Military Clone Facility # 16
So many questions, my mind started to drift as I pondered how ever many years it really was since I'd first remembered anything. If we'd ever really had any value; why were things always so hard and the realities of life so icy cold.
I remember walking through the sanitized halls of the cloning facility wondering what ever happened to so many of the other little children I'd spent so much time with? One day they were there and than they were gone? And the clones who didn't act right? They'd sit on their legs and rock back and forth and hit themselves. There seemed to be a lot of them in the first facility I was in.
Than one day, all the adult clones came to take those of us who could walk and maybe say a few words. They bundled us up together and put us on a transport to some other planet. I found out years later that all the clones left at the facility on Garr where just exterminated and thrown into mass graves. Life is cheap I guess and mass produced men are disposable. I remember telling San Wan about these earliest memories of mine and asking him if he thought maybe those clones had lost their souls? He said no, losing your mind is not the same as losing your soul. Losing your soul is much worse.
Well the next facility I was sent to was much cleaner, better organized and well maintained. It more resembled the army I came to know in later years. They did things differently in this facility. I remember being assigned a number and spending my nights bundled together with 3 other clones.
When ever it was time to sleep they'd wrap us in these cocoon type blankets and leave us together like that. I guess they realized that if we didn't get close to someone we'd all end up dying. As we progressed from the nursery to various types of barracks; all organized and grouped according to age, we stayed with the same clones. We ate together, slept together, trained together, were schooled together and as we reached adulthood were assigned to the same squadrons.
We had a peculiarity nearly all other non-cloned personal or military units found strikingly awkward. Adult soldiers still slept together; just like we had when we were two and three years old. We also fit quite comfortably into amazingly small spaces. What was considered inadequate housing for most; we seemed to occupy with an uncanny ability to navigate absent of tripping over each other. Also none of us possessed little other than the necessities we'd been issued. So there was little conflict over space.
My second cloning facility was also were we all got named. It became customary as the years passed for the clones to name each other. It was a little more personal than the batch designation followed by a lot number that was inscribed on all the clothing and equipment that became personal possessions of individual clones. The adults named the children and the naming process began when we were about 5 years old.
We bore different names from across the galaxies; some according to personalities, preferred areas of expertise, or just the personal preferences of the adults who had charge of us. Some of us were tenacious enough to insist on naming ourselves. To which the adults would usually just shrug - OK - you're the one who has to live with it for possibly the rest of your life! It also wasn't uncommon for some of us to have two or more names; ones in which only certain people or other clones would call us. It was an honor to be considered special enough to earn a beloved endearment from a close friend.
It also was not uncommon to change names or take on a temporary name for a period of time. Clones who'd lost their batch partner generally would come back from mourning facilities with new names given to them by the new batch partner. The first batch partner one lost was always the hardest. When you've spent your life with someone and they are suddenly not there; it's like leaving half of yourself on the battlefield. So there I was, my first common clone name: Nakahm and my original batch partner: Katook.
The Clone Army Planetary Confederacy:
Battalions and Companies were all arranged by age groups and by the time I reached the force; most of the non-cloned military commanders had either retired, been killed or moved on to command non-clone units. We still had a sizable force of auxiliary support officers and staff. Most of them were medical personal, supply coordinators, planetary liaisons, teachers and educational support professionals, researchers or spiritual advisors. San Wan Kandih was such an officer. He held quite a unique position in our Battalion, in that he was a medically trained spiritual advisor.
San Wan lived on planet Savawarh although was originally from Aardat. He was also unique in that his spiritual advisement did not come entirely from the lore or religious beliefs of his own planet, but from an ancient faith on Earth which claimed roots back to the beginning of time. He spoke of a Deliver who came to die in the stead of men to set them free from evil; both their own and the evil propagated against them. A belief system that contained elements of self-sacrifice appealed to most clone soldiers, in that we were called upon to do this all the time.
The problem was, most of us (as well as a lot of other species) didn't believe we really even had a soul; so what would there have been anything worthy to redeem? San Wan though, believed otherwise. He taught us clones that we, just like any other being of cognizant intelligence, possessed an innate essence of being that was above and beyond the common lot base awareness of intelligent design that the creatures of the animal kingdoms possess .
I'd once asked San Wan why he chose to bring these things to us, when he himself wasn't even human. What did he care of what happened to us in eternity, when no-one else seemed too? He'd said that he felt lead by God to come to us.
When he was in college; he'd been looking for a mission God would have him to fulfill and had taken a class about the history of the Clone Army Planetary Confederation. San Wan said he saw a need that we had in which he felt he could be of service to. Service to us? I remember laughing. What "original" wishes to avail their talents to "the copy"? "Repeats", as I'd heard many call us. Unlike most others though; San Wan stuck around, even though the majority of us scoffed at the simple message he offered. After all, who totes religion to a bunch of soulless copies?
Most spiritual advisors who'd come to us actually from Earth, only taught principles of disciplines back on their home planet that fell in the category of what they called "martial arts". Martial arts were certainly useful on a battlefield, but I'd never found any lasting peace in those schools of thought.
San Wan though told me that there was a God, the Supreme Sovereign Creator of this universe that actually cared what happened to me - one single small insignificant clone. A face in a sea of millions who look exactly the same as I do. Could this God who'd created this universe even know I was different from the clone next to me? Even if He knew that - why would He care? Even so, San Wan's words appealed to me and so I went to his studies and discussion groups and listened to his talks. We sang songs in his groups too; which I liked.
I heard what San Wan would tell us about all cognizant intelligent life being created in the image of that same One God; but I certainly had trouble totally grasping it. That seemed fine for species of natural cognizant intelligent life; but I wasn't even that. I was a hybrid humanoid who didn't even really have 100% of my DNA coming from one singular species.
Yeah, most of my genetic make-up was of Earth Species Homo Saipan (as they called themselves on their home world) but I had strands of other species that made up my composition too. The Inter-Planetary Allegiance had been cloning soldiers for nearly the past 700 years and over the course of those years, a lot of experimenting had come to pass that eventually would produce me.
The humanoid hybrid that I was had been in existence for the past 550 to 600 years. The first of our kind was genetically engineered using Savawarhian cloning technology, after it was found that Earth humans were much easier to clone than other species. His original Earth designation was "Adam Squared" He was later affectionately nicknamed "Dolly" though; after the first mammal cloned on Earth - which was a female sheep.
"Dolly" was the host who's basic DNA structure had been taken from other human hosts simply dubbed "Joe", "Chin", "Boris", "Ahmed" "Moses" and so on. All these other original human hosts were similar to each other although not directly related. They spanned the gambit of the best strengths, intelligence, physical characteristics and temperaments of the human populace on planet Earth; or at least what was believed to be "the best".
The Savawarhians took this genetically engineered "Adam Squared" and introduced some DNA sequences that were compatible to humans, but of other planetary cognizant intelligent species. These alien DNA sequences mostly affected things such as sight, hearing, executive ordering function of the brain, agility and ability to memorize.
Other aspects impacted were related to temperament. We aren't easily provoked, angered or annoyed. We are generally cooperative, congenial and obedient. The down side is we are prone to melancholy and minor difficulties with anxiety. The other outcome of mixing all this DNA is that we are all sterile; or at least most of us are. Much to the surprise and/or dismay of some researchers and those with in the Allegiance High Command - it was discovered that there were clones who were indeed not sterile at all! That's another story though.
The Savawarhians had perfected this technology to aid their neighboring planet Aardat in fighting a plague that was threatening to wipe out all cognizant intelligent life on Aardat. The plague was killing off all the Aardatian males, so the Savawarhians helped perfect technology that cloned Aardatian men resistant to the plague. After a couple hundred years; this is how they stabilized the population.
When the Inter-Planetary Allegiance approached Savawarh with the proposition of cloning a standing army, the Savawarhians were ambivalent to the idea; seeing how clone armies of past history suffered great hardship and their soldiers, huge injustices and assaults against their very personhood. When the wars ended; often times soldiers would be sold off to the highest bidders to fight other wars, or be used as laborers in mineral mines, laboratory experiment subjects, slave trade or even criminal activities. It's also said that many clone soldiers of past history were sold into the inter-galactic sex trafficking industry.
So the Savawarhian, Aardatian, Pantori, Venuranton, Sabentan, Jazambane, Minari, Batawanian and Wasawee Planetary High Commands drew up a clone army constitution and bill of rights. They presented it to the Inter-Planetary High Council and said you either ratify this into law and give us nine planets sovereign control over the cloning facilities and lives of the soldiers or we will destroy this technology.
With in the nine planet confederation are checks and balances, that none of these planets take a greater power than the others in the control of this clone army. Not that I've ever known that to be much of an issue, seeing how the nine planets of the confederation bear the same "personality" as this army. They are peaceful places generally filled with cooperative, docile and very intelligent beings. Most of these planets originally only had minimal civil order and practically no crime. Now though, since they contain inter-galactic mixed populations; the criminal laws enforced by the indigenous peoples are usually very strict. All other members of the Inter-Planetary Allegiance are to contribute needed raw materials and space for bases in the maintenance of this military.