Tears Of A Clone
By
CSquared



Chapter 2:
The metal behemoth strode across the ruined landscape. Inside, it cradled a living being, but to anything outside it was a cold, heartless monster. For two decades it had roamed the planet, mot slowing for mountains, or seas, or even what remnants there were of civilisation. Now, finally, it was coming to the end of its journey. The single remaining vestige of the long-past ideals. The wars of clone liberation had taken a heavy toll on the planet. Most of its ruling humanoid race had been wiped out. Many species of fauna were gone, obliterated forever. The little flora that remained was bleak, and unloved. The clawed, ruthless predators that had mutated from the fiercest creatures of the past had no effect on the massive feet of the battle suit. However, were it simply the woman inside, they would tear her apart before she could even blink. They were the single most efficient killers that the planet had ever seen. Only now did the few remaining men and women realise the folly of conflict. Only now, when it was too late.

The giant battle suit reached the base of the huge tower. It was scarred from battle, but was still essentially in one piece. It had been ground zero of the first major assault of the wars. It survived only due to the vacuum created directly under a nuclear blast. Nothing but the radiation had struck it. The behemoth stood, it’s lifeless eyes staring up at the structure. Raising its arm, it fired a grappling hook the size of an ocean liner’s anchor, attached to a cable thinker than a tree, to a ledge nearly three miles up. The cable tightened, and, motors whirring, the humanoid fighting machine began to rise slowly up the featureless face of the spire.

First one, then another huge hand clamped onto the ledge, and the suit pulled itself up and stood before the doors. With one mighty punch, it crumpled them. With another, it smashed them off their hinges and into the dark, musty air of the room within. An echoed clang signified their arrival at the other end. The suit crouched under the top of the opening, and stood fully once inside. A panel that covered its groin swung open, and a pipe extended from behind it. At once, liquid spewed forth, followed shortly by a human form. The disgorged woman lay naked in the steaming fluid, quivering. For the last three months, the battle suit’s computers had been training her muscles for the outside world, but it was still not enough. They were still in atrophy from the years of neglect, and the woman could not bring herself to her feet. She simply lay there, curled up in a ball, and waited. Sure enough, the slightly addled computer brains of the maintenance robots still functioned. Two of the golden machines floated quickly towards her out of the darkness, and grasped an arm each. They lifted her from the floor, and rushed her quickly to the cloning tanks.

She stepped forth, hours later, refreshed. Drying herself of the cloning fluid with a large towel, she took hold of some robes and pulled them on. She walked from the room, and was met by a hovering robot. It beckoned, and she followed it. It led her down the long corridors, into the giant hall that used to contain three cloned versions of everyone alice on the planet. Now, it was simply a sea of melted protein shells, bitter reminders of the ‘liberation’ of the clones. The clones has not been liberated. They had never been designed to live. Within (at the most) four years of being born, they had all died. She shook her head in sadness, and stepped onto a platform. It flew away from the gantry, and took her towards the centre of the hall, towards the only remaining clones in the entire complex. Their original had killed them shortly before the war broke out, and then taken his own life on his way back to his home, where the police had been waiting for him. His act had, technically, been murder - but so had what the authorities had been doing. Now, his final, desperate act could be what saved the race. The woman leapt with the ease of a newly-rejuvenated gymnast off the platform and down the steps, landing lightly before the three tall, thin, egg shaped pods. Inside were three hunched over, dead human forms. Each was over one hundred and sixty years old, but that made no difference. She hit a switch on the control panel, and the middle pod wobbled, rippled, then split open and poured its liquid contents across her. The naked dead body of the man fell from the pod and into the woman’s arms. She rushed back up the steps and onto the platform - she had to get it to another tank before it started its long-postponed decomposition.

The body had already started to rot by the time she got it into the healing waters of a cloning tank, but it stopped within a minute of immersion. She beckoned for a robot hovering in the corner of the room to come along and work the machine - she did not know how. it lowered itself to the right level without saying a word (they were always silent), and pressed buttons faster than the human eye could see. While she waited, the woman removed her sodden robes, and stepped into a radiation shower, her long black hair hanging limply down her back, sticking to her skin. About five minutes later, she stepped out again - clean and dry. A second robot handed her some more flattering clothes, and she climbed into them in the name of modesty. Walking over to the occupied tank, she watched as the robot made the cloning process happen. A long needle was pressed into the dead flesh of the body within, and genetic material removed. It passed through pipelines and computer systems, and was injected into a second tank. The greenish liquid inside that tank began to pulsate with energy, and the microscope viewscreen showed the newly-created cells burst into life and multiply. This clone would be made to last. Before long, the quickly splitting cells became visible to the naked eye. Within twenty-four hours, a fully grown human being would be created. It would only have the most basic animal instincts, but that was all that was needed.
