Keypage: Rudolph’s Page

R Corp. is particularly famous as a private military company. No matter how many combatants die in battle, we fill the vacancy with new soldiers in no time. It was natural for the Wings giving us requests to wonder what kind of Singularity we have to pump out so many mercenaries in such a short time frame. Besides, our soldiers weren’t lacking in combat prowess by any means, so there had to be more to us than just hiring many people. The mercenaries of R Corp. don’t fear death in the first place; they don’t hesitate to carry out any tasks. We’re big in numbers, casualties are replaced quickly, and we fearlessly proceed and get the job done. R Corp’s mercs were ideal for Outskirts explorations and other dangerous operations.

How could such a feat be possible, then? People started making guesses.
“There has to be only one answer: They must be cloning people.”
“No, they’ve got to be robots. R Corp. has been developing war machines in secret!”
“Won’t the Head arrest them if they tried to clone humans?”
“That’s a good point.”

At the end of the day people just laughed it off, talking about how nonsensical their hypotheses were and how secretive Singularities are. Maybe they had the right answer, though they missed the mark a bit.

It’s true that R Corp. uses cloning technology. For that, we had to make a promise with the Head: No more than one of the same person should exist in the City for longer than seven days. The first half I can understand, but I’m still not sure why they set a limit on how long. Is it related to some kind of ethic we aren’t aware of?

Oh, no, we don’t just clone humans and call it a day. We select the fittest one among them. Inside the Hatchery, dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of them fight to the death. We have to kill the clones that look just like us, eat them, and prevail. The larger the population is and the more time given, the finer a clone is made. And the scariest part of it all is finding myself beginning to think this way.

Think about it. Is it really an admirable trait to have no fear of death? I have to disagree. When you know that you’ll die someday, you don’t put off your duties forever. You’re bound to pick them up even if you rest for a day or two. And when your life is at stake, you try all kinds of things to survive. That’s when people feel that they’re alive. Maybe I said people guessed our secret right—because our lives aren’t much different from a machine’s. One thing I’m afraid of is that hell of a selection game. As time passed, my fear of it changed to weariness. Is this the real life?