Chapter 2

May 16th, 2932
(Nine hundred and ten years later)

The tall, physically-fit woman exited the underground facility’s lift shaft along with her much shorter dark-gray android companion. They were each carrying an end of a large heavy suitcase-sized data storage module. Walking backwards easily, the android led the way down the long access corridor heading for the landing pad of the field base located in the southern end of an area once known as the political State of Utah.

“When will we know if the mind-data can be reconstructed,” the bronze-skinned woman asked her machine companion.

“Not until the memory unit has been physically delivered to the space station. It will take the greater processing power of the main AI presence there to extrapolate and fill in any overwritten or degraded memory segments.”

Together, they got the bulky memory module installed into the belly storage bay of the flyer. When that was done, the woman looked around the beautiful but desolate landscape surrounding them. The location was so much dryer than the area where she had grown up and, as always, the unfamiliar distant mountains intrigued her. She decided to delay her return in the flyer for a short time.

“I feel like taking a hike, Ohmu. Do you want to come along and keep me company?”

“No, Uxe. If it is permissible, I would stay and recharge my power cells. There are no dangerous animals within the monitoring range of the perimeter sentinels, and I will follow your trek with an aerial drone overwatch,” the short android replied.

“Alright, you stay. If my husband should call needing pickup earlier than anticipated, let him know that I will be back in an hour or so. Or, come get me if it’s urgent,” she said.

“Affirmative,” her android friend replied.

As Uxe hiked through the rocky outcroppings and sparse high desert scrub, she thought about today’s side mission. The AI had concurred with her and her husband John’s assessment that the mentally edited Ukrainian girl’s development was not progressing well. They hoped to restore her sense of self and balance by reintroducing the almost completely deranged woman to her erased memories.

The dilemma was how to do that without traumatizing the girl even further and causing additional damage. It would require a delicate touch and would have to be done slowly and patiently. From what the AI had been able to confirm about her original past, she had suffered as greatly in the distant past as she had more recently. And, the recent numerous attempts to patch the woman’s psyche had only made things worse.

Fortunately, they had someone available who had many lifetimes of experience in carrying for those who had mental limitations and disabilities. That person might tip the balance and help ease this poor girl along to a suitable recovery.

When she returned, Uxe took her place next to the small android in the cockpit of the craft named Hoss. Up they went, using the overpowered aircraft to quickly fly to one of the three nearby template colony sites, where her husband John was currently engaged in dialog with the new population living there.

John had continued with their primary mission and main reason for coming back to the Earth and had seen some success. It had been a mission to recruit much-needed assistance. They had spent the bulk of the last five years working in lunar orbit, designing and building humanity’s first interstellar starship.

John and Uxe had been the sole humans working with the machines during those early years. Now they needed others to supplement the AI machines, so they had returned on a recruiting drive. For the past month-and-a-half, in addition to a bit of rest and relaxation in the normal Earth gravity, they had traveled around the world visiting various colony sites. In that time, they found sixty volunteers.

Clones of Manuel Rodriguez had been the most numerous in agreeing to migrate, with thirty-five copies of the man originally from Central America volunteering to help their cause. Clones of the female Ella Williams, originally from Australia, had provided another dozen worker candidates. The rest had come from a random few of the duplicates of the other seven humans.

For the female clones, their current pregnancy state had much to do with their decision on whether to volunteer or not. Understandably, those heavy with child were the least likely to commit to an extended trip to Luna.

There were a few exceptions to that, however. Two clones of the Romanian woman, Irina Ioveanu, had requested an immediate cesarean to remove their late-term fetuses in order to be medically able to relocate and work in a low G environment. Their fellow colony members agreed to care for the babies after the fetuses had finished maturing inside the specialized medical crèches into which they’d been placed.

Uxe found it odd that only three of her husband’s clones had volunteered. Although the clones had all been mentally adjusted so that there were clear differences from John Prime, it was almost as if John’s clones were embarrassed or uncomfortable to be around him. Uxe had also detected a similar hesitancy or discomfort from her husband when he was physically near his clones. She was curious about John’s feelings on his clones but had decided to not press the issue now.

It had been on the recruiting tour that something had occurred which caused today’s diversion. While they had been visiting the colonies located in old Europe and western Asia, an incident had occurred at the template colony in the Ukraine. Being close by, her husband’s assistance to mediate the matter had been requested.

At the colony which had been created near the old city of Vinnytsia, there had been an attempted murder. The victim had been the clone of the male, Li Qiang. Uxe had always had a bad feeling about the man and had not been completely surprised to learn that he had been attacked. His attacker was the local clone of Hannah Crather. Hannah had been a young girl who had once lived in her husband’s home country, a place that had once been known as the United States.

Uxe had always felt great sympathy towards the ‘Hannah’ line. The original Hannah had been placed in suspension by the enemy long after its attack had begun. Hannah had survived the apocalypse for over a year. In that time, she had been kidnapped, regularly raped, nearly starved, and nearly crippled. Very near her death, she had stumbled upon an alien compound by chance.

The controlling AI there, instead of exterminating her, had decided to place her into long-term bio-suspension for possible later use. As it did so, it had healed the girl’s physical injuries. It had also scanned the girl’s memories and discovered the trauma and hardship she had undergone. To simplify any future mental conditioning, the machine decided to wipe most of Hannah’s memories before storing her away.

When it had awoken the girl nine centuries later and cloned her to be spread among the template colonies, her altered mental state persisted and caused issues with her new companions. The issues and clear signs of self-abuse had been apparent early on when Uxe and John had first encountered her and her clones during their first colony visits.

Over half of the Hannah clones were immediately removed from their colonies. These had undergone further mental conditioning in an attempt to remove the more-recent trauma. They also had had their physical bodies de-aged to that of a young teenager. Finally, these clones had been placed into the colony’s centralized boarding schools where they were to live with the other children in an attempt to give them a new foundation.

This group of Hannah clones were almost a decade older than the other children in the schools, so they had become something like big sisters. The teaching androids had also utilized the more mature Hannah clones to act as student teachers. The results had been good for both the Hannahs and the younger children. The project was still ongoing but looked to be successful, with the Hannah clones displaying almost no signs of their original issues.

Not all of the original template colony Hannah clones were able to join in this reversion therapy experiment, however. Due to various stages of pregnancies and the fact that Naomi, John’s AI, had wanted an unmodified control group, over a dozen Hannahs had remained in the colonies and left as they were. One of those had been the Hannah who had lived in the Vinnytsia, Ukraine colony.

Something had caused Hannah Vinnytsia to snap. She had finally had enough of her male partner Li Qiang’s abuses and cruelty. After suffering through a rather brutal night of torment and unwanted intercourse, she had taken a rock and bashed the sleeping Li Qiang in the head. Due to the available medical treatments, the man had survived, but the event was too much for the monitoring AI to ignore.

All of the remaining unaltered clones in the control group were immediately isolated from their template colonies. If they had been pregnant, the fetuses were removed and placed into uterine replicators to continue to mature. The Hannah clones were then placed into bio-suspension to begin the memory alterations and de-aging like the earlier group had undergone and which had shown some success.

The Vinnytsia clone was not placed in suspension, however. Her fellow colony members were torn over what the woman’s fate should be. Some had wanted her removed and treated like the other clones around the world, while others wanted her punished because of her murder attempt. When they learned that John Prime was in the area, they petitioned for him to come and break the impasse.

When he had arrived and investigated the matter, John Prime had uncovered the truth of the woman’s abuse by her partner Li Qiang. With those full details now brought into the light, he had used his influence to act. First, he caused the entire Li Qiang line to undergo mental adjustments to mitigate their crueler tendencies and lower their overall aggression levels. Next, John Prime ruled that Hannah Crather Vinnytsia had acted in self-defense and would not be punished. Finally, he had her removed from the colony and sent to the nearby field base to undergo further treatment.

Instead of treating Hannah Vinnytsia like the other clones had previously been treated, by further mental redactions and de-aging, Naomi pushed to try something new. An alternative treatment that was risky, but if successful would replace the mishmash personality constructed of artificially-repressed memories and added fabrications in the current clone with something closer to the personality once possessed by the original girl from Utah.

When asked about the treatment, Hannah Vinnytsia had quickly agreed. In fact, she’d agreed so quickly that the AI had to utilize both John and Uxe to determine if the damaged girl was competent enough to decide on her own treatment. They had found that she was ... barely, and the treatment was to proceed.

Naomi’s new plan was that, instead of further mental manipulation of this Hannah’s already-damaged psyche, the clone would be reverted completely back to her original state. The AI had recommended that her mind data be completely wiped and replaced with a full copy of an earlier version of the girl.

That treatment plan was why Uxe and Ohmu had been exploring the deep archives of the old Utah field base. They had been searching for and had found a copy of the woman’s original mental state which had been taken over nine centuries ago. The copy had still existed in the archives of the original field base where the original Hannah had once undergone bio-suspension.

Uxe and Ohmu had retrieved that memory archive and were now carrying it with them aboard Hoss, flying to meet up with her husband, still on his recruiting mission at the nearby template colony site. After they picked him up, they would fly a short two-hours northwest to a large lake in the western part of the former state of Nevada.

There, they would dock with their orbit-capable space launch vehicle Bucephalus, which currently waited there having replenished its hydrogen fuel from the waters of the lake. Then, they would launch and make their way to the orbiting space station they’d recently named High Castle, where the delicate work of recovering the memory module’s contents would begin.

July 23rd, 2932

(Ten weeks later)

The woman came awake drenched in sweat. It had been the nightmare with the wild dogs this time. She reached over to the small table next to her bed and touched the base of the small lamp. It slowly began to glow, growing brighter.

“Agent, time?” The woman breathed.

As always, speaking, even whispering, came hard to her. Sometimes she could not bring herself to utter thoughts aloud and simply remained silent. Doing that too often here was not tolerated though, but luckily she found that addressing the machine was easier for some reason.

“It is 03:23, Hannah. Did you have another traumatic dream?” the feminine-sounding synthetic voice asked in reply.

“Yes,” she replied, sounding both sad and frustrated.

“Would you like me to summon Mother Branco?” the machine asked cheerily.

“No. Please ... let her sleep. I’m fine. I’ll be alright,” the woman said softly.

“As you wish, Hannah. Know that the compound is secure and that you are safe. Please try to continue your sleep period as best you can,” the machine said.

She fluffed her pillow and rolled over after having set the lighting to partially on. As she lay there, the woman thought back to the past week and how she had come to be at this place, deep in the jungles of South America. Everything was vague and dreamlike. Her memories were in turmoil.

Hannah sat next to Mother Branco on a rough woven mat in the shaded area that was the covered entry of their combined dwelling and medical treatment center. She sipped her morning tea and enjoyed the quiet routine of greeting the new day as they had for the past four days. They seldom spoke during this contemplative time as they took in the wakening community and the rainforest beyond.

As she sat there, she occasionally glanced at the gray-haired matriarch sitting next to her. The Agent AI voice referred to the woman as Abby and she had sometimes heard the villagers call her Deusa. The old woman would scowl if she overheard the use of the term so Hannah suspected the name was a derogation of some sort. What made her unsure was that the villagers were usually kneeling before the old woman when they muttered it.

Hannah had been instructed to call the old woman Mother Branco and had been treated well by the woman since she had arrived. The old woman remained calm and patient with the clearly-troubled younger woman and had quickly earned her trust.

To her relief, Hannah found that she was able to begin answering Mother Branco’s gentle probing questions only hours after they had met. Over the next three days, she became more comfortable with both her caregiver and her new surroundings. The days had been mostly tranquil but had ended with a few hours of discussion after each evening meal. Then, she would lie in her small private room and reflect upon the sessions and her recovering memories.

The older woman led the topics of their nightly conversations and instead of questioning or instructing Hannah, she settled the younger woman by telling stories of her own long life and experiences. Hannah was fascinated enough that she found herself asking questions despite her hesitancy to talk. The older woman carefully answered each before continuing on with her history.

It was not until weeks later that Hannah realized that the lack of any early questions directed towards her had really been because the younger woman hadn’t yet had many memories implanted. That began to change as the daily medical crèche sessions added more and more of her old mind-data to her current body.

Today looked to be another day like the previous. She had awakened, broken her fast, and joined the older woman out on the terrace. Finally, their hour-long morning contemplation ritual came to an end with Mother Branco simply saying. “Hannah, it is time for work.”

The work the old crone referred to was seeing to the medical needs of the tribe who lived in the area. In these duties, Hannah acted as her assistant. For a few hours in the morning, the work took place in the same building she was currently residing in as the front entry portion of the structure contained a fully equipped, automatic medical treatment center. Hannah’s primary duties were one of comfort, soothing the fears and nerves of the primitive humans about the strange machines and devices used to treat them.

Later in the day, after a simple noon meal, the pair would travel out of the main camp and do medical rounds in the nearby villages. A fully laden pack-mule-like mobile unit followed them carrying basic medical gear. If all went well, they would return to the main compound by late afternoon.

Mother Branco would then nap for a few hours after first seeing the younger woman into the medical crèche for an hour of memory work. Hannah would awaken just before their supper meal. Her body would be refreshed but her mind would feel sluggish and confused from the newly implanted memories. What was worse is that she would not yet properly remember them.

It would take a full night’s sleep before the new information could be properly integrated into her consciousness. Until then, the memories would exist in the background, a fog of imaginings and vague recollections which she was not able to trust as her own.

After supper, the pair would reconvene indoors for their nightly talk. There, away from the curious eyes of the nearby tribal humans and free from the evening swarms of insects, Mother Branco would hold more intimate therapy sessions. These were focused on Hannah’s newer memories and how she was adjusting to them.

“Hannah, I know you have been having bad dreams for the past week. They are the result of the machine’s daily treatments. Do you remember what it is doing?” the older woman asked.

Struggling to speak, Hannah answered, “I think ... I think I can remember more of my life back when I was a girl. I think it’s doing something to my memory?”

“That is correct. You have suffered terrible hardships, Hannah. Both in the distant past and some much more recently, after you were awakened in this new world. Do you remember what I told you last night?” the older woman asked.

“Yes ... You said that I have lived two separate lives. That I lived my first life a long, long time ago ... back in ... the early part of the twenty-first century.”

“Yes, Hannah, that is correct. You were born in the year 2005, over nine hundred and twenty-five years ago. You grew up in a place called Utah, on a continent far to the north of this one. When you were a teenager, our enemy began its extermination campaign against all mankind, wrecking much of the world in the process. Do you still understand this?”

“Yes ... Mother Branco, I understand. I don’t remember it clearly though,” the younger woman stammered.

“That’s okay, Dear. Unfortunately, you will remember everything all too clearly soon. As I was saying, you suffered greatly during those events and almost died. But the enemy found you and put you to sleep for over nine centuries. In doing so it erased some of your memories,” the old women explained patiently.

“Why?! Why would it do that?” Hannah asked with emotion.

“Strangely, it was attempting to spare you, child. As I said, you had suffered greatly. Suffered more than any person should ever suffer. The enemy machine tried to erase your memories of that suffering. It was worried that the grief would cause you to lose your mind.”

The pair paused while a mobile unit brought them tea. When they had been served, Mother Branco continued, “Then, in the year 2919, eleven years ago, you were awakened into this new age from your long slumber. The machine made forty-seven copies of you and spread them around the world. You—”

“I don’t remember any of that!” Hannah sobbed, interrupting Mother Branco. “Nothing!”

Mother Branco leaned over and hugged the crying woman tightly for a moment. “Yes. As I have said, all of your recent memories have been erased. This treatment began five days ago.”

“Was ... was it the enemy machine again?” Hannah managed to stammer out.

“No child. This time your memory was erased with your own consent. You allowed it to be done because you were having trouble living in this new world. It’s a long story but I will do my best to explain...”

The explanation went on for the next forty minutes. The younger woman learned details about how she had been created, grown actually, as a clone of the original Hannah Crather. Her new home had been in the old country of Ukraine, near the old city of Vinnytsia, where her template colony had been established.

That was why her full name was now Hannah Crather Vinnytsia. It was to differentiate her from the forty-six other versions of her alive and living around the world. The Ukrainian colony had had three sections named ‘A’, ‘B’ and ‘C’ with Hannah having lived in ‘C’ camp.

She’d been part of a trinary union with two others, another woman named Luisa Perez who’d originally lived nine centuries ago in Mexico, and a male, Li Qiang who had originally been from a place called China. Her two partners had been clones like her, copied from the original stored humans. Like her, they had also been altered mentally, although with far fewer of their memories erased.

They had also had their thoughts ‘adjusted’ to help them accept each other and to live comfortably in their new surroundings. The memory alterations and adjustments resulted in the current clones having personalities which differed greatly from those of the original humans.

With less extensive memory deletions than Hannah had undergone, Luisa and Li Qiang were far more normal. Hannah had not been so lucky and from early on, had suffered mental issues. The other two humans had learned early on to watch over their addled companion but not all had gone well.

To make matters worse, her male companion, Li Qiang had been changed for the worse by his mental alterations. He had ended up more aggressive, domineering, and cruel, with little compassion or empathy. He had treated both his female companions poorly, but Hannah had suffered the most, even being beaten senseless many times.

Four of the Hannah clones had been driven to suicide over the first six years of the template colonies’ existence. This had occurred before John Abrams had taken control of the Earth from the enemy and discovered and freed the cloned humans. Six others in that same time period had caused injury or death to their own children. The enemy AI had tried to treat the damaged Hannahs but had only suppressed, not cured, the underlying issues.

After John and Uxe began visiting the colonies, they had quickly discovered the ‘defective’ Hannahs and forced rapid changes. Most of the Hannahs had been removed from the company of Luisa and Li Qiang and undergone extensive memory erasures, removing much of the recent decade.

Their bodies had been altered along with their minds, being de-aged to be much younger in appearance, and had been placed into the communal schools to live with the colonies’ other children. The thought was that by giving those Hannahs a new childhood that they would develop in a more normal and healthy manner. It was apparently working with the bulk those clones now stable and happy.

Mother Branco had told Hannah that, for various reasons, not all of the clones had undergone treatment. She had been a part of that group. Then, recently she had become violent and tried to murder one of her partners. A more drastic treatment would be needed for her. That drastic treatment was why Hannah Vinnytsia was here now with Mother Branco.

Mother Branco smiled down upon the woman as she lay in the treatment basin of the facility’s medical crèche. The younger woman smiled back but it was clear that Hannah was nervous and scared.

“Child, today, the machine will restore the full and final memories of your youth. The treatment will last much longer this time. When you awaken, you will fully remember your childhood and your family.”

The older woman paused and frowned slightly.

“You will also remember them dying in front of you and the cruelty you suffered afterwards. It will be horrible and the pain and sorrow will feel almost overwhelming to you. I wish I could spare you this fate but it is important you know your own past.”

Mother Branco stood up slightly and her expression firmed.

“But you must remember this! You survived it all and lived. You are now well beyond those terrible times. You are free from them and they can no longer harm you! Cling tightly to those thoughts when you wake up. That knowledge may prevent the rediscovered memories of your past from overwhelming you. Do not forget this, Child! Understand?”

The woman in the basin nodded. Her expression was one of nervousness but also looked determined.

“I survived. I am beyond my past,” she muttered as the lid began closing.

Mother Branco nodded and stepped back from the medical machinery. The cover on the crèche sealed and the woman inside drifted off to sleep as the sedatives took effect. She would remain in the treatment basin for the next four days as her early memories were fully restored. During that time, the machine would bring her to partial consciousness many times, letting her brain and psyche fully absorb the memories.

If all went as planned, the knowledge that she had survived her suffering and lived beyond those harsh times would see her past the worst of the memories. The old woman scowled as she moved to get ready for her own slumber. This treatment the machine had come up with was so risky! So much could still go wrong.

(Three weeks later)

The woman came awake drenched in sweat. The night had been filled with the usual nightmares. Seeing her mom and dad killed in front of her, constant hunger, wild dogs attacking, feeling that horrible man, the beast, on top of her, violating her over and over. As before, during the worst of the dreams, she heard the old woman’s voice. “You have survived this, Child. It happened almost a thousand years ago.”

The reminder helped and allowed her some peace and a bit of reassurance. She’d stopped waking up from the nightmares and instead, trained her subconscious to shift the nightmares to more pleasant dreams, or even better, restful sleep.

The troubled woman sat on the shaded porch with her ancient caregiver companion and watched the nearby village come alive with the advancing morning. Mother Branco remained silent, knowing that the younger woman preferred not to speak. She was surprised when the younger woman did so.

“I had been pregnant.”

The older woman did not immediately respond to the younger woman’s statement. Finally, after noticing the child looking at her questioningly, Mother Branco responded, “Yes. You remember noticing the changes your body had undergone. Once your rescuer allowed you access to more food, the pregnancy would have advanced quickly. It is still surprising that because of your near starvation, the fetus had not been spontaneously aborted.”

The younger woman remained silent after Mother Branco’s confirmation and explanation. The old woman was unsure of whether her charge was just mulling over her reply or suffering from another flashback to her torture and confinement so long ago. She noticed the younger woman unconsciously rubbing her right wrist which confirmed that it was likely the latter.

“The bad times are over, Hannah. They are just memories. There is now abundant food and you are safe,” Mother Branco reaffirmed quietly.

The younger woman took a deep breath, regaining some sense of her current condition and surroundings.

Finally, she looked at the older woman. “The ... the baby was ... aborted,” she whispered finally.

Ah yes, the machine had explained to Mother Branco about the girl’s upbringing. A certain religion had been strong in the area of the girl’s upbringing and she had grown up under its teachings.

“Hannah, I know little of the teachings of the faith you were raised with. However, the machines have taught me some of its tenants. One of these was that abortion was not completely forbidden if the pregnancy was the result of rape. Abortion was also permitted if the pregnancy would have caused harm to the mother. Both cases were true with you, Child. Also, never forget that you were denied any choice in the matter.”

The troubled girl remained silent for the remainder of their morning quiet time. The older woman noticed that she seemed to be more at peace as they went about the work of the day. That evening, after the evening meal, the two sat and talked.

“I had more babies in the time after I was cloned and awakened.”

“Yes Hannah, during your time in the template colony, you bore seven children: two sons and five daughters,” Mother Branco explained.

“I do not remember them,” Hannah said sadly. “The children are being cared for?”