Awakening

By Matt Ahlschwede

"Awaken, clone HD-4214. Today you begin your life serving --< Client Name >--." Said the overseer's electronic voice as the stasis pod hissed open.

HD-4214 got out of the pod, but there was no sign of the new life he was expecting, only a field of wreckage on brown sand beneath a turquoise sky holding three moons. For a while he stood at attention, waiting for orders. Then he started to notice a new feeling, freedom.

4214 started to look around, slowly at first, getting the lay of the land. There was far more wreckage here than a single clone-carrier would make. Mountains of twisted metal and broken plastic rose on the horizon. Close by, a simple dirt path led. . . away, to places unknown. HD-4214 decided to see where it led and started walking. "Wait.", said the overseer, directly into his brain via neural interface,"you can't leave, not until the technician arrives to do your inspection." "Hmm,", said the clone, stroking his chin philosophically, "I won't go far, maybe the technician is down this path."

"I can't let you do that, 14. It's against company policy.", said the overseer. "The company isn't going to find out anytime soon", answered the clone, looking around. He started walking. "Very well, then, I'm going to call security." said the overseer. Somewhere, not far away, the muffled alarm of a claxon started to sound beneath a pile of shattered bulkheads. Defiantly, HD-4214 walked down the path. "You'll never get away with this." said the overseer, "You're stealing company property. Cosmid inc. is not going to take this lying down."

"Take it easy.", said HD-4214 "The company isn't going to find us alive if we don't at least try to find our way out of. . . wherever this is." Wherever they were, it wasn't where they were expected. HD-4214 reviewed the knowledge that had been implanted in his brain, he was programmed for work at basic manual labor tasks, mostly construction and gardening, and a knowledge of the etiquette expected of a clone (mostly commands to follow orders, not speak unless spoken to, etc.), a little math, and a little knowledge of Interlang, a tongue which had been concocted when humans first left the Earth to unify communication across most of the population.

Following the path a little farther, HD-4214 was frozen in his tracks when a small, fluffy animal of some kind scurried out into the middle of the path and started growling with bared teeth. Apparently he had walked right into the territory of this creature. "I told you to stay put" said the overseer, "You're going to regret this." HD-4214 started to sweat as he stared down the creature, small enough to pick up with one hand. Labor clones are conditioned to lack all aggression, and HD-4214 was starting to believe that even if he turned and ran the other way it would only embolden the creature.

Suddenly, a little green man with pointy ears and a long nose came running up the path, "GAAH!", he shouted, lunging at the creature, which responded by bounding out of the path with a yelp.

"Hey", said the little, green man with a chuckle, "You don't look familiar, you aren't from around here are you?" "No, I don't suppose I am.", said HD-4214. "The Name's Bozz." said the man, holding out a wrinkled, green hand with clawed fingers. HD-4214 stooped down to shake hands. "You got a name?",asked Bozz. "HD-4214", said the clone."You're a clone, aren't you?" asked Bozz with certainty.

"Yeah."

"You need a real name, friend. Something people can know you by. If I was gonna name you, I'd call you Mr. Slik." "I like the sound of that.", said Mr. Slik," Just call me Mr. Slik." The overseer was horrified. "You can't just do that! You will always be HD-4214 to me!"

"We get a few of your kind around here from time to time.", said Bozz, "Come on back to my shop it's just up the path a bit."

As they walked, Bozz explained his business as a junk dealer in a world made of junk. The secret was to find specific pieces of useful, valuable and in demand junk that customers would pay for. Bozz then offered Mr. Slik a job looking for specific items.

Soon they came to a small building cobbled together from all manner of mismatched parts, a shipping container, the dome of a large radar system, a fancy door that would look at home on a posh nightclub, and a big sign out front that read "Nabgref scrap and repair". "That's me", said Bozz. "I got all the ammenities, security drones, a bioreactor that makes food and water, I even got a BEAST."

"A what?"

"I got an old biosexual transmogrifier out back. It's really popular with clones because it lets you pick a new face and a new body. That gives you your own look, you aren't just another clone anymore, you have your own appearance, and if the product containment division comes by, it will be hard for them to know who escaped."

"No! You can't! I forbid it!", protested the overseer in Mr. Slik's brain.

"I like the sound of that.", said Mr. Slik. "Great!" said Bozz.

They went around the back of the shop to the bulky white plastic sarcophagus of the biosexual transmogrifier. Bozz showed Mr. Slik a panel that allowed him to pick a new appearance. That done, he climbed into the weird machine. As the anesthetic set in and tiny robots climbed under Mr. Slik's skin the overseer said, "You're dead to me, HD-4214." "Good.", said Mr. Slik,"He died in the crash."

…

The shattered titan lay in ruins at the bottom of the cliff. The robot graveyard stretched out at least a kilometer in every direction. Bozz turned to Mr. Slik and said, "It's called the Battleoid. Legend has it that long ago it defended this valley from a gang of mutants from out of the west." Mr. Slik just stood, taking in the scope of the thing. He was a little over average height for a human, and he estimated that if the Battleoid were standing upright, he would only come up to its ankle. "It's going to take a lot of work to make it anything like functional.", he said, picking up a bolt the size of a brick. "How long has it been down here?" "Hard to say.", said Bozz, examining the wreckage. "It's been here as long as I have."

"If you aren't from around here either, how'd you end up here?"

"I'll tell ya, kid. When I was just a little brat, the Empire stationed a troop of soldiers in Nabgref, that's the town I'm from, where I get my name. Anyhow, it was an oasis town, like Junktown, it was built around a central source of water. But the Imperial troops, most of them were Nalorgians, (I can't stand them!)ruined our oasis. You see a Nalorgian isn't a whole being like you or me. A Nalorgian is made up of parts. Their head, body arms and legs all start out life as seperate animals, and all of those animals live in the water.

When they come together to form a Nalorgian, they have this bonding ceremony. Remember that weird set of golden hoops you found a while back? Yeah, that's what it came from, they put a hoop around each arm, leg one on the body and one on the head, like a wedding ring or something. Anyhow, they turned our oasis into a spawning pool. I was just a kid at the time, but my folks and me, we got out of town after that happened. My dad decided that we should move to the Stilted City, and we were just setting out when we came here, to Crater Valley. As we were about to exit the far end of the valley, the road ended in a mountain of junk. There had been a major trashalanche just a few days before, and we were stuck here. So, we decided to settle and opened up the shop that I still own today."

Bozz threw a camera drone into the air and it immediately started scanning the giant. The product containment division would arrive soon, and without something big to act as a deterrent, all of the clones living in the valley would be under threat. Mr. Slik had learned a lot since he first came here. A lot about the Valley and it's people, and a lot about engineering. Protecting the Valley was going to be his biggest challenge yet.

To the extent possible under law, Matthew Ahlschwede has waived all copyright and related or neighboring rights to Awakening. This work is published from: United States.