EVE Fiction

Free to Choose
by Kytayn

Bolen knew what was coming but was helpless against the brightening glare. It wasn’t actual light; it was the blinding flash of death. Any capsuleer of consequence experienced this from time to time. Even so, it still hurt. In moments it would be over, he’d set aside the scars, the mild laugh lines he’d developed… earned.

He woke up in the Center for Advanced Studies station at Cistuvaert V-12. He ought to have a splitting headache, and his head made little efforts to echo the pain he ought to feel, but couldn’t quite muster it. Then the pins and needles started. All of his nerves started to light up as though he’d somehow been sleeping wrong on every limb, all at once.

Bolen hated that. It was a bit unusual, but it happened to some capsuleers when their consciousness was transferred. For him, it was every time. He’d talked to the clone suppliers but they’d merely said their synthesis logs showed nothing. He also wasn’t supposed to be conscious this soon, but again the logs showed nothing.

As the pins and needles slowly subsided, Bolen was unceremoniously scooped from the cloning vat and sprayed off, then air dried by machine arm. “Now this is a bl…” Bolen couldn’t finish the quip as the servitor, its concentration unbroken, picked that moment to dry off the interior of his mouth. Bolen looked away and coughed. “Serves me right, bad joke.”

Just then an attendant rushed in. This one was young, and pretty, Bolen thought as he looked appraisingly at her. He enjoyed her eyes, the line of her neck, and… He grimaced slightly, wishing he wasn’t naked and damp, as the robot continued to work him over.

“Sorry sir, we missed the note in your file. We would’ve been here sooner.” She looked a little bit frightened, tightly gripping a towel in one hand and managing a thick robe over the other. As part of his payment, a bit more than the usual clone price, a person was to bring Bolen a towel to dry himself off. Most capsuleers were rinsed, dried, swaddled in whatever nano-assembled clothing they had last filed with the clone suppliers and bundled off to a resurrection chamber. They’d then awaken normally to find a message of sympathy from their insurance company, but no hint of the cloning process itself anywhere nearby.

Bolen always woke up early.

The begoggled arm had worked its way down to his stomach and was about to begin what might be an embarrassing bit of the drying process. He raised his eyebrows a bit at the technician.

“Oh, yes, sorry sir.” She blushed, swung the towel under her right arm and stepped up to a control panel near the crèche. As she touched a button the drying arm lost its urgency and slunk back to a recess in the side of the bed.

“Bolen…” he said looking significantly at the towel.

She hesitated before approaching him, holding a towel stretched out in front of her as if it were a ward. She could only stare at it.

Bolen sighed slid himself off the drying bed to stand and reach for the towel. “Call me Bolen, and you would be...?” She jumped a bit as he approached her. It wasn’t out of the ordinary for people to be nervous around him.

He had to reach for the towel a second time to take it from her. The feel of the cloth passing through her hand seemed to snap her out of it.

“My name is Alina.”

Bolen dried himself off with coarse swipes of the towel. “You’re Intaki,” he said, half as a question. Alina had short dark blue hair that fell down over her eyes. The color was an attempt to fit in to wild Gallente society. The even coloring and the slight restraint in the hairstyle hinted that her upbringing was not as freewheeling as she wanted to imply.

“I, um.” She was reaching for words and looked away. “We would have been here sooner.” She said more faintly.

That made Bolen look at her a bit more closely. She was attempting to return to something she had rehearsed. What was going on here? Then he placed her accent. “You didn’t cover the breather scar very well.”

Her eyes widened and her free hand flew to her left ear, “What?”

“You are from Terrefine.” Bolen was sure now. Her accent was nearly gone, but even what little she said spoke of home to his ears. Terrefine, the second planet in 2X-PQG, out of the way, buried in Syndicate space, had a thin atmosphere. “You don’t work for the clone supplier.”

Alina took a quick shaky breath, and let the robe fall from her right hand to reveal a small dart gun. “You’re Bolen. You’re him.” She was talking to herself.

Bolen stared at her, trying to catch her eyes. He took a step toward her, “now look…”

Alina fired.

Bolen grunted and brought his hand to his stomach. His hand met a small spot of blood where the microdart had penetrated. He felt a distant burning sensation in his abdomen as the dart dissolved to deliver its payload.

He staggered back to fall against the bed. Bolen slumped to the ground, his back against the pedestal of the bed. He had already stopped bleeding but the burning sensation was spreading. “How long?”

Alina stared at the weapon, “…it’s different; it’s not what I thought.”

Bolen thundered angrily, “How long!?”

She jumped again at his anger. She started to reply and only breath came out. She cleared her throat and tried again, softly, “a few minutes.”

Bolen managed a soft chuckle. “You idiot,” he said under his breath. It almost sounded to Alina as though he were talking to himself. He searched for her eyes. “You think I’m a monster, don’t you? That’s why you did this.”

She looked at him with mild defiance now, “All those people on your ships; slaves. You always make sure your crews are hired from Terrefine. You go out of your way just for that. You are a monster.”

Bolen slumped a bit more. “Do you have a recorder?”

Alina brought her head back up to look at Bolen. It was difficult now, to see his suffering, to know she had done this, and not just to him. “A recorder?” She carried a com pad like a real technician would. She pulled the small device from her belt loop.

Bolen sighed with effort. “Verbal contract. I assume you have a way out of here, but it will be easy for them to catch you. I don’t want them to catch you. Start recording.”

Dazed, Alina simply began recording.

“What is your full name?”

“What?” Alina asked, a bit startled.

“Your name, what is it?”

“What good will that do you?” Puzzlement settled on Alina’s features, her anguish momentarily forgotten.

Bolen ground out the words, “Give. Me. Your. Full. Name.”

“Alina en Chasteaux.”

“I, Bolen Orvacel, require that 2 million ISK be transferred from my account to Alina en Chasteaux on this date. Stop recording.”

Alina obeyed.

Bolen coughed a bit. “I don’t want the authorities to get a hold of you. They’ll put you out of my reach. You understand?”

Alina clutched the com unit and looked into his clouded eyes saying nothing.

“You understand now what you’ve done?”

“Yes,” she whispered, her eyes unable to leave his.

“You know what you’ve earned from me, what you owe me.”

Alina seemed to shrink into herself a bit. “Yes.”

Bolen took a last ragged breath. “I won’t remember any of this, so you have a choice to make.”

“Yes.” The tears came.