---Genes---
---Tcakqaal’s perspective---
“Well… she’s not your mother, that’s for sure!” shrugs the golden haired Terran with the young face “Even if she is an almost perfect 50% match to your genome and a near 100% match to your mitochondrial and X chromosomal DNA!”
Victor looks dismayed.
Emiko frowns “Could you explain, Thaïs? How do you know she’s not his mother if her genes line up with his like that? I’m obviously no expert but what you’ve just said sounds like a positive maternity test to me.”
The geneticist nods “It certainly looks that way… until you look at any one of…” what looks like a hundred or so pins fall into the chromosomal map “…these locations! All of these are sequences where neither of her alleles match to either of his and, when you look at the same locations on his genome, every single one is the location of a subjectively less desirable allele that has been replaced on hers… If we look at this one, for instance…” he selects one of the pins “…on your genome, Mr Taylor, you have a recessive allele that would put any children you had with someone who also possessed it at significantly increased risk of heart attacks… hers lacks it, having two functional copies of the allele instead…”
“Terrans are well known for the advanced nature of your genetic science and comparative readiness to correctively tamper with your own genes… How do you know she hasn’t simply undergone gene therapy since she mothered Victor?” I ask.
“Because the genetic machinery used for gene therapy leaves behind a completely different signature to this… This was done on a single set of her genes…”
“So…” starts Victor, horror spreading across his face.
“Kara Stellan is almost certainly an illegal clone of your mother, yes… From what you told us about how your mother died and what we know of the Revanchists, it seems likely that she was selected on the strength of her heroic death… who knows how many other Bastionites are unwittingly cloned War heroes.” answers the genderless Terran, simply.
Victor’s breaths increase rapidly as he backs away, choking and swallowing chaotically, as if losing control of his body.
He turns and places his left fist on the wall, resting his head against it and closing his eyes.
I start “Victor, I…”
“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!” he half growls, half screams, causing everyone else present to wince and tense as he levels a full strength punch into the wall panel, causing it to buckle and dent.
Silence reigns for several long moments…
Then, he straightens up and, without looking at any of us, says “I’m sorry about that… I’m goin’ to my room… please leave me alone for a bit… tell everyone else to do the same, if you would.”
With that, he walks from the room, leaving us behind, still in silence.
I’ve never seen him so upset as that!
---Kara’s perspective---
“A clone?” I ask, horrified.
“That’s what I said, yes…” answers the Tshwane woman, soberly.
“I’m just some ersatz copy of a woman who died in the War… and everyone at my orphanage just lied when they told me I was an orphan…?!”
She gives a mirthless smile as she answers “As a fellow clone (albeit of a much older woman and under very different circumstances) I wouldn’t describe us as ‘ersatz’… As to whether you were lied to, I have no way of knowing who if any of those that raised you knew what you actually were… but someone will have. Clones don’t get made by accident… Someone very intentionally made you and put you in that orphanage knowing full well that you were no War orphan.”
“I think I’m going to be sick…!!!” I say, bringing my hand to my mouth and fighting to keep my stomach contents down as waves of nausea wrack my body.
She shoots out a long leg and hooks an empty waste bin with her foot, dragging it close enough that she can reach it from her chair, she picks it up and places it between my cuffed hands.
I grab the bin and stand to bring my face over it.
Thankfully, my nausea passes without me losing my lunch.
“I’m probably not the only one… am I?” I mutter, desolately.
“It seems unlikely you would be…” she confirms.
How many other of Bastion’s children are just the reincarnations of dead soldiers? Were any of us real?!
“Why?… Why would they do this… what do they have to gain from making a bunch of ‘War orphans’?!” I ask her, grimacing.
“I can’t know that either, I’m afraid… but I have a fairly good guess…”
My brow furrows so hard it hurts as I ask “What’s your guess?”
“Well… I would guess that they told themselves some very grand and noble sounding stories about how they were ‘honouring War heroes’ and ‘giving them a second chance to live’… but, in reality, what they wanted was a large subsequent generation of young minds to mould into their ideal of what Terrans should be… They wanted a supply of warm bodies to do their menial work for them… I understand that slavery is practiced on Bastion but exclusively against gardenworlders (who don’t tend to make for good heavy labourers) so, slaves tend to be used for… other purposes…” her wide lips curl in disgust “…Soldiers made for a good genetic sampling pool because anyone with debilitating genetic conditions was preexcluded by the draft process… catastrophic defeats made for good sampling locations because, once the victorious army moved on, they would tend to be quite deserted for a while and…” the dark skin of her broad, flat face twists apologetically “…telling you you were a War orphan seems like a good way to predispose you to hate gardenworlders, doesn’t it?”
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
“So… I’ve just been… livestock… my whole life… and never realised?!”
She shrugs “That’s certainly one way of looking at it, yes.”
My stomach heaves again and, this time, I’m not able to overpower the urge to vomit.
I grab the bucket and empty my guts into it, feeling the acid burn my throat and the back of my nose as I do.
I collapse back into my chair and stare dully into the violet eyes, across the table.
“So, Ms Stellan… do you feel like telling me now… where is Bastion?”
I shake my head, panting, and answer “I can’t…*huff*… tell you…*huff*… that!”
She cocks an eyebrow and says “You mean you’re still willing to defend them after what you’ve just learned?”
I shake my head again “I mean… I don’t…*huff*… know!… Transport… in and out… is something…*huff*… taken care of… by only…*huff*… a few ships… with trusted…*huff*… crews!”
Clearly shocked, she asks “You mean that almost everyone on Bastion has no idea where it is?”
I nod.
“That’s very interesting… more than I’ve managed to learn from any other Revanchist I’ve interviewed…” she states, tapping a long finger against a smooth chin “…So… what else can you tell me about it?”
---Waqa’arc’s perspective---
I walk through the hallway on the topmost of the deathworld dorms.
Their smell hangs heavily on the air, though none are present.
I reach the door at the far end and turn to face it.
With a bracing inhale, I wave to alert the occupant of my presence.
Heavy footfalls sound and, before the door is opened, I’m already hearing the tones of the Terran lingua franca, translated as “Baby, I told you… I need to be alone to process…” the door slides open, revealing a large, heavily built Terran whose hairless, muscular body is almost entirely nude, bar a kind of loin covering with two leg holes.
His hand clutches a half empty bottle of amber liquid.
The Terran is looking slightly up with a bloodshot pair of emerald eyes.
He looks down and sways unnervingly as he frowns “…this… You ain’t Tuun!”
Confused, I answer “I… never claimed to be?”
“Whatchu doin’ here… bigot birb…?” he slurs, followed by a hysterical giggle.
Heavily unnerved by the chaotic way this deathworlder’s behaving, I answer “I… came to thank you…”
“For what?” he demands, twisting his nose and mouth and raising an eyebrow as if he has no idea what I’m talking about.
“For… well… you saved my life and the life of my-yah!!!” I shriek and jump back as the [metre] wide head of a blue furred, amber eyed carnivore appears at his side.
The man snickers at me.
The beast makes no move to attack.
“I… err… I… uhm… I’m sorry, could you put that thing on a lead, perhaps?”
Lightning fast, he drops to his haunches in a way that brings our faces level and, scowling wide eyed, growls “This… is where she lives… You… came here… You don’t like it? Put yourself on a lead and lead yourself the fuck away!” putting an arm around its shoulders, pulling its body against his and stroking the fur on its clavicle with his hand.
He’s close enough that I can smell the toxic quantity of ethanol vapour on his breath.
“I… have something to say to you first!” I assert.
“Go on then!” he glares.
“I… it… You saved my life and my mate’s life in the attack the other day… I came to thank you.”
He sneers “You already said that bit… was there somethin’ else?”
Why’s he making this so difficult?
“I suppose… just… thank you!”
“Alright… bye!” he says, standing and turning to close the door.
“Wait! That’s it?” I demand, incredulously “You aren’t going to acknowledge my thanks?… I’m trying to reconcile with you!”
“Yeah?… Well, what if I don’t wanna reconcile with you?” snarls the deathworlder “What if I have other shit on my mind right now than massagin’ the ego of some petty, officious little, Dolores Umbridge-arse segregationist who casually tosses words like ‘miscegenator’ and ‘machine’ at good people just so she can make herself feel better about what a massive pile of shit she is!?… You thinka that?!?!?!”
I’m dumbstruck by that for a long few moments while the angry, inebriated Terran stands, scowling down at me.
Eventually, I manage “If that’s all you think of me… why did you save my life?… If you had waited another [second] to disarm that other Terran, you could have washed your hands of me.”
He scoffs “Ain’t how it works! You think I can think things through like that?! You think I’d do anything like that if I was thinkin’ ’bout it at all?… You think I got time to think ‘what’re the advantages and disadvantages of savin’ this person or not’! I saved you ’cause you needed savin’… I saved you ’cause I don’t get to decide how much your life is worth! I saved you ’cause, even though I never seen you be anythin’ other ’an a cunt to anyone, don’t mean I get to say you deserve to die!… Simple as!”
Despite the aggressive way he delivers it, I can’t help but be impressed by the nobility of the statement.
“What… what’s happened to reduce you to the state you’re in right now, Mr Taylor?” I say, calling the man by his name for the first time, out loud.
He snorts “Not that it’s any of your fuckin’ business but… if you must know… I just found out that I’m sharing a ship with a eugenic clone of my mum, made by bigoted terrorists who think ’bout gardenworlders the way you do ’bout deathworlders, after spendin’ the last 4 days thinkin’ she were alive, after a lifetime of thinkin’ she were dead!… How’s your week goin’(!?)”
After some moments of making sense of what appeared to be word salad, at first, I answer “Certainly not as bad as that, Mr Taylor!”
The Terran drops to the floor (in a way that definitely would have had me add a note about his alcoholism to my file if I’d seen 5 days ago) and half swivels, half falls, with his back impacting the wall.
His shoulders slumped, his long, thick, bare legs lying in front of him at a right angle to his torso, he turns his face upward and emits rapid puffing sounds.
His eyes screw up and clear fluid begins spilling from them.
Even though it looks very different, the pain he’s feeling right now is one I know all too well.
“I wasn’t even angry! There wasn’t even a fuckin’ moment where I was thinkin’ ‘Hey Mum! Where the fuckya been all my life!?’ I was… so fuckin’ happy, just to finally have her back… When she started sayin’ she didn’t know what I was talkin’ ’bout, I started rationalising; ‘maybe she got amnesia’, ‘maybe they wiped her memories when they kidnapped her’, ‘maybe she’s in deep cover ’an I’m blowin’ it for her’… but no… she didn’t know my name, my Dad’s name, Auntie Tamsin’s, Uncle Rex’s, Uncle Rabbie’s, Simone Sands’ or anyone else… because that’s. not. her!… Just a cruel fuckin’ joke!”
I look at the emotional male… and imagine how his situation would feel…
If I saw someone who seemed to be Qrawi’a but who didn’t know me… If I found out that this had been done to her… it would be devastating.
“I’m… extremely sor-”
“Spare me!” he snarls, startling me “I’m sure I’ve already given you more ’an enough dirt to add to your pathetic little burn book, so just. fuck. off!”
Despite his inebriation, his hand flies perfectly over his head to impact the panel.
The door slides closed, lightly impacting the short snout of the predator as it shuts.
It yowls in protest and the drunkard immediately transforms his tone allowing me to hear a sympathetic “Oh! Sorry, baby! I didn’t mean to! Didn’t see you there!… Come here…” through the door.