Lost Ark Ch. 03

Bauer made an expansive gesture and turned the camera to take in the rest of the cramped room. "I can stay here, no problem," he said, although his hunched posture suggested no joy at the prospect. "With Ford's supplements and the drip tube I don't think there's a limit to how long I can keep myself alive."

Leaning to his left, almost out of the frame, Bauer retrieved a thin tube. He opened an arm flap on his flight suit and inserted the tube into the patch that he had so proudly shown off in a previous video. A viscous brown fluid began to drip into the patch, and from there, presumably into Bauer's body.

"I can still grab some solid food if I need to," he said, again without savor. "Just gotta watch the clones and only leave here when they're asleep. Jade and Lance can feed themselves so it looks like we're going to be neighbors for quite a while."

The video ended.

Kyle shook his head. "So he committed himself to at least two more years, but didn't want to mingle with the clones? That doesn't seem like him at all."

Sloane chewed absently on her lip. "I don't know. You saw how eager Jade was to get Juice, and she was freshly hatched. Li said she was resistant to programming, but addiction is an entirely different matter. It looked like the vending machines were programmed to dispense a Juice after sex; Bauer may not have wanted to be constantly harassed just so Jade could get a hit."

Kyle laughed. "Jade or Lance." A moment later he added, "No mention of Ford?"

"Here," Sloane said, pointing to the next video entry which was titled 'Ford', and dated less than one month after Bauer's previous video.

"Well that's pretty clear cut. Play it."

She did. Just like with some of the other video logs, this one was shot from an overhead security camera, and appeared to have been stitched together from a series of clips. In the first, Ford was shown, naked and on all fours, on the bed in her quarters. A Lance was fucking her from behind, his admirably muscled body well defined even in the dim light. With hands gripping her hips, he pumped her steadily, his hips slapping against her ass. The sound in the video was poor, but when after a minute Ford seemed to cum, she could be heard releasing a sharp gasp of pleasure. Lance pulled free at once and, with his still erect penis bobbing, sprinted from the room.

"He's going to get his Juice," Lissa said.

Here, the video jumped forward a day. Ford was asleep in her bed, while a Jade paced restlessly. When Ford stirred, Jade pulled back the sheets, pushed her face between Ford's legs and began to give her cunnilingus. The doctor looked disoriented, and began to prod Jade's shoulder, but when the clone persisted, Ford fell back against the sheets. This time, a softer moan announced her orgasm. Jade darted out of the room.

The time stamp on the next scene was from almost three weeks later. Whoever had spliced the video together, presumably Bauer, had chosen to skip forward.

A different overhead security camera, this one in the common room, recorded the final scene. In it, Ford lay naked on a pile of cushions, with Jade and Lance asleep on either side of her. Ford looked pale and weak, staring at the ceiling blankly. She rose listlessly and walked toward the corner stairs. Here a different camera recorded her progress as the doctor shuffled up the stairs to the next floor, then up again.

Another camera recorded Ford's final moments. She popped open an airlock, and, still naked, crawled in and closed it behind her. Thirty seconds later the status lights blinked to indicate that the far side had been opened. Ford was gone.

"Holy shit," Kyle said somberly.

"That was horrifying."

"The Juice dispensers must be keyed only to activate when a non-clone has an orgasm," Kyle said. "Jade and Lance couldn't just fuck each other to get their hit."

"So Bauer really was the last survivor," Sloane said, as much to herself as Kyle.

"Any more video journals there?"

"No," Sloane said. A bitter feeling was growing within her. She was so close, had all but the final pieces of the mystery, but they were running out of time to find them.

As if on cue Sloane's communicator rang, sending the voice of Sheen, the shuttle pilot, into her earpiece.

"Lissa, Kyle," Sheen began. Her voice had lost the playful optimism she had demonstrated on the flight out. "I'm en route, but there's a problem. One of my fuel level indicators has become erratic, switching between two different readings. If the high reading is the correct one we'll be fine; if it's the lower number, well, we won't be so fine."

Kyle reacted first. "What do you mean, you might not have enough fuel to reach us?"

"Reach you, yes," Sheen said, "get us all back home, no."

Sloane tried to fight back the panic swelling within her. "Is there anything you can do? I mean-"

"I'm already doing it," Sheen said. "I have to do two more burns to rendezvous with Ark I. I can make them weaker, conserve fuel by slowing my approach, but remember that Ark I is slowly losing ground on Kaybe. Each hour I take it easy means two hours to make up."

Kyle looked stricken. "So the good news is we have maybe one extra hour here. The bad news is we may have an extra two years?"

"I'm sorry," Sheen said, her voice as somber as Kyle's. "I'll check back in when I know more. Until then, you have each other. Take care." The channel went quiet.

For a moment both were too stunned to speak. A hundred fears crowded in on Sloane. It would take two years until Ark I once more came within range of Kaybe. Could they survive that long? Was any of the food that Bauer's team had packed still edible? If not, could Danton restart the algae farm? Could a person even survive on algae? How would they avoid Lance and Jade?

Kyle touched her shoulder. "Liss', we don't know what Sheen will figure out, and we can't dwell on it. Let's make the most of the time we have until the original rendezvous window gets here. Let's complete our mission."

It would take more than comforting words to get Sloane past her fears, but Kyle's touch was a start. She drew in a long breath, closed her eyes and let it out slowly. After doing so twice more she felt more composed. "You're right, Kyle. We're almost to the top. Let's finish this segment then head back."

There was only one more room between them and the top of the ladder, labeled 'Sleep'. Sloane carefully stepped along the narrow walkway. At her touch, the door slid open revealing a cluttered room beyond. A mattress lay on the floor, strewn with wire, ancient discarded food wrappers, bottles, a few desiccated scraps of clothing, and a scattering of bones. A foul odor wafted out.

"This is where he died," Sloane gasped, "where Bauer spent his last days." The cramped, windowless room was the one from which he had recorded the previous video, but at some point it had been wrecked and rearranged.

"Don't go in there," Kyle urged. "Don't."

"No," Sloane agreed. She took an almost involuntary half-step back. The room was like a tomb, the sad, final resting place of a man who had started out with an outsized vision but ended up a prisoner in a cell.

Risking a look down the ladder, Sloane estimated that they had climbed almost as high as the segment could reach. "This next room has to be the last," she said, shooting Kyle a glance heavy with meaning. Kyle, she knew, would understand. After the next room there would be no more clues, no more story. If she couldn't discover the details of Bauer's ignominious passing there, she never would.

The last door was directly overhead. Kyle went first, climbing the ladder's last few steps then pushing the door up and into the next room. He scrambled through then helped pull Sloane up.

The room was wider than the ladder shaft but not by a significant margin. On either side of the door, which opened to the shaft below, were two of the contoured chairs. Like the ones in the office, they were set on curving rails, and featured side-attached terminals. The front of the room, which had a peaked roof, was dominated by what looked like two, massive, blacked-out windows. When Kyle happily climbed into one of the chairs, Sloane popped into another. Both began to explore the terminal menus.

The search for the final clues proved an effective distraction. Sloane dug into first one folder then another. The menus and options were dazzling in their variety, with technical language and terminology that quickly surpassed her ability to comprehend. Let Kyle figure that stuff out, Sloane told herself. Instead, she buried herself in communications, logs, and journals. Much of what she found was incomprehensible or redundant. There were no new personal journals, either video or written.

"Fuuuck," Sloane muttered. Again her frustration surged. She had endured too much, come too close to a complete understanding of the Ark I story. Only Bauer's fate eluded her. Had he passed without leaving any more entries?

Then she noticed a list of video logs under a security folder. Each had the same name, Security Exception: Sleep, but with different date stamps, one day apart. Sloane played the first one.

The scene was the same cramped room where Bauer had recorded his last video, except the mattress and frame had been tossed onto the floor. Bauer himself lay, naked, on the mattress, his wrists and ankles tied to the frame with wire. A Jade rode him, watching his face intently. When Bauer's body jerked in orgasm Jade scrambled away to a vending machine at the back to retrieve her Juice.

They got inside somehow, Sloane realized.

The next clip was similar, except Lance had taken Jade's place. He knelt between Bauer's legs, fellating him while rhythmically squeezing his balls. Bauer moaned in weak protest but, as he had with Jade, eventually ejaculated. With cum still dripping from his mouth, Lance retrieved his Juice capsule and chewed it.

The clips were numbingly repetitive. Jade fucking Bauer, Lance blowing Bauer or sometimes fucking him in the ass while he stroked the man's penis to ejaculation, Jade or Lance fussing with Bauer's feeding tube or topping off his medications. Horrified, Sloane skipped forward a week to discover that nothing had changed. She skipped forward one month, then three. Still the routines were the same.

"That poor bastard." By now Kyle was looking over Sloane's shoulder, watching in stark astonishment. "They tied him down, didn't want him to get away like Ford did."

Sloane skipped forward again and again. The clones must occasionally have brought in solid food because a pile of wrappers and scraps slowly accumulated in the dim room. In one video, Jade looked on impassively as Lance fed Bauer a soft energy bar and let him sip from a bottle of water.

"I guess Li got his revenge," Kyle said eventually.

"You mean Jade?"

"Jade, Lance, both of them. Li was angry with the direction the project was taking, how Bauer was treating the clones like meat. In the end he was the one getting treated like meat. Li died in the pod crash, but Bauer suffered a worse fate."

Jumping forward in ever larger chunks, Lissa reached four months, then seven, then eleven. A slowly-emerging trend appeared. The physical condition of Jade and Lance began to deteriorate. Early on, their fit, lean bodies had been achingly beautiful. As the months passed, the pair must have neglected everything apart from eating, drinking, and fucking Bauer. Their muscles went slack, their skin sallow, and their eyes dull. Bauer aged somewhat less visibly, no doubt a product of the life-extending meds created by Ford.

She couldn't take any more. Sloane scrolled to the last of the log entries, an unbelievable fourteen months after the first. In the clip, a greatly diminished Jade was riding Bauer. When at last his body gave the faint twitch that indicated orgasm, Jade dragged herself to the machine, but it failed to dispense a Juice.

"The dispensers must have broken," Kyle said, "or simply run out of Juice."

Weakly, Jade clawed at the device, futilely slapped her hands against it, then collapsed. The video ended with her laying against the dispenser, panting.

"Holy fuck!" Kyle exclaimed. "All three of them died there, not just Bauer."

Sloane nodded mutely before saying, "I guess I got my story."

"This is crazy, Liss'. I mean, it's like Greek tragedy crazy."

"I can't even wrap my brain around it, Kyle. I'd have guessed that he passed away from malnutrition, fell off of the ladder, or maybe killed himself like Ford. But being fucked to death?" She pressed her face into her hands, welcoming the respite from the video. "Can you give me a moment? I want to take notes while the memory is fresh."

"Sure," Kyle said. He turned back to his terminal, exploring the innumerable menus and options.

Sloane quickly documented her impressions, completing a rough outline of what had transpired on Ark I. The work was a welcome distraction both from Bauer's fate and the looming question of whether or not Sheen would be able to rescue them. But as soon as she completed the outline, another idea presented itself to her.

"Skye!" Sloane blurted.

Kyle was visibly startled. "What?"

"Skye," Sloane repeated. "We can save her."

Kyle's eyes narrowed. "What do you mean 'save'?"

Sloane's mind was turning quickly, still fitting pieces of the plan together. "Skye, the first one. I mean, the one you fucked."

"Lissa, please," Kyle began, "I'm sorry, but she's a zombie. Neither of us could get her to move."

"No, no. You remember Li's notes, right? He said of all of the clones, Skye was the most adaptable."

Sloane's one-time boyfriend clenched his eyes shut. "Okay, right, but what can we do about it? The first Skye may be adaptable but she doesn't have the latest programming."

"We do, though." Sloane allowed herself a smile, holding up her datapad. "We grabbed Nkosi's data, remember?"

"What do you have in mind?"

"There were multiple mentions of rebooting. We didn't know what it meant at the time, but I'm fairly sure it has to do with refreshing the programming. If we can get Skye refreshed with the more advanced programming then I think we can take her with us. It won't necessarily be easy for her, but with some acclimation she can fit in."

A wry smile danced across Kyle's face. He ran his fingers through his hair. "I'm surprised you aren't pushing to rescue the second Skye we found, the one you, ah... had a good time with."

Sloane's face warmed. "I'd like to rescue them all if I could. The two Rods, I'm afraid, aren't manageable, and they stand between us and the spa."

"Agreed," Kyle said with a flash of relief. "Getting them to stand down once was lucky; I'm not risking that again. That rules out the Ambers and that particular Skye. What about Jade and Lance?"

The question was a difficult one. At the time neither had seemed particularly dangerous. And assuming that the Juice dispensers only activated once a non-clone experienced an orgasm, then neither of them had received another dose. They wouldn't be addicted yet. On the other hand, the image of both clones hovering over Bauer like predators was burned into Sloane's mind.

"Let's see if we can rescue Skye first," Sloane said at last. "After that, let's see."

"Okay," Kyle said slowly. "Do you have more work to do on your notes?"

"I finished the rough outline, but could still flesh it out. Why?"

Kyle had already turned back to his terminal. "I'd like a bit more time here. This segment is much more complicated than the others."

Leaving Kyle to his research, Sloane returned to her own work. She knew the value of recording first impressions, and took full advantage of the opportunity to make notes about each encounter, revelation, and slice of backstory. The more the shape of the story emerged, the more she realized it would be impossible to tell it without acknowledging her and Kyle's sexual encounters with the clones. She didn't care; it was the story of a lifetime.

After an hour she felt Kyle's eyes on her. His expression was difficult to read, seeming to contain both excitement and uncertainty. Before she could query him, Kyle spoke. "You ready for a break? Go rescue some clones?"

She was ready. The pair retraced their journey down the ladder, the experience slightly more dizzying than it had been coming up. At the bottom, they turned the opposite direction from the way they had come two hours earlier. As expected, a stairwell, just like the one that had taken them up, dropped down on the other side of the segment. It led to an airlock. They had now traveled almost the entire circumference of the habitat ring, and were no more than a few meters from the common room on the other side. A chilly but short journey through the reclamation band completed the trip.

"I think this is what we're looking for," Kyle said. The pair had reached the room with what looked like hospital beds with elaborate cranial harnesses. "I'll see if I can load Skye's latest programming. I think you'd have a better shot at getting her here than I would."

Sloane agreed. Leaving Kyle to explore the terminal, she went to the sprawling room where Kyle had first encountered, and bedded, Skye.

The exotically beautiful clone was still there. Skye had at some point eaten the energy bar and wrapped herself in blankets. She offered Sloane a blank stare.

"Hello, Skye," Sloane said. She seated herself on the edge of the bed and took Skye's hand in hers. A flash of arousal and affection shot through Sloane, a raw reminder of what she had shared with Skye in the spa. When Skye had no reaction, Sloane thought back to the key phrases list. "Follow me," she said.

Skye blinked suddenly, and rose from the bed. Still saying nothing, she let Sloane lead her back to where Kyle waited. Again the clone gave no sign of recognition.

"Reboot," Sloane said, then watched as Skye obligingly climbed into one of the beds.

"Like this," Kyle said. "It mirrors the harness they wore in the tank." Together they fitted the harness to Skye's head, being sure that each of the leads reached through the clone's thick tangle of dark locks to press against her scalp. Once all of the leads were in place they slipped the extended-reality goggles into place.

"The system looks pretty simple," Kyle explained, "but honestly I'm not sure. I've loaded the most advanced programming build for Skye. It should match the one we met in the spa, a more autonomous version of Skye, but without the programming for Juice."

"Without it she'd never be able even to take care of herself," Sloane whispered. She stroked Skye's hair back into place as best she could. "It's worth the try."

Nodding quietly, Kyle started the reboot sequence.