103rd Entry

March 20^th, 2037

1557

Dear Space Diary.

Mary! You’re alive!

“Of course I’m alive! You think I’m floating in this tank for my health?”

Actually, yes.

“…Fair point. Anyway, no I’m alive. The lightdogs found me, plugged me in here. Never felt better. apart from the whole no limbs thing. That’s a bummer. But a temporary one.”

Temporary?

“You know how they always told you they don’t grow back?”

Yes?

“Well, they lied. All you need is a tank full of regenerative nutritional goo. Who knew?”

You’re being very positive.

“I’m a head a and a diagonally bisected torso floating in a tank of blue goo. Being positive’s about all I got.”

Is there a way I can get you out of there?

“Are you kidding? This tank saved my life. It’s the only thing keeping me alive. And thanks to the whole evil cloning thing, I can actually regrow! How cool is that?”

More disgusting than cool, really.

“I know, tell me about it. But hey, I’ll take disgusting over dead anyway.”

Hesistantly, I will point out that, um, it was kinda your fault your almost died.

“I know. I feel kinda bad about that. I went to a deep dark place.”

Really?

“Yeah the bottom of the pit.”

Stop that.

“I fell from my high station.”

I mean it.

“I was on a downward spiral.”

STOP. IT.

“I hit rock bottom”

I’m leaving.

“No don’t go! I’m all alone here. The lightdogs ignore me mostly so long as I play brain dead, and all the other versions of me just want to talk about themselves. And I am themselves. Please stay.”

But I have to get back. Mary – the real actual Mary – is waiting back at the city, and she’s –

“Whoa, HANG on. Mary’s still alive?”

Yeah, I was amazed too. She’s figured out a way –

“Can you kill her for me?”

…Why would I do that?

“Because she’s the reason I jumped. She’s the reason I am, well, was, the only other Mary running around. She killed the rest of us.”

I don’t believe you.

“Believe it. There was a bit underground facility, metal tubes running from it the city. Cloning program running along smoothly, except for Mary, who was roughly in the same position I am now. Literally. In a tank. Being farmed. Believe me, I do sympathise. Then she escapes, reprograms the lightdogs, and destroys the facility. Fair enough given what had happen to her, right?”

Right.

“Right right. But where were all of us at the time? Still in the facility. Everyone inside was destroyed. Just a giant pink pile of rubble in a cave. All dead.”

How did you survive?

“Oh I’d escaped three days earlier. I’d been planning on shutting down the place and rescuing Mary myself. Only, you know, with less ‘everyone dies.’”

…I don’t know what to say.

“How about, ‘Sorry your clone mother tried to kill you and you’re a torso in a tank?’”

Yeah that about covers it.