“Me?” Addison repeated, still on the back foot. “You just woke up on a dying planet, a clone, on trial, and you’re asking if I’m okay?”
Taka grinned. He did so with his entire face, skin crumpling and folding in a very pleasing way. It was the first real smile Addison had seen since he’d arrived (no other returnee had smiled and the levellers’ expressions were of course interpreter-generated), and something did a flip in the pit of his stomach.
Just a clone.
“Baby steps,” Taka replied, still grinning. “Can’t process the heavy stuff yet, but I know unhappy when I see it.”
“I’m fine,” Addison said.
“You’re not one of them, are you? Those grey-faced waxworks I woke up to? You’re from…?”
“The past? Like you? Yeah, they brought me back a few weeks ago. I was the first.”
“So you had no-one with you?”
“The levellers were there.”
“Not really what I meant.”
Despite the chill of the vision room Addison suddenly felt warm. This wasn’t helped when Taka grabbed the vision chair and pulled himself to his feet. As he did the metal blanket fell away revealing a lean, muscled torso.
“There are clothes in your room,” Addison said, trying not to stare.
But Taka wasn’t listening.
“Shit!” he exclaimed, twirling on the spot. “My tattoos!”
“What tattoos?”
“Exactly!”
Taka turned to one side then the other, revealing an entirely pristine body. “Blank canvas,” he said. “Guess their, whatdyoumacall it, levelling, is good for memories but sucks at tats.”
The sheer silliness of the comment made Addison laugh out loud.
Just a clone just a clone just a clone.
“You had lots?” he asked, marvelling at the novelty of smalltalk. “Of tattoos?
“All over,” Taka replied. “Mainly to annoy my parents. They hate tattoos. Hated, I mean.”
“Any favourites?”
“Plenty. They all meant something in their own way. Places, people, memories, tapestry of life and all that. That said, I also had this great big trashy skull thing right here…”
Taka gestured at his side, showing more rippling muscle. Addison said nothing, but he must have said it very loudly as Taka hiked the sheet up and moved to the mistwall.
“This a window?” he asked, rapping it with his knuckles.
“Wall,” Addison replied, trying to slow his racing heart. “I’ve only seen outside once, apart from in the vision chair.”
“You were in that thing too?”
“We all were.”
“And what a lovely sight that was.”
“I’m sorry.”
Taka’s expression darkened.
“It’s true isn’t it, what it showed me?”
Addison nodded, and the returnee winced and ran his fingers over his stubbled scalp. “I’d hoped it might not be, that I might just be overreacting. But that chair did something, didn’t it? I didn’t just see all those things, I believed them.”
“That doesn’t happen to everyone,” Addison said. “A lot of people deny it, or get angry, or go mad.”
Taka looked lost for a moment then clapped his hands, making Addison jump.
“Still, no use worrying!” he cried. “Now tell me, what’s this about a trial?”
Addison couldn’t put his finger on it. Perhaps it was because the man was from a later era than him, modern and uninhibited in ways he didn’t understand, or maybe it was just his personality, but Taka was different. It was a cliché, and quite redundant given the circumstances, but he seemed so much more alive than the other returnees, vibrant and real where the others were vague and insubstantial. The other returnees were all interchangeable, sorted into Addison’s four categories – screamers, pleaders, deniers or ragers – but Taka was something new.
“...Addison?”
“Sorry, what?” he said, dragging himself back.
Taka was looking at him quizzically.
“Addison,” he repeated. “Isn’t that a girls’ name?”
“It can be both,” Addison replied, a little testily, unsure if he was being teased or taunted. “My parents named me before the girl’s variant got popular. They weren’t happy about it.”
Taka’s tongue poked the inside of his cheek.
“I take it your folks weren’t the most… forward-thinking?”
“You could say that.”
“Something we have in common.”
Taka grinned and Addison’s stomach lurched again.
“So anyway,” the returnee said. “Trial?”
Taka was still smiling that same dazzling smile, and for a moment it nearly tipped Addison into madness. The expression was so natural, so disarming, he almost threw caution to the wind and told Taka everything. He wanted to grab him by the wrists, scream the truth, yell at for Taka to run, hide, fight, anything to get away from the levellers.
But then, of course, he didn’t.
With a dull, inescapable clarity, Addison saw that helping this man would be his undoing. Even if Taka did escape (which he couldn’t), the levellers would know he’d helped. Then it would be him in the witness stand, screaming as the mantis drone turned his blood to steam. No, it was too dangerous.
So instead, Addison did what he always did.
He lied.
“It’s not that bad, really,” he said, feeling something irreparable inside him break. “They just want you to be accountable. Best to indulge them, play along.”
There was a subtle change in Taka’s expression, a minute shift in features. Addison knew instinctively the man understood he wasn’t being told the truth.
“Glad to hear it!” Taka cried, clapping his hands again. “Now, you said something about clothes?”
He smiled as he said it, but it wasn’t the same smile. It didn’t spread over his face in the same way, lighting him up from the inside. The smile was a performance, another lie, exactly like the one he’d just been told.
“This way,” Addison beckoned, dying a little with every step. “It’ll be over soon.”
* * *
At his trial, Taka surprised Addison yet again.
“How do you plead?” Two called from the floor.
It was the final session of the day. Addison hadn’t spoken to Taka since last night, when the man had requested a tablet before locking himself in his cellsuite. Throughout the opening remarks, he’d stood like a soldier at parade rest, answering only when called upon, but otherwise silent as the levellers read him a litany of his ancient sins.
“Your plea, Mr. Everett?”
