I’m screwed.
That’s the honest version.
Deep, all-pervading screwed.
And it’s that insurgent I traded shots with right before I went down who’s to blame.
Exactly, exactly.
Some kind of curse must have landed on me for that, because now I’ve apparently been reborn as a salty little cockroach.
How else do you explain the mess I woke up in?
When I opened my eyes, I saw…
nothing.
Because the second they put this mask on me, that’s when I woke up wearing it.
And the second I woke up, some serious horror started.
The mask turned on.
And started blinking.
You ever hear what a dial up modem sounds like?
This thing started playing me color static at about that frequency.
Fast, relentless, like that.
If I were epileptic, I’d have lost it right there.
And, the real kicker, I couldn’t close my eyes.
Didn’t even want to, for some reason.
I didn’t have time to process what was happening, because I just froze.
Didn’t want to think, didn’t want to move.
Just stare at the lights.
No idea how long that thing hypnotized me, but the second my stomach started demanding food, the blinking stopped, and something like a straw pressed gently but firmly into my mouth.
Something has to be done about this body.
I can barely feel it, and I definitely don’t control it.
I can’t see anything except these colored specks.
One thing keeps me calm: my head’s stopped hurting.
Mostly.
At least thinking doesn’t hurt anymore.
Fine, let’s trust the reflexes.
Give me that straw; I want to eat.
Damn it.
It’s a pacifier.
The pattern on the screen shifts.
Some neutral green now.
Still nothing to look at.
I run my stumps over the inside of the mask a couple of times.
You can feel it, soft on the outside.
And I’ve worked out that tearing it off isn’t happening.
All this while sucking down some kind of sweet and sour mixture through the straw.
Fine.
While it’s feeding me, let the body run on reflex and I’ll think.
Congratulations, Gray, you’re up to speed.
Most likely, you’re in the nursery of some kind of bioengineering facility, raised by something you don’t understand, and most likely, you’re the result of somebody’s successful cloning experiment.
They’d have taken blood samples, whatever they take during evacuation, and the body…
But that’s the part that doesn’t add up.
If I, whoever I am, am alive, then who exactly is here now?
And if my old body is dead, then it’s just me, and that’s fine; I only need to figure out how to explain that to whoever’s raising me.
And how.
Is it even necessary?
My head starts hurting again.
It’s strange; I can’t hear any other kids.
I remember there being some kind of birthing ward; I think I remember other babies crying around me.
Oh no.
A horrible thought cuts through everything, enough to loosen my bowels right there.
I might not be the only one here.
That’s both good and bad.
Good, because I’m not alone.
Bad, because it means I could have been cloned more than once.
There could be hundreds of me in here, and every single one of them will think he’s in charge.
How am I supposed to negotiate with myself?
I hate myself already.
And, wait, something’s moving near my backside.
Hey!
Someone!
Help!
Something’s moving back there!
“Whoa!” Embarrassing.
The system responded to my crying without hesitation; the hose with the nipple pulled out of reach the second I opened my mouth to yell.
So that’s how this works.
And that moving thing was an auto cleaner.
Impressive service, honestly.
After the cleaning, something new started.
I felt like my limbs were being pinched.
As a kid, I once had my teeth treated with electrophoresis, and this feels similar, if a little different.
Painless, at least.
But I can tell my arms and legs are twitching, and whatever I’m lying on is vibrating slightly.
Exercise, then, mixed with a massage.
After this exhausting routine, which by my internal clock lasted maybe seven minutes, I passed out again.
One thing I’m now fairly sure of, or desperately want to believe, since I haven’t managed to convince myself otherwise: I’m humanoid.
How do I know?
Simple.
I can feel all my limbs.
There are four of them.
The next time I woke after another round of “color static,” there was something new.
Sound got added to the specks.
Some kind of sawing noise.
Random, tuneless, but it kept me just as glued to it, and just as quickly I passed out again.
Wake up, eat, watch what feels like the visuals of a bad trip, listen to noise that sounds like it belongs to stoners, do the electric exercises, eat, sleep.
After enough repeats, I started noticing a pattern.
The shock exercises only happened twice, but the flashing shows, with or without sound, happened up to four times between them.
I got fed about six times in one cycle.
If I remember right, newborns eat six to eight times a day.
So yeah.
It’s been almost two weeks since my “birth.” The mask is starting to get on my nerves.
Funniest part: it’s not even the incomprehensible dots and lines and flashes that bother me; it’s just the mask itself.
I just want to look around.
But I can’t hold a thought for long; it knocks me out almost instantly.
After every “session” my head feels like lead and wants to sleep.
Some kind of programming, maybe?
I should think about that.
If I get the chance.
Yawn.
Sleep.
A couple of months in, by my own count, they finally took the mask off.
Just for a minute, before putting it back, but what a minute it was.
I got to see so much.
It started with the expected shock; I’d gotten used to the meaningless flicker, and then, there it was.
My eyesight had already gone back to normal, which was strange, but the thing staring back at me was definitely not human.
I only had time to squeal at this pale bluish white, wide-eyed thing with a neck like something out of a nightmare before the mask slid back into place.
Out of the corner of my eye I caught my own hand, five fingers, pink, a leg, and silvery capsules hanging all around like clusters on a vine.
What in the world was that?
Was it going to eat me?
And where had I seen that face before?
I remember watching something like it, once, back in the barracks.
Click.
Everything fell into place, and it landed as pure dread.
Star Wars.
I’m on Kamino.
I’m a clone.
I died.
Right about then, my overloaded nervous system mercifully shut me down.
You might ask why it was so easy to accept all that.
It wasn’t, really, and I never had time to actually process it.
What little mental energy survived the flashing and the “exercises” was barely enough to register surprise each time.
But it added up.
And eventually it formed a complete picture.
That fight was what finished me.
In my world, I died.
There’s nothing to do but accept it.
And as much as I want to believe this is all some kind of hallucination, I can’t.
Here’s why.
After a couple more months, the “cartoons” sharpened into real images, and the noise resolved into speech.
Not any language I knew.
Some blend that sounded like a mix of half a dozen things at once, and, strange as it sounds, I understood it.
My muscles had gotten strong enough by then that I could roll onto my stomach and get up on all fours.
From that point on I was moved to a nursery.
The mask got replaced with a screen.
And they started waking us on a schedule.
At first I was rattled every time my whole body got dumped somewhere else again, straight out of the usual capsule, though thankfully they never let me suffocate in the process.
At the new spot, something like a tub of gel, I was fished out and looked over by a droid.
Unfamiliar, but recognizable, I’d seen something like it in that same movie franchise.
It scanned me, measured me, muttered something like “healthy specimen,” and set me down in a box.
An actual box.
A plastic one.
I barely had time to panic about that before a neighbor got set down next to me.
Then another.
And another.
Once the number of identical little bodies passed four, they slapped a lid on and put us on a conveyor belt.
So off we went, off to parts unknown, while the others crawled around happily poking at each other, pinching ears, hooting at nothing.
And I stared at everything around me like my life depended on it.
Not that there was much to look at.
Just an ordinary conveyor belt, like baggage claim back home.
Just don’t make a sound.
My neighbors all look the same, bald, dressed in cream colored onesies, and so am I.
The belt spits us out onto a wider platform, where the same unsettling droids carefully pry open our boxes, lift each of us out with those unnerving pincers, and set us down in little enclosures.
A bit later they bring wristbands and fasten one to each of our wrists, and that’s that.
We sat there.
Humming.
Drooling.
On my wrist it says CT-0134.
Guess I’m cleared for takeoff.
Shame the locals won’t get the joke.
Where in the world did I end up?
No, wrong question.
Where is obvious enough.
What I ended up as, that’s the real question.
But for some reason, all I want to do is howl.
What in the hell?