The Birth of The Unity (sequel to Chronicle of Nautilus)

Chapter 12: The Cloning Chambers

Less than millennium ago

A man dressed in white from shoes up to mouth cover carried a transparent glass container shaped as a long tube. Each noise the man produced, bounced off the walls of the room, at least, a dozen times before it dissipated. The room was a fifty-meter wide spherical maze of stairs, floors, and dead ends. Between the different obstacles like bats were sleeping sinister steel bats. Those were drones with sharp wings and hidden weapons. Laser cannons were attached to the uniform wall at even intervals.

After coming to a seemingly random part of the wall, the man plugged the container into a hole that fit the container perfectly. Only its top remained visible becoming a two socket plug with a handle. The handle was made for humans should a need to move the container arise. The double socket was for a machine.

In the center of the room wrapped in circles lay a metal snake so wide that it could swallow a human. For head, the machine had a plug that matched the double socket of containers scattered all around the room in a uniform pattern exactly five hundred millimeters to each direction.

The man checked if he had plugged the container correctly and pushed a button on the wall by its side. A tiny light bulb at the center of the lid switched from red to green. He turned around and glanced at the multitude of tiny green lights shining all over the uniform wall.

"John," the man said. "No one will be allowed to enter this room after I leave. Prepare the security protocols."

"As you wish, doctor," replied a soft male voice.

"Let's run the test before that."

"Sir, can you be more specific?"

"Activate the hand to create a specimen. I know, we did it dozens of times already. But I want to make sure, the system works. There will not be an easy way in once we initiate the lock-down. Create a specimen from the container number 6063."

"Affirmative."

The snake awoke and lashed at the wall dodging the stairs and railings on its way. It stopped a few meters away from where the doctor was standing, grabbed one of the containers and returned to its initial position, wiggling the container through all obstacles. Then it dove down like an arrow towards four massive cylindrical coffins filled with orange liquid. It stuck the container into the leftmost tank and held it there for a dozen of seconds.

A large bubble slowly glided down the orange liquid and stopped at its center. As it fell, the snake returned the container back to its spot and fell asleep at the center of the room. The scientist walked down a stairway and paused by the tank that could easily fit four people inside. The liquid inside the tank started spinning, distorting the bubble. The spinning increased and the bubble dissipated. Then, inside the tank flashed blue sparkles of electricity. One second it looked as if it was raining blue the next one lightning arced through the whole liquid. And when the process ended, all that remained was a one-tenth volume of the initial liquid. It had changed color to that of a blood and turned into a biological mass. The bottom of the tank opened up and the mass fell into unknown.

"Thank you, John, everything seems to be just fine," the man in white said. He walked to the door in front of the tubes and before disappearing said. "Initiate lock-down and activate drones."

Through the generations, the ship inhabitants had forgotten the core of the ship. The single autonomic area, the place in which they were created. If the machinery outside could be considered unreliable, the one inside the room wasn't. It was the only place where humans were prohibited from entering.

The way the people came to exist became magic. No one besides a single curious man had ever wondered if the area should be accessed and explored. It was not the care for others that led him to attempt this feat one day. It was the need to tamper with the genetic pool which was off limits for anyone living. The door to the room would open only when the ship reached the colony.