##1062

From the moment I am born, fully-grown and clawing free from the freestanding gestation sac, I know that I have a Mission.

With my first breath a veritable pinata of knowledge bursts in my mind, my synapses gobbling up the glittering facts like so much candy; foremost among them is the knowledge that I am clone #1062, and I have 23 hours to live.

A conveyor hums and pushes me along, furbishing me with armor and grafting a bioantenna (mostly painlessly) to my spine. I receive and integrate all memory downloads from my recently deceased fraternal partner, #1061: here, forgetting is painful–no, is a sin.

The conveyor stops. To my left is a fashionable lounge, cushions and gentle amber light incongruous against the industrial birth canal I emerged from. To my right is a foot-thick, lead-lined door. Failure isn’t fatal, but everything behind that door is.

Memory shows that some of my predecessors have chosen not to act: faulty genes, or protest of this profligate harvest. Those clones spent their alloted hours relaxing, then dying regardless.

What does it say about my designers that they’d allow this choice?

I thought of #1063 behind me, already being quickened in a nutrient slush in the clone farm. If he’s going to have a chance for a better time of it than I did, well…

I head right, to the Mission.

WC: 228

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