Steven Kent: Rogue Clone

Few clones knew they were clones. Government-issue military clones had brown hair and brown eyes, but the neural programming synapse in their brains made them see themselves as having blond hair and blue eyes. It was the government’s way of preventing an uprising from within the warrior class.

“I look a lot like an Army clone?” I asked, trying to sound relaxed and conversational. “I hear that a lot.”

The boy might have been in his twenties. His shoulder-length orange-red hair was stringy and lank. Large red pimples formed a constellation across his forehead. I was twenty-two, but I had seen death and battle and betrayal. Walking among the general civilian population, I considered most males under the age of thirty to be boys. The few who did not strike me as morons were thugs, like the one I had come here to meet.

The boy looked stunned. He was neither a policeman nor a guard, just an usher in a movie house. His mouth hung open as he pondered my answer, and his eyes showed a mixture of confusion and fear.

“I’m a lot like them,” I said as if confiding a family secret. “The Pentagon used my grandfather’s DNA to make those clones.”

“No shit,” the boy said. A smile formed on his face. Of the six arms of the Milky Way galaxy, four had recently declared independence from the Unified Authority—the Earth government. The Orion Arm, Earth’s home arm, remained loyal to the Republic; but this planet—New Columbia—was suspect. The New Columbian government swore allegiance to the Unified Authority, but its government was filled with politicians who openly sympathized with the Confederate Arms.

“Yeah,” I said. “You might say half the Army and I are cousins. For the record, Army clones are about four inches shorter than me and a lot wider around the shoulders.”

“Yeah,” said the boy, and he laughed nervously. “I knew something was different.”

There were a couple hundred thousand military clones assigned to New Columbia, but they seldom strayed far from their bases. The U.A. government had to tread lightly because of the planet’s skewed neutrality.

The boy looked at my ticket. “Oh, wow, you’re going to The Battle for Little Man . Lots of clones in that flick.” He smiled at me. “Third holotorium on the right.”

The hall was wide and bright with 3-D lenticular posters from upcoming movies on the walls. It was early in the afternoon on a weekday, and I had most of the theater to myself. The only people ahead of me were a young couple on a date—an uptight boy holding hands with a fresh-faced girl. The boy must have wanted to get to his movie. He walked quickly, his girlfriend in tow. The girl floated along lazily and paused to study each movie poster they passed.

“C’mon,” he said, as he opened the door to their holotorium. “We’re missing the coming attractions.”

I went two doors farther. The Battle for Little Man had already begun. It was a war movie recounting a recent battle in which a regiment of U.A. Marines was massacred on a planet near the edge of the galaxy. I knew the battle intimately. Of the 2,300 Marines sent on that mission, only seven survived.

On the screen, a blond-haired, blue-eyed, barrel-chested Hollywood stud played Lieutenant Wayson Harris, the highest-ranking survivor of the Little Man campaign. As I took my seat, six enlisted men let themselves into Harris’s quarters and asked him about the mission. These men were clones. They all looked exactly alike. They had brown hair and brown eyes …like me. They stood about five feet eleven inches tall—four inches shorter than me.

The people who made this film may have hired retired clones to play the enlisted men. I was impressed.

“ What will happen down there, Lieutenant Harris?” one of the clones in the movie asked. Respect and adoration were evident in his voice and demeanor. The leathernecks on the screen must have been computer animations. No Marine could have said that line with a straight face.

“ I don’t know, Lee , ” said Harris. “ It’s going to be tough. It’s going to be dangerous. But we are the Unified Authority Marines. We don’t back down from a fight.” As he said this, the actor playing Harris stuffed an eighteen-inch combat knife into a scabbard that hung from his belt. I had to hold my breath to keep from laughing. None of the Marines I had ever met carried eighteen-inch combat knives and none of them sounded as heroic as the Hollywood Harris on the screen.

“ What if we die?” another Marine asked.

“ You listen here, Marine , ” barked the Hollywood Harris on the screen, “ don’t worry about death. We’re here fighting for the Republic. The Republic needs us. The people need us as they have never needed us before.”

I slumped in my seat. This movie was supposed to be authentic with real combat footage taken from the actual battle. Maybe the battle scenes would be more realistic, but this portrayal of military clones was painfully propagandistic. This movie was the kind of jingoistic shit that Hollywood always churned out during times of war; something meant to build patriotic morale. On a planet like New Columbia, that effort was wasted. I was the only person in the holotorium.

At least, I was the only person in the theater up until that moment. As Harris finished his soliloquy about defending the Republic, the door at the back of the holotorium opened. I heard men whispering among themselves as they moved into empty seats directly behind me.

By this time, Lieutenant Harris and a platoon of Marines were being drop-shipped behind enemy lines. They landed about one mile in from the beach where the rest of the Marines were pinned down by a group of Mogat Separatists. Harris and twenty-two commandoes snuck into the enemy’s bunker. Using knives and pistols, Harris and his men made short work of at least two hundred enemy soldiers. God, it was glorious.

The scene was played out with a combination of two-dimensional projectors creating the background behind three-dimensional holographic images. The result was a battlefield that virtually burst out of the screen. As shown in this film, the battle for Little Man was filled with heroism and valor. Everything was bright colors and patriotic music…. And in the middle of all of the action stood Lieutenant Wayson Harris, twenty feet tall and covered with enemy blood as he ran from one room to the next brandishing that gigantic knife.

“Hello, Harris,” whispered one of the men behind me. “Let’s talk.”

“Can it wait?” I asked. “I want to see how this turns out.”

“You know how it turns out,” the man said. “You were there.”

“Not at this battle, I wasn’t,” I said. “The invasion of Little Man that I saw didn’t look anything like this. We got pinned down on the beach. The Navy had to nuke those Mogat bunkers just to get us off the sand.”

“That so?” the man asked. “I thought this movie was supposed to be accurate.”

Up on the screen, Hollywood Harris led the charge across Little Man Valley. The charge was famous. Some 2,300 Marines ran across the floor of the valley thinking they were up against two or maybe three thousand Separatists. They did not know about the ten thousand reinforcements hiding just over the hill.

“You led the charge?” the man behind me asked. “That took guts.”

“I wasn’t even on the field. I was way off on the side. My platoon was assigned to flank the enemy,” I said.

“Really?” the man said. “Sounds like you gave yourself the easy job.”

Some of this footage was undoubtedly taken from the battle records. Watching untold numbers of enemy soldiers charge over the far ridge of the valley, I felt my skin prickle on the back of my neck. I saw the way they poured over the rise like ants swarming out of a hill. They had rust-red armor that sparkled in the sunlight. They shouted in unison. Seeing their advance, the Marines stopped and dug in.