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clone, the Liberators, had a dark history. Most people believed that the Senate had outlawed my kind. It wasn’t true, by the way. They only banned us from entering the Orion Arm—the arm I was currently in. I was a one-of-a-kind clone, an oxymoronic descriptor if ever there was one. By the time I dropped off the assembly line, my kind had been out of production for nearly thirty years because of our violent tendencies. I did not want to advertise this to the good people of New Columbia. Prosperous and located in the all-important Orion Arm, New Columbia attracted tourists and businesses from around the galaxy. Its spaceport was the size of a small town with ten times the population. Police and military guards kept the tides of people flowing efficiently enough. If they only knew what kind of shark had swum in with their minnows. I passed the queue for baggage. During my years in the military I learned to live light and travel lighter. I spent four days in Safe Harbor, two more days than I expected. Everything I brought fit in a small briefcase that I could carry on my lap. From New Columbia I would fly to Mars, the galaxy’s biggest spaceport. Once on Mars, I would either receive my next assignment or I would find a hotel room and rest until my next job arrived—I didn’t care which.
    Assignments meant money, but it also meant fighting for the good old Unified Authority. I didn’t really mind having bombs explode around me. Even when an assignment meant risking my life to save a worthless punk like Jimmy Callahan, I preferred it to lounging around some hotel. I could not help myself, it was in my neural programming.
    I enjoyed the study of philosophy, politics, and intergalactic relations, but only as they applied to combat. I was designed for battle, and a soldier was all I could be. I was screwed. I went to the gate to wait for my flight, which would leave in another three hours. I cherished short breaks like this. It was the long ones that drove me crazy.
    I put on my mediaLink shades, streamline glasses with retinal displays built into their hinges. Lasers painted images on my retinal tissue, opening a world of books, magazines, and video feeds. I could play games, watch movies, write letters, or catch up on the news. On this particular day, I decided to read. My favorite reading was ethical philosophy. At the time, I was reading The Complete Works of Spinoza
    . Spinoza argued that men could not feel love, desire, or passion without already having a germ of that emotion within them. It was an interesting concept that was especially true of military clones. Our loyalty was programmed into us. We loved the government that made us. Even when we realized that the government hated our kind, we still loved it. Even when we hated the government back, we remained loyal.
    Clones were also programmed to think they were natural-born. Your average soldier clone did not know he was cloned and programmed to love nothing but their country. They just thought of themselves as patriotic citizens.
    Was Spinoza so depressing, or was it just my overapplied interpretation of his work? I looked around the gate. This particular flight was a business flight. Men in suits sat scanning the mediaLink or writing memos. Women in suits did the same. A young mother tried to busy two small children by reading to them. I had no love, desire, or passion for any of these people. They were natural-born, I was synthetic .
    . . a rare synthetic. I was a clone who knew he was a clone. My model was designed before the Senate added a death-reflex to its military clones to prevent them from rebelling against their makers. When other clones learned they were clones, a gland in their brain killed them. When I learned I was a clone, I went to a bar and got drunk.
    If Spinoza was right, perhaps I felt no love or passion for humanity because the germ did not exist in me. Perhaps the germ of love required a soul. Most religions stated that clones do not have