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It starts with a tubie.
The kaminoan overseeing his growth assumes the empty pod means a spontaneous abortion, disposed of by the cleaning droids before the expired tissue began to decay. The kaminoan marks down the termination and moves on.
The possibility of an early decanting never crosses the kaminoan’s mind. The clone is too little to have more than the first half of his number, the number of the tower upon which his growth pod resides. The second half of his number, the number indicative of delivery sequence, isn’t scheduled to be assigned for another three weeks, and kaminoans are well known for following production schedules.
The Force does not care for schedules.
___
There is a baby in their garden.
He is a beautiful little thing, with pale bronze skin, dark wispy curls, and eyes that are the foggy blue of a newborn. He has a tiny upturned nose, and ten perfect toes, and his right arm ends just above the elbow.
But he is the first child their village has welcomed in eleven years, and a child is a child, and a child will be cherished, whether they are found growing among the vegetables of the back garden or not.
___
The next is a toddler.
He is too small for flash training, too small for simulations. His world does not yet extend beyond the doors of his nursery, his troubles do not consist of anything but his current game, and his knowledge does not include anything more than the laughter of his brothers, the smile of their caretaker, and the love in his heart.
The keypad is defective. It refuses to lock the door.
After one too many sleepwalking incidents, he disappears.
___
Two months after the arrival of their son, another child is found in a garden bed.
It is their neighbor, the one with the troublesome goat, who finds the child. She announces his arrival with a shout that wakes the whole village, and tearfully introduces him to everyone, never once releasing him from her embrace.
And when she discovers his tendency to sleepwalk, well. A two year old child is easier to contain than a stubborn old goat, and her husband sighs good naturedly and goes to fetch his tools, declaring that with their son, their goat, and the number of locks he’s installed, they’d have the most secure property in the whole galaxy, not even the most gifted thief could get in.
He and his wife both agree that a child is far more precious than any riches a thief would want, anyway.
___
One of the mandalorian trainers goes off-world for a job.
When they return, they begin training the newest batch of cadets, a group of bright eyed preschoolers. No one thinks twice about the fact that these children were raised in a near-sterile environment. They assume their superior immune systems will keep them healthy.
They are wrong.
The trainer brings back a mutated virus, and the twenty pint-sized clones spread it to each other easily. Within a week, they are quarantined in their nursery. Luckily, the symptoms are not severe, merely very unpleasant, and they recover within another week. All except one.
His fever spikes. He grows delirious, and he fluctuates between distressed, restless sleep, and too still, feverish consciousness.
Finally, his fever breaks, and his batchmates rejoice. He recovers, and eventually rejoins his brothers in their training.
It is obvious something isn’t right. He is slow to respond, ignores his trainers, and is not aware of his surroundings. His caretaker brings him to the medics, and they realize that the fever affected him more than they believed.
He doesn’t return to his brothers that night.
___
The blacksmith is the next to receive a child.
He is carefully tending to his wife’s herb garden, big, calloused fingers clumsily wielding the small-handled trowel and shears never meant for his hands.
He is quietly overjoyed to find the babe, all soft curls and big eyes staring out from baby fat cheeks. The boy has questions, and the blacksmith does his best to answer, tripping over explanations and quietly rumbling out educated guesses, with the same diligent, and slightly graceless, dedication he shows his late wife’s flowerbeds. The boy is much like him, quiet and awkward, though that could be more due to the child’s lack of hearing than lack of social aptitude.
Whatever the case, the blacksmith raises the boy to the best of his ability, teaching him to swing a hammer, keep a temper, and quench steel. He teaches him the sign language of the deafening forges of the larger cities, he shows him how to stoke a fire, and he tells him how to plant a garden.
And if the little boy is just as adept at plucking weeds and trimming twigs as he is at speaking with gestures and coaxing shapes out of metal, then who is the blacksmith to stop him?
Every living thing needs a loving touch, after all. Even plants.
___
The kaminoans do not notice the missing clones.
They calculated for a certain percentage of product failure, anyway, and it is well below the margin, not yet concerning enough to warrant investigation.
And if none of them realize that they have not authorized the decommissionings, well, leave it to arrogant scientists to ignore the fact that their data is skewed.
___
After the first three children, something changed.
It was much like the bursting of a dam. First, a drop, then a trickle, then a veritable flood of children begin appearing, in garden beds and flower pots and window boxes.
The village bursts with new life, with laughter and love and hope. Couples who were barren, parents who lost their children to sickness, those who were not yet of age the last time a babe was born and thus never had the chance to try, they all find children in their gardens, and they all love them more than anything in the galaxy.
And so what if their children all share the same face? They are each different in their own way, whether they are blind, or their eyes are two different colors, or their skin and hair are as pale as snow. Their differences aren’t an issue, and neither are their similarities. They will still be loved and cared for, for they are children, and children are precious.