The Best of World SF by Lavie Tidhar (children's ebooks free online .txt) 📕

maximizing efficiency? A bitter chill slinked down my spine.

This was the true secret of the space miners. This was the debt we carried.

I came to the body of a girl who seemed to have just reached adolescence. The features on her face made me realize a contradiction. The face on each clone seemed to be the same yet different from that in my memory. Perhaps the system had altered genetic expressions. Perhaps it wasn’t so complicated. Perhaps it just needed to make some slight adjustments to the facial recognition module in our minds to pay more attention to some features than others. Then again, perhaps we just didn’t recognize the person when they returned at all.

But that girl’s face provoked a more complex emotional response, like a whirlpool trying to swallow me whole. I finally managed to break away from her gravity well and turn toward the last sealed body.

This one was just a tiny embryo curled amidst a yellowish liquid, like a pink asteroid. It squinted its eyes and sucked at its fingers, immersed in seemingly eternal dreams. I watched nutrients flow from the translucent synthetic umbilical cord into the embryo.

I noticed then the line of code at the bottom: EM-L4-D28-58a.

Dizziness swept over me. I knelt to one knee, doing all I could to support my body.

The embryo was me. Of course, I was one of them. Perhaps the embryo had been triggered by the signal of my recent death. It looked like it was going to need some time.

Would it have all my memories? Including those sequestered within the blockchain encryption? Would it remember my trials of life and death? Will it fear death as I did? How many more cycles would it take to pay off my debt? Maybe there would never come such a day. Perhaps human existence was, after all, itself just another form of debt.

My heart filled with an anger I couldn’t name. I hammered at the transparent casing, making a muddy, dull echo. I wanted to destroy it all and stem the endless cycle.

The embryonic me seemed to perceive something. Its eyelids trembled. Tiny eddies appeared in the amniotic fluid, as if in response to my anger.

It was innocent. I woke to the fact that I myself was just another avatar of the same identity. It was me.

We were all innocent. The guilty ones were those who had built this place.

I stood. I had to get back to the cabin to tell my deceived companions, but how would I not sound like a madman? I had to print something that would convince the other brainwashed, damaged miners this was all real. I had to get the company to stop this. I didn’t care if they ended up doing something drastic.

The long, green lights of the pipe stretched into the distance. I could not shrink back again.

*

Baldy raised both hands and kneeled slowly, his back to me. On his knees, his head was now level to mine.

I aimed the gun at the back of his head. I had no illusions as to how strong or cunning he could be.

Behind me, a body lay supine. Blood covered the soles of my boots. An odd sticky texture accompanied my every step.

They had wanted neither to listen nor believe. ‘Your debt’s been paid. Why come back?’ they had asked. Their faces had been frightened and distorted, like polished foil torn by a meteoroid.

I had explained that this place was all a lie. No matter how long you lived, your debt would never be erased.

I had pulled the trigger to give those soaking in amniotic fluid an opportunity to accelerate their development.

‘You’ve no clue what you’re doing…’ Baldy murmured breathlessly.

‘And you do?’

‘Some truths are best unknown, like some shackles are best unbroken. To achieve eternity by joining God is our only choice…’

‘So, you were selected for the role of administrator?’

‘Without an administrator, Mother Whale would be run by algorithms. My memory, just like yours, isn’t so clear.’

‘So you don’t know how to get in touch with the company?’

‘I told you before. Communications are one-way. The company has to contact us.’

‘Let’s imagine a rather extreme case then.’ I traced the outline of his skull with the muzzle of the gun. ‘Let’s say of all us miners, there’s just one left. Think if they received such an odd signal, it might get their attention?’

Baldy trembled. The instinct for survival always won over the instinct for loyalty, whether the instinct was inborn or acquired.

‘The Recycle Protocol.’

‘What?’

‘In my memory module, there’s a command for something called the Recycle Protocol, which lets us transmit to a relay satellite when we’re at high alert. The signals will reach a secret TT&C center on Earth to then be transferred to the company. The one-way delay takes about 13.4 seconds. The company should then take any survivors back to Earth, but…’

‘But what?’

‘… But only when facing the threat of death can I access the memory of the command…’

I simpered, pressed the cold reinforced plastic muzzle against his sweaty scalp.

‘You mean, like now?’

Baldy stabbed the sixteen-digit command into what looked like some steampunk difference engine. On the screen, an interface I’d never seen before prompted whether to initiate the Recycle Protocol.

Select ‘Yes’.

The screen showed the message sent successfully. We stared coldly and began the wait.

A sound like the flapping of a moth’s wings announced the return message. The clock showed precisely five minutes and forty-seven seconds had passed. Perhaps the company had already held a high-level emergency meeting to discuss countermeasures.

The other party requests a call. Select ‘Yes’.

‘Check, check. This is Wenchang. This is Wenchang. Please reply.’

Baldy glanced up at me, eyes filled with the same confusion. His body reacted before he realized what he was doing as he raced toward the communicator. My gun reacted faster still. To ensure an airtight cabin, we had only slow bullets, which couldn’t penetrate the body. Instead they released their kinetic energy by fragmenting the bullet, doubling its pain and lethalness.

I had no time for regrets.

‘Wenchang, Wenchang. This is