Maker Messiah

by Ed Miracle

  “This is our prototype, the world’s first Maker. It makes perfect duplicates of anything that fits into its chambers.” Machen smiled like a kid with a frog in his pocket.

  Bobby blew across the top of his bottle, producing a soft hoot.

  “Big deal. It’s a 3-D printer.”

  Everett waved for silence. This wasn’t the usual Powerpods spiel. On-screen, the hairy arms passed a garden hose to Machen, who lifted a top-cone cover and directed a stream of water into it.

  “Any material which fits in the upper chamber can be used, but water may be the handiest. Consider this water to be the raw material from which you will make your copies. Your raw material does not have to be water or even a liquid. It could be any sort of scrap, from lawn trimmings to sewage, to common dirt. The imperative restriction is that the mass of the raw material in the upper chamber must always be greater than the mass of any item you wish to copy.”

  “Mass?” Bobby peered down the neck of his bottle.

  Everett snatched the remote and increased the volume.

  The upper cone overflowed, splashing Machen, who ducked too late and threw the hose aside. He opened a side-cone door. The camera zoomed to reveal a wire shelf spanning the interior. Machen unclasped his wristwatch, held it to show a twitching second hand, and laid the watch on the shelf.

  “Place your original item in one of the copy chambers. It doesn’t matter which side, except the opposite chamber must always be empty.” He shut the door and reached between the cones to the Powerpod.

  “Then you press the green button.”

  Hairy Arms retrieved a second watch from the opposite chamber, while Machen removed his original. They held them to show identical straps and faces with perfectly synchronized minute, hour, and second hands.

  Everett stared. How could this not be a trick?

  “You may copy anything that fits in the chambers,” Machen said, “so long as there is sufficient raw material in your upper cone.”

  Hairy Arms brought out an old-fashioned, boom-box stereo. One arm steadied the box on a table while the other pressed a running circular saw against it. With a whine and a screech, it lopped off a jagged corner, leaving the case splintered. Hairy placed this wounded artifact into one of the cones and shut the doors.

  Again, Machen pressed his button. The emergent stereos were identical in every visible respect including their ripped edges.

  “Wonder how they do that,” Bobby said.

  Everett shushed him. If anyone could do the impossible, it would be the guy who had already conjured electricity from artificial boulders.

  Next, Machen and his assistant copied the circular saw, followed by a baguette of French bread, a plate of fish, and a wicker tray of fruits and vegetables. Holding up a tiny white speck, Machen waited for the camera to focus on it.

  “From a single grain of wheat or rice, anyone with a Maker can feed a city. Copy one grain and you have two. Copy two grains and you have four. Within an hour, you could fill a truck.”

  Machen produced a toad in a red-wire cage and placed the cage in one of the cones. A close-up showed the amphibian panting and blinking.

  “Never,” he said, “never try to copy a living animal. This means any animal. Your Maker will kill it.” He pressed the button. Two cages emerged, each containing a collapsed, motionless toad.

  “At the molecular level these toads are identical, but they are both dead. Nothing with a nervous system can survive duplication. If your children try to copy a pet, the pet will die. This is very important. Children must never play with your Maker. In particular, they must never play hiding games in the cones. Maker cones should be locked shut when not in use. Please be careful with living things.”

  Everett’s stomach churned.

  “Duplicate toads,” Bobby said through a belch. He held his bottle at arm’s length, swirled it by the neck. “Didn’t think I drank that much.”

  Machen strolled to a bigger Maker. This one’s side-cones exceeded his height, and the towering top-cone, supported by steel struts, cast a shadow. Nestled between the cones, a central Powerpod was jacked waist high.

  “As you can see, larger items may be copied by extending the size of the chambers. Among the first things you will want to copy is a friend’s Powerpod, along with the cone segments he will need to turn it into a Maker. Copy as many Pods and cones as you wish, and share them with your friends. Ask them to do the same. In this way, you will help ensure that everyone who wants a Powerpod or a Maker will have one. It will cost you nothing but the effort to do it.” He backed from the machine and faced the camera.

  “Then together, you and I will eliminate poverty and scarcity for all time.”

  Everett froze. His limbic brain, beneath the conscious one, locked every motor impulse against a tectonic shift that it alone detected. Hairy Arms rolled a second Powerpod into view, and Everett held his breath. The narration faded. Hairy jacked his Powerpod chest-high and set a bridge into one of the big side cones. He aligned the rails and shoved a twelve-hundred-pound Powerpod into the chamber. Only when Machen leaned between the struts to press his green button did Everett breathe again. Thump, a boulder falling on moss. Then Machen and his assistant extracted two identical Powerpods.

  Everett stood. “If that thing is real . . . .”

  Machen continued, his ghost-eyes blazing.

  “Just as a lens splits and rejoins patterns of light, Makers split and rejoin patterns of mass and energy. E=mc2. The mass-equivalent energy of the item being copied is drawn into folded dimensions within the machine where an equal mass-equivalent energy is drawn from the raw material in the top cone. The Maker splits these energies between the two-receptor chambers to form perfect duplicates—all in the wink of an eye.

  “While a full description of this process requires some advanced mathematics, I assure you there is nothing mystical or supernatural about it. It only looks like magic.”

  His half-smile blossomed into a grin.

  “Makers are not about making more stuff. They are about getting stuff out of our way. As Maker owners convert their goods into free commodities, they will free us to focus our compassion and humanity on improving the world. For the first time, Makers will allow us to—”

  Everett wielded the remote to skip the baloney. “Where’s the part about setting it up?”

  “You going to build one?” Bobby set down his bottle.

  Everett found a menu and clicked Assemble Your Maker. A training video commenced, and they viewed the first part, learned how to attach the cones. When the voice went on about extending the cones to build a larger Maker, Everett switched it off.

  “Do we have—”

  “Still in the crate, behind the garage.” Bobby spoke with his fist against his mouth. “I was going to throw them away.”

  Everett strode toward the door, and Bobby rushed to catch up.

  “Do you suppose this thing is for real?” Bobby said. “I mean, if we can copy the copy machine, how will that guy make any money?”

  Everett stopped to glare at him.

  “Bobby, nobody’s going to make toads or wristwatches.”

  “Holy cow.” Realization flowed into Bobby’s rheumy eyes. “Everybody’s got one, everybody’s going to get one, and everybody’s going to make . . . money.”

  They unpacked the parts and lugged them to their Powerpod. Working in the glow of a fluorescent drop light, they assembled and attached the small cones, then filled the top one with water. First, they tried Bobby’s wallet.

  When Everett pressed the green button, the machine thumped softly, and the house lights blinked. As the drop light flickered back to life, he extracted two identical wallets containing duplicate cards, identical driving licenses, and two wads of currency. They sat on the damp grass, comparing Federal Reserve Notes: three sets of fives, a pair of tens, and a pair of twenties.

  After a moment Bobby couldn’t decide. “Which are the real ones?”

  Without a word, Everett got up an
d slipped into the house. He returned with Bobby’s favorite pistol—a semi-automatic, still in its holster—and stuffed it in the machine.

  “Stand back, Dad. It might cook off the ammo.”

  Bobby scrambled as Everett pressed the button. A louder thump. Again the lights blinked. Identical holsters and pistols emerged, right down to the worn bluing, the scratches, the serial numbers. Even the smell. Disbelieving, Everett hefted one in each hand.

  “Son . . . of . . . a . . . bitch.”

  Then Everett Aboud, the automatic Arab, pointed his father’s pistols at the lawn and pulled both triggers. The double blast woke every dog in the neighborhood.

  TWO

  “Gimme those.” Bobby grabbed the guns, leaving Everett to stare at his empty hands. “What did you do that for? Get inside. Quick.” Bobby yanked the drop light and ran. Everett followed. Inside, they rushed from room to room, turning off the lights. When the dogs quieted down, and nobody came knocking, Bobby said, “Well, that was stupid.”

  Everett went to his room. Bobby always said playing with guns will get you seriously killed, and Everett agreed, but he wasn’t playing out there in the yard. He pulled those triggers on purpose. Something didn’t make sense. Something was wrong. Yet those ear-splitting reports, those blinding flashes, the sting that lingered in his hands, they were real. Those pistols weren’t just lumps of steel, inert and heavy, devoid of consequence. They fired, serious as could be.

  Everett lay on his bed and pressed his toes to the wall, tried to stop the buzz in his hands from migrating to his head, knowing it was too late. Already, an old lyric presented itself. “Things as they are, Are changed upon a blue guitar.” Instant copies meant instant stuff. Just stuff. More of the junk we already have. Some freaky machine generates confusion and stuff. Now that’s stupid. But it didn’t quell the buzz tattooing his skull from the inside.

  He drew a pillow over his head. Too much thinking made his head hurt. He breathed a hundred slow breaths until he sagged into an old familiar dream.

  Once again, irresistible gravity pinned him to a dusty rug of the old house in Oakland. Once again, he was ten years old, flexing skinny fingers, unable to release the weight they held. No amount of wiggling would rid his hand of that ugly Colt .45 pistol. Involuntarily, he strained for its trigger. For the hundredth time he watched the hammer snap, a fireball erupt, and the top of the Colt flick back like a steel cobra. Boom. Once again, his mother rushed into the room, her muffled cries and frantic waves stirring the cordite stink. Once again, a softball-size gap appeared in his sister’s bassinet, and the wall was spattered red.

  “What did you do?” his mother screeched. “What did you do?”

  Her wails sucked the air from the room and out of his lungs. His chest refused to rise. Flattened, he waited for the buzz to stifle his bounding pulse. High above, his mother leaned over the crib and wailed. “What did you do?”

  Everett blinked awake, choked on a burlap tongue. It didn’t happen that way. His guilt was real, but the nightmare was false. The bullet passed into the ceiling that day, never touching his baby sister. Yet the next morning, his mother stood on the porch of their old house and told him, “Choose me or choose your father.” He didn’t understand. He was ten years old and he didn’t want to choose. When he said nothing, she took Melinda and departed for Canada. Remembering that day, fresh as a slap, made him gasp all over again. It was the same buzz.

  Something beyond his control or understanding demanded a response. Only this time he was supposed to know what to do. But he didn’t, so he drew the covers over his head and waited for the buzz to fade. Why does the world have to change before I find my place in it?

  Sunday morning, Everett rose before Bobby and retrieved his Cambiar internet phone from the laundry. It came free in the mail a month ago, no fees or charges, from the same people who shipped those Maker cones.

  He turned it on and scrolled through his email. Nothing from Montana Skies, where he interviewed three weeks ago. They might still respond. Midway Aero in Chicago liked his resume but had no openings. Don’t call us, we’ll call you. Buster’s Dusters said they wouldn’t consider him without experience-in-type, meaning 500 hours in a Turbo AgCat. So much for crop dusting out of Fresno. And the last note, sent by his student pilot, canceled their session this morning without asking to reschedule. Damn.

  Bobby shuffled through the kitchen in his underwear.

  “Too bad you’re flying,” he said. “Winter finals start today.”

  “Well, my eight o’clock just canceled, so how much is it worth to you?”

  Bobby smirked. “You’re not that good, kid.”

  “Oh yeah? I haven’t shot trap since we left Oakland, but I can still knock clay pigeons better than anyone at your club.”

  “Yeah? Prove it.”

  Everett rubbed two fingers with a thumb.

  Bobby feigned disgust. “Top score buys doughnuts,” he said.

  “No wonder you guys can’t shoot. That’s reverse incentive. You gotta reward the talent, Old Man. You gotta pay.”

  Bobby raised his hands, defeated. “Okay, I’ll spring for doughnuts, but only if you break ninety-five.”

  “You really need the points, don’t you. Did any of you guys shoot a ninety-five all season?”

  “Like I said, we could use some help.”

  “I’m expecting a call from an Italian actress. We might go to her place.”

  Bobby laughed, indulged the fantasy. “Hey, if I can shoot with a hangover, you can shoot with lover’s nuts.”

  Laughing felt so good, Everett made a counter-offer.

  “You help me with my engine this afternoon, and I’ll carry your cross-eyed team.”

  He was rebuilding a Honda four-cylinder to replace the one on his bike, partly to save money and partly for the experience. Motorcycle engines mimicked their aviation cousins, so if he found work with some fixed-base operator in Outer Podunk, knowing the tools and the skills would come in handy. Also, an ironclad rule of the Aboud household was no booze while handling weapons or tools, so here was a chance to wean Bobby off the alcohol for a while.

  By the time they arrived at the gun club, the strangeness of the previous night had gone. No one under the overcast sky spoke about Makers, or copying money, or duplicating pistols. Bobby’s team was happy to see him, as if nothing had happened. As if everyone had missed Philip Machen’s announcement and had not yet done the impossible.

  Bobby sold ten boxes of twelve-gauge reloads. Everett shot a ninety-six, earning his doughnut, and everyone grinned and slapped his back. Their team, The Hardly Ables, won the match.

  As lunchtime came, Everett and Bobby returned to their backyard, still wary from the night before. Now they were the neighborhood weirdos, the troglodytes with machinery despoiling the lawn. They copied food and ate it, and Bobby fetched a six-pack. Bottles copied from the fridge emerged cold from the Maker, so he tasted one.

  “Not bad for homemade,” he said, smacking his lips.

  Everett munched a cloned Oreo. “You can have your cookies and eat them too.” He grinned like a fourth-grader, showing off his black-and-white teeth. Afterward, Bobby copied his antique pistols, twice.

  “We can start a business,” he said, “and never run out of stock.”

  Everett’s rebuilt engine was too big to fit into the small cones, so they spent two hours assembling extensions and erecting a full-sized Maker. By the time they wrestled identical motors out of the cast-aluminum caverns, the afternoon was fading, and Everett decided to postpone his engine swap. Tomorrow he might copy the whole bike. This idea pleased him so much he took one of Bobby’s beers and slouched in a lawn chair beside him. They’d done enough for a Sunday afternoon.

  Bobby opened his eyes. “What about the rent?”

  Everett was sipping Budweiser, thinking about flying for Montana Skies.

  “Well, I guess we should put our cash in the bank and write a check. Otherwise, the agency will figure we copied the money
. If everybody does a few dollars, just to prove it works, nobody will be able to say for sure what’s real or what’s been duplicated. They can’t match serial numbers against every other serial number, every time. It’s going to be a mess.”

  Bobby got up. “If we combine our budget envelopes, we can deposit the rent today.” He strode for the house. “You drive.”

  When he returned, Everett was warming his motorcycle.

  The line at the teller machine was seven-deep, all men, each one guarding a stuffed envelope. Something was happening after all, and here it was. They were drawing stares from passing motorists.

  “Machine on Eleventh Street stopped taking deposits,” one guy said. “Sure hope we get a turn before this one fills up.”

  THREE

  Livermore, California. April 19

  Still Sunday

  Philip Machen completed his walk-around inspection, tipped open the canopy of his red, two-seater sailplane, and stepped into its rear seat. He fastened his seatbelt and turned the key for the master switch. His instrument screen hummed and displayed a preflight checklist.

  Tiedowns, Off. Voltage, Green. Control locks, Off.

  Leaving good places and good people always crushed him. He glanced at the two gray pavilions of the ranch house they had rented. In the hangar behind them, he and Tanner had turned their quantum duplex into the first Powerpod, and then into the first Maker. For seven years they had lived here and worked here, even hired Karen Lavery here. His throat tightened at the thought of her, and he brushed an imaginary cobweb from his brow.

  The night they announced Makers, he and Tanner had celebrated with poolside drinks and a tin of Hawaiian Poke. Raw, marinated tuna. They should have held a proper party, but a torrent of logistics swept away the brightest triumph of his thirty-four years. He had yet to absorb the reality of what they’d accomplished or to savor his feelings about it. There was simply no time.