Written in 365 Parts: 11: How Did You Find Out?

“This feels like it is going to be real bad news,” Marsh said as the world snapped into focus. Drick was sat on the benches near the wall of the simulator, there was an open bottle in their hand and a small tub, at their feet, was filled with a few more.

“Take a seat and grab a cold drink,” said Drick.

Marsh walked over and plucked a beer from the ice bucket. He snapped the bottle open and tasted the beer, it was refreshing and clean, better than the drinks he had yesterday. “This seems like better beer than usual,” he said taking a seat, “must be bad news. So, am I being canned?”

“What?” Drick raised an eyebrow.

“Kicked off the mission. Look I have been practicing hard. I am not as good as the rest of the team but I am not that far behind. I know the equipment well, and I am starting to get the hang of the suit, and working everything by thought.”

“It isn’t about the mission.”

“Oh,” he shrugged. “I guess that’s something. So it is bad news about me. Go on then, get it over with. It is clearly eating at you and it isn’t going to help me now that I know you have something to tell me. This is just painful waiting for both of us.”

“You’re not quite who you think you are.”

“Well I guess no one is really,” Marsh took a sip of beer. “But I am assuming this isn’t philosophy, so you want to explain that.”

“Okay. To start with I have to warn you that this may all be a version of the truth, a lot of what we have is speculation that we are able to verify as plausible, but the subtlety can be lost in that kind of thinking. So maybe there isn’t a whole truth.”

“Fair. Go on then.”

“You were born in the twenty-second century using the old calendar system, well your intellect and memories were. You were not. You were born thirty-four years and one month ago, on this planet, in a heavily controlled simulated environment and construct program.”

“What?”

“You’re a clone. A very good clone. You are not replicated from a piece of the original Marsh. You were re-created using the same original input material.”

“What does that mean?”

“Drink your beer and grab another, try to chill this doesn’t get any better.”

Marsh stared at Drick, “I might not want the beer.”

“Bloody hell I would,” said Drick and emptied the bottle in their hand. Then reached for another and cracked it open. Drick watched as Marsh did the same. “They have access to the original gametes from your parents. They are able to combine them using slightly manipulated versions that are an exact chromosomal match and program the DNA to be the same as the original.”

“Shit. That’s mad, why, for what reason?” Marsh drank heavily on the beer, “Go on, what’s the rest? I am thirty-two, so clones take as long to grow and learn?”

“No. We could clone an exact replica of you in a few weeks and download your entire brain into it via an implant as complex as the one in your head. It is easily achievable and how many people escape the aging process. Most of the higher class have copies of their minds saved via hourly versioning systems. No they wanted you to develop as if the whole experience was as close to real from what they have of your memories.”

“How do you mean?”

“I think they have some of your original memories. I am not convinced, or yet to discover, if they have all of them. So they have been recreating them, refining and as they let you grow they implant them, allowing you to experience them in a more naturalistic manner. They brought you up in a simulation.”

“Shit. Why?”

“That I don’t know.”

“Do you know how long they would be doing it for?”

“A little over fifty years was the cut off date. At that point you would either have fulfilled, or will fulfill some purpose.”

“How do you know this?”

“You are not the first Marsh they created. In fact you are just the current one in line.”

“What?”

“They needed to not only have you as close to your original as possible but they wanted even the method of birth to be a close match. They found someone with the same biological make up as your parents. They used them to gestate you. Unlike most of all modern lifeforms you were gestated in utero. Again we don’t know why. You are the eighth Marsh to be born from the same womb.”

“Same womb? Where are the others?”

“We don’t know but we have to assume they either fulfilled a purpose, are hanging around getting wrinkly, or any other number of possibilities. For all I know you could be the main course for a very picky bunch of cannibals.”

“Nice. How did you find out this much?”

“Couple of sources. Oh and your mother turned up she wants to talk to you.”

“WHAT?!”