Not A Clone
A Clone Wars short story by Benjamin M. White.
Chapter 1: The Outcast
A generic clone in generic armor was using a generic pair of electrobinoculars in a generic clone outpost on a generic moon. Generic. Neg hated that word.
Clone 237546900 was stuck on Leegeeo. It was a rock. Just that. A big, stinkin' rock. It really did stink. It had pockets of frozen methane everywhere. Neg once had a nightmare the air purifiers broke in the outpost. After it, he had woken up in a cold sweat. When telling another clone, he was just laughed at.
After scanning the rocky surface and seeing no droids, he walked back through the glossy white building, built in the interior style of Tipoka City. Neg made his way to the dining hall; it was almost time for breakfast.
When he walked in, he grabbed a bowl of cereal and coffee. He sat down with a couple of his squad members, and also his friends. "Dask, do you have the paper?" Dask was his best friend, and was here at the outpost at its creation. Neg had no idea how he got his nickname; he had arrived 6 months after him.
"Yeah. Grand Army edition, of course." Dask passed him the closest thing to a holopaper, the thing that most everyone read daily for news at Coruscant. It was the Grand Army of the Republic newsletter, issued to Clones for basic news.
Neg idly stirred his cereal as he read the paper. "Blue Shadow Virus: Naboo Nearly Made a Graveyard. What is this?"
"Read on." Neg scanned through the news story about: "A Seperatist-engineered virus that nearly brought death to all of Naboo, if not for the efforts of Representative Binks, Senator Amidala, Ashoka Tano, and"
"Of course. Anakin Skywalker, The Hero with no Fear, and Obi-Wan Kenobi, The Negotiator. Have they ever lost?"
"Nope," said Sevens, another squad member, eating some oatmeal. Sevens's number happened to be 77777. "Not that I know of."
"Well, I actually heard that Skywalker nearly died when Aayla Secura's fleet was attacked!" Mike shouted across the table, named for his loud voice; as in microphone.
They talked for a few minutes like friends do, sharing what they had been doing. "Neg, I heard another explosion in your room last night. That's the third this week. What the heck have you been making?" asked Sevens. Neg was a bit of a science geek, and was notorious for making noises in the middle of the night.
"I made... this!" He pulled out a tube of some powder from where clones normally keep ammunition. "It's a special designed food flavoring. Try it." He passed it to Dask, who mixed some of the powder with the syrup on his waffle. Cautiously, Dask took a bite.
"This is good! I tastes like... I don't know. But this was worth all those explosions this week."
"NERD!" An obnoxious clone called over. Neg didn't pay any attention. He got that a lot.
Then, they heard the sound of arguing and yelling. Neg got that look in his eye. "Neg... just lay off it. Don't..." Dask protested, but it was futile. Neg walked over to the two arguing clones. Dask groaned.
"Guys, what's going on?" Neg asked, sounding exasperated.
"He stole the last Pop Tart when I was here first!"
"No, he did!"
"He did!"
"He did!"
"He did!"
"Guys! Just split it, or one can take the last tomorrow. Or do something like Rock Holopaper Vibroblade, or flip a credit - any number of things!"
This, as usual, caused laughter. That's how Neg got his nickname - negotiator. He was always mocked for his nonviolent demeanor, unlike most Clones bred to be soldiers, but it never stung him. He just went on with his life and attitude.
Dask did nothing. He had always respected Neg for who he was, but still didn't want him to fight the flow. He often tried to tell Neg to stay out of it, but it never worked. Most teasers said that he got the wrong fluids when he was an embryo back at Kamino. Sometimes, Dask wondered if that was true.
After finishing his waffle Dask followed the oddball back to his quarters, where they usually did hang around for a few minutes chatting. When entering the bedroom, the only room, Neg sighed. He didn't do this much.
"I wish I wasn't a Clone."
"Well..." Dask tried to pull out one of Neg's own negotiation or debate tactics. He just went with "Why not?"
"I'm not a genuine person. I'm supposed to be a soldier, grow, train, fight, and then die, no questions asked. I don't want to be a mass-produced person! I hate the concept of war! Even if I hear somebody needs surgery, I start to get dizzy. I have hemophobia. How could I deal with a battlefield? I don't want to be a soldier, I want to be... a..."
Neg looked around his room for inspiration. Various science and engineering books were in a neatly organized bookshelf. A small lab table lay next to it, brimming with chemistry supplies. A large datapad mounted on the wall was next in line, almost always opened to a state-of-the-art word processor showing some novel he was righting. Aside from being a diplomat and scientist, he was an author.
"A diplomat? Author? Chemist? Starship builder? Anything but a soldier or a surgeon." Dask stopped and thought about it all, trying to understand Neg's state of being.
"I know I've completed basic training, and not to bad of a shot, but... there are so many more bad things about being a Clone! I have the same genes as Jango Fett, the galaxy's most notorious bounty hunter. I'm a piece of mass-produced machinery. My only purpose is to fight ruthlessly and die."
***
From that moment on, Neg seemed different. He spent more time in his bedroom lab, or writing his novels. That day was must of been the straw that broke the bantha's back. From then on, he never stepped in to arguing Clones, or asking random people for his opinion on his latest drafts, but he still came out with a science fact, but this was rarer. Dask regretted trying to pull him away from who he was.