The Retrieval II – Choose Your Own Adventure
David watched through the air lock porthole as the retrieval claw pulled in the Wonderboy clone, Lima. He knew some of the powers of the clones from the countless movies, documentaries, and books. Many could fly, one had giant raven’s wings, another could read thoughts, and one was said to be powerless. The runt of the litter. But he couldn’t remember anything about Lima. He wasn’t a major player in the wars, just one of many clones to fight and fall during that terrible time.
He was unsettled by how alive the clone looked. The computer didn’t pick up any vitals, so the clone had been long dead, but that didn’t keep his instincts from firing warning flares in his mind.
“Your wife sent a message,” the onboard computer said, as if the spectacle of a superhero being plucked from deep space was as boring and routine as recycling his urine.
“Yeah?” David asked, his eyes still fixed on the dead body as the hull doors closed. “I’ll listen to it in a bit. Did it arrive just now?”
“Nope, about three days ago.”
“Three days?” David snapped, turning from the porthole and storming to the cockpit. “You’ve had a message from her for three days and you are just now telling me?”
“I don’t like her.”
“You don’t like my wife?”
“No.”
“The person whose personality you were made from?” David asked, sitting down in his pilot’s seat and punching on his communications monitor.
“What can I say? I think you settled.”
“Go to hell, Robin.”
“Love ya,” the computer cooed, then faded as an image of his wife, millions of light years away appeared on the monitor.
“Hey, baby, how is pirating going?” the real Robin asked.
“I’m not a pirate,” David muttered to himself.
“Things are good here. Everyone misses you. How is other me? Still being a crazy bitch?”
David chuckled, knowing the computer heard and would seethe.
“I imagine you are busy, so I don’t want to take much of your time. Just send me a message when you can. I miss your stupid face.”
David smirked and his heart did the little twist it always did when he realized how much distance separated him from home. He loved the life of a smuggler, he loved the money, he loved the danger, but he hated the space it created between him and his family. But jobs were scarce on Earth. The economy was dying as all the best and brightest went off-world to find fortune. It was a global brain drain that sucked him away from his family alongside the scientists, miners, techs, and mercenaries. It was hard on Robin, though she never let it show. The kids always looked at him differently when he came home. It would take days before they stopped treating him like a stranger. The traveling broke their hearts, he knew, and that was why this Wonderboy clone would mean everything. It would be an end to the salvage missions, to the weeks of picking through ghost ships, to only feeling contact with those he loved through strained and brave video messages sent across the universe like corked bottles amid the greatest and most desolate of all seas.
His breath was heavy and cold. He stood from the monitor, promising himself he would send back a message when he felt able. But not now.
He walked back to the cargo hold. Artificial atmosphere was pressuring inside. Radiation was being measured. Normal bodies would need to be bagged and stored to protect from contamination, but he had no idea what to expect of a Wonderboy.
“So, how is other me?” the computer asked. “Still a crazy bitch?”
“Call Robin a crazy bitch again and I will turn you back into Chewbacca.”
“Roger that,” the computer replied, followed by a subtle giggle. It brought a quick smile to his face. He hid it quick, but he knew the computer saw it. This is when the computer felt the most like Robin, pushing buttons in the way that only lovers can.
He looked into the air lock, seeing the body drifting down to the floor as artificial gravity eased on.
“You better make me rich.”
“He will, darling,” the computer said. “The cargo hold is safe. No radiation or other contaminants. Wanna get a closer look?”
“Yes.”
The air lock opened. David stepped through, approaching the body slowly as if it was a wild dog. He knelt down beside Lima.
“So, who are you going to sell him to?” the computer asked.
Two names came to mind. Both dangerous. Both lording over black market empires run out of the darkest, most savage stretches of the universe. Not the types that David liked to doing business with, but the only ones with the resources to buy a god. Oscar Willington controlled the only interstellar, black market trade route absolutely free from X-Verse and Regency intervention. Born from wealth and the deepest of blue bloods, Willington used his family’s influence to corrupt a chain of deep space colonies that would be converted from city-building to mining the lucrative, ultra-exotic narcotics and rare materials from within their planets’ cores. The other, Shahid Mamnoon, inherited his black market empire from a long line of energy barons. Mamnoon specialized in asteroid farming. The brutal process was among the most lethal careers in the history of man, but anyone who survived five missions retired into a life of opulence. Mamnoon survived twelve missions, which turned him into both a legend and a savage nihilist.
Neither men were to be trusted, but the same could be said of anyone with the money to buy a Wonderboy.
WHO DO YOU CHOOSE?
Oscar Willington OR Shahid Mamnoon
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