Josh Roseman - The Clockwork Russian and Other Stories

The ground vibrated slightly. The port began to cycle.

“Computer, declarative,” I said. “Activate countermeasures.”

Everyone woke up in an instant. I couldn’t hear either the countermeasure or the signal, but I knew it was working. I could hear them all converging on the port. I got to my feet and joined Two as she passed, pulling her into a quick, fierce kiss before catching up with Jenn Eight and Jennifers Fifteen and Sixteen.

The port opened and an anti-gravity pallet floated out, piloted by a large, blocky robot. Someone was on it, asleep or unconscious, and as the Jennies advanced, it lowered her to the ground, far more gently than I’d expected.

I also hadn’t expected Michael’s voice to boom out of the robot’s mouth-speaker. “Step back!”

“No chance!” shouted Jennie One, who was at the vanguard. “Let us onto the ship, let us get off this planet and let us move on with our lives, or we’ll take the ship by force and do it anyway!”

“No.” Michael’s voice sounded sad. Sad, and something else. Something that made me pull Two against the plascrete wall of what had once been a sundry shop, back when this had been more than just a home for exiled versions of myself. I whispered to my handheld the command to open the door; Two followed me inside, looking confused.

“What the hell are you doing?”

“Something’s not right,” I said. “I can’t put my finger on it, but something—” I heard Jennie call out the order to charge the ship, and then the horrifying sound of blasters.

“Oh, no,” Two whispered.

I stepped around her and stared out the window.

The robot was firing bright beams of light at the advancing women — at my sisters, my daughters, my friends — and they were being cut down where they stood. Some turned and ran, and a few managed to get out of the way, but I couldn’t keep count. I couldn’t watch. I turned to Two and we collapsed to the floor together. I held Two, and she held me, and we waited for it to end.

And Then There Was Her

Two was still as beautiful as ever — maybe she wasn’t as young as when my husband and I had come to Ongkanon VI, but she was still slender and her hair was as dark as her eyes were bright. I was sixty-four; ten years had passed since the massacre. All that remained, including me, were eight Jennifers, three Jenns, and one Jennie. No one new had arrived in all that time, and Jenn Two guessed it was because he’d finally gotten one of us to be the perfect woman for him.

I didn’t care. Not anymore. My dear, darling Jenn One was gone; her screams had been clear to me above all the others. Maybe we were all the same on some level, but Jenn One had been different, had been my best friend, and I missed her more than any of the other forty-one who’d died that day. Jenn Two was… well, she wasn’t Jenn One, and I still got a pain in my chest and a lump in my throat when I thought of her.

I was in the garden with Two — I’d banished the robots years ago — when I felt the gentle vibration of the ground that told me the liftship was back. We’d agreed, those of us who’d survived, that if it ever came back, we’d get the hell away from the port. I hoped the others remembered.

I met Two’s eyes and held out my hand; she took it and squeezed gently. “It’ll be okay, One. I won’t let anything happen to you.” Two — my lovely, loving Two — had become so much stronger. She was our leader now; I was just an old woman who lived in a colony of clones, exiled for some imagined slight.

We knelt in the dirt and waited until the liftship uncoupled.

And then we heard the voice.

“It’s not me,” I said. “It’s not me, Two.”

“I know.” She smiled, but it didn’t reach her eyes. “Let’s go see who it is.”

Jennie Four was already there, talking to the newcomer. I pushed my way past the others, Two by my side. “Who are you?”

The woman was shorter than us, with flowing blond hair and pale green eyes and curves almost voluptuous enough to be called exaggerated. She gave me a nervous smile. “My name’s Mary,” she said. “Mary Davalos.” She looked from Two to Jennie Four, then at the others, clustered farther back. “I don’t mean to be rude, but where exactly am I?”

“27 Jennifers” is my first published piece. It was the winner of the inaugural Broken Mirror Story Contest, presented by The Dunesteef Audio Fiction Magazine . They originally published itin audio form, as performed by Dani Cutler of the Truth Seekers Podcast. The prompt, “someone comes to town and discovers that everyone there is exactly the same”, confounded me for about two weeks, until I was driving home from work and heard Mike Doughty’s song “ 27 Jennifers”. The story unfolded in my brain and I wrote it in about three days.

What I love about the story is how the clones work together to figure out what’s going on and how to stop it, and the quiet, solid relationship between One (the original — as far as we know) and Two. While it does have its unanswered questions — why would a scientist and his wife be the only people on a terraforming station, and why would there be cloning equipment there? — I feel like the story holds up pretty well.

And here’s a fun fact for you: this isn’t the only story I’ve written based on “27 Jennifers”. It is, however, the only one I’ll probably ever publish.

The Commodore’s cabin is clean, free of the sand that seems to have settled everywhere else. The surfaces are polished, the floor spotless. William guesses the cabin was once a bedroom, but now the only furniture is a huge desk and three chairs, one for the Commodore and two for his guests. Bookshelves are built into the walls, crammed with as much literature as the colony has been able to collect in its travels.

And it’s been traveling for a long time.

“You’re sure, Lieutenant?”

William has long since grown accustomed to the designation. “Yes, Commodore. I’m sure. All my computer models agree.”

The Commodore steeples his fingers and leans back in his chair, a wooden antique worn smooth with more than a century of use. William stands and waits; his computer models have been continuously refined over the past three decades, and only once in five years has he been wrong. After several seconds of consideration, the Commodore nods. “Very well.” He writes on his tablet and presses the commit button; William knows that, up on the bridge, the Commodore’s orders will appear on a repeater screen for the crew to act upon. “You may go, Lieutenant.”

“Yes, Commodore.” William walks down the narrow corridor to the main cabin, still as well-appointed as it had been when the ship was built in the 1990s. He retrieves his sidearm from the lieutenant that runs the Commodore’s personal guard, then goes out onto the aft deck. He squints in the bright sunlight — no clouds in the sky to lessen its impact — before covering his eyes with sunglasses.

“Lieutenant,” says the Officer of the Deck — a greeting and an acknowledgment of William’s greater rank; the OOD wears an ensign’s single black bar on his shoulder.

William has never approved of the military fashion in which the Commodore runs the colony, and long ago he chose to ride in the middle of the pack, holding his appointed rank of lieutenant but never actually ordering anyone around. “Can you bring my car in, please?”

“Yes, sir.” The ensign blows a four-note melody on his whistle, then shouts to a couple of enlisted men riding on a skid off to port. “Lieutenant Portis, disembarking!”