Clone Strike

Rachel47 couldn’t remember the last time she left the capital. Not because it was so long ago but because the last time she left her home, she died.

The air was the same in the bustling streets of Downtown Ultima as it was the last time she died. The temperature was a little cooler and she could see the sky through the triangles that shaped the roof of her world, but she was breathing the same stale air.

However this time she could see the stars. 

She’d never been able to see stars before. The sky was always a permanent hazy grey. But on this day the clouds had moved. Things were changing. Perhaps that meant she was destined to survive.

A rare clear day, the observation decks must have been packed with more people than usual. If she hadn’t known any better, she would have sworn the weather looked nice enough to open the gates of the walled city and truly step outside.

If she didn’t know any better.

Rachel fearlessly put her hover scooter in third gear. She could never float this fast in the capital corridors. She would have been stopped and fined or maybe worse. But life was cheaper outside. She could go as fast as she wanted. 

“Do you know how fast you were floating, ma’am?” 

“Not as fast as you, if you keep calling me ma’am.”

Hover vehicles had been around since the turn of the century. Hover enabled items never touched the ground, the buildings or the people, not even if the driver wanted it to. Not even when shut off.

Rachel was a lot like a hover craft in that respect. She preferred staying out of reach, keeping others at a distance, and she always had her head in the clouds even on a clear day.

Rachel enjoyed the feeling of the stale city air whipping through her strawberry locks. She had never worn a helmet and could not remember regretting that decision. 

They rented helmets at the same storefront that rented the scooters. At one time it must have been a legal thing, but hardly any citizens wore them. 

Had Rachel47 been able to remember her last trip outside of the capital, she would have surely worn a helmet. But if she were lucky and as long as she hovered at three meters or more, she could cruise at her rental bike’s top speed and still avoid any traffic violations or pedestrian mishaps. 

Rachel floated swiftly through downtown Ultima. She liked the downtown area but she was on a mission. The skyscrapers downtown didn’t overshadow the dome like they did near the center. And there was always something spectacular going on at one of the local arenas. Good food, a free concert, a public humiliation or some sort of death match blood-sport public break up and execution. Those were always fun. Feuds, rivalries, vendettas were open ended in a society that had no memory of dying. 

The inner ring was what people called the capital complex. She could see it in her rear view, the sixteen buildings that made up the heart center of Ultima loomed above everything else. 

She floated rapidly through the downtown area; with its twenty to thirty story buildings with shops and theaters open all night. It took more than an hour for her to reach the third ring, the residential district, the middle they called it. It was where the bulk of the government workers lived. A few high end stores and some really nice privately funded public parks. 

The last ring was the outer rim; with its farmhouses and fringes of society. That was where Rachel was headed. To the fringes of society, where the wealthiest and most dangerous people lived. She was going to find the captain who had shown her leniency and she was going to save him. 

The streets around the clone warehouse, were littered with police transports, tons of clone soldiers and a few officers rushing in and out of the building. There were no citizens of Ultima anywhere near this place. 

Rachel47 pulled up to the entrance on her hover craft and told it to wait. She jumped off with purpose. She thought that if she looked like she belonged, and knew where she was going, no one would question her. She was right. 

Her red hair stood out. Her female form stood out. Her clothing; a white and pink floral blouse and grey knee length A-line skirt stood out. 

There were men here. There was nothing but men here. The area smelled like them. Like cinnamon and gunpowder. Like orange peels and coffee grounds. While she smelled like jasmine and melted butter. Like red wine stained on linen.

And her sounds were different. The breathing of the soldiers was a low rumble like the purr of a big cat while even the sound of her clearing her throat was like a song bird that had flown into the wrong enclosure.

Rachel opened one of the two surprisingly heavy and thick double doors and squeezed through the small space she was able to create. She entered through the front door like she belonged and no one even noticed.

There was no visitors desk in the lobby. No signs. No elevators. The first floor of the facility was for barracks, sleeping quarters and the common area. 

Inside the common area there were soldiers sitting in chairs, lifting free weights, staring at terminals lined up in rows as they stared at the publicly available private lives of the women of Ultima. The clones were as addicted to the static as the rest of the city. 

Rachel wondered if they enjoyed watching police actions as much as some citizens or if they just watched porn like the rest of us lonely perverse women.

Rachel made her way through the common room to the sounds of clinking plates of free weights and bench presses, and no one looked at her twice. 

She proceeded deeper into the clones’ inner sanctum near the outer rim.

She had never seen this many soldiers at once. Every one was virtually identical to the last. Some had scars or noticeable limps but without some identifiable marks she could not tell them apart. Not that it was necessary to tell them apart. They were all the same. In that they were emotionless and large and very scary.

The officers looked identical to each other as well. While the soldiers had more round faces and thicker necks, the officers were thinner and had sharper features. Where the soldiers were brutish and garish. The officers were pleasant and lithe. But both the officers and the soldiers lifted heavy weights like they were made of paper.

The officers, however, had distinct personalities and tastes. They wore the same uniforms but each one wore it in a slightly different way. Some had their shirts un-tucked or the jacket off. Some wore the tie open or tightened or no tie at all. Some wore the hat up or over or down or backwards or not at all. Some had medals displayed while others had ribbons or armbands. 

By paying close attention to detail, they could be distinguished one from the other. The officer clones seemed to take pains in making sure that they were not identical. While the grunts were more like the average citizens of Ultima, with the same hair, same styles and following the latest trends, just hoping to blend in.

Rachel47 tried to look for her Cap but there were no officers in the common area. Or perhaps there was a separate section where the officers hung out. 

They had nothing in common; the grunts and the officers, besides being clones of two now famous military volunteers from the last war. Two men who were long dead. Two men whose faces and bodies and DNA still walked the Earth. 

Whatever the reason, Rachel needed to find out where the officers were staying if she were going to find her Cap. If she was going to save him from a system that had enslaved her sweet boy, she had to find him first. 

Then she would save him and he would fall in love with her and then move in and sleep in a corner while she watched the static and drank wine from a tall glass.

Rachel moved through the terminals and chairs and the frozen faces of the Grunts toward a bluish green door in the back of the room. 

She was no longer afraid of being seen. She walked in the very center of the room and no one grabbed her or raised an alarm at all. They did not care. They were not programmed to care. This is what had bothered her; The Dogs, the city’s cloned police force, did not have free will. 

After her living room cam went dark and she met Cap, she hadn’t been able to sleep. It bothered her that the clones, previously looked at as monsters and killing machines, were actually flesh and blood and nearly human. Sure they were made in a laboratory from sperm and ovum and grown in an incubator but that  was close enough to being human to have rights. These men needed a mother.

What Rachel had experienced haunted her; a clone Captain’s kindness, heart and humor, and he was handsome… but that’s not what this was about… freedom to quit his job and… not kill anyone and… she couldn’t sleep thinking about what they made him do. 

She hadn’t slept. She needed to tell them about choice. She wasn’t sleeping anymore and she needed to tell them to wake up to the reality of their surroundings. 

And she needed to do it without getting killed.

Rachel47 headed down a corridor to an unmarked door. Behind it she could hear the officers speaking. They were not as much arguing as they were discussing, competing, for the room, for the floor, for the crowd. 

Parliamentary rules were not being followed, as they tried to talk over each other. It was a room full of male bodies with not one wanting to be anything but alpha. 

Yet there was a joviality about the process, like friends at a pub trying to outdo each other. They sounded like they were having fun.

Rachel listened. She wanted to help. She needed a pet project or a charity case. She needed someone to assist or someone to love. It made her feel less like an animal in a glass cage. And more like a woman in control of her life. 

One word stood out in the din of men’s voices talking one on top of the another without raising their voices; Strike.

The cloned officers, who served as police and security, were deciding if they should risk going on strike. 

It sounded like a union meeting but it also sounded like something they did everyday. 

Disgruntled. Disorganized. Just a listing of grievances. They did not like the conditions that they worked under. 

Rachel had come to the barracks to help them express free will but they were already expressing it.

There were several plans on the table.

They were considering holding one of the prime facilities hostage. A sit-in, a labor action of civil disobedience. There was a suggestion from one of the officers, she thought they said his name was Rod; like Cap it was what you got when you let a young boy with no imagination pick his own name, he proposed taking over a government office. Sanitation was another of the places offered and someone said genetics. It would have to be a very important place to the citizens and the government. An energy facility or a scientific lab or a government office or all three. Then and only then would they have to listen.

These were military officers with no real power and no idea how to leverage the power they did have.

All of this pleased Rachel47 to no end as she wanted to be that someone to take control of the room and offer a plan of action. They needed a plan of action. They needed a list of demands. They needed a leader. They needed a mother or at least an auntie to help push them from behind. These guys needed girlfriends.

Rachel pushed the door open about three centimeters and shouted through the opening. “What do we want?” she asked in her most commanding voice. The officers began throwing out suggestions in answer to her question. Such a great question, she thought, they seemed not to care where it came from.

One of the officers said “Better food.” Because they were allowed only protein loaves and water. What they used to serve to the prisoners when the prison was still operating. 

Another shouted “Better hours.” And another “Better uniforms.” 

But then a voice that she thought she recognized said in a conversational tone “Perhaps cool overcoats.” 

It came from directly behind the door. And she was certain that it was her Cap, yet how she knew him from his voice she could not say because they all had the same voice. There was a slight difference in inflection but she was right. It was Cap. It was her Cap.

He opened the door all the way and pulled her into the room. 

The meeting continued. No one acknowledged the newcomer, the eavesdropper, the fly on the wall. They just kept right on shouting out suggestions for their new list of demands. 

Rachel quickly noticed, that no one was writing them down. Pencil and paper was illegal but if anyone had access to writing material it was the ones who confiscated them.

Cap pulled the lovely redhead in close as if they were partners in a tango. She was not afraid. 

“I’m sure the soldiers would want genitals.” She said to him softly adding to the discussion but only for his ears. She looked into his piercing brown eyes. “I’m certain they’ve seen how much you officers enjoy yours.” She said smiling. 

Cap stared back at her. He remembered this flirtation and wanted more. It was clear he was happy to see her because the same smile on her face was on his. 

“I’m not certain the authority would go for that.” He responded in a hushed tone, a couple of centimeters from her lips. “There would be no controlling them then.” 

“Soldiers want vocal cords.” she said seriously trying to impress him. “They are denied the ability to talk.” she explained. “Which is worse than not having the right.” 

“You have the right to remain silent.” He said.

“Silence isn’t the absence of the ability to speak. Silence is the absence of the intention to speak.”

“All beings just want to be respected.” Cap said while studying the curve of her bottom lip. It was plump. Juicy he thought. More so than the top lip. So juicy in fact that he wanted all of it in his mouth to gently suck on.

“I respect you.” She confirmed softly and then kissed him firmly, her lips to his. It was a long kiss as far as first kisses go but it was a short one as far as he was concerned. He had never done that before and he wanted to do it forever. He wanted to do it again.

“Down, boy.”

Rachel pulled away from Cap and cleared her throat loudly and shouted, “Guys!” to get everyone’s attention. And then she told them the secret to a successful revolution. “It was knowing your history,” she said. “You should be writing this down.”

In a past life Rachel47 was a substitute teacher. Sometimes those things bleed through.

“Clones were originally created to fight the endless corporate wars after the great unplugging,” she began. “This was before the fall of men. It was clones that ended the war. It was clones who irradiated sixty percent of the world’s population. It was the clones who eliminated the scourge of men.”

“Heroes that looked just like you forced the remaining women to work together, with the most ominous message in human history.”

Ladies,

Our mission has been accomplished. 

We have ended all war. 

We wait to be fed.

“Eventually the Dome cities were constructed, your previous models were destroyed, and all of the remaining women of the planet traveled to their nearest enclosure to wait out the winter.

“Each city was given a squadron of clone eggs for their future defense. Some said they were kept in case of alien invasion but the more common belief was that humans held on to clones because they couldn’t bear to be unarmed.

“President Taryn of Ultima restarted the clone program to deal with the city’s chaos and crime after several bloody rebellions and violent upheavals.

“You boys kept the fragile peace with the immortal citizens of Ultima but because of rampant reports of brutality, President Taryn declared the clone program a failure.

“The reports of brutality notwithstanding, clones were not failures.” Rachel said. “It was a failure of masculinity itself. The masculine need to conquer everything and to solve every problem. You were the hammer and every citizen that broke the law was a nail. You are made in the image of men. Men who had served a necessary, if violent, purpose. But the president ignored you thinking that if she allowed your numbers to dwindle that you would be easier to control, to shut you off.”

The clone captains spelled out their hopes to Rachel, and she wrote them down. For their part in saving the world, they wanted a continuum of consciousness. They wanted to be transferred to new bodies when they died. They wanted immortality. They wanted to be full citizens.

“If you give a clone a cookie,” the old saying went. “It’ll destroy the world to gain exclusive rights to the recipe.”

It was time to put their demands in a logical order, from most to least important and write it down on paper.

After several minutes of bickering, Rachel43 read aloud what they had written. 

“We the clone warriors,” she said. “The keepers of your laws. The last line of defense against chaos and endless war in this glass bowl that we all call home. We, the ones who do your dirty work, will no longer allow ourselves to be treated as sub-human. We are just as human as the rest of you. We are not disposable.”

It read: 

We are more than just weapons in your arsenal. We are your partners in rebuilding humanity.

If our demands are not met, we will not work another case. We will not terminate another citizen. We will not handle the threats of those that wish to destroy our city.

We want better food choices.

We want to choose our own off duty clothes.

We want cool overcoats that let people know we mean business.

We want days off and the right to visit the parks or see a show when we aren’t working.

We would like our mute colleagues to be allowed to speak and perhaps given their own sex organs.

We want our consciousness to be backed up to a server and we want to be uploaded to new bodies after we die.

We want the rights of full citizenship and the immortality that comes with it. 

But we want to stay men

We want to be reborn as men, penises and all.

These are our demands.

We thank you for your swift attention to this matter.

We wait to be fed.

And that was how the list ended and the revolution began, with the scariest five words the world had ever known. ||