Dream
Life-energy drifted through him like motes of dust in a sunbeam. He floated in liquid and darkness, asleep or not yet really alive.
Eventually a light came on, and his eyes opened. The thick liquid medium pressed gently against them as he struggled to make his eyes adjust, and finally the kaleidoscope of color and light changed, made sense. He was naked and in a tube, there were wires embedded into his scalp, and outside of the tube, out in the air, someone was watching him.
Someone alien - shaped and proportioned like a man with blue-black hair swept back, wearing an unadorned white uniform with black boots. But his skin was a pale blue, and his eyes - his eyes were unmistakable. There was no pupil or white in either. They both glowed a strange and featureless red, unreadable as his expression. He was - he was a great man, whoever he was.
Next to him was someone almost inconsequential, an older human officer in olive green with a white moustache, and on the great man’s other side there was a child-sized gray alien with nightmarish jaws, armed to the teeth. Maybe they were studying him as well, but the one in the tube saw only the great man looking at him, alien eyes glittering, motionless.
The one in the tube pressed both hands against the inside of the tube, a little surprised to see that his skin was a mixed, low-chroma beige-orange-pink. Human skin, incredibly wrinkled from a long time in this liquid, fingerprint whorls distorted, white nails long and with scalloped edges, like they’d never been trimmed.
The great man didn’t move, but his voice sounded, cool, quiet, and very controlled. Your template was a good man.
Was he? In the tube, the clone tried to remember, and couldn’t. He was blank, totally blank. It… made sense, though.
Your template was a good man. You have the potential to be even better. But if not - he is dead, and we have no replacement yet. The great man turned away, the other two going with him.
He was left alone - and, secretly, he was faintly relieved.
There was the great man’s voice again, softer, muted. We will see.
His eyes drifted closed. Life-energy floated through him like dust in a sunbeam. He drifted in liquid and darkness, asleep or not yet really alive.
Eventually a light came on, and his eyes opened. The thick liquid medium pressed gently against them as he struggled to make his eyes adjust, and finally the kaleidoscope of color and light changed, made sense. He was naked and in a tube, there were wires embedded into his scalp, and outside of the tube, out in the air, someone was watching him.
Someone alien - shaped and proportioned like a man with blue-black hair swept back, wearing an unadorned white uniform with black boots. But his skin was a pale blue, and his eyes - his eyes were unmistakable. There was no pupil or white in either. They both glowed a strange and featureless red, unreadable as his expression. He was - he was a great man, whoever he was.
Next to him was someone almost inconsequential, an older human officer in olive green with a white moustache, and on the great man’s other side there was a child-sized gray alien with nightmarish jaws, armed to the teeth. Maybe they were studying him as well, but the one in the tube saw only the great man looking at him, alien eyes glittering, motionless.
The one in the tube pressed both hands against the inside of the tube, a little surprised to see that his skin was a mixed, low-chroma beige-orange-pink. Human skin, incredibly wrinkled from a long time in this liquid, fingerprint whorls distorted, white nails long and with scalloped edges, like they’d never been trimmed.
The great man didn’t move, but his voice sounded, cool, quiet, and very controlled. Your template was a good man.
Was he? In the tube, the clone tried to remember, and couldn’t. He was blank, totally blank. It… made sense, though.
Your template was a good man. You have the potential to be even better. But if not - he is dead, and we have no replacement yet. The great man turned away, the other two going with him.
He was left alone - and, secretly, he was faintly relieved.
There was the great man’s voice again, softer, muted. We will see.
His eyes drifted closed. Life-energy floated through him like dust in a sunbeam. He drifted in liquid and darkness, asleep or not yet really alive.