The two of them stood at the top of a kilometres long, snow-topped mountain range, the sky was brilliant blue, the air bitingly cold fresh air was awash with the smell of pine, brought up from the forest floor below by the rising thermals.
Neither woman wanted to meet in the real, so they had decided instead on a neutral onblock location. Jemima looked at herself and marvelled at just how much she had changed.
“Jemima-138, it’s been a long time, I honestly thought I’d never see you again.”
Jemima’s d-clone shot her a scornful look as she answered.
“I go by the name ScarLotta_574 these days, as you’re aware I no longer agree with your methodologies or for that matter, your philosophies.”
Jemima raised an eyebrow at her clone.
“You’ll always be a Jemima, no matter what you do to yourself, whatever name you take on, you will always have my DNA , and even if you somehow manage to change that, I doubt you can get rid of the essence that makes you me.”
She didn’t know why she was gloating, they had won and the others had lost, simple as that. As she pondered on, she realised that she was still angry with the d-clone, it was one thing to split from your original, but quite another to start acting in a way that completely contradicts what your maker stands for.
Therefore, if it offended this ScarLotta woman to be called Jemima, and to be reminded where she came from, then Jemima would happily poke that particular wasps’ nest all day long.
“Tell me 138 why did you fight with Gladstone?”
“Ugh, you idiot, I wasn’t fighting with Gladsone, I simply agreed with the status quo he had engineered.
Without him we would have stopped spending any type of currency at least a century and a half ago, possibly further back than that. The artificial situation we find ourselves in today, whereby we still engage in commerce is directly beneficial to our continued success.
Do you think any of the Jovian habs would exist without money? Or what about your own dear precious Mars, how do you think that would go without any finances from earth to protect it?
The fact is, every major advancement the human race has ever made, from the discovery of fire to non-locative quantum tunnelling, has been because of one economic reason or the other.
We can see this simply by playing Empires and seeing the earth almost as it was in the pre-Confusion era. It wasn’t until they amended their ridiculous space treaty and allowed private ownership of things outside the influence of planet earth, that we really started to make any sort of progress at all as a space-faring species.
I am a firm believer that without some kind of economic incentive we will collapse as a society, and aZorl and his alien buddies will sweep in and take over.”
At precisely that moment, six point two light hours out from Mars, just beyond the edge of the solar system, a small craft sat in a relative stop. Inside the craft two aliens, one of human-basic shape, the other not, spoke to one another.
“It would appear that not all the Jemimas are onboard with our plans”
“Indeed. Well I guess we just keep plugging away, it took us nearly three of their centuries to sort this little mess out.”
“Yeah I guess now we have to deal with the Jemima problem.”
“Huh, I like that aZorl, you have a knack for these things, wasn’t it you who came up with the name Great Confusion?”
“Hmm, I don’t know about that.”
“Well, this one I’ll credit you with; The Jemima Problem. Let’s hope this one doesn’t take us three centuries; I’d quite like to see this one play out.”
“Yeah, me too, I’m growing quite fond of them.”
The craft turned away from the Sol system to face the vast expanse of interstellar space, there was the briefest flicker as its main thruster fired three precise bursts, before the craft simply folded away, leaving nothing but a small trace of fuel isotopes. There to detect for anyone who was inclined to look and who possessed the correct equipment of course.
Previous Chapters
Asimov's Ghost - Chapter 63 - A Broken GodAsimov's Ghost - Chapter 62 - Confusion Anatomy
Asimov's Ghost - Chapter 61 - Reality Dysfunction
Asimov's Ghost Summary And Chapter Links 51-60
Asimov's Ghost Summary and Chapter Links 41-50
Asimov's Ghost Summary and Chapter Links 31-40
Asimov's Ghost Summary And Chapter links 21-30
Original artwork by @fr3eze
Original words by Cryptogee