Sergeant Gonzal knocked on the gray metal door.

“Nanosec!” said Doc Kourailen’s muffled voice from inside. After a few moments he shouted, "C’mon in!"

The door slid open with a soft hiss.

Gonzal was greeted by the pleasant tang of lavender, citronella, and the slightest whiff of some other musky, earthy scent he couldn’t quite place.

“Excuse me, Doc…”

“Well, hello Sergeant Gonzal! Do step inside!”

Doc’s office could have been an orbital prison cell if, instead of bunks, prison inmates were allowed to sleep over large wooden desks, and to use several thick layers of papers and files as blankets and mattresses.

Doc smiled from behind his bureaucratic barricade and pointed to the stainless-steel chair across his ocean of documents. “Please anchor yourself, Sarge.” He then aimed his chin towards the small replicator to Gonzal’s right. “Unless you want some coffee first? Tea, maybe? I’m afraid I’m sadly without anything with enough calories to avoid you having to pay yet another visit to our good chef’s shitpots, but either brew will keep you warm.” Doc’s office, and the whole Cloning facility for that matter, was kept rather cold.

Gonzal decided to accept the gesture of hospitality and served himself two shots of Doc’s searing hot, strongly aromatic coffee in a small paper cup. He recognized some of the earthy aromas which he hadn’t been able to place before, when he had entered the room. There was still a burnt, smoky scent clinging to the air that he could not quite place.

“Do sit down, Sarge,” Doc said. “Just lemme clear this jungle for you to park your brew.” He pushed aside a bunch of files, leaving an empty spot of wooden surface in front of the stainless-steel chair.

Gonzal sat down and placed the steaming cup over the polished desk, feeling a bit in an interrogation room. And what else was a doctor-patient relationship, anyway? He traced the tip of his index along one of the wooden veins, thinking how to tackle this conversation.

“Not everything’s metal in here, then,” he said.

“Of course not! Hopefully”—Doc glanced towards a large metal door to Gonzal’s left—“we have in there all the biomass this Chapter needs.”

Gonzal took a sip of his coffee. It was really good stuff.

“So!” Doc said. “What brings you to my humble domains, Sarge?”

“Well… you know, Doc… I was wondering if we could talk confidentially?”

Doc’s friendly smile widened as he spread his arms. “But of course, Sarge! Mi casa es su casa. Whatever we discuss in here will remain as private as if you were talking to yourself.”

Alright… here we go…

“Well, actually, that’s kinda the point, Doc.”

“Aha…”

“Hypothetically speaking—”

“Oooh! Hypothesis! I like those!”

“Yeah; about that—”

“I just looove how that word rolls off your tongue,” Doc said, tasting the syllables. “Hypo, thesis. Hypo, as in below. You know? Like hypo dermis: below your skin. Or hypo thermia: below normal temperature. And hypo thesis: a proposition you’ve found worthy of consideration, but without enough proof just yet. Sorry; I get carried away by big words. You were saying?”

Doc smiled as beatifically as a chubby cherub would.

The bastard knows why I’m here, of course he does…

Gonzal decided to play along. “So, yes. Hypo thesis. Suppose a squad leader were to hear one of his grunts talking about something that may have happened to said grunt while in there…” He pointed to the cloning room to his left.

“Hum!” Doc took his index finger to his temple. “The plot thickens. Was our hypofficer actually eavesdropping on his men? That’s a clear breach of protocol, I’d say. Hypothetically speaking, of course.”

Gonzal shifted in his seat. When the hell did it occur to me that playing cat and mouse in the cat’s den was a good idea? He cleared his throat. “Let’s say this hypothetical officer cannot help seeing that some of his men are acting strange right off the vat, when they return to their squad.”

“If that’s our working hypothesis, Sarge, I’d say our hypofficer should be highly commended. It’s his job to watch over his crew, isn’t it?” Doc’s smile mellowed. “He just can’t look away, now can he?”

Gonzal knew better than to trust a superior officer suddenly turning soft and placid. “Yeah…” he said cautiously, “exactly…”

Doc’s grin sharpened again, as he shuffled through some of his files. “Of course, now we have to consider: would our hypofficer know how to define ‘acting strange’ in precise medical terms? I mean, no disrespect to your imaginary friend, but I would assume he lacks the extensive training, the vast skillset, and above all the hard-earned expertise required to turn such a vague feeling into a precise and accurate diagnosis…” He left his files alone and stared at Gonzal. “Our hypofficer would be working with just a hypo-opinion, if such word exists. Which it should, because it seems like it’s what most people work with, most of the time. Wouldn’t you agree?”

Gonzal felt like the fly in the spider’s net. Struggling was useless, so he just nodded.

Doc asked, “Are we talking ‘strange’ as in dilated pupils?”

“No…”

“Torpid hand-eye coordination?”

“No.”

“Slackened speech patterns? Spatial disorientation?”

Gonzal shook his head.

Doc’s teeth flashed like a Terran shark’s. “Or were some of our hypothetical men smiling like they had just been to heaven, talking about angels, and only too happy to gobble on whatever shit Kooks calls food these days?”

Son of a bitch.

Gonzal sighed loudly and threw up his hands, surrendering.

Doc chuckled. “There’s nothing hypothetical about that last bit, I’m afraid,” he said with a smile. “Not Kooks’ fault as far as I’ve been told, but his food as of late has been hypo-edible by a mile. By the way, Sarge: your coffee’s getting cold. That would be a shame, if you ask me.”

Doc ruffled through his papers as if he was looking for a specific dataset, while giving the Sergeant a few moments to take a sip of the cooling brew.

Gotta give it to the bastard, Gonzal thought as he regained his composure, at least he is magnanimous in victory...

“So!” Doc said, “you’ll have to excuse me, being so secretive. And also forgive your recently cloned men in that regard: their being hush-hush was my rather direct instruction. An order, to put in clearly. Nothing classified going on in here, mind you; I just wanted to record the effects on unsuspecting subjects. In a few days every Corvid will know what to expect; I don’t expect any changes myself, but it’s always nice to have some baseline with which to compare. It’s just good science.”

He stared at Gonzal while rubbing his hands and smiling like a toddler told to go take all the candies for the candy jar.

Since the Sergeant stood quiet, Doc whispered, “That’s your cue to ask me what the heck I’m talking about, Sarge.”

Gonzal chuckled. “Alright, I’ll bait. What the heck are you talking about, Doc?”

“Why, thanks for asking! Don’t get me wrong, I love rhetorical questions, but they just cannot beat real questions from an engaged audience. So! What the heck are we are doing in Cloning, you ask?”

Bastard does love his spotlight, no doubt…

“Simply put: we are tweaking, fine-tuning and improving our post-cloning protocol, in order to augment dopamine and serotonin levels, adding some oxytocin to the mix, and therefore reducing the occurrence of post-cloning stress. You know… bouts of weariness and depression, morbid ennui, the blurring of experiences…”

“That’s it, Doc? Just a long string of long words to tell me you are giving us some new happy dope? Which apparently gives my men some sort of celestial epiphany? Oh, and as a side effect, it turns them into smiling dorks. That’s what’s new?”

Doc lowered his voice, as if he was sharing HiComm’s most hidden secret. “What’s new,” he whispered, “is that oldest is the new new.”

He made a theatrical pause. Gonzal was fearing another rhetorical cliché, but instead Doc turned to his intercom and said, "Joan… Jane… will you please come over here?"

Aha? So ol’ Doc has gotten himself a pair of nurses, has he? Probably nice-looking, too, judging by how Wolf and Haiko…

As the door to his left slid open, the wave of pheromones hit him.

Hard.

Gonzal’s dick got rock stiff so violently that it hurt. “A—a J—jill…!?” he stammered as he turned.

Not one, but two of them.

They stepped through the door, clad in the tightest abridged version of nurse uniforms, like right out of Gendai porn: Long strong legs. Deliciously curved hips and impossibly thin waist that promised flexibility beyond belief. Tits so big and round and firm that you’d think they were floating in zero-G. And large, lake-looking eyes so deep that a man could happily drown in them and completely forget how to breathe.

And exuding an aura of pheromones so powerful that, in the quiet atmosphere of Doc’s confined quarters, Gonzal’s rock-hard boner was drying his brains out.

Doc chuckled, somehow impervious to his new attendants’ charm. “Aren’t they something else?”

“Jills?” Gonzal asked in bewildered disbelief. “You’ve got yourself Jills?”

“Don’t be rude, Sergeant; that’s derisive name-calling.” He smiled at the blonde. “She’s Joan, and she is the good girl. The brunette is Jane, but she prefers Jenny. She’s a good girl too, but when she’s bad, she’s much better.”

The two beamed such as smile so as to make the sun pale. They were obviously either clones or twins.

“Could you… please…?” asked Gonzal.

Doc’s predatory grin briefly butterflied through his lips, then became a benign uncle’s smile again. “Girls… Sergeant Gonzal and I have some matters to discuss, and he needs to regain blood pressure above his neck. Be a dear, both of you, and go back to your room, will you?”

Both dolls giggled: a soft, crystalline stream of innocence and promise that could forever haunt a man’s lonely nights. As they left, swaying like warm waves licking the wet sand of a sunny beach, the blonde blew Gonzal a timid kiss.

The door slid shut with a *thud*, followed by the soft whirring and hissing of Doc’s air fresheners. The strong scent of lavender and citronella soon took hold of the room.

Gonzal could again think more or less straight. “You got yourself Jills!?”

Doc laughed. “You in a loop, Sarge? Third time in a row you’ve said the same. That’s not how you break free from their charm, if that’s your strategy.”

“But… how the heck did you get them!?”

“Ah…” Doc said, playing mystery man, “magic of the free market, as it were. PhaayaTek did a great job with them, didn’t they?” He sniffed carefully, like a sommelier about to enjoy the best-aged wine. “Outstanding bouquet, wouldn’t you agree? Porn peddlers may base their industry on visuals, but you just cannot beat having the right love chemicals in the air. Well, unless you get the whole sight and scent and sound package right in front of you, am I right? Pure and primal: bypasses all or high-level let’s-think-things-through wetware and goes right to let’s-get-things-done.”

Gonzal narrowed his eyes. “You don’t seem to… I mean, their bouquet doesn’t seem to…”

“Rule number five, Sarge,” Doc grinned. “Don’t get high on your own supply.”

“Does it work for every breed?”

“Sapiens and Clypeus for certain. Which was why you came here, right? Homo Pernix like your Squirrel not so strongly, I believe. Should affect the Gnarus, on paper, but most of them are under a mindlocker diet to put up with Kooks’ shit, like our good Minds.” He rubbed his hands again, evidently excited. “We’ll have to test and see. Science demands it!”

Gonzal finished his coffee. It was all cold now, but still strong, and smelling a bit of burnt tobacco.

“So…” he said, “back to square one, then.”

Doc looked puzzled.

“What the hell are doing to my men?”

Doc leaned back in his chair. “That,” he said, pointing at Gonzal’s groin, “was a low-flow priapism.”

“It felt just like to a really strong boner, if you excuse my vast lack of medical expertise.”

“It actually feels exactly the same, Sarge, with one key difference.” He raised both index fingers, erect and straight up. “A normal boner does not last forever, as I’m sure you are aware.” He let the left index slacken and bend. “Which is normal, and even healthy. But!” He kept his right index straight and stiff. "If what must come down doesn’t, then it ain’t normal.” He pointed his erect finger to the door through which the two Jills had just left. “Should I call them back and see which of these two conditions those two angels can provoke you?”

“I spent a whole week in Luly IV, Doc. I know perfectly well what a Jill can do.”

“That,” Doc pointed again at Gonzal’s crotch, “was not your first priapism while in a clone room. Am I right?”

Gonzal shifted uncomfortably in his hard chair without knowing how to answer.

“It’s called Angel Lust,” Doc said. “It’s well documented since, centuries ago, some bright fellow decided to study the effects of hanging people. A stiff boner was among them.”

“Really?”

“Indeed. Thing is, cloning makes it much more common and acute. In the middle of combat your body kicks into berserk; you’re chock full of adrenaline; you get shot, your mind is rewritten to your new brain and it keeps telling your body to pump, pump, pump up everything. On top of that, we spike your testosterone in here, to keep your clones’ muscle mass…” Doc raised both indexes stiff.

“I thought you kept us all happy-doped in there? Literally sleeping like babies in a womb…?”

“Aha… we do…” Doc went again through his where-did-I-put-that-damned-file routine, like he was at a loss of words.

What did he say, just before the Jills came in? Weariness and depression, morbid ennui, the blurring of experiences…

“You do,” Gonzal said, “but the happy dope makes some of us too happy. Right? Womb-like happy; don’t-wanna-go-out-there happy. So now you are adding something more into the mix.”

Doc shook his head. “Actually… old is new, and less is indeed more. That”—he pointed at the clone room door—“that’s the first thing we did. Not me, of course. I mean the first guys who tried, tested and tweaked field cloning, back in the day.

“You see, after being recloned a disturbingly high percentage of grunts were waking up ready to rape anything with a body temperature above freezing. In other cases the subject’s pituitary pathways went into a weird closed loop, and I can tell you that ‘scared stiff’ became a research subfield all of itself. Long story short, with their cloned grunts going on a raping rampage, scientists called in the ancient experts.”

Gonzal was sincerely puzzled. “You mean we borrowed some biotech from the Nemurastii? I’m pretty sure we were using field cloning decades before they stumbled upon us…”

Doc laughed. “No! I mean Terran most ancient experts.”

Gonzal didn’t follow.

“The oldest pros on Earth?”

Gonzal’s face changed as he connected all the dots. “Whores!?”

“There you go again, Sarge, calling people names. But yeah: they hired a bunch of whores. Very high-end, apparently, who really knew how to put the ‘hard’ in both work and play. It’s all thoroughly documented; wildest papers I read in Med School, I can tell you that. Tons of records and studies and datasets analyzing and dissecting post-cloning behavior. Good times, those.”

“I hope you mean your Med School times, Doc.”

“Yeah, of course. At some point somebody decided that drugs were better than sex ‘n’ rock ‘n’ roll, and that’s what we’ve been giving you guys since then. Our happy dope cocktail’s much better now, of course, but basically the same procedure…” He made a pause, and smiled like a small kid with shiny new toys.

“… until you decided to come to the ass-end of nowhere,” finished Gonzal, “to try to go back to the sex ‘n’ rock ‘n’ roll part. But now with gengineered Jills.”

“Oldest profession remade with bleed-edge tech, Sarge, designed and genetically engineered like only PhaayaTek can. What can I say? One Jill can single-handedly rise a whole platoon’s morale, or so the joke goes.”

“I know all the jokes about what a Jill can do single-handedly, Doc, let alone using both hands.”

“Then I suppose you can imagine what those two dolls in there can do with four hands?”

Gonzal stared at him blank-faced.

Zerp

“Actually, Sarge…” Doc said, now serious, “save Captain Luthz, you are the only Corvid that has spent some quality time on Luly IV. And in this case Captain Luthz doesn’t really count. To be plain and honest: I thought you’d be the first to back me up on this. Didn’t you have a few good ones, back in Luly?"

“Actually… no, I didn’t.”

“No?” Doc seemed genuinely surprised.

“No. That was my plan, mind you. To spend my whole Luly IV week locked in a room with some fine-looking dame. I had been stationed for three years in a god-forsaken little moon doing nothing but digging trenches; my bank account was bloated and we were going to stay on Luly for only a few days before they shipped us to the Cheruvian frontline, and nobody officially said it but we all knew that cloning signals were sometimes jammed. So I said what the heck, I may be dead forever in ten days, let’s just have a taste of the best possible candy. Long story short, I blew about twenty months’ pay in so many hours with an Anna-class Jill.”

Gonzal’s voice softened and took the tones of the experienced, battle-hardened veteran reviving his blissfully great, never-to-come-back rookie days. “Laura; that was her name. Looked very much like your blonde here; bit shorter, hips maybe wider, and she had a much darker tan. Her hair was waist-long and furiously bright pink. She kissed like fire and moaned like an angel. And I don’t need to go to Cloning School to tell you that both angel and hell-spawn were hardcoded into her DNA in the best possible ways.

“I would probably have spent a second night with her, but she was fully booked until they shipped us. Anything above a Barbie-class was booked, in fact; I had to settled for a Cherry. Can’t remember her name, if she had one. No complaints, and the cost-benefit ratio was ok, but…”

Gonzal sighed as he tapped his fingers against the desk’s dark wood. “Laura? The absolute best night of my many lives, Doc. Most expensive by a couple of figures, too. Best spent bucks ever, given the context, but not something a soldier can make a habit of. There’s nothing cheap about those premium Jills.”

Doc nodded knowingly. “You can say that again, Sarge. Joan and Jenny do put the ‘high’ in ‘maintenance’, I can tell you that.”

Gonzal’s dreamy, lost-in-memory-lane gaze regained its sniper sharpness. “You can tell me that, can you?” He leaned forward, placing both elbows over the desk. “So, tell me, Doc… how the hell did you get the budget for two of them, full time, plus shipping costs all the way to here?”

Doc glanced defensively at his files.

Bullseye.

“Well…” Doc toyed with one of his folders. “Only one model wouldn’t please all your grunts all the time, now would she? Maybe the Clypeus wouldn’t care—those big guys are all muscle and no imagination—but Sapiens crave variety. I mean, I really wanted a red-haired, too; that would’ve been a nice threesome but hey, we are on a shoestring budget here, cutting corners and all…”

“And let me guess: your cloning fees for my grunts just went up, didn’t they?”

Doc smiled somewhat ashamedly, just like a good student who has been caught cheating during a final exam, but seeing Gonzal’s cut-the-crap expression he said, “Yes. Cloning fees are up, I’m afraid.”

Gonzal life-long training stopped him right before sneering in front of a superior officer; he grinded his teeth instead. "So… you are toying with my men like they are lab mice, and on top of that making them cover the extra cost of your experiment."

Doc stood up and slowly walked to the drink rep. Giving his back to Gonzal, he filled one paper cup with coffee. “The Corvid is an elite Chapter, Sergeant. You know that as well as I do.” He filled a second cup, the pleasant roasted aroma spreading through the room. “Everybody here is a volunteer; they know the risks they’ve signed up for, and they know the rewards.” He walked back to the desk, placed one cup in front of Gonzal, kept the other in his hand. “Your grunts are the first to get cutting-edge toys, right off R&D, and get them at factory cost, no markup. Is that because UGC is good and caring? Hell no: it’s because R&D wants them tested under field conditions. Your Chapter has the best clones for a pittance, for the very same reason. And the Corvids get cash bonuses that, I can tell you for a fact, sometimes make the pencil-necked bean-counters back at HiComm cringe and wish your grunts weren’t so good at kicking asses out there.”

Gonzal, much like his coffee, seemed like a long way from cooling down.

“Look, Sarge… if this works out, we would be making progress. I mean scientific progress. In one of the ways science goes forth: by going back to what years ago didn’t work and finding out what happens if we try again now with a few new tweaks. This”—he stabbed his datasets with his stiff index finger—“this is what I have signed up for. Data. Empirical evidence. Science."

Gonzal took a sip from his cup.

“Plus,” Doc added, “if this works, no need for happy-doping your grunts. And dope ain’t cheap, mind you, and it also comes from your cloning fees. So… no dope and overall cheaper cloning fees for your grunts; eager non-doped grunts for you; an ocean of data for me. Looks like a win-win for everybody involved.”

Gonzal nodded, reluctantly.

Doc stood up, went to the trash bin in one of the office’s corners, let his empty cup fall inside. “Bullseye,” he said, and turning around smiled at Gonzal. “Whadda ya say, Sarge? Should I give it a shot? Becoming a sniper, I mean.”

“I think that what you just did was close quarter combat."

Doc chuckled. “Guess I’ll just stick to medicine and research.”

“Alright,” Gonzal said. “Let’s say this works. This wouldn’t just be a cheap trick to increase your cloning revenues, now would it be, Doc?”

“You insult me, Sarge. I’m a man of science. Knowledge is the only currency of value to me.”

“Yeah, right. You know the one about the Nemurastii with a parrot? Cracks me up every time: a Nemu goes into a bar, with a parrot over his shoulder; the bartender says…”

Doc raised an eyebrow. “Your sarcasm seems every bit as sharp as your marksmanship skills, Sergeant. That’s my diagnosis, at least.”

“You gonna bring a Jack or two, too?”

“If these tests continues as well as thus far, then sure thing. It was just more cost-effective to focus on the largest pool of test subjects first. “hoestring budget, right?”

Gonzal finished his coffee and crushed the cup in his hand. He tossed it carelessly, without even glancing; the paper ball flew through the air describing a nice, flat parabola, and landed in the exact center of the trash bin across the room.

Doc raised his eyebrows.

“That wouldn’t be sniping skills, either,” Gonzal said. “ That’s grenade-throwing.” He stood up. “Thanks for the coffee, Doc. Really good stuff.”

“Anytime, Sarge. Anytime.”

Gonzal nodded thoughtfully, and approached the door leading to the long, twisted metal corridor that would take him outside. He paused just before leaving the room, as if he still had something to say.

Doc stared at him. “Believe it or not, Sergeant, and all hypo-jokes asides… I respect your judgment. Even if it’s just your guts speaking, I do take all data as seriously as I can. So… what’s bothering you? I know it’s not just me raising the cloning fees. that cannot be even close to what Kooks’ doing to your men."

Gonzal looked back. “Ever heard the expression ‘I’m Jones for Jills’?”

“Yep, sure. Means boy sees girl, and feels like they are made for each other. As if PhaayaTek had brewed them to be the perfect happily-ever-after match. Right?”

Gonzal shook his head.

“No?”

“Nope. Or yeah, maybe it has that more poetic meaning in other circles. But among soldiers, ‘Jill’ is literally one of those Jills you have over there; and Jones is Jones as in ‘craving’. As in being addicted to.”

Gonzal let that sink.

A shadow of a doubt crossed Doc’s face, then he waved it away and dismissed it with a wide grin. “That’s called a crush, Sarge. And yeah, Sapiens have been falling for it since the dawn of time. Something we Docs and labrats can do nothing about.”

As he found his way out of the office and through the maze-like corridors of the Cloning facilities, Gonzal could hear Doc Kourailen singing:

It’s written in the scriptures

It’s written there in blood

I even heard the angels

declare it from above

There ain’t no cure,

There ain’t no cure,

There ain’t no cure for love

The bastard was a damn fine baritone. The notes chased Gonzal all throughout the long, bending walkway until he made it back outside, to the Nest’s courtyard under Dari Cal’s starry night sky.

###