The Clone Ranger: Episode 11

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 719

I went back to the magnolia tree today, the way I promised myself I would.

ZX98 was already there when I arrived, sitting on the bench with his hands folded, watching the petals come down the way he always does, like a man keeping an appointment with something only he can see. He did not seem surprised to see me. I have stopped expecting him to be surprised.

"I brought the question I told you about," I said, and sat down beside him.

"The one with no number on it," he said.

"The one with no name on it," I said. "The shape behind my bunk still has none. And 583's two figures under the moons have none either. On Raven 5 everything has a number, and numbers are for things that are issued. On Mon Scarab, things had names. So I want to know: what did the old ones call the two who chose each other?"

ZX98 was quiet for a long time. A petal landed on the bench between us, and he picked it up and turned it over in his fingers, the way I have seen him do a hundred times.

"382," he said at last, "I am going to tell you the way I told you about the moons, as third-hand guessing. An old Bird told me, and he heard it from an older Bird, and neither of us ever met a person from Mon Scarab. I want you to hear it that way, because a word you are sure of is heavier than a word you are only carrying."

"I hear it that way," I said.

"I believe they had two words," he said. "One for each of the two. The man was called a husband. The woman was called a wife."

The words sat between us like something placed carefully on the bench, the way you set down a thing you do not want to break.

"A husband," I repeated, "is a man who chose, and was chosen."

"And a wife," said ZX98, "is the woman who chose him back. Not assigned. Not issued. Chosen, the way a family was chosen, only closer. The old ones said a husband and a wife belonged to each other the way a name belongs to a person, not the way a number belongs to a unit."

I thought of the shape folded behind my bunk, the soft nameless curve my hand drew without my mind teaching it. I thought of 583's two figures, different from each other, standing close enough that their shoulders nearly touched.

"Then the shape has no name," I said slowly, "because the shape is not a thing. It is a person. And the person has a word."

ZX98 nodded, and for a moment his eyes went somewhere far past the mill yard. "That is what the old Bird told me, too," he said quietly. "He said he sat on this same bench thirty years before me, asking the same question, and the answer followed him the rest of his life. Some days I am glad I asked. Some days..." He looked up at the tree. "Some days I sit here."

I did not ask what he meant by that. I think I already knew. The peace he chose is a real peace, and I respect it. But it is not the peace of a man who stopped wanting. It is the peace of a man who decided to carry the wanting quietly, the way you carry a folded slip in your pocket, close and out of sight.

"I am not sure I can carry it quietly," I said.

"I am not sure you should," said ZX98. "It was my choice, not a prescription. But 382, a word is not the thing itself. Husband is a word. Wife is a word. The thing itself is the choosing, and I do not know what the choosing looked like. I never asked that part."

That stayed with me all the way back to the mill, past the grey walls and the grey sky, past the shift bell and the looms. I do not know what the choosing looked like. Choosing must have had a moment, a word said aloud, a promise made where another Jack could hear it and know it was real. A number is issued in silence. A name, I think, must be spoken.

Tomorrow I will go back to the magnolia tree, and I will ask ZX98 the question underneath the question: what did two people say, on Mon Scarab, when they chose each other?

United are we. But tonight I am a number who has learned the word for a man who is not one, and the shape behind my bunk is no longer only a shape. It is someone I have not met, who has a word waiting for her, wife, and I am beginning to wonder what word she would call me, if she ever got the chance.

Thanks for reading Clone Ranger: Episode 11. I'd LOVE to hear your thoughts in the comments.

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If you are enjoying Clone Ranger, you may also enjoy my full novel, Legend of Sylphar: The Silver Queen, now available at select retailers in eBook and paperback.