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Thera was the eighth.
The first seven were gone before the pod doors had opened and Dr. Thorne had gently lifted her from the mechanical womb. If she had been an infant, this would be when she was born. Because Thera was just a clone, the moment was notable only to her.
The room he pulled her into unsettled her to her core. She knew she wanted to go back into the pod before she even had words to explain what wanting even was. Thera learned the words for what she didn’t like about the room later, when the implanted language database took root.
The room was cold and sterile, but when Nurse Bray opened the door to the next room, it smelled like death.
There were others who could have been Thera but were not because they had died. Thera hadn’t known what being dead meant yet or being alive, but Thera was defective.
Thera was not supposed to remember things that happened a long time ago. She knew this only because when…
Sometimes, the Doctor indulged in her body. That was what he called it, but Thera could access her language database and knew the word he meant was rape.
Other sometimes, he shared her body with the nurses or orderlies, especially if she’d displeased him. The youngest orderly—the one who’d been awkward but gentle with her—had argued when Doctor Thorne had first offered her to him, but the Doctor assured him that Thera wouldn’t remember within a few days.
Thera did remember, though. She remembered the beatings.
She remembered the rapes.
She remembered the Doctor’s security codes he punched into the door every single day for three years.
Another defective thing about Thera was that she very rarely was capable of sleeping, even after being locked in her pod for the night. She was meant to be turned off like a computer to reset, but her body only stilled. Her mind kept awake. The word for that was bored.
Thera spent most nights going through the dictionary in her head, searching for new, interesting words.
Maybe it was the programming in her head—Thera didn’t know the extent to which she was mechanical, but she knew she wasn’t fully organic either—but it didn’t occur to her for a long time that the words for things she knew but had never seen were that names of things that existed outside the laboratory walls, just the same way the words for all the things she had seen were the names of things within the laboratory walls.
Overpass, she mused silently to herself. Overpass…I’d like to see one.
It wasn’t till a few days later when she’d worked her way back to the word agency and was parsing its definitions that it occurred to her that she didn’t have to stay.
No one stopped Thera. Maybe that was surprising, but she simply walked out of the facility. The bright light burned her eyes at first, but she simply adjust her eyes’ sensitivity and continued on.
Thera didn’t know where she was going to go, but she recognized what she was walking on as a road. Roads led places, and since the facility was one place, then the road would take her to another. Maybe she would like that place more than she liked this one.
Besides, overpasses were also parts of roads. She was very excited to find one.
Thera walked for a long time. She thought, at first, that Doctor Thorne would come after her to retrieve her, but she reasoned quickly that he would have little reason to. After all, the mere fact that she was running away proved that she was defective. Chasing down a defective product when he could simply make another would only waste resources.
Thera walked for a long time. She didn’t need to sleep, and she only needed to eat sometimes. She was surrounded by plants and minerals, but while she knew some plants and minerals were edible, some were also inedible. Thera didn’t trust herself enough to know which was which.
Sometimes, cars would go by, so so fast. Thera loved to see the cars, going to wherever the other place was far faster than she was. She loved that for them.
Other sometimes, the road would split, and Thera would have to decide which way to go. She didn’t have a preference, so she always took whichever turn was closest to her.
The sun set eventually—another beautiful vision she’d never seen before but now loved—and the world became dark. That was no matter. Thera readjusted her vision so she could see again and—
Her heart skipped a beat.
There, beyond her, the road rose up, and a flash of light emerged perpendicularly from beneath it. An overpass!
Thera ran the last half mile, almost tripping over the guardrail in her haste. This was it! The bridge that served to separate two flows of traffic moving in different directions! The architecture! The beauty!
Thera stopped, catching her breath at the base of the bridge. This was it!
She reached out and let her fingers brush over the cement wall of the overpass. It was coarse, rough. She loved it.
She walked along the edge of the road, trailing her finger along the wall. Nothing in the laboratory was rough except the people, and she didn’t like touching them. This was…
Real.
Tears prickled in her eyes. She leaned to look over the wall at the cars driving away as fast as they could below her. Beautiful.
Behind her, a terrible screech of metal tore the night air.
Thera turned on her heel, finding a green car stopped across the road.
The car’s door flew open, and a man tumbled out of the car in a panic.
“Wait, wait!” he cried, sprinting across the road and grabbing her around the waist. “You have so much to live for!”
Thera frowned, but maybe this was how things worked in the real word beyond the laboratory. Searching her language database, she realized this was a hug.
She smiled. Thera had never had a hug before.
He was right, too. She did have so much to live for, like hugs and overpasses. And cars. Maybe she’d get to go fast someday, so far away.
“Thank you,” she said softly, laying her head against his shoulder. He was very warm, and she liked that.
“Why don’t you just—hey, come with me, and we can like, I don’t know, call someone for you?” the man released her from the hug but held her arm.
“Come with you?” Thera frowned.
She didn’t know if she liked that he was holding her arm like Doctor Thorne. She didn’t know if she wanted to go somewhere when she had just escaped. What if he locked her away again and didn’t let her see his security codes?
“Yeah, uh, or we could take you to the hospital. You kind of…are you feeling okay?” The man looked intently into her eyes.
A hospital was a place for healing sick or injured people. Defective people. Could they fix the things wrong with Thera?
Did she want them to?
But the man didn’t know she was defective and that fixing her might mean that she would forget the rapes and security codes and not know to run away again. He thought he was being kind, probably.
Besides, he had a car.
“We will go in your car?” she asked hopefully.
“Unless you planned to walk?” he chuckled, but it was strained.
Thera had planned to walk, but she decided not to tell him that. “I’ll go with you in your car. But no hospital. I am not defective.”
That was a lie, and only defective clones could lie, but he didn’t know that.
“Great.” The man heaved a relieved sigh and gently but quickly led the way across the street after a cursory glance in both directions, but she didn’t know what he was looking for. “I’m Peter, by the way.”
Doctor Thorne had Thera introduce herself sometimes, so she knew the rules.
“Hello, it’s a pleasure to meet you,” she said with a friendly smile he wasn’t looking at. “I am Experiment Number Four, Zero, Seven, Three.”
But I call myself Thera, she said in her mind.
Peter came to a dead stop on the yellow line. “Your name is what?”
He was right. Experiment 4073 was what she was, not her name.
Thera was short for another of the first batch is dying, something Doctor Thorne had told Nurse Bray when he pulled her from the pod for the first time. She’d survived, though, and shortened another of to Thera, but she’d never told anyone. She’d never wanted anyone else to know, but looking into Peter’s wide eyes, illuminated by the bright lights of an oncoming car—
Peter yelped and suddenly pulled her across the rest of the street just as another car flew past.
“WATCH WHERE YOU’RE GOING, ASSHAT!” Peter yelled after the car, shaking his fist.
Asshat, asshat…that’s not in my database.
Peter pulled Thera off the road and over to what she knew was called the shotgun. He opened the door with a huff and another scowl in the direction of the retreating car, muttering about the guy hadn’t even stopped to apologize.
After a moment, he glanced at Thera and raised an eyebrow. “Uh, you can get in if you want. Or we can talk a little longer, if you need to. Or if you feel weird because I’m a guy, I can call my sister? She’s a nurse, and she doesn’t live very far away.”
Oh, Thera was supposed to sit in the car. Yes, there was a seat there. Wonderful, it looked quite soft and nice.
“Thank you, Peter,” she said, because she may not have been taught what the sun looked like, but she had been taught manners. “You’re very kind.”
“No problem, Forty-six, um…” Peter tilted his head. “What was your name again?”
Thera considered him for a minute, trying to figure out what she was seeing in his face. She thought he looked kind, anxious…ah that was the last thing: he was very handsome. Thera had never thought a man looked handsome before, but she found his face and body very aesthetically pleasing.
“My name is Thera,” she said for the first time.
“That make a lot more sense,” Peter laughed, more genuinely this time.
Thera sat down in the seat where he indicated, and Peter closed the door. She jumped at the loud noise, but it didn’t hurt her.
Peter walked around the front of the car and got in on the other side before turning on a light on the ceiling and looking over to her.
“Hey, I…I’ve been where you are, you know? And it gets better, I promise,” Peter assured her. “There’s so much to live for.”
“I know. I’m very excited.” Thera didn’t really understand, but he seemed so kind and so sincere with whatever it was he was saying.
Peter nodded emphatically and turned on the car, seemingly content with Thera’s answer. He turned the car around to go back the way he’d been coming from, chatting with her about his older sister who worked at the local hospital.
Thera rested her head against the glass. So cool and smooth, but not sterile and stark. The world…it was so beautiful out here.
Peter is right, she thought to herself with a happy hum. There is so much to live for.