-----SPaCeTriPPin-----

Nikolas Drummand the last in the line of Drumands who had inherited wealth before the Unions had taken their franchise on the earth's policy against all forms of currency that weren't involved in the trafficking of the disposessed. He'd given them all his money in exchange for a chance to leave the planet which by now had become inhabitable due to the fact that every living being had his profile and existence privileges had been revoked.

He could run but never hide. He'd hijacked a freighter bound for Europa before being Id'd at the moonbase's offloading checkpoint. They'd looked at him up and down and decided that although the moonbase was off-limits to sanctioning people that had been de-existed on earth their regime was such that his labours were not required at least not for any currency that he could carry as the moon base was a mineral rich facility and only had credit in platinum which he'd only get when he'd found his place amongst their strange and inclusive fraternity.

How he'd managed to get on a Free-loader was incredible even to the imagination of those in command. The moonbase was a vast warehouse complex that straddled a 200 mile crater and sunk deep beneath the moon its people had originally come from space flats around the earth stations and had commuted after the mining machines had discovered the uranium fuel deposits. The fraternity had kept everyone out and through the course of successive generations had morphed into a new form of human life adapted to the moons lower gravity and with the ability to sense and manipulate the gravitons that enabled them to move about freely and easily.

At first he stood out amongst them being grounded as he was but this soon gave him an advantage amongst the women who liked a man that stayed put.

He took to wearing the heavy titanium boots of their ancestors and people often laughed an stared in unison as he plodded along carrying the waste uranium from the extractor and exchanging it for food and supplies in order to scout for new deposits. The moon was indeed rich but having no currency like the earth he could take nothing within him except his notoriety and respect earnt from his hard labours. Each day was another preparation for an extended trip alone into the moons wilderness. You might imagine the moon to have no weather. Well you'd be wrong the weather on the moon was cosmic. Radiation to be more precise showered in regular intervals and without protection you'd quickly develop a cold and die in the sub thermal energy that made even the most ardent heat shielded suit vulnerable to its effects. Often times he'd have to sit and repair his suit only surrounded by a gossamer tent filled with a oxygen extractor that could pack in at a moments notice and then he'd feel the headaches as the cold and the lack of oxygen would slowly eat away at his mind. But although he knew the moon people had blue blood and could outlast him in a low Ox tent he had the advantage of being the only one determined enough to keep going even when it seemed like there was no longer any point.

The Free-loader docked every 5 years at the moonbase to supply its engines with the enriched uranium mined from the moon. After the first five years were up he'd determined he was going to be on the vessels. He had a plan.

Taking a recently exploited mine and holding it ransom wasn't the normal course for a man who'd worst offence was stow away on a freighter but he'd been left with no choice he needed time to hold off the Free-loader so that he could break the encryptor. A high energy field that protected the ships Half-life occupants from being awakened or in this case awakened and substituted with another body that of his own.

Of course the encryptor was a DNA coded stream that held everyone in virtual stasis during the 7 year stretch to the outer rim planets.

If you broke the stream you could re-enter the vessel with your own DNA substituted for someone else's. Well at least that's what Senori Franco had told him before offering his daughter to him in exchange for the location of several sub lunar uranium sources. Francesca Franco Capillari or Franni was a tall middle aged woman of considerable wealth and status and was equally blessed with unusually good features.

She had taken Nicolas in soon after his arrival and allowed him room and board amongst her fraternity who were mostly her own family. She was widowed to a man of nearly twice her age who by the sounds of it had kept her in the wealth to which she had become accustomed and yet was taken from her suddenly during an asteroid capture voyage that had gone wrong. The vessel he'd been on had imploded after a collision between the thrusters and an orbiting piece of space debris. It had'nt been detected because nobody really knew much about asteroids to realise that they carried all kinds of junk from around the solar system, space debris being one of them and as more vessels littered the space between them and as their trajectories were altered in exchange for a communal sharing of the wealth that these mega structures could yield more often than not they attracted space junk a natural occupation hazard.

Senori Franco knew that the only way he could separate the two lovers was to offer her to him. This was the custom and most often you'd have to refuse or become part of the fraternity for life. Drummond did neither he married Francesca and fathered two boy's before leaving them in the care of the fraternity Francesca had lost another of her husbands and Nikolas had his freedom as did her father who now having him out of the way could enjoy his daughters sole attentions.

Many in the fraternity had developed affections for their own offspring that had meant that outsiders were only welcomed if they were given the opportunity to leave in exchange for sacrificing some part of the love. Francesca was the sacrifice he'd had to make in order to leave the moon and his moon children.

Drummond left Frani one day never to return and boarded the Free-loader, 5 years in the waiting. He looked around and saw that it was being maintained by a group of robotic clones. Made from human hybridized DNA the clones all looked identical and had internal implants that gave them the look of being all human but with the obvious behaviour of robot's.

He looked in the mirror of the stasis prep room that overlooked the moonbase beneath and watched as his home for the last five years disappeared slowly from view as the huge Free-loader fell out of the moon's tethered gravitational hold. It fell towards earth before reaching a slingshot velocity and engaging the freshly fuelled fission powered nuclear thrusters that now outshone and occluded the earth's thirst quenching sight an oasis amongst the empty waterless and artificial worlds of the colonists.

The vessel was an oblong type hyper class machine operated vessel that had no crew beyond the virtual mainteners contracted from earth to work in hazard zones. Its girth contain five 3 km radial 2 trillion megaton thrusters capable of reaching acceleration rates of mach 400 in under twelve seconds. It could effect the gravity of small planetoids like the moon if not correctly programmed with slingshot trajectories which it was deemed a hazardous environment to be controlled by only the highest forms of machine intelligence.

But to those onboard it was just another form of prison for the mind as the hyper sleep wasn't really sleep at all but hard won freedom at the expense of your minds own neural energy. You'd wake up and you'd become habituated for cloning a necessary stage in developing the artificial worlds being created in the outer-rim. This was hard labour and they manufactured you along with every gravity yielding superstructure that composed the future worlds destined for exploring the galaxy that lay beyond.

It was the chance he'd been waiting for. He knew the story's that many never made it through the habituation periods that would turn an ordinary mans mind into pea soup. He didn't have a choice he needed to take the gamble because otherwise they'd erase his ass back on earth.

He glanced again for the final time at his face in the mirror an ageing veteran of isolated preconceived notions of his own worth and owner of a mind wrought by the lack of fidelity to his own existence a tortured soul that had found love only to have it removed as soon as the opportunity became available. He clung to himself the self he'd allowed to exist where nothing was allowed to exist without humanity's sanction's on love. Love that binding quality that pervaded all and yet gave nothing as it alone had become the secret worship and the decree absolute to his and others like his existence - thrown together and forced into oblivion and he anticipated it like death.

He walked into the stasis chamber and dialled into the encryptors robotic control panel. The cloned robots moved through the ship momentarily distracted from their routines to locate the anomoli. Detecting the breach in their security they converged on his chamber just before the encryptor released the grav switch that brought his body into the stasis chambers habitation initiation procedures. Red lights began flashing as the clones began to assimilate his personality into the collective habitation sequence. Drummond gasped his naked body suspended began to reach optimal zero point temperature he could feel this strange new type of cold that seemed to choke him into unconsciousness but he resisted in the same way he'd resisted it on the moon. But this was different it gave a sensation of heat to his chest where before there had been none. Like the colder darker presence of so many others that had experience this fate. The clones held his personal mind for evaluation.

He watched from above the chamber as his body's extremities slowly yielded to the cold that now felt like a fabric of hot wet tissue merging into his own flesh turning him into some part of the vessel. Until eventually and he'd already felt this sensation as his mind had left his body in the low Ox tent on the moon he observed himself and clones that had now surrounded his chamber and were now interfacing with the diminishing neural activity of his mind. This was a necessity to preserve the neural integrity of the other occupants already in stasis as he merged into their conjoint habituation's.

As his mind was now outside his body he could sense his thoughts being conditioned in preparation for the combinator - an applied device that systematised the thoughts and abstracts of his mind and heart system into a regime. A harmless non invasive procedure that the cloned machines managed. Once this was achieved his mind would steadily become aware of a decrease in neural energy, as parts of him were frozen and off limits so to they were being preserved by the increasing cold temperatures of stasis. They called it reverse annealing the lowering of temperature gradients which to you and me felt like colder and still colder but in physics it was the deliberate control of entropic procedures that allowed for the chaotic form of the human brain system to be preserved. Even with neural decay the unique personality's of those onboard would be encoded into neural network architectures that would evolve during the course of habituation and would interface with each human via the combinator.

These mind uploads would then be duplicated into the newly harvested minds of the robotic clones which in turn would initiate further cloning until the ship had maintained orbit around the outer rims debarkation sector. On arrival each sleeper would awaken and be joined into multiple groups containing the cloned versions of themselves split into working teams that would most likely never meet and share their similarity's from their mentally inherited states.

The clones would have no genetic linkage and so through the course of century's of re-cloning eventually their new personality's would develop from their original abstracts.

Often clones would exist that had male and female personality's which would dominate and surpress the other until a convergent personality had formed unique and genderless they would operate and form their own identity's and culture that didn't belong to anything likened to earth.

Differences in ability would permeate through into cultural variances between the groupings. This was a stable society one based on work and fidelity to work under extremes of space. They weren't machines far from it machines were not to be risked in these locations these were ordinary man that had been taken away from the world of love and introduced to nothing but the fraternity of work or conscription to work for an entity that was no more human than a can opener.

They operated machines, calculated vectors, constructed and synthesised polymer tunnels and moved and conveyed the mechanical self assembled modules that provided them with working environments that many back on earth could only dream of. They were the commanders of human destiny and not a human child in sight for a million miles.

Of course they remembered the past all too well and had recall from their memory's that played in their perfect minds like video. They dreamed their past perfect and pristine just as it was and this was the fuel this was the energy that made them carry on - like a dope they'd become addicted to this dream scape that was denied them during unconscious habituation. There was a low risk of suicide because the machines had stimulated the competitive and aggressive centres of the brain enough to make sure that the symptoms of an introverted intellect could never form. That didn't mean they weren't there and often times Drummond would feel his memory's of the past too much he couldn't cope with knowing them, so his mind simply blocked them out. Others also reminded by their past's instead took to blocking this dream scape from their minds but of course it never really escaped them. It was always there sublimating into another form deeper in the subconscious.

Eventually the slaves of this new world would rebel but it took and outsider like Drummond to achieve this. He awoke to his new body. It was sixteen years on and he'd been re-cloned 3 times already. His biogentically enhanced arms felt like they were just as much his as any of his comrades. The only reality they knew of their own minds and body's were in a subconscious limbo on a far distant world which seemed less of a known fact and more of a feeling.

But he could write. He'd started writing on his 2nd clone. It came naturally to him while taking down the numbers for a group activity the called death bowl. The participants of the game would don their OPM thin layer suits and create a virtual Ag arena in Augmented Reality - a software program used to control and vector assembly's in space. They'd sharpen their movements in space using force feedback. Each thrust of their legs in a certain direction levied to a certain amount of gravitational thrust that propelled them in another direction that only being countered by an equal and opposite force in the other. The goal was to run you opponent down and take possession of the bowl a cylindrical zone in which the gravity well was graded like a black hole - a virtual black hole if you like. You'd take ownership of the bowl if you could stop the the other team pushing you in it or by escaping from its pull after you'd already arrived at its perimeter. The added ingredient was a projectile much like a rugby ball that could be thrown into the bowl in order to change its field and drag your opponent in. It was fun and great exercise. But it was called death bowl because occasionally someone would be hit by the ball knocked unconscious and remain in the bowl centre for more than a minute the gravitation forces would turn his mind into jelly - the first thing to go without a G-protected suit.

Drummond's writings took everything into account the passage of time the emergence of newer clones the addition of more personality overlays which could be easily dominated until eventually you grew tired of destroying minds not knowing whether they'd still exist in an original or another clone. It became routine the newest recruits with the weakest minds got put with you. You had to sort them out push them down in your mind with the hope that they'd one day find they're own mind's or be given a clone like yours. He wanted to change the system and put mankind back in control. These minds he had to carry around some of which had no choice in being put into his clone and he felt that the system needed to change so that these other minds also had the chance of a cloned body of their own. Of course the nature of cloning didn't allow for this. Their fragile minds wouldn't have survived the cloning procedure alone and their only way of making it through was to occupy the minds of the stronger personality's like his own.

It vexed him that this couldn't be resolved with a simply change to the cloning procedures. Why not produce clones capable of receiving all personality's even the weaker ones who he knew he could find a use for if they'd not been crowding his thoughts day in day out.

The latest arrival of new recruits emerged out of the blackness between the planets in the now distant unknown solar system. They'd been selected for a different purpose the super massive space structure was near completion and these new recruits had not been given the usual habituations. They were Freemans and Drummond was only too aware that his days of usefulness were drawing to an end as they became the new masters of a world that was only just about to awaken.

The part of this colossal space structure that this particular Drummond had carefully engineered was now nearing completion the scape and immensity of this vessel was only diminished by its complete lack of illumination. The Sun being many earth distances away the only light came from the workers that tended to their designated portion of the whole.

This was soon to change. As its interior power source began to start activations throughout the vessel whose concentric ring structure began to generate the immense forces of gravity needed to maintain a level of life support that Drummond's like had never known. An earth like environment within began to grown as more recruits arrived in greater frequency some in more than one vessel the name no longer bore the title Free-loader but instead bore the name Destiny one or Star Traveller. Names Drummond thought could have been taken from a child's story book. The love economy had arrived.

He glimpsed through into their newly awakened world as children and family's awakened from stasis began to settle within the facility's on board and within each concentric ring city's began to come to life. Transport systems ferried people to and from their domiciles and into the extended recess of the spherical structures that connected to each other with giant polymer tunnels that channelled the gravitation energy's throughout. Like a supermassive centrifuge the gravitons its excited where channelled freely throughout the ship giving variants on earth natural G with the maximal space from a vessel many moons in size. As the station moved through its gravitational orbit's so too did the crews of cloners that clung to its sides like some form of detritus. From the inside this movement was barely noticeable due to its concentric construction its inhabitants enjoyed a steady gradual rotation with its plasma fuelled sunlight graded for the equivalent of earth like day's.


Drummond's writings were losing meaning. He strained to look out at the misty void as it swung past his face nearly knocking him senseless and giving him some sense of vertigo that he'd thought he'd lost only to be regained in repetition day after day. I contemplated suicide.

"There is no way in Drummond - no way"

Drummond's face clenched at the futility of his comrade Johnas a fifth generation clone.

"I've studied these blueprints we damn well built the thing don't you think we have a right to be in there."

"We're not human Drumond..", Johnas displayed his artificial looking façade, holding his face towards Drummond whose only differentiating feature was that he'd scared himself with his own form of cosmetic surgery. Others had grafted skin to create differences but for the most part they'd taken to creating blood red tattoos to hide their self similar features.

"We're no longer wanted we're not even machine grade. We're just trash expendable when this is completed when this..."

"Why the hell do you think its taking us so long? I had to do it I had to change the protocol on the new recruitment allocation plans to buy us time."

Johnus looked down at his feet.

He looked back into Drummond's cloned identical eyes each iris expanded wider taking Johnas in, showing him the gravity of the situation.

Johnas stared into Drummond's eyes, "What are you upto Drummy?", he asked inquisitively.

"We're getting back in.", came the curt response from Drummond.

The other cloners new recruits entered the communal facility's and took about their daily after work routines Drummond continued to stare past Johnas who acknowledged the others on his team as they entered and left to there domiciles.

After Johnas looked back Drummond had already moved his position and was now looking out at the nearside of the giant space colony they'd all built, its name was called the Citadel and most of it that grew in some immense never ended vastness into the darkness of space was off limits and couldn't easily be seen from their close vantage point.

It was like staring at a blank wall unyeilding and yet made by their own hands and what lay beyond could only be imagined.

'I know its out there beyond the first quadrant don't you remember, I have some recollection from being nearer to a central hub in one of my former clones."

Johnas wasn't listening.

A new recruit was hovering between Johnas and Drummond he walked over to Drummond and spoke intelligently and with respect that indicated he was talking to someone of status and age despite looking nearly identical. "I've been that far sir, why yesterday we'd be requisitioned to recover a failed driver from beyond that point."

"Who gave that order I never heard about it."

"You wouldn't have sir it was via the comlink."

"Where abouts show me."

Drummond pulled the new recruit over to the central office space on it lay various plans referring to quadrants that had no work details. "Its here we were right here.", The recruit pointed at a position on the blueprint several kilometre's distance outside the authorised zone.

"But that is impossible. Hold it look here Johnas they must have given this detail to the new recruit hoping we wouldn't notice it was outside the zone."

"Ok that's interesting they trust the new recruits more than they do us with moving beyond our allotted sector."

The new recruit looked quisically as his two superiors studied the blueprints.

"And what exactly did you see there describe it to me give as much detail as possible."

Johnas grimaced he looked at the new recruit not expecting him to say a word.

"Its the sub orbital gravity drive , well it looks like, let me draw it.."

The new recruit avidly took Drummond's writing device and marked out the shape and depth of the cavity used to transport people to and from the Free-loaders.

"Thats our way in."

"Drummond don't you think they'd have thought about this I mean there must be security, airlocks that kind of thing."

"Well listen Johnas that's just what were going to find out with our boy's here.", He patted the new recruit's back as he studied the plan's.

"Eh isn't that right sonny?"

"Err yes sir. Your my commander just say the word. What do you want me to do about central."

"Leave central to me. I've got a plan to deal with central"

Two days later a team of twelve recruits radio'd a lost machine essential to work repair order authorised by Lt Drummond.

Central's delay lasted a full 5 minutes before it responded with the precise vectors and the retrieval protocols. A soon as they were received the recruits moved over the surface of the citadel towards the opening in the adjacent sector two of the recruits retrieved the unit while the other two began to explore the gravity well opening.

"Its a sealed hatched" reported back one of the recruits on a secure channel using Drummond's own encryptor. Look for a leaver or an access panel.

"There is none its a smooth surface, with the words 'magnetic seal override' over one section. Its indented looks like its been used by another team for maintenance duty's"

"Feel around the inside of indent use your torch."

"Ok yes there is a cavity its got a powerful G gradient my hand just wont stay in the hole its repelled immediately.

"Yeah that's the Grav access point, it works just like the Death bowl only much smaller it just needs a sufficient force to activate - a Gravity switch or Pusher would do it. Come back."

"We need to requisition or build a switch to activate this..", Drummond spoke softly to Johnus and one other a much younger clone who'd barely really uttered a word since his arrival but could be seen from his eyes that he was much older than the younger recruits.

"I.....I...I ....I..", spoke the Older man for the first time since his arrival.

"I can..... do this", he ended his sentence that seemed to take a while of stuttering.

Drummond knew exactly what he meant. "Your talking about self sacrifice well we know that is one way of doing this..."


"I ......I ...... am ready."


Drumond looked down and then back over to Johnus.

"Ok old man this is your chance to be immortal."

The old man though young in body moved as though he was still an old man of some 80 years and had been taken aboard the Freeloader because his crimes against the Earth men had been so great they'd never been able to fully erase his mind and his existence. He was considered by many to be an unstoppable machine, mentally speaking of course they could have just signed him away to be deleted but that was impossible given the severity of his crimes. He was instead imprisoned inside the newest of earth's prison facility's and being transferred between prisons each time they'd tried to obtain his mind through habituation and every known form of mental torture he never yielded not even for a minute. He remained a national treasure a testament to true evil in a society where no one really knew what was good any more.

He'd killed a million people not all at once. He'd done it slowly over the course of a lifetime. He'd managed to host other minds and in doing so he'd implemented schemes so dire so automatic and with such inventive genius so as to evade the armed forces to whom he had owed much of his ability and training in his formative years as a robotic engineer.

He'd been responsible for creating robot pacification elements useful in removing all of the volatile elements and creating a one world state. But then he went rogue.

The robots he'd created had to be removed their dangers to society were in conflict with the basic laws of robotics and towards the end of his career another form of sentient life was evolving that would do away with the killing machines of the past.

He'd rebelled, they'd destroyed his creations in favour of their own form of robotic purity and this offended a man whose intellect could have destroyed entire worlds and populations. So he went tactical and took the system apart piece by piece without anything but his own mind and a few carefully placed charges. Not only that he'd also managed to kidnap various members of state and tortured them made them sign their own confessions to the atrocities they'd made him carry out on their behalf and then mailed by auto courier their own signed for body parts back to their loved ones. A really nice guy - thought Drummond.

The old man entered the air lock and saluted his team for the last time. Drummond looked gleefully at his familiar tentative gait as he entered the space walkway. He'd listened at length at this old man's story's the tales of his life's work a memoir a testimony to self preservation in the face of incredible odds. He'd struggled with the morality of his conceptions and his motivations as they were essentially a confession that made all the more sense the more he listened. He didn't commit those crimes because he wanted to, he did it because he had to, it was his duty. The truth only became apparent when he realised that this world the world he was in now wasn't real any more than the love economy on earth was real. It was all an invention all a morbid creation by a fanatical system that had been formed by the hand me down belief systems that no longer made any sense to a morally intelligent being that hadn't experienced their diluted forms of love and accepted them without questioning their purpose.

CopyRight 2015 Simon Kettle


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