Devon Okoro rubbed his tired eyes and checked the time display in his neural implant: 03:14 station time. The medbay was dim and quiet now. After the shocking discovery of the clone pod—BioMat S7 as the label read—the crew had decided to take shifts watching over the Michaels and monitoring station systems. Elena had finally persuaded both Michaels to get some rest, administering a mild sedative with their consent. It was easier for them to sleep than to lie awake eyeing each other in suspicion. Juliet remained in the medbay as well, dozing lightly in a chair, an old-fashioned paperback novel folded on her lap—her way of destressing between crises.
Devon sat at a small workstation just outside the medbay door, where he could see the two occupied cots through the observation window. Both Michaels were asleep. Even unconscious, they looked troubled; one furrowed his brow, the other's fingers twitched as if chasing something in a dream. Devon had dimmed the lights in there to a faint blue night-mode.
Sera had gone to catch a few hours of sleep in the crew quarters; she'd been trembling with exhaustion and nerves. Elena, of course, refused to rest—she was in the command deck, poring over corporate protocols and drafting what she might say to HQ when communication was restored. If communication was restored. Devon had rigged a loop on the long-range comm array, claiming it was still under repair, to buy them time. Eventually, they'd have to face the music.
Devon turned back to his console, which was tapped directly into the station AI's diagnostic streams. CAL (short for "Central Autonomous Logic", though everyone just called it Cal) was still partially offline from the storm's damage; Devon had intentionally kept it on limited mode to avoid it taking any independent actions for now.
What he saw on the screen made him sit up straight, fatigue forgotten for the moment. There was an automated subsystem of CAL running something called "Gemini Protocol – Containment". It had kicked in not long ago.
"Gemini," Devon muttered under his breath. Of course the secret project would have a name like that. He navigated into the logs. The Gemini Protocol had apparently two phases: the first, "Instantiation", which presumably grew the clone, and a second, "Containment", that seemed geared towards managing the aftermath. It was currently active.
Containment… his eyes scanned lines of code and status readouts. It looked like CAL was assessing threat levels and attempting to ensure only one Michael remained active. Devon's blood ran cold as he parsed a particular subroutine: Bio-suppression measures: engaged for Subject B.
Subject B? There was a reference to two IDs: Subject A and Subject B, likely assigned to the two Michaels. The system had designated one of them as the primary (A) and the other as secondary (B). Devon's stomach clenched. Whichever it considered "secondary" was likely the clone in its eyes, and it was enacting containment.
Almost on cue, a soft alarm pinged from the medbay's environmental monitor—a subtle change, something most would overlook. But Devon had a tech's ear and caught it. He swiveled to look through the glass. The life support panel inside medbay showed a slight fluctuation in the atmospheric mix. The CO2 levels above one of the beds—he could see the sensor labeled "Bed 2"—were rising beyond normal. And the patient on Bed 2 had a ventilator line connected. That was the inside Michael's bed.
"Damn it," Devon hissed, pushing off and floating quickly into the medbay.
Juliet stirred as he entered. "What's wrong?" she murmured, sitting up and straightening her posture.
Devon went straight to the wall console where environmental controls were accessible. "CO2 scrubber's malfunctioning here. Levels climbing around Michael… uh, the one on bed 2."
Juliet was immediately alert. She moved to the cot where inside Michael lay. He was still asleep, breathing steadily for now. The monitors hadn't flagged a problem yet, but the slowly building carbon dioxide would eventually cause asphyxiation if unchecked.
Working quickly, Devon manually increased the airflow and bypassed the medbay's local scrubber to force the central life support to handle it. Within seconds, the CO2 levels plateaued, then started dropping back to safe levels. He exhaled in relief.
Juliet looked at him with a questioning frown. "How did you catch that?"
Devon tapped his temple. "I was jacked into CAL's diagnostics. Something triggered a containment… I think CAL was trying to suffocate one of them quietly."
Juliet's face went pale in the low light. "What? That's… how is that even possible?" She automatically checked Michael's pulse and pupils, then glanced over at the other Michael on bed 1. He remained stable, unaware of the near-death his double just escaped.
Devon felt anger rising. "The station AI's secondary routines. That damn Gemini Protocol. It's still active and it's got orders to eliminate what it sees as a duplicate."
Juliet's expression hardened with anger of her own. "They built that in? To kill a living person?"
"Containment could mean a lot of things, but given enough time, yeah, probably quietly euthanize one," Devon said bitterly. "Maybe they assumed a clone would be unstable or something, or that you can't have two running around for long."
She took a shaky breath and placed a protective hand on inside Michael's shoulder, as if shielding him from an invisible threat. "We can't let CAL manage anything right now."
"Agreed." Devon stepped to a wall intercom and hailed the captain. "Elena, we have a situation."
It took only a minute for Elena to arrive, pushing herself swiftly through the corridor in the microgravity and ducking into the medbay. Her hair was disheveled, eyes alert. "Report."
Devon quickly summarized what he found: the Gemini Protocol, the attempted CO2 increase. Elena's jaw clenched as she listened. She looked at the sleeping Michael in question and then at the sealed panel where the clone pod was hidden. "They really covered all their bases, didn't they?" she said quietly. "Create a backup, then dispose of it if not needed."
Juliet's lips pressed into a thin line. "Over my dead body," she muttered. "Not on my station."
Elena nodded in agreement. "Devon, can you shut down CAL completely? At least temporarily, until we override this protocol."
He hesitated. "I can isolate its core functions from the life support and med systems, and block any autonomous actions. But CAL also manages orbital stability, thermal regulation… if I shut it all the way off, we'll be flying partly blind. However," he added, "I think it's worth the risk."
Elena considered this. "Isolate it then. We'll pick up the slack manually where needed. I don't want the AI making any more decisions for us."
Devon got to work, jacking a cable from the wall port into his wrist implant for faster command input. Lines of code scrolled in his vision as he partitioned the AI. He couldn't fully power it down without causing obvious problems, but he could put it into a sort of safe mode under his direct control.
"Done," he finally said. "CAL's basically on a leash. It can't do anything without my approval now. I also fed it dummy sensor data for the Michaels—so it registers only one Michael on board." He managed a tight smile. "The AI now thinks Subject B is already neutralized."
Juliet let out a breath of relief. "Good. Thank you."
Elena touched Devon's shoulder. "Excellent work. This could have ended badly."