my batchmates do. Isn’t it fitting that, just as she helped me live my life, she will also help me end it?

As I said, I never thought that this would be my destiny. But a Mod-clone never has to think much about their destiny. It is decided for them before they even start to grow. From the day the proctor selected the prototype for my batch, the plan was for all of us to prepare to fly away into the galaxy. All of us trained to survey unmapped territories; we were all hardwired for exploration.

My thoughts go back to the letter. After reading it they will certainly condemn me. And if they let it be known that it was I who caused this whole situation, maybe the news will even reach Earth. I see the headline in my mind as though I read it in this morning’s paper:

“EXO PLANETARY SURVEYOR RESPONSIBLE FOR CRUISER OUTBREAK.”

But the truth is, I honestly didn’t think she was dangerous. Who expects a little girl to be dangerous?

The moment I saw her on JL-908 I felt sorry for her. She was such a pitiful little being. If she were human, she would have been only about ten years old. Her small hands were cracked and dry from the heat. As my eyes passed over her body, I noticed most of the rest of her skin was in the same condition. But it wasn’t her age or condition that made me pity her. It was the scar on her arm. It was the same scar I had on my arm from being tested in the dermascanner again and again. This girl was a clone.

When I first found her, I could see the city in the distance and thought she must be lost. She wouldn’t speak but protested wildly when we started to move towards the settlement. The fear in her eyes was unmistakable, like a cornered animal looking death in the face, I thought. I didn’t know how accurate that was.

After giving the girl some food and gesturing to her to wait by the Adventure -- hoping she would understand what I meant -- I started out on my own. As I approached the outskirts of the town, there was no hum of activity that accompanies daytime activity in a colony. Even if most people were somewhere else working for the day, there should have been others here -- children and elderly people at least. But there was no one.

Was the girl alone on a deserted planet? It wasn’t so odd to find abandoned structures on a planet. Plenty of civilizations have started space colonies, only to discover that there are more profitable location options out there. But this place didn’t have the look of an abandoned settlement. There were no tumble-down buildings bereft of furnishings. Everything here looked...well, for lack of a better word, fresh.

I entered a house. It wasn’t either packed up or emptied, as I had expected. Personal belongings were in place, food was in the storage container, and there was even music playing on the entertainment unit. The music lent a ghostly quality to an already eerie atmosphere. A ran down the back of my neck.

Back at the Adventure, a quick scan of the planet revealed that the planet was in fact deserted. Perhaps a threat was imminent and they had all fled, leaving the girl behind in the confusion. She was a clone, and when push comes to shove they tend to be overlooked. Or maybe the whole settlement had fallen victim to traffickers. This place was small, and crimes of that sort were not unheard of. Either way, there was no one here and the girl couldn’t stay by herself. I decided to take her with me. Looking back, I should have noticed the lack of plant or animal life on a clearly habitable planet. That one fact should have rung a warning bell in my carefully engineered, logical brain. But it didn’t.

After the Adventure docked with our cruiser, I walked through the sterilization chamber. It was a simple white sterile room, equipped with large spraying and drying mechanisms.

I sterilized without thinking, but when I looked behind me the girl was not following. She was standing stock-still, eyes wide with fear, pressed against the Adventure’s closed door. I circled back and tried to coax her through the room. She melted to the floor, kicking and screaming.

Our trip back to the cruiser had made it clear that not only would she not speak, she also couldn’t or wouldn’t understand anything I said. In short, there was nothing I could do or say that would help her process what was happening at this moment and why the sterilization chamber was important.

I felt so bad for her. The chamber was loud and echoey; the huge sprayer apparatus must have felt menacing to a little girl who had probably lived most, if not all, of her life on that small primitive planet. I wasn’t sure what she had been through in the days before I arrived on JL-908, but it clearly hadn’t been good.

So, I made a quick decision: rather than trying to force her to walk through that intimidating room, I led her through the side exit used for equipment loading and unloading. Then I manually changed the log to indicate that she had followed all sterilization procedures. The security camera would still show what had actually occurred, but no one regularly reviewed the camera footage.

I figured that if she had been carrying any harmful organism, either she or I would be showing symptoms by now. It had taken us almost two full weeks to journey back to the cruiser. But at that moment the nagging words of my proctor sounded in my mind:

“Protocols are designed to keep people safe and keep the System moving. To ignore protocol is to endanger our people and our way of life.”

Proctors are supposed to say that kind of stuff, I reasoned.

You may be wondering how a genetically engineered Mod-clone, bred specifically as a cog in the great System, could even have the capacity to think an insubordinate thought. But the truth is that the engineering of the System is not as infallible as they would like citizens to believe. Mod-clones frequently experience human-like urges. The System has been trying to rectify these anomalies for centuries, but they have yet to erase all the human imperfections from us Mod-clones. So it is not uncommon for us to break protocol on occasion – just as it is not uncommon for one of us to commit suicide on occasion.

A quote from Graham Greene comes to my mind. “Humans are not black and white, but black and gray.” I scoff. People expect Mod-clones to be perfect black and white creations but in reality, we are more like humans. Black and gray.

The smell of disinfectant and metal ends my reminiscence and brings me back to the present. I’m passing the lab. My hasty walk slows to a crawl as I catch sight of my own reflection in the darkened window. My complexion is pale and ashy like Exo’s sky during a rainstorm. Untied hair falls like a bolt of lightning down my stricken face. My shoulders heave up and down quickly, ragged breathing more the result of anxiety than of activity.

The muscles around my mouth tighten, determined to reveal no feeling. However, that expression is too resolute, revealing just how much emotion I am trying to hide. The most unsettling feature is my eyes, dark and hollow as a collapsing star -- dead. But as I stare myself in the face for what could be the last time, it isn’t the darkness in my eyes that threatens to swallow me whole. It’s the anguish.

I’ve seen these eyes before, but not on me. One of the clones in my batch was caught tampering with planetary samples and was expelled from the System. My eyes look like the eyes of that clone at its trial, right after sentencing. They are the eyes of a clone who knows it will never again be able to experience the only real joy of which Mod-Clones are capable: fulfilling its purpose in life. The eyes speak utter defeat and resignation. That is me now. Tears well up in those eyes I see in the window. I blink them away and keep walking.

Mod-Clones are usually bred with a single directive in mind. My batch was to be Planetary Surveyors. We were bred to love it, and we all do. That’s what makes us different from unmanipulated clones. Unmanipulated clones are exact copies of humans, possessing all the capabilities and facilities of humans. Mod-Clones, on the other hand, are engineered to excel at a specific job. Usually, it is a dangerous job that the System doesn’t allow humans to do. The System doesn’t grow regular clones anymore and I’ve never seen one. Or at least not until recently.

After running a few tests on the girl, the lab informed me that she was, as I had surmised, a clone. And a rudimentary one at that. She was likely one of her people’s early attempts at human cloning because her DNA appeared to be unmanipulated, unlike mine.

Over the two weeks we were traveling in the Adventure she had really opened up to me. She still wouldn’t talk, but she would draw me pictures. I was right about her age; her drawing skills and imagination level put her at about age ten developmentally. The walls of the Adventure had been richly decorated with her pictures these past two weeks. Most of her artwork showed a small room, where adults in blue uniforms interacted with a young girl. I can only assume that she was illustrating her own life up until now: living in a lab, being observed and tested. She might have even lived the entirety of her life in that little room, with no peers or other contacts.

Though I had grown up with other clones, I saw myself in that little girl. I had been reared and trained with batchmates all around me, but had never felt close to anyone. Everyone in my life was literally and exactly just like me, so we all understood one other completely. But at the same time, when all those around you are exactly alike there is no need for empathy. No one gave a thought to anyone else because each one of us assumed we were already all on the same page. Just like harnessed carriage horses with blinders on, we all moved and worked and even thought in unison. But we grew without once looking sideways at one another, able to see only ourselves. So yes, I grew up with peers -- but in many ways, I was just like that little girl. Alone. And so like that, I named her “Almana”, old Earth Hebrew for lonely.

As much as I wanted to stay with Almana on the cruiser, I needed to return to JL-908. I hadn’t completed the routine sample collection which had been my mission. When I arrived I decided to land on the dark side of the planet. I hadn’t been there yet, maybe there were answers there. In my second step, I stumbled and almost fell. Switching on my lantern light, I looked up and nearly fell again.

I was standing in the midst of hundreds of bodies. There were humans of all ages and animals of all species and breeds. As far as my light would shine, bodies were strewn on the ground like mismatched, discarded toys in a child’s room.

Worse yet, all of them seemed to be horribly disfigured. Some had all their skin peeling off, others had holes in their abdomens as though they had been burned through with acid. I suppressed the urge to vomit because I knew this was the last clean exploration suit on my ship.

Steeling myself, I fished my scanner out of my bag, bent down over the nearest corpse, and aimed the apparatus at it. Although we had Almana’s DNA, a true human sample would be necessary to identify her people’s origin.

My scanner beeped.

“ERROR - NO GENETIC MATERIAL FOUND”

I tried again.

“ERROR - NO GENETIC MATERIAL FOUND”

And again, and again.

“ERROR - NO GENETIC MATERIAL FOUND”

“ERROR - NO GENETIC MATERIAL FOUND”

What? No genetic material meant no DNA. But every living thing has DNA; without it, life as we know it is not possible. Although these people were dead there was clearly organic material still present that should be carrying DNA.

I decided to take a sample and sequence it manually so the lab could compare it in the database on the cruiser. But even after the manual sequencing process was complete, I still had nothing. If I hadn’t added the sample myself, I would have thought the only thing in my solution was primer and dye.

I pitched myself into the operating seat and turned the problem over in my mind. There was no DNA. As impossible as it would seem, that was the truth before my eyes. These people had died suddenly for some unknown reason. Perhaps it was a disease or bio-weapon that erased DNA? If cells had no DNA, it wouldn’t take long for a body to die. Cells without DNA cannot replicate correctly and will not be able to perform their proper functions. And without the needed cells to perform their different functions, the body would begin to destroy itself from the inside out. Probably the thinner organ membranes would go first – the mucosa in the stomach, the subcutaneous tissue under the skin, and the three layers of meninges in the brain. Eventually stomach acid would eat through the abdomen, the skin would shed, and the brain would lacerate.

Finally, I prodded myself to action. I needed to collect the rest of the planetary samples originally assigned to my mission. The problem of Almana’s people would have to wait. I collected the planetary samples, but for days on the return trip back to the cruiser, I stewed over the information I had collected. What if this really was a disease? Almana may have been fine, but she still might be a carrier. For that matter, I might be a carrier as well.

No, I reasoned, I couldn’t be a carrier because I sterilized after I returned. Then I remembered Almana’s episode with the sterilization chamber and felt a chill go down my spine. If she was infected there would be serious consequences when I got back.

As the Adventure neared the cruiser a message popped up on my portable.

ATTENTION! PART OF YOUR CRUISER HAS BEEN EXPOSED TO AN INFECTION. AS YOU RETURN AVOID QUARANTINED AREAS.

Attached to the message was a map of the quarantined areas but I didn’t open it. My mind was reeling. I clicked through the other attachment about the known information. Maybe this wasn’t the same infection, I reasoned. Thousands of humans and Mod-clones frequent my cruiser every day. It could be anyone.

KNOWN INFORMATION:

DISEASE ERASES DNA

RESULTS IN THINNING OF ORGAN MEMBRANES

FATAL FOR INFECTED

NOT AFFECTING MOD-CLONES

I remembered the sea of carnage on JL-908. People were going to die here just like I had seen there. And this was my fault, that’s how the officials would see it. They wouldn’t care that Almana had shown no indications she was carrying a disease, and they wouldn’t care that I had only been trying to make things easier for a frightened little girl. All they would see is that I had broken protocol, and the punishment for that was expulsion from the System for life.

The Coalition would hand me over to the Industry, and after that, I would work with other “defective” Mod-Clones to harvest resources from various planets. I would be reduced to back-breaking, repetitive manual labor -- the Industry would suck the life out of me a day at a time until finally my body would give out and I could escape from that wretched existence.

The beep of the Adventure’s docking system snapped me back to my senses.

No. I couldn’t dock. I had to get away. But I reacted too late. The notification had been sent to the bridge that the Adventure had arrived.

I collapsed into the seat. I couldn’t leave now. Now there was only one option. I knew what it was, but I was scared. First I could Almana. Yes, I at least needed to know what had happened to her.

I rushed to the Information Review Center to see where Almana was being kept. Before I died I had to know her fate. Finally, I found her information; she was in the research lab. But everyone from the lab had been the first to become ill and they had all been quarantined. I read further into the report. Then my heart dropped.

“TERMINATED,” bleeped the entry.

Almana was gone.

Her test results showed her to be contaminated. And so they had ended her. Just like that.

I dropped with my portable to the ground, sitting motionless for several minutes. Dead. Almana had been my only regret in leaving this world. There was nothing to tie me here now. I could go in peace now. I should go in peace.

Peace, I thought. My mind was far from peaceful. I thought about writing a letter. Maybe this was why all hoppers leave a letter. To try and gain some peace before their passing.

I decided that the person I really wanted to write to was Almana. She was the only real connection I had in this world. Even if she was already gone.

Almana,

It probably doesn’t make sense to most people that I would end my life simply because I can’t do my job anymore. But to me, it’s so much more than a job. It’s my life and the purpose for which I was born and bred. It’s the only way that I know how to be happy.

I used to think it was a relief that I loved my job so much, that I was lucky to have this career ingrained into my genes since I have to spend my life doing it anyway. But now I think it must be a curse.

If I wasn’t modified to love this job so much, maybe I would be able to find joy in other things instead of being obsessed with exploration. Who knew that loving something so much could be so destructive?

MC 651

I clicked send. I had submitted the letter with my daily reports. I didn’t care. It was time. I headed back towards my ship.

A lyric from one of my favorite Earth musicals comes to my head. “The world I have known is lost in shadow”. At this moment I am Javert, ending my life as my purpose for living disappears.

My mind wanders over the plot for a few moments. It lands on the protagonist, Jean Valjean, and his soliloquy. “Is there another way to go?”

All at once, I feel old -- very old. Like an elderly person, I slowly stagger to my feet. They ache, but even so, those feet start walking again. Plodding back to the Adventure. Back to my death. Back to nothingness.

I’m almost there. I can see the door of the Adventure ahead of me. Once I make it onto my ship, all I have to do is disengage the pod. Then the atomizer will automatically activate in front of the empty portal, wrapping a protective shield around the whole ship. That atomizer will turn to particles anything that it touches – including me as I step out of the Adventure’s door. It’s a tidy way to end a life.

The atomizer is a protective shield that wraps around the whole ship. Just as the name implies, it will atomize anything it touches. It’s a tidy way to prevent space debris and asteroids from hitting and damaging the outside of the ship. And a tidy way to end a life.

I think again about Javert. I’m not human; I’m a Mod-Clone. But could it really be possible to find a new path?

I don’t stop walking.

Mod-Clones are part human, I reason. Even though we are bred to do a single job, we still have human emotions and are capable of human connections with others.

I disengage the pod.

If I were expelled from the System, could I find something else to love as much as Surveying? Even as part of the Industry, doing manual labor for the rest of my life, would it be possible to find a purpose for living?

I override the safety protocols for the atomizer and open the maintenance door.

It might be possible, I reason. But could I stand the uncertainty -- and possibly the pain -- of finding out for sure? Doubt pushes me toward the opening.

I stop inches from the buzzing field. As much as I dreaded this part, in my whole walk down here I never thought I would waver.

If I can’t be a Planetary Surveyor for the System then I am nothing.

But am I more than a Planetary Surveyor? After all, I am not a robot -- I am sentient. Maybe no one really knows the full capabilities of Mod-Clones, since we are so regulated and the information about us is so controlled.

The intercom beeps.

“MC 651 please report to the bridge immediately.”

That’s it. They are coming for me now. Either they found my letter or reviewed the scanner data. They know I’m the cause of the outbreak.

In my final moment of panic, I step forward. Even so, my last emotion as my foot extends toward the atomizer is a strong feeling of regret.

My body tightens, and I brace myself for the ripping sensation.

A forceful hand grips my uniform and drags me back.