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 Tears Of A Clone By CSquared



   Chapter 2: The metal behemoth strode across the ruined landscape. 
Inside, it cradled a living being, but to anything outside it was a cold,
heartless monster.  For two decades it had roamed the planet, mot slowing
for mountains, or seas, or even what remnants there were of civilisation.
Now, finally, it was coming to the end of its journey.  The single
remaining vestige of the long-past ideals.  The wars of clone liberation
had taken a heavy toll on the planet.  Most of its ruling humanoid race had
been wiped out.  Many species of fauna were gone, obliterated forever.  The
little flora that remained was bleak, and unloved.  The clawed, ruthless
predators that had mutated from the fiercest creatures of the past had no
effect on the massive feet of the battle suit.  However, were it simply the
woman inside, they would tear her apart before she could even blink.  They
were the single most efficient killers that the planet had ever seen.  Only
now did the few remaining men and women realise the folly of conflict. 
Only now, when it was too late.

   The giant battle suit reached the base of the huge tower.  It was
scarred from battle, but was still essentially in one piece.  It had been
ground zero of the first major assault of the wars.  It survived only due
to the vacuum created directly under a nuclear blast.  Nothing but the
radiation had struck it.  The behemoth stood, it's lifeless eyes staring up
at the structure.  Raising its arm, it fired a grappling hook the size of
an ocean liner's anchor, attached to a cable thinker than a tree, to a
ledge nearly three miles up.  The cable tightened, and, motors whirring,
the humanoid fighting machine began to rise slowly up the featureless face
of the spire.

   First one, then another huge hand clamped onto the ledge, and the suit
pulled itself up and stood before the doors.  With one mighty punch, it
crumpled them.  With another, it smashed them off their hinges and into the
dark, musty air of the room within.  An echoed clang signified their
arrival at the other end.  The suit crouched under the top of the opening,
and stood fully once inside.  A panel that covered its groin swung open,
and a pipe extended from behind it.  At once, liquid spewed forth, followed
shortly by a human form.  The disgorged woman lay naked in the steaming
fluid, quivering.  For the last three months, the battle suit's computers
had been training her muscles for the outside world, but it was still not
enough.  They were still in atrophy from the years of neglect, and the
woman could not bring herself to her feet.  She simply lay there, curled up
in a ball, and waited.  Sure enough, the slightly addled computer brains of
the maintenance robots still functioned.  Two of the golden machines
floated quickly towards her out of the darkness, and grasped an arm each.
They lifted her from the floor, and rushed her quickly to the cloning
tanks.

   She stepped forth, hours later, refreshed.  Drying herself of the
cloning fluid with a large towel, she took hold of some robes and pulled
them on.  She walked from the room, and was met by a hovering robot.  It
beckoned, and she followed it.  It led her down the long corridors, into
the giant hall that used to contain three cloned versions of everyone alice
on the planet.  Now, it was simply a sea of melted protein shells, bitter
reminders of the `liberation' of the clones.  The clones has not been
liberated.  They had never been designed to live.  Within (at the most)
four years of being born, they had all died.  She shook her head in
sadness, and stepped onto a platform.  It flew away from the gantry, and
took her towards the centre of the hall, towards the only remaining clones
in the entire complex.  Their original had killed them shortly before the
war broke out, and then taken his own life on his way back to his home,
where the police had been waiting for him.  His act had, technically, been
murder - but so had what the authorities had been doing.  Now, his final,
desperate act could be what saved the race.  The woman leapt with the ease
of a newly-rejuvenated gymnast off the platform and down the steps, landing
lightly before the three tall, thin, egg shaped pods.  Inside were three
hunched over, dead human forms.  Each was over one hundred and sixty years
old, but that made no difference.  She hit a switch on the control panel,
and the middle pod wobbled, rippled, then split open and poured its liquid
contents across her.  The naked dead body of the man fell from the pod and
into the woman's arms.  She rushed back up the steps and onto the platform
- she had to get it to another tank before it started its long-postponed
decomposition.

   The body had already started to rot by the time she got it into the
healing waters of a cloning tank, but it stopped within a minute of
immersion.  She beckoned for a robot hovering in the corner of the room to
come along and work the machine - she did not know how.  it lowered itself
to the right level without saying a word (they were always silent), and
pressed buttons faster than the human eye could see.  While she waited, the
woman removed her sodden robes, and stepped into a radiation shower, her
long black hair hanging limply down her back, sticking to her skin.  About
five minutes later, she stepped out again - clean and dry.  A second robot
handed her some more flattering clothes, and she climbed into them in the
name of modesty.  Walking over to the occupied tank, she watched as the
robot made the cloning process happen.  A long needle was pressed into the
dead flesh of the body within, and genetic material removed.  It passed
through pipelines and computer systems, and was injected into a second
tank. The greenish liquid inside that tank began to pulsate with energy,
and the microscope viewscreen showed the newly-created cells burst into
life and multiply.  This clone would be made to last.  Before long, the
quickly splitting cells became visible to the naked eye.  Within
twenty-four hours, a fully grown human being would be created.  It would
only have the most basic animal instincts, but that was all that was
needed.