thin top she wore underneath. She enjoyed the feeling of the fresh air, such a rare thing at one time, so she stuffed her hands into the sleeves of her long hooded overshirt and crossed her arms instead of stepping inside.
Ayan. That was the only name on her official identification. It had been issued that morning, and the absence of a surname meant that the genetic typing and genealogical matching had failed to connect her with any citizen on record. Doctor Anderson had told her that was a possibility.
He had been so good to her, treated her like his own flesh and blood. The memory of her first morning came to mind again, as it had often. Waking up in bed as though she had just had a good night's sleep, the first thing she did was reach for her morning pills. When the soft lights came on she realized she wasn't waking up where she remembered going to sleep, and there was an overwhelming awareness that everything was somehow new.
It must have been hard for him to just leave her alone, to watch from another room as she sat up, realized that her body was different, the results of her sudden weight loss and the evidence of multiple organ failure just wasn't there. There were other memories that were vague, more like emotions. An overall feeling of wellness, a quiet place with melodies in the distance, a heartbeat and gentle voices just at the edge of her senses.
When she took a slow, deep breath it felt different, there was no pain, no resistance in her chest. As she sat up she realized her body was proportioned differently than she remembered. Less sleek and more curvy for the most part, and there was strength she hadn't felt since she arrived back on the First Light. There was no medication on the table, the command and control unit had been replaced with something that looked like a thinner, lighter five centimetre wide transparent bracelet and there was an open closet with loose fitting clothing.
Ayan remembered just shaking her head and closing her eyes. She was herself, but not, and then she recalled the week before, when she had allowed herself to be scanned by the highest resolution equipment in the fleet. They cloned me. She remembered realizing. The feeling was indescribable as she just sat there, trying to think her way through it. It was at the same time terrifying and amazing. Her memories told her that just days ago she had started losing her hair, but when she ran her hand over her head and down her shoulders she could see and feel golden curls down to the center of her back. It was a change, but considering how her health had begun to quickly decline it was a welcome one.
Sadness threatened to grip her as the supposition struck. I must be dead. She thought. I wonder what happened.
Ayan took the command and control unit and materialized a vacsuit onto herself, then put on the long, white hooded overshirt that would become her favourite piece of clothing.
The smile on Doctor Anderson's face as he opened the door to her bedroom was something she'd never forget. It was so warm, adoring, welcoming. “I can answer most of your questions,” he said quietly, gesturing to the room behind him. “Let's sit down.”
The apartment was naturally lit that morning, the golden sun filled the main sitting room with light through the large balcony windows. She sat down on a brown sofa and took a moment to get comfortable, even that felt different. “You're not a clone,” was the first thing he said.
Over a breakfast of fresh fruit, cranberry juice and coffee he explained everything she wanted to know. Firstly, that it had been almost six years since the scan was taken, so her memories didn't include the worst of her failing health or the growth of the Special Projects Division she had restarted with Laura or years of searching for Jonas Valent. Telling her that Jonas was just recently killed saving the Triton but there was some kind of copy of him as well was difficult. The man she had loved so deeply was gone, but according to the transmission received from Laura and overheard by Intelligence through surveillance equipment in Oz's quarters Jake Valance had his memories. Still, her grief was undeniable and there were questions about Jake that no one could answer. That, along with Freeground disallowing any attempt to contact him or the Triton frustrated her to no end. Her last meaningful memory was Laura and Jason's wedding, and that's one thing she was very thankful for.
Other questions, like her own marital status and what kind of person she had become in the missing years were addressed as well, and she was strangely proud of her accomplishments while she wished she could remember them. When she had run out of queries there was only one thing left; if she wasn't a clone, what was she?
It took a while for the answer to sink in. According to Doctor Anderson he had found a sample of genetic material from a woman named Angelica five generations back. He also obtained a copy of the oldest female human genetic sample on record. After studying them for a time, determining what kind of genetic alterations had been made, he fertilized many of her mother's eggs with material from her father's family. He halted the cell division and reverted all the genetic alterations to a natural state, a process taking months using templates developed with her ancestors material along with the older reference.
When that was finished he selected the candidate that would be most like Ayan, then resumed cell division. Ayan still couldn't believe how they advanced the ageing process; naturally. It had been done before, but never so drastically. The entire first stage laboratory was on a ship with no name, just a serial number, and when they were sure she was undergoing healthy development they entered a wormhole specially formed to accelerate the passage of time. In the space of nearly four years the Doctor and small crew experienced thirty. When they returned to Freeground their lab had been moved to Freedom Tower under Special Projects Division Classification. The original Ayan and her team didn't know it was there, no one did. Someone would have to specifically look for it, and no one other than her mother and a few select individuals knew anything about it.
The sacrifice that crew made for me is still unbelievable, she thought as she took a step closer to the railing. The strong white bars of the rail were only three meters away, and she could see a bit more of the expanding town below and decided to stay right there until she became accustomed to the view. She had a fear of heights before and took care of it in cadet training when she was a teenager. At least that's what her memories told her, but she knew that somehow the phobia had made a comeback with a vengeance since her second birth.
There were other experiments that benefited from time dilation, but she got the impression that compared to her, they were just something extra for the crew to attend to. To them thirty years passed, for everyone outside the wormhole it was only four. They aged, two of them were married as soon as they emerged, while another had written a holographic epic and interactive world that took the Freeground population by storm called The Last Blood Caller. There was time, and while the rest of the crew worked on personal projects after their daily duties were taken care of Doctor Anderson focused on her care and memory imprinting. The process was simple; as her body developed and exercised in the artificial womb a neural link with a detailed scan from Ayan Rice was formed. Through that neural link all of her memories were imprinted in real time, including all the sensations; emotional, visual, tactile and so on. It took over thirty years because imprint acceleration would cause gaps, overlapping and perhaps worse problems.
In the end she was a genetically pure human woman with the memories of Ayan Rice. There were drawbacks, to be sure, but as she faced disappointments in aptitude and skill level testing, not quite measuring up to the intellectual scores of her predecessor but scoring high compared to the general population, the sacrifice everyone had made to give her such a good start at a second chance softened the blow.
As her thoughts returned to the identification statement on her command and control bracelet the latest drawback was plain. Her ancestors had undergone such severe genetic modifications that after a full reversion she didn't even match her mother. My original mother. She reminded herself. I haven't heard from her yet. The Doctor's been here every day, made himself available any time I have questions or just want someone to talk to, but she hasn't so much as sent me a text or audio blip.
Ayan shook her head, trying to clear the irritation and unconsciously took a step forward. Her gaze went straight to the edge and vertigo threatened to overcome her senses even though she was still over two meters from the railing. She closed her eyes and tried to forget where she was, to breathe deeply and calm down. After a few minutes she opened her eyes slowly, gazing out to the horizon.
Looking down to the top of the railing her heart beat faster, she could feel sweat on her forehead, palms, forehead and upper lip as she looked lower still and just as she began to look at the tiny buildings over the edge the wind gusted lightly. “That'll do for today!” she said as she backed towards the sliding windows behind her. They parted and she walked inside, turning towards the comfort of the central room. There was a soft brown futon, a pair of round bag chairs and a low table between.
She was just on her way to the small kitchen when the door chimed. The holoprojector hidden in the low sitting room table came to life, displaying an image of Minh-Chu Buu. He was looking around the hallway outside, whistling to himself. His shoulder length black hair was new, but aside from that he was just the same as she remembered, flight jacket and all.
