A small wizened form lay encased in crystal. Wires ran from his head to a terminal beside him.
“Welcome Dustin and Olivia, I have been waiting a very long time to meet you.” The voice was mechanical, coming from the terminal. The robot AI stopped in its tracks and the face on it disappeared.
“I hope you don’t mind the games I had you go through, but I had to make absolutely sure the two of you could survive the coming trials.”
“What?” started Dustin, completely confused. “What the hell?”
“I’m sure you have figured out that I am the original Dustin, by now?”
Shaking his head, “Actually no, you bastard, I didn’t have a fucking clue until this moment.”
“Pity. Regardless, you are tasked with saving the human race.”
“Like hell we are!” shouted Olivia, furiously.
“Please calm down, I will explain everything to you.”
“I don’t think you could explain everything, I think you’re sick and twisted!”
“Olivia,” said Dustin, grabbing her arm. “We don’t have a choice but to listen to his little tirade. We need to know what’s going on, and then we can kill his sick ass.”
She nodded, hesitantly at first, then turned to lean against the wall.
“Alright, Original Dustin, let’s hear what you have to say.” He crossed his arms, trying to keep an open mind about all the different ways he wanted to kill this thing.
“When the humans left, I was ignored in the prison. I was to be used as a test subject on the new technology, the PED, they had just acquired. Luckily, the Josagn came and rescued me, or so I thought, until it became clear they were more interested in hunting me, than they were in saving me. My clones were set to start growing, also left by the humans, in order to have multiple test subjects for the PED.”
“But why make clones? Isn’t that infinitely more difficult? Why not just use other people?” This just didn’t make sense to Dustin.
“The PED was reverse engineered by me, so I was to be the test subject. Every other human they had tried it on, had died.”
“But what about me?” asked Olivia.
“And all of those people in the underground city?” added Dustin.
“Olivia was in jail with me, and the Josagn had no idea it would kill other humans. I expected her to do as well, but when they placed one on her, she did fine. I never questioned it, personally, just saw it as a blessing. As for the people in the underground city, the PED works just fine on aliens. Those were never humans, they were other aliens that had been released for the Josagn to hunt.”
That made a bit of sense to Dustin, he had never considered those people to be aliens.
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“The Josagn were tempted to release all of the clones at once, but I convinced them to draw the fun out, make it last, and they saw the wisdom of that. I was hoping that at least one of my clones would manage to succeed at killing off the Josagn and freeing us all. And here you are.”
“But I still have so many questions, like why do I have the memories from the other clones, and why were the Josagn taking the babies out of the other Olivias, how were there other Olivia’s if they only cloned you, and how are you still alive after 200 years?”
“The answer to that, is in the PED. I don’t understand everything about it myself, because it is alien in nature, but what I have been able to deduce, the device stored far more than just genetic information. I believe, because they are your clones, the device also stored memories, that whenever a suitable electrical shock occurred, you would be able to unlock those memories. I have been able to study the actions of each of the clones that came before you, and I have been able to watch you make decisions that your clones had made, that you would not have been able to make otherwise.
“As for the babies, the Josagn have always been interested in our reproduction. Their gestation, within the body is mere days, then their young is expelled within an egg. I know they understand the gestation of our kind, but I believe they were conducting experiments to try to understand more. It could also have been to see what the affects of the PED had on the young.”
“So, in other words, you don’t have a fucking clue,” snarled Olivia, unable to remain silent any longer.
“Yes,” even as a mechanical voice, they could both hear the reluctance and sadness, but they were beyond feeling sorry for this guy.
“Olivia was cloned using a device they had from an alien race they destroyed about a hundred years ago. It clones much more efficiently than the method used by the humans. Unfortunately, they were only able to get a certain number of clones from her before her original died. Cloning from a clone turned out to be…disastrous.”
Olivia opened her mouth to say something else, then snapped it shut. Dustin didn’t know what to tell her. He was sorry she was the last of herself? That just didn’t sound right.
“I have only been able to survive this long because of the semi-stasis the crystal cocoon has placed me in. My mind can still function at a normal state, but my body is slowed incredibly. The crystal being you passed to get in here was the one who placed me here. I believe his entire race was wiped out by the Josagn, and that he is the last of his kind. He has been an incredibly good friend, but the Josagn greatly enjoyed using him to mislead my clones.”
“I plan to kill him, too,” growled Olivia, marching out of the room.
“What happened to the humans? Why the nonsense with the clone hunts? Is there a way to get home?” Dustin couldn’t believe he had gone through all of this just to come to a dead end. He refused to just roll over and die!
“There was a war raging with the Josagn when they left, I don’t know what happened on their end. The Josagn here, have been breeding happily and seemed to have no interest in traveling away from this station. The clone hunts were their form of entertainment. Though now that you have killed them all, it would be interesting to see what happens below as everything settles down to try and survive. There is one ship I know about, that you may be able to use, to return to Earth. I don’t know its condition, or how long you may live as a clone. For all I know you may live a long healthy life. If you do, I would be pleased to know that someone could.”
“Why did they keep you alive?”
“I believe they hoped to clone me some more. They had so much fun hunting me they wanted to keep it up.
“Between the two of us, I never wanted any of this. I wanted nothing more than to escape the Josagn myself and go home. You probably don’t believe me, and I have lived long enough to be fine with that. As a show of good faith, I thought it wise to inform you that the station is designed to blow up when the population drops below a certain number. The Josagn designed it in, and I discovered it shortly after they hooked me up so that I could communicate with them. It was meant to keep them from being used as slaves if anyone ever came to overthrow them.
“The ship is on floor twenty-three, near the main engines. It was designed to be an escape ship for the mechanics who worked there. I will send the AI from the other station to lead you there. The count down has just started, so Olivia must have killed the crystal man. Hurry!”