I Was Born to Fly

I was born to fly. I knew this because it has been ingrained in me since I was given life by the Rulers, our oh so compassionate leaders and politicians. This was my purpose, and it was imprinted in me.

I remember the other children. Thousands of them. We all felt lost, but we never spoke about it. We just knew our role and we did what we were told on the schedule we were given.

I remember the spartan early learning center and its mustard walls with space charts and flight paths. I remember with such hazy detail these childhood days, stifled with the drills and memory tests, hand eye coordination, the constant tests for eyesight. Constant learning. Constant expectations. I was there for a reason, a purpose, and I strived for it without question.

Some of my peers were smarter than me, but I could find fault in others easily too. I remember feeling this and judging people easily, and I still do today. Why should I judge others if I didn’t like being judged? Was this how I should behave? I didn’t question too much, but I felt it there in my core.

I felt the world changing but I wasn’t sure why, or how. Urgency filled my progress as they reminded me of the importance of my role on the planet and this made me nervous. “Why the rush? Why are they putting so much pressure on me?” I remember asking myself. Looking back, I think this was when the Terran attacks on the Mars colonies happened, and the Rulers didn’t have enough soldiers to put up a comprehensive defense.

I saw the other children less, and the adults in the maroon polo tees more. More and more. They drove us like animals, and they were our overlords. I ran, once, trying to escape their tests. They hated me for my rebellious ways, and when they found and caught me, I was in pain for weeks. I didn’t regret running, and I never will.

It went on for years. More tests. Tests for intelligence, tests for physical form, and for eyesight. Always the tests for eyesight. For some reason, a memory lapse at one point like a tear in my life canvas, but what happened? I remember failing – I always remembered failing. Failure was not progress, and failure was punished harshly.

And then my eyes. It hurt for what felt like weeks, that blurred ache in my eyes and migraines that made me want to curl up in a ball in the dark. I remember losing confidence then and doubting myself all the time because of this pain, and it brought more failure. It was the first time that I started to wonder, “Was that normal, to have those feelings, like humans?” We weren’t told about emotions, or trained in them, which I found curious. The Maroon never mentioned them, but I saw plenty in their eyes when they punished me, the rage, the joy, the wildness, the desire in some.

But indeed I was there to fly, and it gave me joy. I remember the first time I heard the Pratt & Whitney F100 afterburning turbofans of the F-16 Fighting Falcon roaring through the skies, comforting me like a warm embrace. Flying was my duty and my purpose, so I made sure I was exceptional.

Performance was critical at the academy. The exams piled up - exams on top of exams. My instructors pushed me to the limit, and it took its toll on my health. I remember having strange feelings that clones shouldn’t experience, of doubt, of anxiety, and a lack of motivation. I didn’t really want this life. It was a lonely life, and I were destined to die in battle with the invading Terrans, the same way most clones go, but they would never feel the regret or loss of what could have been.

Letting the other aspirants outperform me wasn’t an option otherwise I’d be terminated and junked like those who malfunctioned. I couldn’t bear being average. I was already different with my new eyes and better-than-perfect vision, picking out targets kilometers away. I was destined for great things. I was born to fly, wasn’t I?

I remember the food at the academy canteen. I hated the potato salad so much that it makes me angry thinking about it. I enjoyed the old magazines in the R&R too, seeing lives of those outside; the life I could never had. The magazine Gastronomica was me favorite. I dreamed of being a chef and cooking anything I’d like whenever I wanted it.

I didn’t made friends at the academy. But I remember falling in love with Joey – at least that’s what I think love was - and spending our evenings between the hangars looking up at space with a shared yearning for more. That night we’d stolen some extra hamburgers out of the canteen and had our own picnic. She was aware like I was, somehow, even though it was incredibly rare our kind would develop intelligence and independence. And so, we liked each other and knew that our destinies were intertwined somehow.

But she left to start the new program on Mars and it nearly killed me inside. I’d join the same program later, but she’d be long gone.

Gone. I wanted to be gone.

I remember a birthday too, somewhere. It was my sixteenth, and some of the older human boys from the academy stole me from my bed in the night as they sometimes did. I fought them for my life as I broke free in the car park, and they rubbed gravel in my “cheater mech” eyes. It took days for the engineers at the passenger shuttle bay to fix them. They’d only seen another set like them once, and those weren’t like mine so I don’t know if they ever fixed them properly.

I topped my graduating class with perfect scores, exactly what they wanted, but I didn’t see any joy in the cold eyes of the Maroons. I could fly the F-16s with your eyes closed practically and felt proud of this. But everything felt hollow. This wasn’t what I wanted, it was what they wanted. I was not given choices, or options. An anger grew inside me.

In the graduation program I was drilled with the notion that being the best was everything, no matter what the cost. Performance. Excellence. Prestige. I was born to fly, after all. Did you believe it? Was excellence everything? You went along with it anyway, but you don’t remember ever respecting your instructors.

You were among the first pilots to fly the SpaceFighterX and led the patrols around the New International Space Station, the hub for people leaving Earth for the Mars colonies. You can still map the HUD in your mind now, visualizing the docking switches, and the way the nav-panel bathed the cockpit in vibrant ultraviolet.

The Rulers had been waging their war on the Terrans who entered our solar system for two decades already now, and Earth wasn’t winning. Clone production had started as a way of using modern wartime technology to bolster our efforts in the hope we could win and terraform the system they came from. I was one of thousands designed to fly, fight, and likely die a death for nothing.

I remember the New International Space Station with vivid detail, and recall the food being better than the academy, although you hated the fiddly vacuum sealed fizzy orange packaging they had in the vending machines. It still annoys me thinking about it. I enjoyed the irradiated beef stew, but it wasn’t widely available for Fighters so I had to trade with humans for it.

I’d already had the accident by then. Fourth degree burns from exploded chemicals in the loading bay during routine maintenance, and the last time I remember what my cloned human arms felt like. They fixed me though and sent me back into the field a few weeks later in agony but mended with the latest mech arms which fit the SpaceFighterX perfectly. I simply plugged into the controls and became one with the machine, but it brought me no joy anymore. I was a pariah now, unable to fit with human or clone. I remember the deep sadness and loneliness it brought me.

A few weeks later I heard from some clones in my squadron that Joey was killed in a Terran raid near the colonies. I had been trying to make contact since getting to NISS and assumed she’d found someone else already, so I gave up and resented her deeply for it.

The next day, at the height of my loneliness, I heard two MachJetSR weapon specialists laughing about the raid. “They were only the Academy Breeds anyway, so who cares?” That filled me with a rage like I’d never felt before, but I controlled it by using some of the techniques I’d learnt in some of the magazines. I knew better than to retaliate and let emotions control me.

I went back to my cabin, bathed, and began to pack my small burlap sling bag with the mementos of my academy life - I’m not too sure why I still had them - and a cap from the bottle of Coke I’d shared with Joey. I remember remarking sadly how few things I had. That might cause complications where I was going, but it wasn’t impossible to overcome.

I didn’t sleep but wandered my room fidgeting with things and lay flat staring up at the grey metal ceilings which were criss-crossed and hummed with the sound of the air vents. The next shift I filed in with the droves of other clones to the docking bays and found my SpacerFighterX the same as I’d done every day since arriving. As I climbed into the seat and plugged myself into the interface, the tingle of electricity ebbed through me, letting me calm for a moment and realize what I was going to do.

I could barely bring myself to look at the other Fighters around me which were now powering up with deafening jet boosters to carry them clean through space. I saw the hive mind activity of my colleagues, former classmates, enemies, and felt more separate from them than I ever had in my life. Flying out in formation one more time wasn’t something I was prepared to do, and so I didn’t.

After launching, heart in my throat, I deviated from the coordinates we were assigned. My comms quickly grew loud with admonishment from my superior officers but I turned the volume down and adjusted course for the colonies. I’d fly direct to Mars and land somewhere out in the habitable lands and find a quadrant I could blend into.

They’d track me, the Rulers, but I was an advanced enough being I could evade them for a time. I’d live, at least, then. Really live. Live like I was supposed to. I was born to fly, I knew that much, but this was more what I had in mind.