lethargicI had worked long and struggled hard to save the life of an abandoned orphan girl before the demise of the planet where she had been stranded. The account of how I got her out at great cost to the health of both us us, before the end, would be too long in the telling, though a story worth hearing in its own right. When we arrived, as I say, safely on our ship, I slept a good long time, and woke feeling considerably improved. From time to time I saw my charge and perceived that she too was gaining strength, though still far from the flower of her former beauty (she was about eight years old). So we traveled for some time toward “home.” I knew that there I would very likely meet myself — though not myself, but a much healthier version of me, cloned from this body soon after our rescue and taken and nurtured in the fine facility QRTZ. I knew also that this copy would most likely be convinced that it was “really” me, and regard me, when we met, with a type of disdain, mixed no doubt with pity at my physical frailty....
....after three ZRQTs, we arrrive, and I expect soon to meet my double, but I’m fully prepared not to be put down..... he, after all, can’t help his own sense of identity, so why should I be threatened by it?
....Zloty, a technician (affable fellow) takes me over to an unloading station where another ship has just arrived.... a transport, not a hospital ship like ours. Seems there’s something of a hero on board, saved the life of a ZQTR girl, but “poor fellow, there’s not much left of either of them. I hear they were going to clone him, and the girl too... Supposed to have started on that ship of yours...”
.....found myself looking at him with an awful feeling of revulsion — God, the radiation burns have eaten off most of his face... he knows me, too.... and knows (he thinks) I never went there... that shivering blob in the box being carried off the ship..... she won’t recover.... shall I tell Suzi that she.... that we.... God, I’m going to be sick......
