The Passport

[Ashin Varanin]

[SIZE=11pt]“How long have you had a mind?”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]The young woman doesn’t answer, and though I’ve never met her I can read every hint of tension in her face and body, the way her eyes tighten, the bulge as the corner of her jaw knots. I can’t read just anyone, but I can read her. I’ve done this song and dance before, with others just like her. I know she’s offended that I’d think she was one of SLATE’s true-blanks.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]But then she smiles, and I know that expression too, and inside me a klaxon is blaring [/SIZE][SIZE=11pt]danger, danger[/SIZE][SIZE=11pt] while ice-cold adrenaline floods my veins. She doesn’t say a word. I can almost, but not quite, hear what she’s thinking, and somehow I know[/SIZE][SIZE=11pt] that any insight I glean through the Force is something she lets me get.[/SIZE]

I look down at her file on the table again, and this time I realize what seemed off about it the first time I scanned through. It’s a snapshot of a life, an idealized one. It has the basics of a history -- an undergraduate degree, nothing else of interest -- but it’s all framed in such a way that...how do I put this.

[SIZE=11pt]It’s not the key points poking out of a real life’s mess. It’s all there is.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]“This is the life you’re offering me,” I say slowly.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]“Yes,” she says, and that frightening smile stays in place. She’s pale, just like me, and she plays with her hair just like I do. That mannerism always triggers the uncanny valley in me, like I’m looking in a mirror and my reflection’s following me wrong.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]“But it’s not your life.”[/SIZE]

 

[Ashin Varanin]

[SIZE=11pt]She shrugs. Is she maybe a hint paler than me? “How much does that really matter?” she says.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]I glance down at the file again. “Well, there’s an art to settling in, and if the legend’s threadbare…”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]“You’ve swapped before?”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]“Twice.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]“Personal or professional?”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]“You wouldn’t be stepping into any mess,” I say. “Let’s put it that way.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]“Good enough for me. Forget I asked.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]“Aren’t you going to look at my file?”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]“You’re far from the only person who wants me to take a closer look at your life history,” she says, with a flicker of some private amusement. “I answer to someone who would prefer I have the fullest possible facts before a decision is made. But I look at you and I see more than I would find if I read this file for the third or fourth time.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]“You can read me that well? Beyond the normal, I mean?”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]She nods once. “My Master showed me how.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]Without meaning to, I glance up and to the side, where the Lifeswapper sits brooding behind plate glasteel. His implants twinkle in the dark alcove. He claims he can’t hear us, but when so much is at stake, I couldn’t blame him if he hedged his bets in case of the unexpected. Like, say, when a swap candidate turns out to have followed after what you might call the family business.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]“Who’s that?” I say.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]She shakes her head fractionally. “Someone influential enough to give you everything in the file I gave you.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]I look down again. This time I don’t focus on the background, the absent identity; I take a hard look at how all the pieces come together. University-educated on Corulag, general sciences. Ship handling certificate from the Levantine Astronautical Academy at Oswaft Station -- better than the cert I have, but close enough that I can fake it. Apartment on Widow, Naboo system. Leads on jobs…[/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]I whistle; I can’t help it. “I think I see what you’re getting at. This can really be arranged?”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]“Guaranteed. It would mean going from captain to first officer, but we’re talking about the same model as you currently fly, with a proper support structure and a professional crew.” The edge is gone from her smile. “And a nicer uniform than that civilian nonsense.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]“Don’t knock it before you step into it.” [/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]“Is that a yes?”[/SIZE]

 

[Ashin Varanin]

[SIZE=11pt]“You can really get me a first officer’s slot on a Laureate.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]Another nod. “My Master can, yes. A Laureate with Expeditionary Branch, or a Handmaiden or H9 with Strategic Security Branch. A couple of years and you’d be back in the captain’s chair and upwardly mobile.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]I snort. “Until they geneprint me.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]“How many of us are there, as far as you know? How many did SLATE thaw, and how many of those were half-blanks, or true-blanks that got thawed young and brought up carefully?”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]“Meaning how many of us are running around functional? I’ve met half a dozen.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]“My understanding is there may be upwards of a hundred.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]“That,” I say slowly, “is not a safe number.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]“Nature versus nurture. Most of us lead quiet, productive lives. One of us is a baker on Dasid Anya, another one rehabilitates former sex slaves on Vortusa, and I can think of several who wound up as gardeners, landscapers, and florists on Varunda Nine.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]“If you know about so many of them, why me?”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]She shakes her head again, almost mockingly. “Don’t sell yourself short. You may be willing to abandon the life you’ve built, but you’re proud of it, and rightly so. New Habat University went through a budget shortfall a couple of years ago, yes? Other expeditionary officers were let go, but not you. You’ve carved out a degree of professional respect from these people. And yes -- yes, I understand I would need to maintain your standard of service, just as you would need to maintain yours to reach your potential in the job I’m offering you. I think we each have a decent idea of the other’s abilities and proclivities. What’s amusing?”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]“Just wondering if I talk this much. Or our donor did.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]“Oh, I’m reliably informed that she was prone to monologues.”[/SIZE]

 

[Ashin Varanin]

[SIZE=11pt]The young woman -- she [/SIZE][SIZE=11pt]is[/SIZE][SIZE=11pt] paler than the rest of us; I’m certain now -- leans back in her chair. “I made my decision before I came into this room. Where do you stand?”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]I’ve got my reasons to want to move on. The boyfriend, his ryll habit, a bit too much debt to handle, the sheer isolation of living this close to the real Unknown Regions. Most of it’s in my file, to one degree of detail or another. And I have to admit, the file she gave me is far better than I expected. Like she said, most of us wind up with fairly boring lives, whether we started as half-blanks or true-blanks. Me, I was a half-blank, imprinted with basic things like feeding myself and tying my shoes. We end up normal, for the most part. Your average true-blank, who was grown from the same gene stock but only intended for organ harvesting, wasn’t imprinted with anything, just vat-grown with nothing going on upstairs. After the Fringe collapsed, the humanitarians and the cultists raided Soledad’s SLATE labs before the local regimes could kick into high gear. A lot of true-blanks, just newborn infants in young or adult bodies, wound up all right thanks to a ton of developmental and technological therapy. [/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]Mother-love and flash-learning. Half-blank or true-blank, those that got’em lived, and those that didn’t died. Even those of us that thrived, though, find it real hard to get past the stigma out here. The Naboo system seems far enough away that nobody’s going to recognize me, and the boyfriend’s not going to have a prayer of finding me even if he realizes that she’s not me.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]Somehow I doubt she and her ‘Master’ will have much trouble with Chuk and his ryll habit.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]“Done,” I say, and my mouth’s gone dry.[/SIZE]

 

[Ashin Varanin]

[SIZE=11pt]The pale woman grins broadly and waves to the Lifeswapper. His implants’ running lights shift in the gloom, then vanish as he heads down to join us.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]“So you’ve made your decision?” he says. Whatever injuries he took in his pre-cyborg days, they must have been gruesome. Half his torso is metal.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]“Yes, Farn, she’ll do perfectly,” says the pale woman.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]He sags in something like relief. I’ve never seen that from him; never seen him care. This is his business, Farnabas Engel, the Lifeswapper, coordinator of clones who want to exchange their realities. After trading lives for Jorin clones, Mantis clones, Kol clones, SLATE clones in all their incarnations, even the occasional Dreadguard or Fett, he’s inured to the job. Except today. “And you?” he says to me, blinking one cybernetic eye. I swear he does it deliberately.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]“Yes. Yes, I’ll do it.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]“All right.” A metal hand claps against a flesh-and-blood palm. “Please lay all your personal effects and belongings on the table, then step around to the other side. There is nothing to sign. There is no paperwork of any kind. You-” He points at me. “-are now her, and vice versa. Whether you tell others is up to you, though I would strongly recommend against it. Your fingerprints are identical; your genetics are identical; before you came in here you were both scanned for identifying marks, and my medical staff will replicate and alter those as necessary. You will also be asked to provide a flash-learning tape covering the last seven days to aid your counterpart in taking over your life, and to help you learn to live hers. Please make the tape’s duration longer if necessary to cover the standard routines, the usual faces, and so forth. Are we all clear on that so far?”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]We both nod; neither one of us is looking at him. She’ll be me; I won’t really be her. Oh, I’ll step into the life she wants me to see, and take the direction she fabricated to entice me, and I’ll probably have a fascinating life, but it’ll be one cut out of whole cloth, not taken on secondhand. She knew that would get to me, the urge to make something new and real all for myself, on my own terms. All of us Varanin clones -- whether ship captains or florists -- we all have that in common. [/SIZE]