A Birth.
Day 105 of 2136, New Calendar.
“Just this way.” said the doctor. Ziztiki followed him into the room, taking a seat in the large brown chair sat atop an elevated platform in the center of the floor. Above it, on an adjustable arm, sat a sort of metal headset. The doctor placed one hand onto the mechanical arm and lowered the headset into place just behind Ziztiki’s crest. The doctor then moved to a desk equipped with a computer on the opposite corner of the room. Once there, with his hand hovering just above the keyboard, he said, “This won't hurt a bit.” and pressed a key.
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Day 266 of Year 268 of the Journey.
There was… light. Too much light. It was so blindingly bright that Ziztiki didn’t even know his eyelids were closed until he opened them, and when he did it was like looking into the sun. Good gods did he ache. Every muscle in his body felt like he had just run for a day straight and his lungs were burning. He tried to move his hands to cover his eyes but didn’t have time before there was a far too loud creaking sound beside him and he began to fall forward. Liquid he hadn’t even noticed before poured away from him as he felt himself land on some sort of a grate. It felt like metal, but Ziztiki didn’t really notice this as he was more preoccupied with how he could feel himself coughing up some sort of thick viscous substance. It tasted faintly of blood.
What even happened? Last thing he could remember he was taking a brian scan and…
Oh, he thought, I'm not really Ziztiki.
He felt someone lay a cloth, probably a towel, on his back. Ziztiki automatically wrapped himself in it as someone, presumably the same person, pulled him up by his elbow. “I’m going to need you to come with me for a medical evaluation, alright?” said a voice by his ear.
“Wh- who are-?” They weren’t bad first words, as first words go.
“My name is Br’kiv. Just follow me please.”
Ziztiki was led, on shaking legs, through several long hallways and into a small room thats door proudly proclaimed itself to be Examination Room Five. Once inside he sat down on a bench. Now that his eyes had begun to adjust to the world around him Ziztiki was able to faintly take in his surroundings, though they still hurt unless he was squinting. The room was… honestly quite a lot larger than he had expected. While it was true they had told him the size of the more important locations on the ark as part of his training, he had never been very good at distances. Instead Ziztiki had just assumed everything would be about the size they were in the pictures he’d seen of the interiors of the first three arks. Those had been cramped affairs, every tile of floor was treated as precious as air. Ziztiki couldn't imagine living in such small conditions for more than a few years, much less being raised in them. This room was different though, its size hardly any smaller than a hospital room from back on Vivis. He supposed it made some sense, after all, they were working with more materials when they constructed this ark.
Ziztiki looked down at his hands. The effect was strange. The hands were new, the old scars and calluses he had picked up over his life, he corrected himself, the original Ziztiki had picked up over his life were gone. His skin pattern was different too. They'd actually thought to tell him that before the scan, apparently the patterns are caused by conditions inside the womb and therefore were near impossible to recreate. He also noticed his muscles were a different shape than he remembered. For a start they existed. Ziztiki had never considered himself particularly unhealthy, but he had to admit he'd never been this physically fit looking before.
For a moment he wondered what had happened to the original Ziztiki after his scan. Went home and ate some dessert probably, that's what he recalled planning to do. He wondered if he'd ever gotten married. The arks had barely begun construction when they'd copied his memories but he knew there was supposed to be a backup of everyone's records on board. Maybe he could check to see what he'd done in the following years.
“Sorry about having you do all this,” said Br’kiv, pulling him from his thoughts as she grabbed various medical equipment from a nearby cabinet, “I know the cloning machines were developed by a lot of very smart people who poured years into making them as good as they could be, but I refuse to start growing thousands of people without at least doing a test run to make sure they actually work. By the way, what’s your name?”
“Ziztiki.” Replied Ziztiki. He’d actually wanted to give himself a new name as he was technically a new person, but the suddenness of the question threw him off. He rallied.
“So I take it we’re in orbit of Iti Three?”
“Hm? Oh no, we’re not even close.” replied Br’kiv as she dug through a drawer.
“What? Then why start cloning people?”
“The population dropped too low. There’s only 618 people left. Well, 619 now.” she gestured vaguely at Ziztiki as she spoke.
“What!? How!? There were supposed to be nearly 25,200 people onboard when you left!”
Br’kiv, satisfied in her search as she picked up an otoscope, turned back around and walked over to him.
“Hizt.” she said. “Nasty strain of it turned up sometime around forty-eight or fifty-four years ago and killed almost everyone. The few of us that are left are only alive because we closed ourselves off from most of the ark. We’ve been spending most of the last few years just loading some of the bodies from the rest of the ship into the organic waste chutes. Chances are you’re made of recycled corpses.”
Ziztiki, who would have much preferred if she hadn’t told him that, stared glumly at the floor while Br’kiv looked into his ears. Eventually he asked, “Any chance we’ll catch it?”
“Nah, the last infected person died seven years ago and Hizt can only survive a few days outside of a living host. We’re fine.”
Br’kiv didn’t speak after that until she finished her basic examination, at which point she said, “Okay, next I’m going to do a blood test, have you take some x-rays, and then get you some clothes. Actually, best if we do that one first, you’re probably feeling a little bit cold. Follow me.”
She made for the door, Ziztiki getting up to accompany her, before she suddenly stopped.
“Oh, and one more thing!”
She turned back to face him.
“Happy birthday.”