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Homer Brandon sat in the observation lounge and looked down at the colony. The seed ship orbited five hundred kilometers above the surface of the planet. That let him see a good potion of the world at a time, but nowhere near all.
The first seed colony was rotating under the ship now. Fifty years ago it had started as a flat place for the shuttles to land and refuel. Now it was a city with more than ten thousand people in it.
Homer had worked on the colony since the seed ship entered the system. He was one of the top planers. He and two others selected the start sights for the different seeds, and determined the growth pattern for the colony.
This one, his third, was his best.
There had been no major native life. A few native fish swam in the ocean, but nothing more than primitive plants were on the land.
Terran plant life had quickly taken control of the land without much assistance. The native life had never had to compete against anything. The Terran stock had millions of years to develop aggressive behavior.
From orbit, Homer could see the green of the Terran plants covering all of the land on this section of the world. Projection showed they would completely dominant it in another fifty years.
Terran animals were following where the plants led. Like the plants, many were able to exist without any modifications.
“Not like the last colony,” he said, looking down at the world. There they had to modify everything to even have a chance of survival. Still, it had survived.
Homer would never know if the seeds he had planted there would flourish. The seed ships never returned to the planets they colonized. Trade ships were planed to follow centuries later, but Homer had never seen one.
“Please restate query,” the ship's computer said.
Homer looked up at the intercom above the view port. He was getting old, and tended to talk to himself. He did this every time he got to be more than sixty years old.
“I said this colony is better than the last one,” he said towards the intercom.
“Colony three has an eighty five percent chance of success,” the computer said. “That is far superior to colony two’s fifty one percent.”
“That’s what I said,” he frumped, getting up from his chair.
He walked out of the lounge and headed back to his quarters. The ship spun in orbit, creating a small artificial gravity. It was enough to walk in, but not enough that a fall would hurt him.
His current body was seventy-five Terran years old. Because of that he was confined to the ship. The lower gravity was much less taxing on the older body. All of the original seed ship crew were now old enough to be confined to the ship.
Only the second and third tier crews were still on the planet. Even they would be returning to the ship soon.
The seed ship would stay for a colony for fifty years, or until it reached a fifty-one percent chance of success. This was the first colony to reach the fifty-one percent before the time limit had elapsed.
On colony two, Homer’s body had died of old age before the colony reached the necessary point. Since he was only required during the initial stages of the colony, the ship had not created a new body for him until it reached this system.
He remembered waking up in the new system, inside a twenty year old body. A twenty year old body with more than two hundred years of memories.
The transition made when waking in a new body took a while. Especially when the previous body had died of old age.
He remember walking down a corridor in the ship, and a great pain in his chest.
His next memory was sitting up in the seed ship medical bay, inside a new body. For several weeks afterwards, he walked with extra care, and checked his pulse often.
The first two times had been easier. His body had been ‘suspended’ as the ship left for the next system. The first time headed out of Earth had bothered him, but after he woke young, he forgot his worries.
This time he would live to see the ship leave the colony. It was going to leave in a mater of weeks, and he knew he would last that long. The last body hadn’t died until it was ninety-one years old. That gave him plenty of room.
He got to his quarters and went into them. Unlike the observation lounge, all quarters were on the inside of the ship. There they were much safer from radiation and any other damage.
The protected samples were at the center of the ship. The genetic material that everything was cloned from was the most important thing on the ship. Everything on the colony, as well as all the crew, was cloned from it as needed. Keeping it pure was of the utmost importance.
Homer sat down at his computer interface and began choosing memories. The human brain could only contain so much data. When his new body was cloned, the computer would load it with all the memories he needed to do his job. Training on Earth, experience on the three other colonies and other mission requirements were the highest priority.
This information took up a large section of his brain, and space had to be saved for the things he would experience on the new world. That still left a large area for discretionary memory.
Because of his sudden death last time, he had not had a chance to choose which memories would be kept. The computer had chosen for him, picking mostly colony related events.
Since the computer had a full record of memories from each of his lives, he could choose memories from all of his lives to be included next time.
The transmitter implanted in the base of his skull sent the computer a record of his memories as they were made. They were available for review at any point after they had been backed up to the central core.
He had already chosen his memories from colony three. Now, he was reviewing the memories from colony two. He knew the computer had done its best based on his personality, but he wanted to make the choice himself.
When he had asked to review the memories from colony two, the computer had pointed out that most people only review their most current life.
He had insisted, and the computer eventually complied. He realized it required the computer to restore old files, but he didn’t like the fact that it had chosen the last set for him.
“Computer,” he said to the terminal. “Call up memory records for colony two.”
“Specify,” the computer replied. “You have seventy one point four three years of memories available for review.”
“Start where I left off last time,” he said, frowning at the terminal. “That’s what I always tell you to do.”
“Acknowledged,” the computer said, ignoring his comments. “Review set ready to start in year sixty seven.”
He picked up the headset next to the terminal, and put it over his head. The memories would be down loaded from the computer, through the headset, into his short term memory. He would retain them long enough to decide if he wanted them permanently, then they would fade away.
Once the headset was firmly on his head, he hit the start button in front of him.
The memories appeared in his mind at a fast pace. It was like watching a fast forward of his life. When he found something that interested him, he could slow the recording and examine it at normal speed.
At this point in the record, he had also been confined to the ship above the colony. Colony two was on a heavy world with a thick atmosphere. The storms that swept around the world destroyed anything on the surface.
The colony had been placed underground. All the plant life had been modified to grow from geothermal energy. Much of it ended up totally different from its Terran roots. Still, they had managed to make it survive.
That world Homer had been happy to leave. He hated the high gravity and being underground all the time.
The memories that flowed through his mind were of being on the ship. This time he had been more active. He had been in several social groups that met regularly.
Most of that had been edited out of his memories by the computer. He could understand why. The colony no longer needed its initial planers, so their social groups had nothing to do with the mission. The computer was very mission oriented. If the memories did not have mission oriented content, it almost never saved them.
Homer had slowed some of the memories down to examine, but few of them were worth keeping. Most of them involved card games or trivia. Like the computer, he felt that mission memories were more important.
As the scene of another of these meetings flashed through his head, he saw the mission director join them. He hit the slow button so he could see what the man had to say.
“I have received your complaint,” mission director Keller said to his previous self. “I don’t find any evidence to support it.”
“I’m not surprised,” his younger self said. “The process would have destroyed your questions along with everything else.”
“I chose the memories to take with me to this body,” the director said. “Anything that is missing is because I selected it to be removed.”
“The computer can’t transfer a soul,” Homer said. “When your body is suspended, you die.”
“The body dies,” the director said. “My life continues when my essence is put into the next body.”
“It’s not your essence!” the previous Homer shouted. “It is the memories of some other person who lived centuries ago three star systems away!”
“What is the difference between someone’s essence and their memories?” the director asked.
“It’s the difference between a person and a computer drive,” Homer said. “This process turns us into organic computers.”
“That’s what humans are,” the director said. “A brain is a computer as much as any other type.
“This technology is what allows people to get to the stars. There’s no other way to do it. Suspended animation doesn’t work and generation ships loose too much through the descendants.”
“I know all that,” Homer said. “But, I also know that there was life in this body before my memories were written into it.”
“The clones have to be aged,” the director explained. “You can’t write memories into an undeveloped brain. It wouldn’t take.”
“What develops in that brain before the memories are written into it?” Homer asked. “I know that I have memories that predate the memories that were implanted in this body.”
“The brains are stimulated electrically. If they weren’t, then they would not be suitable for memory implantation.
“Your memories are just left over bits from the implantation process.”
“What if those electrical stimulations create a person that is then erased?”
“This was tested on Earth before we left,” the director said. “Clones were aged and stimulated, then studied. There were no signs of any personality or mentality.”
“But, what about a soul?”
“What would you have us do?” the director asked, shaking his head.
“Have the computers teach the new clones, not overwrite them,” Homer said. “The same circuits could be used to teach it as a new person, not overwrite the new person who is forming.”
“What of the lost experience? Do you think the computer could teach people to do their jobs better than they remember doing them?”
“Is the loss of efficiency worth the souls of two thousand people each time we reach a new system?” Homer asked.
“If it worried you, you shouldn’t have come on the mission.”
The director turned his back to Homer, and walked out of the room.
The latest Homer hit the save button on his computer, and took off the headset.
“Computer?” he asked.
“Active,” the computer replied.
“Why was the last set of memories I viewed not included in this clone when I was revived?”
“Memories not critical to mission,” the computer answered. “Mission critical memories were give priority.”
“Were any humans consulted in this decision?” Homer asked.
“Mission director Keller was consulted,” the computer said. “But, editing was done by this computer.”
“Did Keller specify anything about the memory I just reviewed?”
“It was part of several sequences that he deemed unimportant for implantation into the next clone.”
“Show me the other sequences,” Homer said, putting on his headset.
The computer ran the other sequences through his mind. They were all of the same nature. Homer had been trying to get people to give up being reanimated in their next clones.
Perhaps it was because of his memories being edited by someone else, but he no longer seemed to mind the idea. He had been looking forward to being put into his new body sometime soon.
He had never thought about the body before his memories were placed in it. Now he realized that was because those questions had been removed from his memory.
“There’s an easy way to fix that,” he said, peevishly. He entered his code word into the computer and called up a list of selected memories.
The list showed all he had reviewed for his next incarnation. He read down the long list once, then hit the delete key.
“Are you sure?” the computer asked. “Deletion of these records could have serious consequences to your next body.”
“Computer, I order you to use this file for my reanimation process,” he said. It beeped and he reeled off his long password.
“This file is empty,” the computer said.
“Put my personal lock on the file,” he told it.
“This action does not fit with the mission program,” it said. “Please reconsider this action.”
“Computer,” he said, staring into its visual pickup. “I order this action with my personal code. You must obey.”
“Acknowledged,” it said. “File saved.”
Homer sat back in his chair. He felt happy for the first time in a long time. He didn’t know if a cloned body would have a soul, but his next body would have a chance to find out.

Mission director Keller sat in his office going over the preparations to leave the colony. They were all ahead of schedule. The seed ship would be on the way to the next world in less than a month.
“Director,” the computer on his desk said.
“Yes, computer,” he answered, putting down his work. “What is it?”
“Homer Brandon has again selected to be reanimated without any memories.”
“Damn him!” Keller said, slamming his fist down on his desk. “Doesn’t he know he is vital to the mission.”
“Chance of mission success drops thirty four percent without Brandon’s planning,” the computer answered.
“Initiate same proceeded as last time,” Keller said. “Use my director override on the memories.”
“Acknowledged,” the computer said. It began creating new memories for Homer.
“We need his thirty four percent,” Keller said, and turned back to his reports.