The Clone Ranger: Episode 9
Jack Unit 382 is a clone — one of a thousand identical Jacks laboring in the textile mills of Raven 5, a world his kind can never leave. Each night he journals the days since the treaty. But 382 has begun to suspect he is different from his brothers: he dreams, he wonders, and he wants things no Jack is supposed to want. This is his story. Journal Entry 705 I went back to the magnolia tree today. ZX98 was already there when I arrived, sitting on the bench with his hands folded in his lap, looking at nothing in particular the way he does when he is thinking. He did not seem surprised to see me. I have begun to suspect that very little surprises ZX98, which is either wisdom or exhaustion, and I have not yet decided which. "You have the look," he said, "of a Jack who has been carrying a question." "I have been carrying it all week," I admitted, and sat down beside him. The petals were coming down slow in the afternoon light. I watched one land on the be...