Noumenon

“Suit up!” was the call of the day.

I stood aimlessly in hangar four, eyeing the rows and rows of space suits, trying to divine which one I was supposed to find my gear down.

Nika ran by with a helmet in her hand and slapped me on the back. “Wake up, Mags.” She pointed over her shoulder at the aisle she’d emerged from. “Tenth suit down. Better hurry up. Mother and Father won’t be happy if we’re late.” She brushed her dark hair out of her eyes as she smacked the helmet down over her Mongolian features. Nika was beautiful in a really regal sort of way. She should have been a queen instead of an astronaut.

Of course, she’ll never be my queen …

Then she said something in Russian and hurried away to her mark.

I flipped her off as she went, knowing full well she’d just insulted me. We always used our native languages to jab at each other.

I swam against the flow of bodies rushing away from the makeshift lockers. They were off to find their places. Bumping into person after person, I found myself shoved down the wrong row, then helped down the right one. Organized chaos. We all knew what to do and where to be, but there was nothing ordered about it.

That’s what you get when you have fifteen thousand people all getting ready for their Big Debut at once.

I think there were only seven hundred in my hangar, but it seemed enough to constitute a sea of people. And I definitely felt like a little fish swept up in the ebb and flow.

Finding my locker—which was more like a fiberglass cubby—I swiftly pulled the space suit over my party dress and zipped all the zippers I could reach. I’m not sure why I picked a dress—silly choice. It got all bunched up around my hips, which in themselves aren’t exactly slight. Supposedly the suits are unisex, but I’ll be damned if they aren’t designed for men with skinny asses.

Helmet tucked firmly under my arm, I advanced with the crowd toward the hangar entrance.

Number 478. That was my designation for today. That was the mark I had to find.

You know those birds—starlings, I think they are—that fly around in huge flocks right around sunset, bobbing and weaving, changing direction in a group? When they do that they’re trying to find roosts for the night, but no one wants to be the first to land, because the first to land is the most likely to get eaten.

That’s pretty much what happened at the lineup. Everyone swirled, trying to find their mark, but no one wanted to stick to their spot first. In this crowd, if you suddenly stopped, you’d get knocked on your ass by a hundred people behind you all trying not to get pushed over by the hundreds of people behind them.

But then a whistle blew and all the birds landed at once.

A few unlucky people, caught far from their designated perches, awkwardly tiptoed into place after most movement had ceased. Myself, of course, amongst them.

I was never good at musical chairs, either.

The whistle dangled from a cord around Father’s neck. His real name was Donald Matheson. That’s what we were all supposed to call him: Dr. Matheson. But the convoy’s not-so-secret name for him was Father.

It only seemed a proper nickname after we started calling Dr. Arty Seal “Mother.”

“All right!” yelled Father. “This is hangar four because you are fourth in line to board. Understand? Settle yourselves on Mira and hold tight. As soon as I.C.C. indicates it’s safe, you are free to go to your respective stations.”

Mira, fantastic. I got to take off in my own bedroom. I already knew that—we’d drilled this (the boarding part, not the suiting-up-in-party-dresses part) at least twenty times. But being there, for real, having it happen— Ah, it was great. Exhilarating. I felt bad for the guys who had to take off somewhere less comfortable—like the engineering dock. Or, hell, the medical bay.

“Your signal to move will be four blasts of the foghorn. Then it’ll be just like we practiced, all right? I want to wish you well. I’m very pleased with all of you. You’ve become fine, dedicated members of this team. We’re sad to see you go, but we have the highest hopes for you and the mission. Do us proud.”

Then the aides came through the lines, fastening any buttons and zippers and locks we’d missed. Father saluted us, we all saluted back, and he moved on.

I’d expected a bit more. Father was given to showboating, while Mother was given to, well, mothering. This seemed like his grand moment, the day Matheson would get to make a scene. But he was very subdued.

I realized it might be a bittersweet moment for him—it was the closing of an era. The project was complete on his end, while it was truly just beginning on ours.

Mother wouldn’t give a speech. In the previous weeks he’d sought out each of us to say his goodbyes personally. He knew some of us better than others, but we’d all had one-on-one training with him at some point. His specialty was psychology, while Father’s was sociology.

Together, they taught us how to play nice with each other.

In a way, I grew up with fourteen thousand, nine hundred and ninety-nine siblings. A different person from the convoy might say schoolmates. But we weren’t raised as strangers all thrown together by the coincidence of proximity. Our births were deliberate, our interactions and lives together planned by our “parents” long before we were actually born. (Some people have an issue with “born” and prefer “grown.” But I’m not a plant. Human beings are all born in my mind—naturally or not.)

Of course, we all had different people raise us. I was born in the United States. Then transported to Guatemala, where my “mother” lived. I say mother, but donor or original might be more apt. The first Margarita Pavon took care of the second.

Most parents want their children to grow up to have the same values and ideals they have. But very few parents want their children to grow up and literally be them. But that’s what my mother wanted.

Okay, I’m not naive. That’s what everyone wanted. Still wants.

And maybe I am. But it’s hard to know.

When I was five we moved to Iceland. That was a requirement for all clone families. You could live where you wanted to for the first five years, but then the children had to come to Iceland, parents or no. And when the clones turned ten, it became a communal mash-up. Like summer camp all year round. We had cabins, and bunk mates, but no one was much for singing songs around a campfire or roasting marshmallows under the stars. And instead of camp counselors, we had vocational advisors—scientists and professionals made up our extended family.

My mom was killed in a car accident when I was seven. So I got moved into the community sooner than most.

She was in the back of my mind on launch day. I think she would have been very happy for me, very proud—not proud like Father, but proud like a real parent. If she were still alive it would have been much harder to leave. I wouldn’t have felt nearly as elated to escape into space.

As it stood, everyone I’d ever been close to was coming with me. I wasn’t leaving anyone I loved behind. There were people I would miss—Father, Mother, other teachers and trainers. Awkward little Saul Biterman. But those I couldn’t bear to lose I didn’t have to.

The foghorn blew once. We all shifted on our numbers, impatient for our turn.

Eventually, it blew twice. Then three times.

We’re next …

Four times.

We all cheered and rushed forward. No pushing or shoving, no stepping on anyone’s toes. We’d practiced this. But we were definitely on a mission, moving with enthusiasm and intent. Our cries were muffled by our helmets, but we kept shouting.

The crowd was miles away. They might have been cheering, too, but we couldn’t hear it, so we rooted for ourselves.

With great sweeping metal curves, almost like that of a giant zeppelin, Mira was both beautiful and imposing. The hull was so shiny—well-groomed and polished, as though it were a billionaire’s favorite sports car instead of a spacecraft. All of the rooms inside were illuminated, which made the many portholes look like strings of little twinkle lights wrapped around the ship.

We reached the open bay doors of the shuttle hangar and marched aboard, keeping our rank and file. We waved to invisible cameras and blew kisses to invisible people.

When the cold Icelandic plain was finally obscured by the dark carbon-fiber walls of the ship, I turned my attention to the open airlock. It was small, and we all had to move through two-by-two.

Once inside Mira proper, I wanted to skip to my room. But I restrained myself. Even on a wonderful, exciting day like today, it was inappropriate for a woman of twenty-five to bound around like a schoolgirl. Or, at least, that’s what Mother would say. But I wouldn’t have to keep to such restrictive expectations once we were off on our own.

Then I’d skip all I wanted.

My cabin was on the fourth deck, toward the front of the ship. It was a single. There were doubles, too, and if I ever got married we’d move into a quadruple—if you commit yourself to a partner, you commit yourself to raising two clones. Father had set the system up just so.

The jump seat automatically thrust out from its compartment in the wall next to the window, waiting for me to settle in. On the cushion sat a little blue envelope with my name scrawled—not typed—across the front.

It was a letter, written in Mother’s hand, but signed by both him and Father.