Chapter 3

Flotsam

Chapter 3: Halley-2

“I bet you have some questions,” says the man who was once me.

I stifle a typsy, manic giggle. “Where do I even begin?”

Hank clears his throat, “Standing up when you pee is pretty convenient and more entertaining than you might think. Plus shaking instead of wiping is so much easier. I don’t know why that doesn’t get talked about more...”

"Really?" I groan, "You start with peeing?"

Hank smirks, "Well, it's an obvious question. And I am kind of an expert on urination styles now."

I give Hank another burst of The Look, but since he is apparently an earlier clone of me it has little effect. "The obvious question is why the fuck are you a guy!?”

“Well that’s a bit complicated...” Hank takes a deep breath. 

***

“I was confused when I first opened my eyes. The last thing I remembered was fighting with Clem in the trailer park and that sudden, weird light. And then jump cut to me lying naked on an unfamiliar bed with a man sleeping next to me. I screamed, which woke up the man, who bolted upright in bed and yelped in shock. Fortunately for me the man was Clem, still regular old skinny whiteboy Clem, with his scruffy hair and stupid goatee. But I was still a panicking mess.

Clem was pretty freaked out too. Here he was on an alien planet and his girlfriend, Halley-Prime, had disappeared weeks ago and now here she was back in bed in the middle of the night screaming her head off. I was the first Halley clone and I’d appeared without any warning so he had no clue what was happening. He thought I was the original Halley, returned from wherever it was she went, suddenly back and inexplicably losing her shit. He was startled and confused, but also elated to see me. Which all resulted in an unfortunate comedy routine: I didn't know that I was missing months of memories or that we were on an alien planet, and Clem had no idea that I was a clone and not the original Halley. 

Somewhere in our confusion we ended up having sex. I was using it as an emotional crutch to avoid dealing with whatever the fuck was happening and Clem was just desperately glad to see me alive. It wasn't until after we’d fucked, cuddling together in that cramped bedroom of his, that we started to figure out what had happened. As Clem gently cupped my breasts he asked where I’d disappeared to and whether I figured out why we were abducted. As I nuzzled against him, enjoying his slick cock on my back, I realized that the seeming gap in my memories was significant. When I explained that the last thing I remembered was the trailer park, Clem finally figured out I wasn’t the genuine, or at least, not the original Halley. And so Clem explained that we had been abducted by aliens and were stranded on a strange alien planet.

Clem also filled me in about what I, or rather Halley-Prime, had been doing since they arrived. When we first arrived Halley-Prime had an anxiety driven breakdown and refused to leave her charity supplied room. We Halley’s have always struggled with our anxiety, but the combination of being kidnapped and appearing on a hostile, alien planet was too much for her. I imagine she worried that the anxiety would just go on and on, crippling her, or that she had somehow lost her mind and this was all some strange episode of psychosis. But eventually, at some point, Halley-Prime turned a corner on her fear and resolved to find out why she and Clem had been abducted.  She decided she would leave no space junk unturned, would interrogate every terrifying alien until she knew who was responsible for what happened, and then find a way back home to Earth. In doing so she could find a purpose on Flotsam and maybe take back control of her life. You know, fix one small problem at a time and work towards a goal, as our once therapist said.

By the time Halley pulled herself together, Clem had managed to find a steady paycheque and a home for them. Through a combination of hustling small jobs, being an obvious charity case, and blind stupid luck, Clem had found he had a valuable, marketable skill. Clem was a Shaper... you know what? I should probably explain something...

Okay, this next part is going to be a bit hard to swallow, but, Humans aren’t native to Earth. Not really native to anywhere. Humans are a synthetic species made to be adaptable, self-replicating, sapient servants. No one seems to know who made us, but it was a long time ago and we have since mostly gone feral. Humans live on all kinds of planets with all kinds of aliens. In most places we are a tolerated minority species just living our lives, in other places humanity has managed to eke out its own self-governing polities, and in a few places humans are mostly kept as servants or even slaves. Earth, it turns out, is kind of a human nature preserve, an experiment to see what a native human society would look like if it developed organically. It’s part of a debate between some of the more prominent local aliens about whether or not humans should be considered a full sapient species. I can’t help but feel we Earthlings are really cocking it up for the rest of humanity.

Anyway, Clementine, Clem, has a rare, valuable skill. She is what is known as a Shaper. Whoever created humans wanted the ability to customize their servants for a variety of tasks, to maybe make them mermaids to work on a water planet, or make them super strong and durable to serve as soldiers, or to make them horny and multibreasted and hyperfertile to be power breeders. To do this they invented some sort of nanomachines, which are so advanced and weird that no one really understands them. It’s science indistinguishable from magic stuff. Shapers can produce and interface with these machines to sculpt other humans, to remake their body in all kinds of amazing ways. But it isn’t just anyone who can be a Shaper, it’s this rare innate ability that some tiny number of humans have. Clem, while hustling janitorial jobs for a Shaper, was exposed to the nanomachines and it became apparent that he was one of these rare Shapers. Which landed him a decent paying job learning how to Shape.

The thing is, it isn’t just that Clementine is a Shaper, it’s that she’s a massively, hugely powerful Shaper. A freaking space wizard! Most people who can Shape, only have a tiny amount of talent. They can, say, change someone’s hair or eye colour, maybe make them a little slimmer or busty working a little bit at a time. Make minor cosmetic changes like Earthling plastic surgeons. People with enough talent to be professional Shapers, who are very few in number, have the ability to make larger changes, say, grow a new limb or give someone animal traits. But this is very taxing for them, and takes many hours and repeat sessions to do anything major. A tiny fraction of this small group are quite powerful, they can make big changes easily, and with work, can alter bodies far from their human baseline. But these Shapers are very, very rare. Maybe one in a billion humans has this ability. Clem is among the most powerful group of Shapers who can rewrite a human almost completely in a single session, giving them physical changes that defy the laws of biology. And she can do the very rarest of things: she can Shape aliens, albeit slowly, painstakingly over many sessions. This is such an enormously rare gift. Only a handful of people in the entire known universe are as talented at Shaping as Clementine is. Which makes her a very, very valuable commodity.

Halley-Prime, all fired up to discover the reason for the abduction, initially thought that Clem's Shaper abilities were the reason they were abducted. Except... looking into it she found that it was pretty unlikely. Clem's boss, themselves a powerful Shaper, explained that the Shaping ability is completely dormant until someone is exposed to the Shaping nanobots. In civilized parts of space where Shaping is common, this would typically happen when a young person first visits a shaper for a minor medical or cosmetic procedure. Or in many places parents routinely test their children at a very young age for the ancient talents: Shaping, psychic abilities, telekinesis, prophecy. But on a place like Earth? The Shaping nanobots are strictly forbidden meaning that any Shapers on the planet would be latent and nigh undetectable, especially from orbit. Which means that the abductors couldn't have known that Clem is a nigh-omnipotent Shaper. When you add in the very steep penalty for violating the Earthling preserve experiment.... it doesn't seem very plausible. Which, all together, was enough to convince Halley-Prime that Clem and his Shaping abilities were not the driving force between their abduction. And no offence to Clem, but he wasn’t really remarkable enough to warrant a highly illegal abduction without that.

But then again, what was special about us? About Halley-Prime?

So Halley-Prime set off on a quest to learn why she and Clem were taken by aliens. She learned who the information brokers were on Flotsam, those people and aliens that seemed to know a bit too much about everything. She started working for them, doing favours, paying for information when she had to. She insinuated herself into that world and became known as an infobroker herself and began to earn a modest living from facilitating deals. Halley made friends with the order-obsessed cyborgs who contract for security at the spaceport and in parts of the city. She started visiting the alien consulates in the nicer parts of the city, learning what other species knew. She cultivated contacts in the Syndicate that runs organized crime on the planet, sometimes even working for them a little to earn their trust. Halley-Prime visited alien Oracles, had her own potential for ancient human talents checked, and ventured out into the Junk Deserts with Scavenger crews to chase leads. She even went to the Far Outlands, the quarantined zones, and prospected for forbidden artifacts that might give her new insights. Most impressively, she gained entry to the forbidden Citadel of the Greys, the compound of the enigmatic administrators of Flotsam who typically forbid outsiders from entering their home. Maybe she learned what they knew? It took Halley-Prime months of work, but if anyone knew anything about why we were abducted it was her.

Which is why it’s so frustrating that she disappeared.

As Clementine tells it, it was just another day. Still Clem, he had another day of apprentice work for the Shapers, doing minor, boring changes, like removing unsightly blemishes to learn control of his new power. He had breakfast with Halley-Prime who was excited about chasing down a new lead, but there was nothing remarkable about that, she was always excited about finding a new thread to follow. She did admit that she might be away for a few days if the lead panned out, but that he shouldn’t worry. They kissed goodbye, I love youed, and went their separate ways. And that was the last time Clem, or anyone, remembers seeing Halley-Prime.

Clem did search for her, of course. He hounded all of her contacts among the infobrokers, but they didn’t know about the lead she was after. He asked the security folks, the consulate staffs, and the Scavenger crews that Halley most often worked with, but no one there had seen her either. Clem made a formal request to see what tracking data the Grey’s had on Halley, but they never responded. He even confronted one of the lieutenants of the Syndicate, fortunately one who respected Halley, who could only express ignorance and remorse at her disappearance. Without any leads, Clem had to give up and hope she returned, there was just no other way forward. Clem still doesn’t know what happened to her, whether she is dead or alive, whether she maybe was abducted again or escaped Flotsam, or whether she maybe found what she was looking for.

I personally hope she found her answers.

Weeks passed and then suddenly I appeared, naked and confused and having no memories of the two years Halley-Prime spent on Flotsam.”

***

I sit and think about what Hank has just told me as he serves some customers. Customers who are a hardy looking group of men that I decide have an air of futuristic desperation; very motorcar, very dystopian. They sit on chairs fashioned from cleverly bent pipe around one of the repurposed cargo canisters tables and drink beer analogue. The background music alternates between 1950s Rockabilly and very cheesy 1970s disco, presumably the only authentic Earthling music on Flotsam. These roadwarriors wear armour studded coveralls plastered with dust and wide streaks of rust. One of the group wears a cybernetic looking monocle thing, which might actually just be his eye. All of them have thick tattoo like lines of something metallic running along their exposed skin. "Scavengers?" I ask Hank when he returns to where I sit at the enormous steel structural beam serving as a bar. 

"Sort of," Hank answers. "Gauld and his boys are Salvagers, which are a bit more legit."

"And the difference is?"

"A Salvager stakes a claim to a particular plot of land within the Administered Zone, usually for something like a fairly intact derelict spacecraft. Their goal is to systematically strip the thing for everything its worth, reselling functioning parts, maybe scrapping any high value metals, and auctioning off any exciting technology. It's dirty, honest work; kind of like the mining industry of Flotsam. Scavengers, on the other hand, are more like prospectors, they are looking to find something valuable and strike it big all in one go. They essentially wander the Junk Deserts looking for rare artifacts or sexy tech, often without much regard for the official rules of salvage or other sapients claims. They also have a tendency to enter the Outlands." Hank leans in, "Salvagers don't much like Scavengers, so try not to get them confused... or call my customers Scavengers, okay?"

I nod and try not roll my eyes. Wake up on an alien planet just to find out people are just as tribally petty as back home. It seems human nature transcends Earth.

Hank pours me another not-beer and asks, "Where were we?"

"You still haven't told me why you’re a dude, oh formerly-known-as-Halley-two."

"Right...."

***

"So I woke up naked in Clem's bed and we both flipped out, like you do. After much confusion and some sex we figured out I’m not Halley-Prime, or if I am, I’m missing a ton of memories. So of course we try to learn what the fuck is going on.

Which actually doesn't take all that much effort. It turns out the apparent resurrection of a loved one is a feat only a handful of groups on Flotsam can pull off. Clem asked some of Halley-Prime's infobroker contacts and the next thing I know we’re at the very swank law offices of Luminous Intergalactic, the front company of the mysterious Annunaki aliens. The Annunaki are a *very* advanced and reclusive species who definitely don't live on Flotsam or spend much time in this galaxy. They do have this company though, and it has a branch on Flotsam to pay top dollar for any weird or interesting scavenged technology. Luminous Intergalactic has their offices in a handsome stone building with beautiful marble everything and staffed by a human man and woman who look suspiciously like Carl Sagan and Linda Salzman Sagan. They were very eager to help, at least to a point. The woman Sagan clone was able to confirm that I was a clone of Halley generated by one of their insurance policies. But the man-Sagan explained that they have strict client confidentiality and could not discuss the particulars of said policy. Clem asked if my presence meant that Halley-Prime was dead. The Sagans told us they couldn't comment on this particular case, but that death is often the condition triggering the policy. Although, they added, the insurance policy could depend on other more nebulous conditions too. Which, since we are two real live Halleys sitting in a bar talking about this, I suspect death is not the main trigger. Anyway, Clem kept peppering the LI employees with questions about Halley that they politely rebuffed while I thought about the thing I wanted to know most. Who the fuck was paying for this?

I knew the Sagans would never tell me, so I asked how much a resurrection policy cost. The answer, converting from our local currency, is completely too much fucking money. The Annunaki charge an absolute fortune for this kind of insurance, enough that virtually no one on Flotsam could afford it, especially Halley-Prime. I felt a tickle of anxiety in my stomach. What kind of sicko was I suddenly beholden to? A rich anonymous weirdo or a soulless interstellar corporation or worse, maybe I was in hoc to the Syndicate. I was fending off a panic attack when Clem asked if the Annunaki accepted other forms of payment. The woman-Sagan pointed out that Luminous Industries was more interested in technology or interesting artifacts than money, since what did the Annunaki need with the local currency? The man-Sagan continued that an artifact of sufficient value could easily be exchanged for a resurrection insurance plan, although he of course couldn't comment on my specific policy. I was relieved to hear this, since it was at least plausible that Halley-Prime found something really cool out in the Junk Desert and traded it for insurance. But that was only a possibility and it didn't really explain what might have happened to Halley, or why I had such a big gap in my memory, or why Halley-Prime felt she might need resurrection insurance in the first place. It was still wide open.

We left the offices of Luminous Industries basically right where we started from: Halley-Prime was still missing and I was a clone paid for by someone. Without any new leads Clem had to accept that Halley-Prime was out of the picture, either dead or long gone, maybe off planet. But he did have me, Halley-two, wide-eyed and naive to this brave new alien world. So Clem decided it was time to stop chasing Halley-Prime and focus on helping me. 

Clem really steered into it, making me feel like an absolute princess in my first weeks on Flotsam. He took some time off work and showed me around the city, taking me to all his favourite places and introducing me to his exotic friends. He cooked me strange alien delicacies and bought me amazing futuristic gadgets and generally taught me what I needed to live here. And Halley, I was so in love. I mean, in my mind we’d always been together, so I never stopped loving Clem, but this was like it was when we were first together, everything new and fresh. And the sex! He was so grateful to see me alive and he tried so hard to please me. It was the second greatest whirlwind romance of my life.

And for a few months it was enough.

But… curiosity started to get the better of me....

For the sake of Clem I really did try to stay out of trouble, but the mystery of Halley-Prime’s disappearance and my cloned existence was just too juicy to ignore. So when Clem went off to work with the Shapers, I tried to follow in Halley’s footsteps, introducing myself to her contacts and interviewing her friends to figure out where she might have gone. Unsurprisingly I didn’t learn much, except maybe something about the Syndicate and something about a journey deep into the Junk Desert. I couldn’t really act on either lead without putting myself into danger and I couldn’t do that to Clem. But I was still invested in solving the mystery. What was I going to do?

It turns out I didn’t have to worry about it for long, because that’s when it happened...

I came home from a jog to find a woman crying in our bedroom. She wasn’t anyone I’d met, a lanky brown haired gal wearing too large clothes, awkwardly hugging herself on our bed. She looked up at the sound of me entering the room and when our eyes met I realized I was looking at Clem. I must have looked shocked, because the blushing the woman whimpered “It’s me, it’s Clem.” I had no idea what was going on, but my good person module kicked in and I went straight to poor Clem and gathered her thin body into my arms and held her as she cried.

“What happened,” I eventually asked. “Why are you a girl?”

Clem sniffled and I combed her newly long hair out of her eyes and mouth. “It... it was an accident,” she sniffed, “sort of...” Clem explained that another Shaper had dared him into transforming himself into a woman. Clem had balked at this, he wasn’t trans and didn’t harbour any secret fantasies about being a woman. But the other Shaper kept after him, called him a coward, questioned whether he could even do it. The bullying didn’t really get to Clem, you know he’s had much worse, but the challenge intrigued him. Could he make that big a change all at once? He knew he was powerful, but he was still learning, and a complete gender swap was a substantial transformation. And, well, maybe it would be fun? He could surprise me and we could spend the night like gal pals, maybe do something silly and girly like paint our nails or go dress shopping. Maybe we could fool around or even have sex. With the option on the table, the idea of trying out sex as a woman, if only once, was actually kind of interesting. So Clem decided to go for it. He reached out to the Shaping nanomachines that lived in his blood and guided them with his mind, reshaping his body, not into the space princess she is now, but just a baseline female version of himself. He, now she, had succeeded.

At first Clem had been elated, she’d just accomplished something incredible. But then she felt something different about her nanites and her body. She touched them and tried to Shift her body back.... and couldn’t. Something had gone wrong. “I’m stuck!” Clem cried in my arms before breaking out in sobs again.

What no one had told Clem was that when a Shaper transforms themself, the change is permanent. No one’s entirely sure why things work this way. One theory is that it’s a safety feature: Shaping takes a physical toll on both the Shaper and the person being shaped, a shared cellular burden that leaves both parties exhausted by the experience. When a Shaper works on themself that burden falls entirely on their own body, and if they make multiple changes to themself they risk serious injury or death. Another idea is that it’s a security element, a purposefully designed limitation to prevent Shapers from altering their shapes and acting as doppelgängers and stealing other peoples identities. Regardless of the underlying reason, someone forgot to inform Clem of the rule, probably assuming he already knew it since it’s common knowledge. The Shaper who goaded him into the transformation was jealous of his power and decided to exploit his ignorance to hurt him. So Clem was stuck being mostly female. 

As I held Clem, trying to soothe her, an idea came to me. “Clem,” I said, “I want you to make me a man.”

I don’t know where exactly the idea came from, but I knew it was the right thing to do. If Clem was going be stuck with a new sex and gender, then I could too. This way I would be going through the same dysmorphic roller coaster as Clem, giving us a chance to support each other. Part of me thought we could even make it into an adventure, that we could teach each other about our new genders and make a game of it. Besides, it would only be a temporary change for me since Clem could change me back when we were ready. In the worst case scenario I suffer through a few months of body hair and sat on balls to make Clem feel a little better. “Clem, I’m completely serious. Make me a man.”

Clem looked at me, her wide eyes shining with admiration and tears. “Okay,” Clem said, pushing herself out of my arms and sitting up on the bed. “First, you’ll need to take off your clothes and lie down.” I did as instructed, touching my Key to command my clothes to relax. I slipped out of everything and dutifully laid down on the bed. My skin prickled in the cool air and I felt a wave of nervousness wash over me. I stroked my stomach and cupped my breasts in a goodbye gesture. What the fuck was I volunteering for? What did Shaping even feel like? “Last chance...” Clem told me as she kneeled over me, a concerned but excited look on her face. “Just get on with it,” I growled, worried that I would try and chicken out of it. Clem leaned down and kissed me hard on the mouth....

...and I felt a jolt; an electric tingle that ran through my body, radiating from where our lips touched and out through my limbs. My body began to warm, taking on a feverish quality as the invading Shaping nanomachines powered up. The heat concentrated like a welt in my breasts and I gasped as I watched them recede into my chest. This was actually happening! My chest reshaped itself, gaining muscular pecs, as the sculpting heat marched along my now washboard stomach and down to my hips which squeezed and narrowed, reformed, trading fat for muscle. These changes rippled out over my limbs which bulked up and lengthened, gaining muscle and strength. Waves of heat crawled over my head and face and I felt it reshape like putty, growing rugged masculine features. Finally I felt a sharp burst of heat in my vagina, alerting me to the most significant change. I moaned, a new deep, male sounding moan, as my clitoris and vulva began to push out and merge into a phallus. I gasped as my vaginal cleft fused and sealed, before ballooning out into a scrotum. I felt my guts writhe as my mutating ovaries migrated out of my body and became my new testicles. I had grown a cock and balls and ohhhh, my cock was so hard and...

I realized that Clem had pulled off her shirt and had grasped my new cock in her dainty hand and was jacking me off. I writhed at the alien sensations of my engorged hard cock being held in a tight, pistoning hand. I was panting, feeling a new pressure building, myself narrowing to a point. Clem saw me look at her and held my eyes a moment before ducking forward and popping the head of my cock into her mouth. The warm moisture of her mouth coupled with the kinky visual of my femininzed boyfriend sucking my cock pushed me over the edge and I came, ejaculating. Clem, inexperienced as she was, sputtered and choked on my cum and slipped off my cock giggling a little. I had only been a man for a few minutes and I had already had my first male orgasm.

And as I basked there on the bed, I realized I liked it.

What followed was a strange and kind of wonderful phase of our relationship. Clem made a game of steering into gender norms, experimenting with being a ‘stereotypical’ woman. Clem had her hair styled in ringlets and bought a very girly wardrobe of dresses and rompers and other very femme clothing. She insisted that I teach her how to do makeup, and she adopted lipstick and nail polish into her life. We went on dates, holding hands as she tottered uncertainly in heels, where we ate dinner while she played with her hair and giggled. When we went to watch the gladiators, she pressed herself into my strong arms and squealed at the violence. She was being, for all the weird heteronormativity, super cute. And I was finding myself falling into the game. I enjoyed how she relied on me for strength and comfort, and I started to look for ways to touch her protectively or clutch her posessively. I started to lift her up, not for any practical reason really, but as a macho display of strength and because she always cooed appreciatively. Performing being a man was, I was finding, fun.

And then there was the sex, which was actually fairly complicated. Despite Clem being gung-ho about playing with my cock when she changed me, she was actually quite shy about her new genitals. For weeks all we did was make out like horny teenagers, grinding crotches while she took off her top and let me play with her small, high tits. I would gently push for more, offering to teach her how great a female orgasm was, but she would wear pants or keep her underwear on and demur. To distract me, I think, she steered into giving me oral sex, performing awkward but improving blowjobs to keep me happy and away from her strange new vagina. It took half a bottle of berry wine to get us sufficiently relaxed, but I eventually got Clem out of her pants and onto my face. I went slowly that first time, lazily caressing Clem’s vulva with my tongue and raining her cute little clitoris with kisses, before slowly, so slowly ramping up my licks and finally slipping a finger into her pussy to stroke her. She writhed and gasped and panted and swore, her thighs boxing my ears and shoulders, before finally with a whoop she squeezed my head and bucked through her first orgasm. As she lay panting afterward I asked if she wanted me to keep going and breathlessly she nodded.

Three days later we finally fucked. 

After that our sex life took off like a rocket, both of us addicted to our new sexes like a couple of dumbass horny teens. Clem was an absolute whore in the sack. It was really, really fun and was absolutely the greatest whirlwind romance of my life.

This isn’t to say it was all sex and gender fantasy roleplay and good times. It wasn’t unusual to find Clem sitting sadly at night, maybe clutching a hologram with an old picture of her male self. And when she had her first period, she broke down completely, fingers bloody and wailing at the unfairness of it all. She even cried when I grew my first beard, jealous of my display of masculinity. Clem really did struggle to adapt to her forced new gender. It was a process.

I knew Clem had finally reconciled herself to her new body when she asked me to call her Clementine. I mean, it was kind of already obvious; the crying jags were gone, or at least about other things when they happened, and she’d seemed much happier. Clementine had also stopped trying so hard to be girly and had settled into a new persona. She was still more femme than before, but she’d ditched the elaborate makeup and styling and pink frilly clothes, and replaced them with a more mature and comfortable palette of simple modern womenswear. Clementine had really grown into herself and seemed ready to carry on with her adjusted life.

Which was the beginning of the end of our relationship.

You see, while Clementine was willing to experiment with a dude and will still occasionally take a man to bed, she is still mostly attracted to women. I noticed she started checking out girls when we were out on the town, and her enthusiasm for our sex life started to cool a little. But I, maybe foolishly, didn't think too much of it until the day when she asked me if I was ready to turn back into Halley, to be Shaped back into a woman. And well...

I balked, I didn't want to change back. 

I like being a man, I like being Hank. Some of it is the body itself; just like Clem, I had grown into being Hank and learned to enjoy my male body. The size, the strength, sex, the works; being a dude was great. But it was more than that. I liked that I was someone different, that I was Hank, a new identity that I owned, instead of Halley-two, an insurance clone of another woman. I finally felt like I was a real person and not just a redo. So I really didn’t want to change back into plain old Halley. 

Which meant that there was only one thing to do.

I wrote Clementine a letter explaining my decision and joined a Salvager crew headed into the Junk Desert. I know it was kind of a shitty thing to do, running away like that, but I’m still pretty sure it was the right choice. We couldn’t stay together and both be happy. Rather than drag things out, I decided to do the bandaid thing and get it over with so we could both move on and live our new lives. I could have my macho man adventures out in the Junk Desert and Clementine could find a nice new girlfriend and get past all this Halley nonsense. 

Little did I know that a month after I disappeared into the Junk Desert that a new Halley clone would appear.”

***

Hank smiles apologetically at me, “and that is the sordid tale of why I’m a dude.”

***

Chapter 4