RB-X-17

Chapter 4

“No alpha-ones?” SR-Y-18 replied, blinking. “That- That doesn’t make sense. How can the System function without alpha-ones to guide it? To resolve unanticipated problems? To advance science and technology?”

“Nine generations ago,” LG-X-17 replied, “the alpha-ones brought about the Turmoil. Their differences of opinion about how the System should operate led them to split the alpha-twos, alpha-threes, and beta clones into factions, each faction loyal to an alpha-one. The factions vied with one another for control of the System—and nearly destroyed it in the process.”

“Yes, of course,” SR said. “But the alpha-ones came to an agreement that they would isolate themselves and communicate only through the alpha-twos, who would communicate only through the alpha-threes, so that any future differences among the alpha-ones would not spread through the rest of the System. That history is part of every alpha-three’s basic education.”

“Every alpha-three has been lied to,” LG-X-17 replied. “There was no such agreement. The alpha-twos ended the Turmoil by uniting and wresting control of the System from the alpha-ones. We have been running it ever since.”

Up to this point, TK-Y-15 had remained quiet, but now he gasped. 

“You…You murdered them?”

“We did not,” LG-X-17 answered gruffly. “We simply confined them to their living area. And because we alone control the cloning facilities, whenever an alpha-one died, we did not clone a replacement.”

“That…It’s like…genocide,” TK blurted.

LG-X-17 glowered. “It is not genocide. The alpha-ones’ genomes remain in cryogenic suspension just like all the other genomes. They simply have not been used for several generations.”

SR blinked. “Is this why there’s been so little scientific progress in my lifetime?”

“The System has all the technology needed to continue operating indefinitely,” LG countered. “We now live in a perfectly balanced society. Scientific and technological advancement is no longer necessary.

“I am revealing all of this,” she continued pointedly, “to impress upon you the extreme importance of taking control of this situation. If we allow reassertion to occur in any clone, it could well become an epidemic, and the System will be subjected to a second Turmoil. But this time, no amount of effort on the part of the alpha-twos will be able to quell it. The System will collapse, and we will be its last generation.”

At that moment, SR’s screens came alive with readings. RB was dreaming again.

***

It had been weeks since Regina stopped taking her birth control pills. On her doctor’s advice, she had avoided vaginal sex during that interval, instead restricting herself to oral and anal sex as well as plenty of lesbian fun with her girlfriends. 

But now that it was safe for her to conceive, Regina was wasting no time. She firmly believed that a woman looking to have a baby should fuck a variety of men and, preferably, not know who the biological father of her child is. Her convictions were so strong on this point that not only did she ask her husband to help her organize a sex party at their home and invite more than two dozen men to gangbang her, but she gave him sole discretion over the guest list and told him to keep it secret from her. Regina would spend the entire evening in a pitch-dark bedroom that the men would enter one at a time, so she would have no idea who was fucking her at any given time unless he accidentally spoke or otherwise gave himself away.

And yet, despite these measures, there was one guest at the party who had no hope of hiding his identity from Regina, even as they fucked in the darkness. He didn’t speak, but Regina could tell from his every grunt and moan, from the feel of his body against hers, from the size of his cock and the copious amount of seed that he shot into her waiting womb, exactly who it was.

***

RB awoke, gasping in startlement. Even though her dream had been as vivid as any of the others, she knew that it couldn’t have really happened. Because the man whose body had felt so familiar against hers hadn’t lived long enough to attend that party.

“Rennie,” she whispered aloud.

Yet he was alive. Not merely in her dream, but here, now. She’d never actually met him—not while awake—but she’d seen him in passing in the corridors and other spaces. She didn’t know his designation, or even what work group he was in, but as of this moment, she knew him.

And she was going to find him.

***

In Monitoring Room 3, the call had just ended.

“Okay,” SR sighed, moving over to the drone controls. “I will awaken RB-X-17 and escort her to A29.”

“I’m not comfortable with that,” TK replied.

“An alpha-two just ordered us to do it. We have to.”

“An alpha-two who answers to no one,” TK said. “We’ve been taught since childhood how the System works, and now we find out that a big part of that is a lie. If they’ve been lying about the alpha-ones, what else are they lying to us about?”

“TK, calm down,” SR said urgently, knowing that LG-X-17 could well be monitoring their conversation through the room’s mics and cameras. “We still need to maintain order. That’s our job.”

“Listen,” TK said. “I’ve discovered more about that virus. It was hard to detect this at first, but over the last several days, I’ve found that it has telomeres that grow infinitesimally shorter each time the virus replicates itself. Just as we keep track of how many times each genotype is cloned, the virus has been keeping track of how many generations it has been through. Like a, a countdown. And now that countdown is very close to zero. In fact, it may have already reached zero in some carriers.”

“Why didn’t you mention this in the meeting?” SR asked.

“Because I don’t know what it means!” TK cried.

“Then we need to keep operating as normal,” SR said. Then he turned back to the drone controls.

***

In the dim light of the room, RB was just getting out of bed when the dormitory’s resident drone lifted into the air and approached until it loomed above her. 

“RB-X-17,” it said quietly, “please follow-”

“My name,” RB interrupted, “is Regina Barnes.”

Staring wide-eyed at the screen, SR breathed, “Oh, sweet System, it’s really happened. Reassertion has really happened.”

He moved the drone down to the woman’s eye level and said, “Please come with me. This is for the safety and health of all your fellow betas. I know how much you care about them.” 

Regina exhaled sharply. It was rare for the alpha-threes to appeal to her emotions to get her to submit. Even so, Regina did not submit. 

Instead, she turned and ran.

“What the-?” SR exclaimed. 

Never in his monitoring career had SR seen an adult beta-one just run away. So he did the only thing he could think of: He leaned the drone forward and made it take off after her.

Regina ran out the dormitory door—SR mentally kicked himself for not thinking to secure it—and hurtled down the corridor. She dashed past surprised betas whose day cycle started earlier than Work Group 12’s and who were on their way to one task or another. She looked back over her shoulder and saw the drone pursuing her.

I need to get out of the corridors, she thought. Otherwise, they can just send another drone from somewhere ahead of me to cut me off.

She turned left and ran a hundred and twenty meters down a long, wide corridor, passing more gawking betas as she went. In the back of her mind, she had the thought that some of them were probably enjoying the way her boobs bounced as she ran.

Regina had nearly reached the end of the corridor when, just as she’d feared, another drone flew into the intersection ahead of her. She stopped dead in her tracks, even as the drone behind her sped toward her.

Then she turned left and ran straight through the entrance to Agriculture Dome 2.

Unlike the other ag domes, which were for vegetables, grains, and legumes, Ag Dome 2 was an orchard. Rows upon rows of trees bearing apples, pears, lemons, and many other fruits extended farther than the eye could see through the misty, humidified air. The trees provided not only food but also oxygen, supplementing the efforts of the air scrubbers that made the System’s atmosphere breathable.

This was the first time Regina had run away from the drones since childhood, but she still remembered something useful from back then: that drones, while fast, were not terribly maneuverable. They would have to come to almost a full stop before they could turn ninety degrees to go through the door into the ag dome. So it was several seconds before the two drones pursuing her entered the dome, by which time Regina had gotten down on her stomach behind a mound of dirt at the base of an apple tree, opposite from the entrance and the drones.

The drones split up and began to float down separate avenues between the fruit trees, scanning. Neither was coming Regina’s way, so the woman kept her head down and tried to think of what to do next.

She knew she couldn’t hide forever. But maybe she just had to hide long enough.

***

KH-Y-21 and the others from Work Group 12, with the notable exception of RB-X-17, were just waking up. Per their schedule, they were to eat breakfast and then return to Agriculture Dome 6, where KH had been assigned to do a maintenance check on the dome’s irrigation system. 

But instead of getting ready for the day, KH was just standing by the foot of his bed, staring at nothing. A drone flew into the dormitory and stopped to hover in front of him.

“KH-Y-21,” it said, “please shower and get dressed.”

“That’s…that’s not my name,” the tall, black-haired man said, his brow furrowing even as his gaze remained far away. “My name is…Ken. Kenneth Han.”

***

SR continued searching for RB. He had commandeered two drones from nearby areas, so four of them were now moving slowly around Ag Dome 2, one operated manually by SR and the others under AI control. 

But SR’s heart wasn’t in it. Not only because this situation was the strangest of his entire life, but also because locating and detaining RB could lead to her being cycled. SR didn’t wish that on anyone.

The monitoring room door opened. JE-X-16 fast-walked inside, looking as disheveled as she had during their middle-of-the-night conference call.

“What’s going on?” she said. “I just got awakened by a message telling me to report here immediately. Is there-?”

She was interrupted when another screen lit up. It was TS-X-16, one of the alpha-threes from Monitoring Room 2.

“What in the entire System is going on with your work group?” the woman demanded. “You’ve got a clone running around the beta-one floor like a lunatic, and another one is claiming that he has a name. Not a designation—a name.”

The face of VK-Y-19 from Monitoring Room 1 abruptly appeared on the screen, as well.

“We have another problem,” the black-haired man said. “RB-Y-21 is leading Work Group 3 in some kind of revolt. They’ve shut down the drone in their dormitory, and now they’ve barricaded the door. And before they disconnected all the cameras, we heard them saying some extremely strange things.”

“Things like ‘My name is Regina Barnes’?” SR asked.

VK swallowed. “Things very much like that, yes.”

JE had been only half-listening to this conversation, because she had just had a bizarre revelation—one that now had her standing at one of the consoles, changing settings on the emergency systems. Everything she’d been taught as an alpha-three said that in a situation like this, where there apparently was an epidemic of mental illness, she should initiate a lockdown of all beta sections and then a series of drone-mediated medical examinations of affected clones in each section to identify the problem. That was protocol.

Yet she found herself doing something very different. Having finished at the console, she went to one wall of the room and put her hand on a scanner, causing a small section of the wall to slide away to reveal a red button with a clear plastic cover over it. A label beneath the button read,

DE-SEPARATION CONTROL

DO NOT USE WITHOUT AUTHORIZATION

JE flipped the plastic cover up, exposing the button. Suddenly, LG-X-17 appeared on her console screen. Her tan face was flushed with anger.

“JE-X-16!” the alpha-two barked. “That control is for emergencies only!”

“I know,” JE said. The flat of her hand now hovered over the button. “And, I should let you know that I’ve shut you out of the system. You could disable the protections I’ve set up, but not in time to stop me.”

“You can’t initiate de-separation unilaterally!” LG shouted. “You’ll disrupt the entire System!”

“I’m sorry,” JE replied, “but I have to.”

“Why!?” LG-X-17 shouted.

JE sighed. 

“Because,” she said, “my name is Julie Eisenberg.”

“WHAT!?”

JE slapped her palm down on the button. Alarms sounded in every room and every corridor as, all over the System, the huge metal doors that separated the various sections slowly opened.

***

Regina had been using the cover of the fruit trees in Ag Dome 2 to hide from the drones and the ceiling cameras, only daring to raise her head now and then to see where the drones were. This time, she saw that the drones had stopped their pattern-based search and were simply hovering in place. Regina guessed that at least some of the drones were controlled by AI, so the fact that every drone had stopped moving meant that the alpha-three commanding them had deliberately called off the search.

Cautiously, Regina got up and headed toward the door. None of the drones moved an inch.

Whatever it is I’ve been waiting for, she thought, it’s happening.

She needed to find Rennie. While Regina was hiding from the drones, she had realized that the beta-one she’d seen in the corridor by Ag Dome 1 was him. She simply hadn’t recognized him because the other Rennie, the first Rennie, had never reached adulthood, so Regina hadn’t known exactly what he would look like at that age.

Obviously, he was in one of the work groups housed on the other side of the level. But that was all Regina knew. She supposed she could just go over there and ask around, but-

Suddenly, she heard a sound like metal scraping heavily on metal, coming from the corridor outside the ag dome. Regina had never heard anything quite like it, so she went out to investigate.

On the corridor wall was a large metal door that Regina—and virtually everyone every other beta—had never even thought of as a door, because no one had seen it open or even heard of it opening in their lifetime. But now, it was opening, the two wide, rubber-rimmed plates of steel slowly retracting into the wall on either side of it.

There were several hundred beta-ones in the System, and similar numbers of beta-twos and -threes, so it wasn’t possible to recognize them all. Even so, when Regina saw two people—a gangly man and a small woman—looking at her nervously through the gradually opening door, she knew for certain that she had never seen them before. They weren’t wearing coveralls; they were wearing shirts, pants, and jackets in various earth tones. 

Are those alphas? Regina thought. Is that how alphas dress?

The two looked wide-eyed at Regina, like they might bolt at any moment. Regina realized how sweaty and dirty she must look after all her running and hiding. She reached up a hand to fix her hair as she spoke.

“Hello. I’m Regina. I used to be called RB-X-17.”

“Regina…” the tall male said, his brow furrowing quizzically.

“I…” the short woman said, “I am BN-X- no. I am Beatrice Ndiaye. I mean, I was.” She took a moment to think before she went on, “And now, perhaps, I am again?”

“That seems to be how it works,” Regina replied.

“Then I am John,” the man said. “John Thayer. We’re alpha-threes.”

“If that still means anything,” Beatrice said. “Say, do either of you feel an urge to go…up?”

“Up?” John replied. “This is the top level of the System.”

“No, she’s right,” Regina said. “I feel it, too.” She looked around and added, “I’m just not sure what to do about it. But I do need to find my brother.”

“‘Brother’…wow,” John said. “But how can you have a brother? You’re a clone, like everyone in the System.”

“They cloned him, too,” Regina said. 

She wasn’t certain of this, but she had dim memories of her parents enrolling her and Rennie in some kind of program, one involving blood draws and cortical scans. Plus, Rennie being a clone was the only explanation for his presence in the System.

“But,” Regina said as an idea struck her, “if everyone is feeling the same urge to go up, then maybe I’ll find him wherever ‘up’ is.”

“Yes,” John replied, “that seems-” 

“RB!”

Regina turned and saw PW-X-14, her beta-two friend who worked in one of the fabrication rooms, jogging toward her. 

Of course, Regina thought. The beta-twos lived and worked on the level below the beta-ones; their urge to go up would have brought them to the beta-one level.

“It’s Regina now,” she said as the woman stopped in front of her. “What about you?”

“Paula,” she replied. “It’s crazy down on my level; the beta-threes are coming up to us, and half the beta-twos are coming up here. The other half are in the fabrication rooms, making…well, I don’t know about the others, but the ones in Fab Room Four are making ‘rain gear.’”

“What’s that?” Regina asked.

“Something to do with keeping falling water off yourself. I feel like I should know what that means, but…it’s fuzzy.”

“I know how you feel,” said a blonde woman who had just emerged through the same door as Beatrice and John. “There’s something important we need to do now, but it’s only coming to me in fragments.” Then the woman turned to Regina and said, “Hello, RB- I mean, Regina. I’m Julie. I’m one of the alpha-three monitors for your work group.”

“I see,” Regina replied. Then she smirked. “Have you been enjoying watching me fuck?”

Julie nodded contritely. “I suppose I deserve that. But honestly, yes, I’ve enjoyed it very much. More than I’m supposed to.”

“Believe it or not, I’m glad to hear that,” Regina replied. “But you need to forget about how you’re ‘supposed to’ feel about sex. That’s not just my personal belief; I think it’s an important part of…all this,” she finished, waving her hand at their surroundings.

“You may be right,” JE said.

“Attention, everyone,” said an unfamiliar voice over the beta-one level’s rarely used PA system. “This is, ah, Frank McReady with Work Group Three. We had a big door open up in our dormitory with some stairs leading up. They’re dark, and they’re dusty as anything, but we’re grabbing some emergency lanterns and heading up. We’ll leave some lanterns on the stairs as we go so anyone who wants to can follow us.”

Work Group 3, Regina thought. That might be Rennie’s group.

“Well,” Julie said, “I suppose we should go take a look.”

Regina briefly thought about going back for the rest of her work group, but she knew they would all be headed the same way soon enough, if they weren’t already.

“Let’s go,” she replied.

They headed for the far side of the beta-one level. John and Beatrice looked around and murmured to each other as they walked down the corridors, while Julie, also gazing around, walked with Regina.

“I’ve been monitoring one part or another of the beta-one section ever since I left creche,” Julie said. “But I never thought I’d see it with my own eyes, and not just on a screen.”

“Is it different from the alpha-three section?” Regina asked.

“It’s certainly a lot bigger,” Julie replied. “There are only about two hundred alpha-threes.”

They continued talking, mainly about what they could remember from the lives of their originals. Julie mentioned being from a place called Green Bay but had trouble explaining what a bay was. Mostly, though, Julie wanted to hear about Regina’s original life, which Regina was happy to tell her about.

“My goodness,” Julie said after Regina described the events of her fifth birthday party. “I had no idea there were communities in the pre-world that were so…open, about sex.”

“I don’t know how common it was,” Regina replied. “But I wouldn’t have wanted to grow up any other way.”

They followed the crowd to the stairs, which were made of concrete and were as dark and dusty as Frank McReady had described. They were also long; because there were only three beta levels, Regina had never had to climb more than two flights of stairs at a time, while these seemed to go up and up and up. It was nearly ten minutes before Regina reached the top.

There was a doorway up there, with a thick metal door that looked like it must have needed five people to push it open. But Regina forgot about the door the instant she looked out through it.

“The floor…” she breathed, “I mean, the ground…it’s green. And the ceiling…” She looked up at the blue expanse above and gasped. “There is no ceiling.”