Meteorites.

Joshua let out a great belly laugh. It roared and echoed across the vast empty flurries of the snow plain, until it took on a life of its own. For a moment he imagined his laughter as a great glistening white wolf running alongside their sleigh, wild and free, under the crisp morning sun.

He let out a heavy sigh. He hadn’t realised that there had been so much tension bottled up inside him for so long. Michael, his compatriot, grinned at him from beneath his reflective goggles. They were making a good pace now, the huskies paws beat out a ground eating rhythm, and the sleigh bounced as they sped across the snow. The plain was so flat and they were travelling so fast that Joshua had the overwhelming impression they were at sea: Perhaps travelling on the Mayflower, speeding away from the suffocating presence of the known and into the unpredictable realm of possibility. “We made it Jo, we bloody made it!” Said Michael excitedly.

“Yes… we have” responded Joshua not fully convinced. He rolled his shoulders back. Michael glanced up at the sun to check its position in the sky, then adjusted the reins. It was time for a change in direction.

That night they set up camp on the plain, and cooked up a warm meal from the tinned food that they’d managed to stash in the sleigh before their hurried exit from home. “Do you think they’ll be following us?” asked Joshua as they sat contentedly in their tent, surrounded by the debris of their meal. “Probably, but they won’t catch us, I made sure I picked the fastest dogs. And they will be far heavier than us with all their guns and tracking equipment.” Joshua nodded, that made sense, but despite Michael’s comforting words he couldn’t seem to recover the feeling of cathartic liberation that had overwhelmed him earlier that day. “We’re safe now Jo, I promise.” Said Michael, he had sensed Jo’s disquiet.

Although the comment was meant out of kindness, Joshua was overcome by a sudden hot flush of anger. “Don’t you go making promises you can’t keep. I knew what I was getting into when we did this, we did this so we could be responsible for ourselves. So no promises, you look after you, and I’ll look after me.” After he’d finished speaking he carried on staring straight into Michael’s eyes for a few seconds. He felt frenzied, his heart was pounding in his neck with the steady rhythm of a dirge drum, not fast, but loud, so so loud.

Michael broke eye contact first. He nodded at Joshua then turned away. Joshua could tell he had scared him, but it was necessary, they couldn’t go back to the way things had been. They didn’t talk anymore that night.

The next day they rose before sunrise, having only slept a few hours. The sun’s vanguard was already racing towards them from behind the distant mountains. Yesterday those long golden strands of light had kissed Joshua’s face and promised him the world. Today, reality was sinking in, it was time for practicality. If they didn’t move soon the light would reach their tent. In the rush they’d picked up one of the orange one’s, and unlike the camouflaged sleigh it would be a beacon to their pursuers. Michael had already woken and fed the huskies. They dropped and packed the tent in a chaste silence; Michael was still stinging from their rejoinder the night before.

As Michael went to climb on to the sleigh, Joshua clapped a hand on his broad shoulder, “I didn’t mean to get angry at you last night, it’s just we’ve risked so much, one of us has to get there. We can’t afford to make those kinds of promises.” Michael nodded, and gave him a weak smile.

“Its alright I understand.” He said. His voice was deadpan and the weak smile seemed strained, but it would do for now. Joshua liked Michael, they had been good friends, but civility was enough for their purposes if necessary.

Once they were underway, Joshua slowly allowed the tension that had been building again to seep away. It pooled in the back of his mind like bilge water in the bottom of a ship. But at least there he could relax the rest of his mind to think about other things. He could tell Michael was feeling the same because he spoke up. “Did you ever imagine it would be like this? I mean I know we talked about it before, but with those kinds of conversations you never know if someone is ever really saying what they believe.” Joshua nodded. He’d been waiting for this conversation.

“I guess I’d imagined it would be sort of like this, open, free. But my imagination was never going to compare to the reality.”

“Yes.” Michael paused and the silence drew out, like a long note on a violin. Joshua felt himself being pulled along by that silence, perhaps because he already knew where it was going. “We won’t ever be free of them will we?” said Michael finally. The words burst out fast as if he had been hiding them for a long time. Joshua sighed, and let the tension bubble back up to the forefront of his mind. “No, not really. You’re right. Even if we get word out, they will always be with us.”

“All we need is a mirror.” Stated Michael bluntly. Joshua felt like crying.

They journeyed on for the next few hours in silence. It was as if they were worried that breaking it would shatter the miraculous serenity of the surrounding landscape. They had been exposed to art, during the tests at the compound. There had been a very old piece, part of the ‘outdated abstractionist movement’ the warden had said. It was a square canvas divided into two parts, the top half was blue and the bottom white. The warden had obviously scorned it for its simplicity, he had wanted Joshua to look on the works of the modern masters in all their lurid complexity and hide in awe from the greatness of those he could never be a part of. But Joshua had loved that piece. Not just because the warden loathed it, but also because it had reminded him of what he was seeing now. A clear blue sky above an empty brushstroke of snow.

As the sun began its final move in the day’s performance he was overcome by the stark beauty of the emptiness around him. It was as if right now he was inside that painting, and he could, if he wished, even brush himself out of the picture with one careful stroke. He turned and grinned at Michael. He grinned back at him, Joshua wondered if he too was seeing what he saw now, feeling that same feeling. He knew that they could not escape, they probably only had a few days left before the choppers would cut their sojourn rudely short, but it would be worth it. For this.

That night they made camp in a small crater in the plain. At its centre there was a small lump of dark rock that gleamed in the starlight like a precious crystal. It was the only place for days where they had seen the black rock that hid beneath the snow. They started to set up the tent, working together with efficiency and precision borne of countless nights following this routine. Once the poles were in, Michael started pegging out the guy ropes and Joshua set about heating the food sachets they’d stolen with a solar charged electric stove. As per their evening ritual he complained that cooking was more work than pegging the tent. Michael responded that it was better he pegged the tent to protect his beard. Joshua laughed, he’d grown a beard too now. That wouldn’t have been allowed in the compound, it diverged too much from his genus apparently.

Once he’d finished pitching the tent Michael petted the huskies and bedded them down under a tarpaulin next to the sleigh. Then he stopped to look at the meteorite in the centre of the crater. “I wonder how it feels so far from home.” Said Michael pensively.

“Probably how we feel” shot back Joshua, only half joking.

“That never was our home, not really.” Responded Michael, refusing to let him lighten the tone.

“Then what is?” asked Joshua.

“I don’t know, in this moment, this crater. Maybe we carry it with us where we go. This tent.” He gestured vaguely around them. Then Joshua replied, sombre now.

“No we can’t have a home, this world isn’t for us. It’s better not to have a home, that way we have nothing to lose.” Michael shook his head, he clearly disagreed but knew Joshua well enough now not to challenge him when he was in this kind of mood.

“It can’t be far now.” He said.

“Another day or two I imagine.” Responded Joshua disinterestedly. He was staring intently at the crystal embedded in the ground in front of him. Like them it had come so far. Unlike them it had made its mark on the vast emptiness of this world. He looked up at the sky. Clouds were gathering. Soon the snow would cover it all. He breathed in deeply. Michael was saying something but he didn’t listen. He had the overwhelming thought that he must remember this rock, and its crater, although they both would soon be gone.

He realised Michael had stopped talking. Instead he was frozen in place staring at the edge of the crater. He was so still it was almost comical. Joshua turned. Despite the chill air he was sweating immediately. His hands shook like the needle on a seismometer. At the craters edge were six men, clothed in red leather and Kevlar, with black rifles in hand. Their faces were obscured by thick reflective goggles. Like drops of blood they spread out across the snow, and flowed down into the muddy rock of the crater. The sharp crack-crack of a chopper sliced through the air around them as a helicopter rose into view from behind the men. “Subjects J and M, keep your hands where we can see them.” Came the cracked voice of the warden from a megaphone at the helicopters window. Michael laughed. “I’m sorry but I think you’ve got the wrong blokes. Those aren’t our names!” He shouted back petulantly.

Suddenly Joshua found himself laughing too. The tension finally released, and the whole thing now seemed so ridiculous. He had come too far now to be terrified by these men. He was not the man who had cried hidden under his blankets for fear of their rebuke. Here was the fate that had known was coming the second the two of them had leapt over the compound walls not so very long ago. He wanted to embrace it, lovingly, because it was the sign that what they had done was worth it, even if only in the moment. As the soldiers tied and gagged them both, Michael caught Joshua’s eye, and he could tell that beneath the tape that masked his mouth he was smiling. They had won in a way. The warden wanted subjects J and M, but now he could never have them. Instead, their freedom had given birth to the two of them; Michael and Joshua.

As they were dragged unceremoniously up over the rim of the crater towards waiting vehicles, Joshua saw another squad of soldiers poking around the meteor as if in confusion. If it were not for the gag he would have heckled them, because they would not understand it, they could not. They would never understand why that meteor had come so far, just for the glory of being found by inconsequential travellers on this snow smothered ground.

There was a sharp prick on his arm, as a needle was rammed home and then the cold leapt up from the ground to smother him with its beatifying numbness.

<>

Joshua awoke gradually, he was not sure how much later, in a room so brightly lit and clinically white that at first he was not sure he wasn’t still out in the snow. Slowly his senses pulled together a model of his surroundings for his brain to understand. It was a struggle, whatever they had given him had still not fully worn off.

He could tell that he was inside one of the teaching rooms of the compound. As before his wrists were cuffed to the cast iron desk in front of him which was in turn bolted to the floor so that the whole room, occupant and all was a seamless block of imperturbable matter. Just how they liked it. If he was just a facet of the room then it was far easier for them to see him as an object of study and not a human being. He knew how they worked, he had studied them as they had studied him. He would even bet that he had had a better time of learning than they had.

The door on the other side of the desk opened with a click and a well oiled swish. As soon as he saw who it was, Joshua knew that they really were mad at him, they only let him see his genus when they really wanted to unnerve him, and remind him that he was not allowed a sense of self.

The face of the man looking back at him was his own. Or rather the original face in whose likeness his had been sculpted and from whose bearer his DNA had been harvested and multiplied in a petri dish. “Subject J you’ve embarrassed me a lot, and the promise of my genes.” Said Louronne. Joshua flinched, he did not want to remember this man’s name, he did not want to have to remember that he existed. But the spectre in front of him refused to respond to the hopeless whims of his consciousness. “Do you care to explain yourself?” Said Louronne with the soft paternal tone of a generous father. “Don’t treat me like a child.” Spat Joshua, holding his chin up high, and looking Louronne straight in the eye.

Louronne chuckled and rubbed a hand across his stubble free jaw. “You always resented my caring about you didn’t you. You know a lot of the genus’ think that clones are worse than animals, given your shorter lives you can never hope to match our abilities, our cognitive capacities, our higher feeling. But I, I treated you like a beloved pet, I cared for you. You should be grateful. It was far better than you deserved.” Louronne smiled at Joshua. There was no malice in his eyes, instead there was just the blind ignorance of someone so caught up in themselves that they were incapable of imagining that there could be anyone else as whole and complete as them.

Joshua was proud at how levelly he was able to reply, “how can I be grateful, you’re torturing us here to make us subhuman, so you can market us as a morally permissible slave labour force to the rest of the world. They have clones out there too, and it’s been recognised that they’re human! You wanted to change that.” Louronne tried to cut in but Joshua got there first; “Don’t try and argue with me, I’ve done the reading, I broke into the compound library before I left.”

Louronne paused for a long moment, and he seemed to look through Joshua as if he wasn’t really there. “I don’t think you really understand. You say I treat you like a child subject J. But I am not your father. I am your God. You are made in my image by my power, as all subjects here were made by their Genus. You owe me everything you have, you are mine through the debt of your existence. I see now that you are too broken. I tried to remake you to be a better tool for my world, but you have revolted against me!” He was standing now and bellowing straight into Joshua’s unflinching face.

Joshua closed his eyes and thought of the sun setting across the snow. He remembered the way that the light reflected between the blades of snowflakes as they flew gaily across the sky. Then Louronne hit him. “I gave you the eyes that you see with. You will close them only when I say you can close them.” He shouted. He rammed his fist again into Joshua’s face. He could feel a bruise blossoming under his eye, but it only made him smile, now he would look even less like Louronne.

That man, who thought himself a God, was enraged now, he screamed abuse at Joshua. “You laugh at me! You know there is a book that tells of what happens to Lucifer, the most despicable being that rebels against his God. He is cast into the bowels of the earth. Into darkness visible! I will send you there too.” He bellowed. He seemed to be shouting now more to himself than to Joshua, as if he were to trying to justify to himself what he was now going to do. Joshua realised that probably this whole performance had been just that. It was as if Louronne’s interior monologue had never let him enter the room as anything more than a puppet. Louronne reached inside the pocket of his dirty lab coat and pulled out a pistol. It was rusting in places, and the grip was misshapen.

Joshua tried to ignore that, he did not want that gun to be the last thing he thought of before he died. But it kept on dragging his eyes back to it, as if the deed it was about to do gave it some extra painful reality possessed by nothing else in the room. Louronne was still speaking, his lips murmuring snatches of words that were not meant to be heard, let alone mean anything. Joshua wondered if he would feel guilty. If maybe then he’d finally recognise the humanity he’d spent so long trying to destroy. Or perhaps the performance of the last few minutes would allow him to go on living in his illusion. Either way, he did not want his last thoughts to be of Louronne either.

So instead he closed his eyes to Louronne’s rage and remembered looking out from the tent door to see Michael silhouetted against the vast openness of the arctic. The sun lit him up like one of those Christmas trees that they had both promised they would one day see in the flesh. Snow crowned his unruly black hair like a diadem of starlight. Behind him the sun was warm, reaching Joshua’s face despite the cold. It beckoned to him and it soothed him. He breathed in deeply through his nose. He was ready.

BANG.

There was a loud thud, and Joshua jolted his eyes open. Michael stood behind Louronne’s collapsing body with a well-polished and smoking pistol clasped in his hands. “Michael, how?” He felt dizzy, this didn’t feel real. It wasn’t how things were supposed to go. Michael grinned at him as he un-cuffed him from the table. “Remember when you told me not to make promises I couldn’t keep?” said Michael.

“Yeah…” replied Joshua confusedly.

“Well while you weren’t looking I made a promise.” He gave Joshua a roguish wink then pulled him to his feet. “I promised that we’d do it, we’d expose the truth about what they’re doing here, and we’d do it together.”

“But you… how did you get through the soldiers?” Asked Joshua. Michael led him out of the room and into a dimly lit and dirty corridor. “Well I’m glad you asked that actually, it was pretty amazing of me really!”

“Modest as ever” Joshua butted in despite his frayed nerves.

“Hey do you wanna hear about my daring escape or not?” Asked Michael. “While they were busy needling you I whistled to the dogs, sent them wild. The soldiers panicked and pulled you into the helicopter while I managed to wrestle my way free. As the helicopter took off I tied myself to one of its skis with the reins of the sleigh”

Joshua widened his eyes in amazement. “You’re joking right, that’s insane! You should be dead.”

“Well just be glad I’m not hey. I dropped myself in the deep snow outside the walls before they could land and catch on that I was there. Then I waited for nightfall, ambushed a guard for a gun, and here we are.” Replied Michael. “I knew Louronne would take you to your old teaching room, he was always a dramatic nutcase that one.” They’d reached the end of the corridor, and were now at a glass door looking out over the rest of the compound. “Now Louronne is an overconfident fella, so there weren’t any soldiers in here, but I counted at least twelve out in the grounds.” Said Michael.

“Guess we’d best be quiet then.” Relied Joshua. Michael nodded his agreement, and then slowly eased open the door. They snuck out and padded softly through the snow. Joshua couldn’t help but be reminded of their first escape. They were making their way down to the sleigh shed again. He grabbed Michael’s arm. “We can’t use the sleigh, it didn’t work last time.” He whispered hurriedly.

Michael’s wild grin returned “Who said anything about a sleigh?” He whispered in return. He led Joshua around the edges of the various buildings of the compound, refusing to expand further on what he meant. They moved quietly whilst constantly aware of the guards patrolling about the compound. However, they had the advantage, they had grown up prisoners here and they knew the guards patrol routine better than they knew their own faces.

They ducked down low behind a snow covered skip full of broken lab equipment as they waited for one of the soldiers to pass them by. At that moment the alarm went off. Red lights blared angrily above the doors of all the building and a shrill siren shrieked out like the scream of a banshee. “They must have found Louronne. Slimy bastard.” Mutterred Michael. “We better hurry while they’re distracted.” He said.

“Hurry where?” demanded Joshua, he was impatient, and the siren had set him on edge.

“Why the chopper of course!” Michael shouted. He dashed out into the open and levelled his pistol at the stunned soldier. Once, twice, thrice. Michael fired into him, then they were both running past him and up towards the helicopter platform. At the edge of his senses Joshua was dimly aware of gunfire crackling at the snow behind him. Michael pulled a flare gun from beneath his jacket. Joshua recognised it as the one from their sleigh. He pulled the trigger and the flare flew into the compound behind them. Joshua did not look back, the gunfire had stopped and so he kept on running, with the heat of the flare still stinging the back of his neck.

Then they were on the platform and Michael was yanking impatiently on the door to the helicopter. It was refusing to open. Joshua grabbed the still warm barrel of the flare gun from where Michael had dropped it at the edge of the platform, then he slammed the barrel repeatedly against the helicopter’s lock. The door clanged open. “That ain’t gonna close anytime soon.” Said Michael with admiration in his voice, as he clambered into the cockpit. Joshua scrambled in beside him, and yanked the door back over the gap. Its broken lock refused to hold it closed, so he gripped it tightly to hold the door shut as bullets smashed into the reinforced glass of the window.

“You know how to fly this thing” shouted Joshua over the noise.

“Nah but I’ll learn.” Retorted Michael.

Joshua turned to face him and nearly let go of the door in the process.

“Are you serious?” He shouted back at Michael. At that moment the helicopter jerked off of the ground, and all of Joshua’s effort was taken up with staying inside it and keeping the door firmly shut. He didn’t have enough attention spare to feel angry at Michael or even scared by how stupid this was. The Helicopter swerved wildly through the air, and almost collided with the wall of the compound. Michael jerked the stick around, then they were pulling out of the compound and up into the air. “I learn quickly.” He said grinning. Joshua shook his head with relief as the sound and light of the sirens sank down away from them. “They won’t catch us now. I promise.” Said Michael sincerely. All the mirth was gone from his voice. Joshua looked at his eyes across the cockpit. They were brimming with tears, from stress, from relief. He realised his probably looked the same. But in the light of the rising sun, he could not help but let Michael’s eyes remind him of the crystals of the meteorite, so far from home. So he responded; “I believe you.” Michael grinned again, and the snow flowed past below them like the waves of the sea.