She stared dully at her own hand,
‘If you prick me do I not bleed…?’
‘But this was not a real hand, this was not a real body…it was borrowed from someone else… Her life was essentially a forgery, a clever mechanical approximation of a girl…but not the real thing…!’
She caught sight of herself, reflected dimly in the glass partition,
‘If the eye offends, put it out…!’
‘What would it matter if this body is burnt, smashed…obliterated…! .A replacement could always be made, the pattern was stored in the Mission files…a thousand Martas could be made…’’
‘…maybe a thousand existed already, here on this planet, in different Domes…or on different worlds… Do they all feel like me…?’
‘If you prick me do I not bleed…?’
Somehow, she’d arrived in Jorja’s medical lab…. The lancet felt hard and glittery in her left hand…
She seemed to be watching herself from an immense distance… As if bridging the gulf between the stars…
She drew a line across her wrist…
Bright blood…!
Suddenly, she felt so tired…
And again……

---

The entity designated Six Gee was summoned from its contemplation of certain complex algorithms by disturbing data readings concerning crew member Marta Fernandes. Her blood pressure had crashed, and input from her visual and auditory cortices had been lost. Six Gee had switched to imaging which showed that the human unit had collapsed in Sector 47, a dark stain was shown spreading from beneath her prone form. Six Gee quickly dispatched the nearest available AI units to render assistance…
Marta had a fleeting memory of bright lights passing in front of her face…then oblivion…

---

It wasn’t meant to be like this…
Everything in the garden was supposed to be rosy once she’d kissed and made up with Jorge… A few awkward questions from Mission AI, and life could continue as before… She’d faced Nurse Six Gee on the day she was discharged from the infirmary,
“Now Marta, before you rejoin the others, I need to clarify a few things about your time in the pod grove…”
Marta swallowed hard, this was the interview she’d been looking forward to least,
“For the record, dear, what is the last thing you remember…?” the nursemaid had her serious face on, her eyes carried a steely glint,
“Um…” Marta was temporarily struck dumb,
“If we start with this, maybe we can work our way back…” clarified her nursemaid…
She had a moment of pure panic,
‘how could she pull this off?’
She knew she had to be consistent, but couldn’t recall what she’d told them…and what she may have let slip while she was semi-conscious… She decided that she’d have to act confused, and be unclear as to the order of events, vague on cause and effect…etc etc…
“Well…” the pause seemed to lengthen out to infinity, “…uh, I’d decided that I was going to ignore your prohibition and attempt face-to-face communication with the crusty…”
‘There, she’d said it…’ an enormous feeling of relief swept through her, ‘…perhaps honesty was the best policy…’
“Yes, we’d concluded that was your intention…” responded Nurse Gee,
“So, I disabled my interface…” was it her imagination, or did Six Gee look at her even more intently at that point,
“Go on…”
“I approached the test subject on foot…”
“What happened next…?”
“There it all get’s a bit hazy…” said Marta haltingly, “…I can recall the creature touching my hand…..and I’m sure we achieved some kind of communication, like a meeting of minds…then I remember being in the pod grove, then nothing… Nothing until I woke up here…”
It all appeared a bit unconvincing, even to her, but it was the best she could do in the circumstances… She wasn’t even sure why she was being so circumspect, why she was holding so much back… Six Gee asked no further probing questions, bar one… She asked how the girl had been able to switch off her interface. Marta explained that she had stumbled across the technique by accident…and tried to explain, as best as she could, what she’d done…
There was an enigmatic pause from the nursemaid, who then said merely, “This requires further consideration…” and that was it, Marta was released back into the world…
She emerged bearing a fresh scar on her belly, which had the effect of making her even more self-conscious about her appearance…!
Tentatively, she resumed her role within the expedition, she knew that everybody was now expecting great things. Hadn’t Rai been responsible for important breakthroughs in his work following the time he spent attached to his pod… Marta felt the pressure acutely, but her scientific work was necessarily constrained by her reluctance to reveal too much. Priya was aware that her friend was holding stuff back, and told her so, but this merely led to an argument between them…and she stopped pushing….
Marta and Jorge also resumed their former intimacy, but the dreams came every night, and she was remembering more and more,
“What is it…?”
She’d finally given in to Jorge’s urgings and had agreed to spend the whole night in his bunk,
“Nothing… Bad dream…!”
The boy could tell from her voice that it was hardly nothing, he put his hand to her face and could feel her trembling,
“You’re shaking… What’s wrong…? Please tell me…!”
This particular dream was recurring with increasing frequency… She was in the railway compartment, as her six year old self, and the dark lady was reaching into her bosom, and pulling out her bloody offering,
“I keep on having this dream… It’s very unpleasant…” the girl shuddered, “…I’m on this train… You know, like they have on Earth…and I’m sitting opposite this woman…and she does something horrifying…”
“What does she do…?” Jorge’s face carried a look of appalled fascination,
“It’s rather disgusting… She reaches into her blouse…and she pulls out one of her ribs…and she offers it to me….and it’s all bloody… And I just sit there, I want to take it, but I’m too afraid…so, I just sit there…then I wake up…”
“It’s only a dream…” Jorge had taken her in his arms, and was stroking her damp hair…
But the girl could feel her dreams slowly encroaching into her waking hours,
“Ciao Marta…!”
She had emerged from her isolation to find not one, but two packets from her Earthsister awaiting her attention… She put off looking at them for ages, but eventually opened the newer of the two,
“Marta, devo dizer-Ihe sobre o meu novo papel no show…! Agora tenho que…”
Miss da Guia continued to prattle on in Portuguese, but Marta Fernandes was no longer listening…she now knew who the dark lady was…

2

The shock of finding her dreams corresponded, at least in part, to reality had the effect of confining Marta, temporarily at least, to her bunk… She contacted Nurse Gee, and claimed a migraine. This was accepted graciously by her nursemaid, who with constant access to data from the girl’s interface, must have known the truth… Priya arrived to see how she was, and Marta changed her story, now claiming it was period pains which had led her to duck out of the Mission the two girls had been due to undertake… Priya said nothing, but it was clear that she didn’t believe her friend, either… By nineteen hundred hours Marta was over the initial shock, and had had enough of being ‘sick’ and miserable…! So, she left her bunk and went to visit the twins,
“Hi Marta, feeling better…?” Nurse Amber hailed her as she walked through the door,
‘They always know everything about you…’ thought the girl, ‘…you’d think that just once in a while they’d feign ignorance…’
Her biggest fear when she emerged from the infirmary was that Maddy and Milla would have forgotten about her…this was accompanied by a profound feeling of guilt,
‘How could she have been so selfish, to have deserted them…’ she’d thought at the time. But the twins had been overjoyed to see her, which of course had only made her feelings of guilt worse,
“Maddy’s got a new trick to show you…” said Nurse Amber…
She looked at the children and pointed to Marta, “…Maddy…! Who’s this…?”
“Mama…!” said the child pointing in turn… Marta’s heart melted, tears started in her eyes,
“And that’s not all…” continued the nursemaid, “Milla…Milla…! Who am I…?”
“Amba…!”
“When did all this happen…?” Marta was amazed,
“They got the hang of it last night, after you’d gone to get dinner…of course, I’ve been trying for some time to get them to turn the sounds they’ve been making into words…”
“I can understand them learning to call you Amber, but how did you get Maddy to call me, mama…!”
“Well, I cheated…to certain extent…! While you were…absent, I used vid of you…to keep them accustomed to your face, and started pointing at you and calling you mama…!
Amber paused and looked her full in the face,
“Seriously though, Marta…please don’t go away again…! It’s not fair on them, they really missed you when you weren’t there…a child only has one mother, and they cannot be replaced…”
Marta could feel her face burning with shame and mortification, but then she thought,
‘…at least they have a mother, we only had nursemaids…!”
On the way back she turned again to the vexed question of their origin…
At first, the nursemaids had said nothing, but then had told the children that they were hatched…hatched from artificial wombs, in pairs… Although it had taken Marta years to be reunited with her particular hatchmate…
Eventually, she had virtually forced Nurse Gee to be more forthcoming about how they all came into being. Gee had told her about the failure of the original plan to employ IVF using sperm and ova carried on the journey, and how the backup solution had been arrived at… Genetic data, genetic patterns…all transmitted from Earth, before the printers had then done their work…
‘So, we’re only data, then…’ she’d always imagined herself to be a unique individual, ‘…but surely data could be copied…’
And then the there was the question of the origin of the data…of the pattern itself… Marta doubted that even the Mission Planners had the ability to ‘design’ a human being… But what did she know…? Maybe they did…! The girl knew she had to find out…the question was… How…?
She could, of course, just ask…either directly by questioning Nurse Gee, or indirectly by interrogating the Mission files… But she didn’t think they would tell her, and her natural reticence, her tendency to want to hold her cards as close as possible to her chest, also got in the way… No, a much more indirect approach was needed…one that wouldn’t draw suspicion, or could be explained and justified if it did… She decided to find out as much as she could about the Earth siblings, starting with Miss da Guia…
Why she hadn’t ever considered doing this before, she couldn’t explain… Like so much of life in the Dome, she just accepted what was given…and their Earth sisters and brothers were one of those givens… Why she thought they were part of the solution, this was something she couldn’t explain… Was Miss da Guia really her sister (how was that possible?), or was ‘sister’ merely a courtesy title, like calling a fellow countryman your brother…? Certainly, the nature of the relationship of the children with their Earth siblings needed further investigation… One thing she would have rejected out of hand was a role for her dreams in influencing her decision… Marta was a rationalist, she did not believe in dreams either as prophecy, or as the key to deeper meaning…
But her dreams, although denied, continued to push themselves relentlessly into her conscious thoughts…

---

“We are different sides of the same coin, we cannot exist in the same space…”
She was suddenly awake…
The dream has seemed so real; the dark lady again, but in a different context! She was on some sort of farm talking to the woman…and suddenly she wasn’t…! She was in a cold grey place, a place devoid of all life,
‘“We are different sides of the same coin…” But, what does that mean…?’
‘“We cannot exist in the same space…” Why…?’
She shivered at the memory of the grey emptiness that had followed…

3

Three days in, and her research project was in top gear… As she had anticipated, there was plenty of information on all of the Earth siblings in files sent from Earth. Most of it fell into the category of celebrity bio and showbiz gossip! It came as a shock to discover how famous their Earth sisters and brothers really were; Miss da Guia’s stellar rise in the world of broadcasting was well documented (and the Alpha Mission Show, in which she was taking an increasingly central role, was a ratings hit!), but all of the others seemed to be almost equally well known. Next, she researched Jorge’s Earth brother! There was a haunting similarity between them, but one important difference. Jorge on Earth had no disabilities, either physical or sensory; he did however have a rising reputation as a young physicist, and he was employed by the Mission. In fact, the deeper one looked the more apparent it became that all of them were employed by, or at least strongly linked to the Mission in one shape or form. Even the Alpha Mission Show, although not short of commercial sponsors, was essentially an arm of the Alpha Mission itself…
After two days she had received a polite summons from Nurse Gee,
“My dear! I see you are looking into the backgrounds of your friends back on Earth…”
Her nursemaid had come straight to the point,
“Yes…! I don’t know why I never thought to do this before, they are such an important part of our lives…it just seems strange that we know so little about them, apart from what they tell us in their packets of course…”
“Quite…” Six Gee was clearly suspicious, so Marta decided to keep talking,
“What I didn’t quite realise is how famous they all are… Of course, our small community here doesn’t really prepare us…prepare us for the sheer impact of fame, of celebrity back on Earth… I mean, all those people…it doesn’t bear thinking about…!”
And so on…
As she had anticipated, her inconsequential prattle had the desired effect. Her nursemaid’s suspicions were assuaged, and she was dismissed without having to face any probing questions…
So it was back to her research, but it was a case of so far, so bland! Nothing in the material she looked at indicated any relationship between them and their counterparts back on Earth, other than that they had been chosen as their interstellar pen pals. But, when Marta looked more closely she could find no information as to why these particular children had been chosen… Clearly, they were holding something back…!

---

“Another bad dream…?” Jorge had awoken to find her sitting up in bed again,
“Except that this one was more weird than scary…!”
“You better tell me about it, then…”
Jorge was resigned to no more sleep for the next hour or so. He had been gratified when Marta had made their nights together a regular event, but there was a price to be paid,
“Well, this one features a snake…!”
“What kind of snake…?”
“Well, a talking one actually…! It’s sitting on this rock in front of me, and it’s telling me something really important…but I can’t make it out what it’s saying, although I know it has got something to do with time…”
“With time…?”
“Yes, I also thought that was screwy…! Then, after a while it just closes its eyes and curls up, and won’t talk to me any more…”
“Have you had this dream before…?”
“I think so…but this is the first time I’ve really remembered it…”
“Well, the snake is clearly some kind of avatar for the pod you were connected to…”
“How so…?”
“Well…it’s just the obvious interpretation, is all…!” the boy was rather nettled at her reluctance to see what was plainly in front of her, “…I also think that the fact your conversation is about time is significant…”
Again Marta looked blankly at him,
“Well, the pods clearly have a different relationship with the passing of time to us, being so long-lived and all…” Jorge was going into lecture mode,
“…we have an organism that functions as a sort of collective intelligence…bits of it die, but its awareness…its consciousness, if I can put it like that, essentially continues… It’s inevitable that an organism like that, one that is to all intents and purposes immortal, would have a different view of the nature of time… For all we know, it carries memories within it from thousands, maybe millions of years in the past…”
“But, why is it communicating all this to me…? I mean, Rai didn’t get all this crap…”
Her voice had taken on a rather sulky tone,
“That I don’t know, but I think we must assume it has a reason…!”

---

The exchange did nothing to improve Marta’s mood…! Being the unwilling repository of the wisdom of the ages, courtesy of the all-knowing pods, was not something she felt she had time for… Not while there were more important questions…
By a process of elimination, she was working her way through the list of Earth siblings; searching for something, anything, that would cast some light on their relationship with those back on Earth. But as hard as she looked, nothing incriminating came to light! But she wasn’t stupid, she could tell that the information she was reading had in some way been ‘sanitised’…! Sentences, parts of sentences, even whole paragraphs, appeared to be missing from the stuff she was plowing through… And she was nothing if not persistent; somewhere, somehow, they would have slipped up, and sooner or later she would catch them out…
Eventually, she had the break she was looking for, just when she had given up all hope! Marta had gone through all the information on all nine of the siblings with a fine tooth comb, and was about to give up when she came across a fleeting reference to an Earthsister called ‘Sally Wong’…
At first, she was mystified by the reference…but then it came to her, in a blinding flash of revelation …! This was the putative Earthsister of one of the two unacknowledged (and profoundly disabled) children being kept alive by Mission AI, the ‘mistakes’ they weren’t supposed to know about…
As her services had not been required, ‘Sally Wong’ had clearly been expunged from the official record…but whoever was doing the censoring had been sloppy in their work… Now that she knew the woman existed, Marta could search to see if there were any other references…
After another hour of fruitless searching, she decided to give up for the night…
Two hours later she again found herself sitting bolt upright in bed, Marta was alone in her own bunk, conscious that she’d been dreaming but unable to recall what about…then she started to remember…
The first dream had been the worst, an horrific repetition of the events at the pool…only this time she really had drowned… She could clearly recall the fear, the panic…the pain… Only, despite the evidence of her own senses, somehow in her dream she still lived…
The second dream had concerned her and Priya on another Mission to the Pole…they’d found the advanced pseudo-crustaceans, but then Marta somehow had found herself falling…and was again in that cold grey place… She recalled closing her eyes and experiencing a profound vision…of a serpent that encircled the heavens…
The third dream was more prosaic, she was back on the farm with her dark lady who made the same enigmatic pronouncements…before she was snatched away to that cold grey place once more… Marta felt a profound and inexplicable sense of loss at her ejection…as if she’d been exiled from the place where she could finally find peace…
There was no way she could back to sleep after that, so she returned to her research… It was slow, unproductive work, there were so many Sally Wongs, but none of them the right Sally Wong…! But eventually, poring through yet another page of results, she found a scientific paper…
It was entitled ‘Experimental Research on the encoding of Human Genetic Data with reference to the Alpha Mission: A discussion document’. It had been produced for something called the Cyber Genetic Congress 2099…!
It turned out our Miss Wong had been a case study for the researchers. With a growing sense of dread, Marta read how soon after conception the embryonic Sally Wong had essentially been scanned…her unique genetic make-up reduced to a series of ones and zeroes…and this information had been part of a huge data burst sent to the Alpha Mission… The researchers reported that the results of their particular case study had been ‘disappointing’, although ‘others had exceeded expectations…’
Marta sat back in her chair…she could feel her pulse thumping in her head…she felt like she was going mad,
‘but, that would mean…’
Without knowing why or how, she found herself outside in the corridor… At this hour of the morning even the nursemaids were tucked-up in the automaton equivalent of bed… Not that the girl would have cared or even noticed if she’d encountered one… Random thoughts flitted through her brain,
‘She drowns, but yet lives…’
‘…the grey plain on which I walk forever…’
‘…the Midgard Serpent encircles the heavens…’
‘…we are two sides of the same coin…’
‘…we cannot occupy the same space…’
‘…this is my gift to you, Marta…use it wisely…’
Marta knew what she was going to do, but could not admit it to herself…
She stared dully at her own hand,
“If you prick me do I not bleed…?”

---

Chapter 21. Making Amends >>