“Hey, wait. If you have something to say, say it nicely!” A-Ka was startled to see the clone fall back to the ground.
The men surrounded them. One person holding a gun pressed it to the clone’s head. “Why did you send a signal to the robotic soldiers?”
“I didn’t!”
“You were contacting the soldiers,” the leader of the men accused. “You wanted them to capture us!”
“I only wanted to listen to the news from headquarters,” the clone protested.
A-Ka jumped in. “Wait, please. Let him speak first.”
“This has nothing to do with you, bro.” The leader blocked A-Ka with his arm, trying to push him away.
Shuffling slowly, A-Ka backed up. Heishi had been standing off to one side, studying the small girl who was traveling with the group, but he suddenly and keenly felt the tension in the air. Turning, he walked toward A-Ka and the others.
“What’s going on?” Heishi asked icily.
Everyone looked at him before their gazes traveled down to the broadsword in his hand. No one dared to speak.
Finally, the leader introduced himself. “I’m Tapp.”
Heishi nodded. A-Ka gestured for them to release the clone, and Heishi asked the assembled group, “What crime did he commit?”
“On our way here, we kindly took him in, but he dared to send a secret signal to that robotic patrol squad as he traveled with our group,” Tapp explained.
“I didn’t!” the clone said. “I helped them escape from the City of Steel and only had good intentions. I just wanted to listen to the news from headquarters along the way. Even if we ignore that they destroyed my transceiver, they were the ones who forgot their debt to me and tried to kill me! You ungrateful humans…”
In that moment of heightened emotions, that clone clearly wanted to fight Tapp, but the group of men stopped him.
“What did he use to contact the patrol squad?” A-Ka asked Tapp.
Tapp turned and made a gesture, and another person brought out an electric signal transceiver.
A-Ka took a look. “Hmm. This device can only receive signals. It can’t transmit messages. He didn’t lie to you.”
“But he still drew the robotic patrollers to us,” one of the men insisted stubbornly. “He was receiving a message when his signal was tracked.”
“It can’t send messages, which means that the robotic patrollers can’t figure out where the signal came from, so he couldn’t have been the one to draw the patrollers down on you,” A-Ka reiterated.
The clone glared at them, and everyone else shifted uncomfortably.
After a short silence, Tapp said, “Bringing him along is too dangerous. Let’s kill him.”
“You!” The clone could hardly believe it.
“Wait!” A-Ka interjected. “Why do you need to kill him?!”
“The clones aren’t on the same side as us. Who knows what tricks they’re up to?”
“You can’t just kill him!” A-Ka looked toward Heishi, but Heishi was ignoring them. Still, Tapp and his group seemed to be a little fearful of him and Heishi. A-Ka pressed on. “Hand him over to me. I have questions to ask him.”
A-Ka held out a hand, and the clone grabbed it, using it to pull himself to his feet. With the clone in tow and Heishi alongside him, A-Ka walked away.
“Wait!” Tapp shouted from behind them.
A-Ka turned back. “What else do you have to say?”
Tapp sized up the three of them, almost as if he were estimating Heishi and A-Ka’s fighting capabilities. Finally, he gave up on whatever he was imagining and just said, “You’d best be careful of that guy.”
“Thank you for the reminder,” A-Ka responded.
Night fell, and A-Ka, Heishi, and the clone sat in a cave, where they had started a fire. The rest of the humans had chosen to stay within the valley to rest, lying down in an area sheltered from the wind.
“General Liber has died,” the clone said. “The revolution failed, and Father is currently rebuilding the City of Steel. It has also sent out robotic patrollers to track down the humans and my clone brothers that escaped.”
This piece of news was about as bad as it could get.
“What other word is there from headquarters?” A-Ka asked.
“You seem to be well-informed on our movements,” the clone said. “There were no more than ten humans involved in the Patricide Plan, so how did you learn about it?”
“Um, we got mixed up in it by chance. So, have they all been defeated?”
“Not yet.” The clone shot a glance at Heishi. “Headquarters had the rest of the wounded troops escape past the Aijia Strait to Andoria to form an alliance with the humans of Curran before we think of a counterattack plan.”
A-Ka thought about that for a moment before nodding.
“Have all the people in the City of Steel died?” Heishi asked.
The clone sighed. “Well, our loss can’t be counted as a total defeat. For now, Father will need at least ten years to repair itself. Our main body of troops bought us quite a bit of time in the end.”
“And what is Andoria?”
“The country of clones. Our clone ancestors, those who gave us our forms, lived there. We clones trace our heritage back to our four progenitors, but one of them was involved in a scheme many years ago. After the plan failed, he was captured by Father. It was he who stayed in the City of Steel, fomented rebellion in the hearts of all of the clones there, and started this war.”
A-Ka sucked in a breath. The clone’s words had revealed a very important piece of information: They were still in danger, at least for now.
The clone repeatedly toyed with a small mechanical device. “I can’t connect with headquarters. Those idiotic humans broke the transceiver.” After saying this, he realized that A-Ka and Heishi were also humans. “Sorry, I didn’t mean you.”
A-Ka nodded. “By the way, why don’t you have a serial number?”
“As soon as the revolution began, all clones stopped acknowledging the serial numbers that the robotic government gave us. We gave ourselves unique names,” the clone said. “Mine is Feiluo.”
“I’m A-Ka.”
“Heishi.”
Now that Feiluo had joined them, A-Ka didn’t have to deal with the slab of rock that was Heishi on his own every day. When they set off the next morning, the other group of humans came over to check in with them, asking if A-Ka would join them. Thus, A-Ka’s small three-man group was absorbed into this camp of human refugees. Crossing mountains and fording rivers together, they headed to the Aijia Strait, hoping to travel across the ocean to a new mainland.
Of all the clones that A-Ka had interacted with, Feiluo was one of the better-tempered ones. He was extremely polite to Heishi, and Heishi didn’t treat him like he treated A-Ka.
“Thank you for saving me,” Feiluo said without warning one day while they were on the road.
“You’re welcome.” A-Ka still held a certain amount of goodwill toward clones as a whole. After all, when he and Heishi escaped from their confinement, it was the clones who had saved them. If they hadn’t allied with them then, they would definitely have died within the City of Steel.
“In the end, I’ve found we must still depend on humans to change this world.”
A-Ka half mumbled, “Humans, huh?”
The revolution of the clones had actually begun because of a human. A-Ka had not expected this, but after thinking about it carefully, it seemed within reason.
Humans had a wealth of emotions and complex ideas, which was something that the steel beings were unable to achieve. But due to their emotions and their ideas holding each other in check, they hindered one another, oppressing the rest of their own kind. When the Creator gave humans their brilliance, many flaws were also mercilessly bestowed upon them. The entire world had changed because of humans, for the Creator had pinned the compass of creation’s fulcrum on humans and sent the other point out into the vast, chaotic, and unknown universe.
Humans differed from each other in a thousand tiny ways, and each person that walked this world was a unique being. At the heart of it, even the clones were chasing after this individual identity. Take Feiluo, for example: He had given himself a name, turned his jacket inside out, and stuck a piece of straw on his hat to indicate his difference from other clones.
“I once heard an older clone brother say that this is the awakening of my ‘self,’” Feiluo said to A-Ka. “Every one of you humans has their own concept of self, but we don’t. We must first awaken our own sense of self before the revolution can truly begin.”
“So, right now, what is your understanding of yourself?” A-Ka asked him curiously.
Feiluo shook his head. “It’s hard to say, but at least there is one thing that is clear—I am not the same as I once was.”
Instinctively, A-Ka felt that this topic was deep and hard to comprehend. Every person had their own identity. They were all individuals, from the oldest adult to the youngest child… He looked toward the train of humans and saw that inquisitive young girl following Heishi, asking him a bunch of questions. Every now and then, Heishi would nod or shake his head, but most of the time he remained silent, simply observing this small child.