Doppelganger Girl

by T. R. Woodman

  In spite of how awful—evil—Mrs. Vandergaast had been to her the night before, Evelyn knew she was right about one thing. She had a responsibility to make sure the agribot was working properly, so she sat up on the edge of her bed—Jane’s bed actually, as it was her quarters on the shuttle she had been using—and turned to look at herself in the wall-mounted mirror.

  Disgusting worm … Her skin was pale, almost plastic, and had a sheen of sweat and oil that had oozed from her pores during her fitful night. She had never seen dark circles under her eyes, but there they were with a little purple hue to them that made it look as if Misha had punched her in the nose. Bloodshot eyes rounded out her once-vibrant, now-vacant appearance. She had seen photos of women arrested in the early hours of the morning after a night binging in an alleyway. They looked better than she did as far as she was concerned.

  Stripping off her clothes as she took the single step to cross her cramped quarters, she walked into the shower closet and ten minutes later was clean and dressed, had her still wet hair pulled back out of her face, and she was ready to endure another day in the colony. Tapping her eyelids, she noticed the swelling had gone down and the darkness had left. Thank God for good genes.

  Grabbing a meal replacement bar from the cabinet—less because she was hungry and more because she knew she needed it—Evelyn walked down the ramp of the shuttle and headed into the midmorning light.

  Inhuman … tool … The words still bounced around in her head, ricocheting like bullets off concrete. She couldn’t make them stop, and she was looking forward to working on something in the hopes that maybe it would take her mind off the way she felt. She knew it was unlikely. As vicious as it was to be emotionally assaulted the way she had been, the most painful part about it was the fact that so much of it rang true in her ears.

  The truth was that she didn’t know what she was. She sure felt human, but she knew she was different. Even at sixteen, or whatever-the-hell age she was, she knew she had responsibilities others couldn’t begin to understand. And while Mrs. Vandergaast had been right about her need to check on the agribot, Autumn had been right about Joseph, and that was making her heart feel like the full weight of her mountain was resting on top of it.

  If Joseph chose her, he would be choosing exile. She knew what that felt like, walking in the dirt, alone, but he didn’t. She couldn’t bear the thought of not being with the best friend she had known in her few short years—the boy with the messy hair and the mossy-green eyes—and the thought of him giving his crooked smile to another girl just about made her wish her heart would stop beating. But the pain of seeing him as an outcast had to be worse. She couldn’t do that to him. She couldn’t let him do that to himself.

  Abomination … worm … Evelyn brushed the tears back from her eyelids and tried to keep her tired chin from quaking as she walked toward the fields—alone. It was a feeling she was determined to get used to, and as she looked over her shoulder at her mountain, sure that it had felt the sting of solitude for millions of years, she was also sure she would feel the sting of the loss of her first love for at least that long.

  WRENCHED

  Vista had been an engineering marvel. A space station built to sustain human life indefinitely. It had all the trappings of a prosperous society—a wooded park in the center of the biodome, shops and stores surrounding it, and labs, offices, and residential quarters surrounding those. Of course, space was at a premium on a space station, so the residents’ quarters were small, but the future colonists who were living there were determined to make the cramped conditions work.

  Unfortunately, no one, including Evelyn, had expected the trip to take more than a few weeks. The device that allowed them to fold the fabric of space on itself, making it possible to travel impossible distances instantly, had been her creation. When she had finished working on it—a labor that had taken the better part of two years and billions of dollars—a brilliant if not-so-creative engineer had christened the device the Trans-Universe Relativity Drive. Evelyn couldn’t stand the notion that her creation could end up being called by its unfortunate acronym, so she renamed it. The effect the drive had reminded her of the children’s game Leap Frog, where one child would hop over the back of the other. In a manner of speaking, the drive allowed them to “hop” over space, and Evelyn figured she built the device, so she should be the one to name it. People seemed to prefer calling it the Leap Frog anyway, and the name stuck, but when it was damaged and the residents realized it might possibly take decades to get to their new home, they quickly grew restless.

  Even from her first day with a body, as a person, Evelyn had been overwhelmed by data. She was responsible for managing nearly everything associated with the space station—life support, propulsion, power regulation—and before she had a body, when she had been artificial intelligence running on high-tech computer systems, it was easy. She had endless capacity for it and could manage all of it without so much as a blip.

  But as soon as she had a body, things changed. Her brain could still handle the work, but her body—her physiology—had a harder time keeping up. She had moods and emotions and hormones, and she needed rest and sleep. The weirdest thing of all to her was that she needed to play, have fun, and to laugh.

  The nanites in her body had acted like an antenna of sorts, allowing her to read the signals from all the electronics around her. It was like her brain was plugged in and she could speak directly to all the computer systems around her. After a month on Vista, with the billions of computer processes going on, and the noise and the chaos, Evelyn unplugged. She learned how to tune all of it out, and thanks to Joseph, she learned how to have fun.

  It wasn’t easy, though. Many of the residents blamed her for the problems with the Leap Frog, and since she was the only one who could fix it, she had to spend a lot of time dealing with childish adults and doing work that was anything but childish.

  Disconnected from the technology, she didn’t have the constant noise in her brain. After the past few years—for the most part—she never looked forward to plugging back in. When she did, it was like she was trying to remember a foreign language she had once known but had long since forgotten—like she was being pressed into a conversation with someone hopped up on speed, suffering from memory loss, and who had had their personality surgically removed. And so, as she reluctantly stood over the agribot, rolling her shoulders and then her neck until it popped, she forced herself to remember how to speak “bit.”

  Evelyn had forgotten about the tingle and hum in her body when she allowed the nanites to receive signals. It was uncomfortable, like she had just realized she had had too much coffee and had the jitters. Not a second later, she felt a tickle deep within her, like an itch in her spine, as the agribot came online.

  The hum Evelyn felt inside her was soon dwarfed by the droning hum in the air around her, emanating from the bot.

  The agribot was huge—about ten feet tall while it rested on the ground—and it was almost a perfect sphere. In many ways, it looked like a giant white ball, though a lot of the paint had been scratched and the surface gouged from laboring in the rocky earth. Other than the panel on the back, which allowed the gardeners to add more seed and fertilizer, the only visible components were the dozens of optics the bot had all over its surface.

  As the bot powered up, it trained one of its optics on Evelyn, the blue hue of the scanner just barely visible in the soft light of the cloudy morning. Evelyn knew it was trying to read its surroundings; the optics were designed so that the bot could see everything around it, especially humans and animals. A few seconds later, the bot stopped its scan. If it weren’t for its size, it would have been one of the least intimidating bits of technology the settlers had—that is, until it’s legs started to unfold.

  From the underside of the sphere, eight long and spindly legs started extending from mostly hidden panels, stretching out on either side of the bot. Pressing their pointed ends into the dirt, Evelyn watched as the legs continued
to extend and push and lift the enormous body of the bot into the air. A moment later, the agribot stood to its full height of thirty feet, with each of its powerful legs holding its body aloft like it was a giant spider. It shifted its weight, its legs grinding into the dirt and rock as it braced itself for work.

  Evelyn listened to the hum in her body as the bot ran its startup processes, and felt the flash of the code in her mind. She had engineered the bots to record their work for the scientists, so all she had to do was look for the video feed to see what had happened the day before. If the bot had tried to run down a person, Evelyn needed to figure out why—because every protocol in the bot prevented it from harming humans.

  As the video feed loaded, Evelyn could see the images in the back of her mind like she was recalling a very vivid memory. It was another reason she hated plugging back in. Her brain couldn’t distinguish between her own memories and the downloads she pulled. They became part of her, cluttering her brain with more things she didn’t want or need, and she couldn’t forget them any more than she could forget her name, or how to tie her shoe, or the fact that she had, in fact, been grown in a lab.

  The giant agribot locked its legs and froze as Evelyn read the video feed from the day before. It was as if she was sitting on top of it, and she felt the bot lumbering along a newly planted row of genetically engineered wheat. The long legs of the bot were surprisingly agile from Evelyn’s perspective, touching down on the crumbled dirt with much less force than she would have expected from a multi-ton spider. The long spindles from the belly of the machine were furiously tending the weeds that had cropped up overnight, and the bot was reading the life signals of the plants and nature around it.

  There were very few gardeners in the fields, and for several minutes, Evelyn didn’t see anything at all of human life, but as the bot approached the end of the row, Evelyn saw a woman. Her frame was slight, wispy, and the field clothes she wore draped on her body. The wide-brimmed hat obscured her face, and her back was to the bot. Given her size, though, and the fact that there were only a dozen female gardeners in the population, Evelyn suspected it was Mrs. Telini, a widow who had lost her husband shortly after they had left Earth. Mrs. Telini was older, but the way she worked put most women half her age to shame, and Evelyn watched her through the eyes of the bot, admiring her stamina as she also worked to clear a row of weeds.

  Everything seemed fine, and then without any warning, the agribot lurched, covering nearly a hundred feet in three seconds, and then stopped, slamming its leg down into the ground less than a yard from Mrs. Telini. The earth shook under the force of the blow. In a fit of panic and nearly falling over backward, Mrs. Telini screamed in terror and scampered away from the agribot’s giant mechanical leg. A few seconds passed, and then, as if nothing had happened, the bot turned back to finish its row of weeding.

  Evelyn was shocked. Mrs. Telini may have been panicked, but her own heart had nearly stopped at seeing the sudden violence of the agribot’s actions. She couldn’t make sense of it and turned to look out over the field, as if seeing it through her own eyes instead of through those of the machine might give her the answer. Still nothing, but she was sure there was more to what had happened than what she saw in the video feed.

  Evelyn turned back to the bot.

  “Can you give a girl a lift?” she asked, more for her benefit than for the bot’s, as it was what she was telling it to do through her nanites that mattered.

  The bot lowered its body, and from a panel in the front, a ladder emerged, as if the giant spider was growing a beard below its chin, all the way down to the ground. Evelyn grabbed the rungs of the ladder and climbed up onto the back of the bot. There wasn’t a seat on its back, but there was an indentation in the top—not visible from the ground—and some crossbars. As she looped her feet under one bar and sat on the other, the bot lifted its body again and started walking toward the far end of the field.

  For a fleeting moment, she felt like royalty, remembering the pictures she had seen of princesses riding in carriages on the backs of elephants. But no sooner had the image come than it faded as she realized she was about three times higher and her elephant was made of hard white metal.

  The bot moved into the fields, and twenty minutes later, it came to the spot where Mrs. Telini had almost been impaled.

  “Lemme down, Charlotte,” Evelyn said, grabbing the rungs of the ladder and riding down to the ground as gently as if she were riding an elevator.

  The sun was starting to warm the fields, and Evelyn felt the sweat start on her brow. Wiping it away with her forearm, she walked to the back of the bot. Opening the storage hatch, she slid a pair of work gloves over her hands and started looking for some sign of what caused the bot to turn aggressive. It didn’t take long.

  Not twenty feet from where the bot stood, Evelyn found the hole in the ground it had made when it slammed its leg down. The hole was easily a yard deep and six inches wide, and the force of the blow had packed the damp earth around the inside. But as impressive as the hole was, it was the snake coming out of it that really grabbed her attention.

  It was unlike anything she had ever seen, in person or in the wealth of pictures she had stored away in her head. The body of the snake was long, and it stretched at least ten feet out of the hole. At its widest, it looked about as thick as her thigh. It was a mottled black and brown color with a reddish belly, and the most disgusting part was the thin ridge of tiny hook-like horns down the length of its back.

  Evelyn had no idea what the head had looked like, as it appeared the bot had pulverized it with its leg, and she was a little glad for not knowing. She stepped closer to the snake and curled her lip in disgust as she kicked at it with the tip of her shoe. It was most certainly dead, and as best as she could figure, the agribot had detected the snake and had raced to Mrs. Telini, not to hurt her, but to save her. No doubt Mrs. Telini had no idea she was even in danger, given the way she had reacted and how quickly she had run off.

  “Is that what you were doing?” Evelyn asked, turning toward the bot, again asking more for herself than for the bot. Cocking her brow in wonder, Evelyn went back into the video, isolating the view from the eyes on the side of the bot that might have seen the snake. Again, she was shocked.

  In real time, the snake had moved so quickly and had blended in with the surrounding dirt that it probably wouldn’t have been perceptible to the human eye. And it looked like the video had warped for a split second as the snake raced through the brush, moving as fast as a galloping horse. In slowing down the footage, Evelyn also got a clear look at the snake’s head. Not only was it large, but it looked like the head of a large bat, without the ears, and was just as repulsive as she thought it would be.

  Evelyn felt a shiver run up her spine at the thought of this disgusting creature going straight for Mrs. Telini, and then felt her stomach flip, remembering that the snake’s image would be with her forever, stored away in the deep recesses of brain, never to fade. The stuff of nightmares.

  She turned to pat the long leg of the bot. “You’re a hero, girl,” she said, climbing back up the ladder to the top.

  As the bot turned to walk back to the settlement, Evelyn couldn’t help but feel a smug sense of relief. Mrs. Vandergaast had been so cruel the night before, and Evelyn couldn’t wait to tell her she was totally wrong about the bot. Riding with the sun on her face, Evelyn imagined telling the councilwoman in front of the whole council that the bot had saved Mrs. Telini. A smile crept across her face as she wondered exactly how ugly Mrs. Vandergaast’s face might get as she learned of her mistake. It was a perfectly wonderful dream, and Evelyn ran it over in her mind, enjoying it more with each pass.

  After several minutes, they arrived back at the greenfield where the farming equipment was stored. Evelyn relaxed for a moment, allowing the bot to rotate into its place. It still had to be loaded with more seed and fertilizer for the day ahead, and it was already behind in its work by a few hours. Feeling the rumble of
the bot as it lowered to the ground, Evelyn stood and absently took in the view.

  The school building wasn’t more than a couple hundred yards down the slope from the greenfield, and the garden wasn’t but a few hundred feet from that. She was supposed to meet Joseph and spend the day with him and the kids in the garden. She knew he would be looking for her, but she really didn’t know what to say to him. She had made up her mind about putting some distance between them, and as much as she wanted things to be different—as much as she wished she was different—she knew it wasn’t possible. Evelyn felt the pinch in her chest again, her head telling her that it was for the best but her heart screaming at her to run to him. As she sat on the top of the bot, torturing herself and watching as Joseph came out of the building with the kids, her head won out.

  Not wanting to be seen, Evelyn spun around to lie on her stomach and propped her head on her hands. Joseph had gathered about a dozen of the littlest children around him and was looking toward the town. He obviously was waiting for Evelyn to show up, and she hated that he was giving her so long to show.

  Ten minutes passed, and Evelyn could hardly stand it, the time seeming to drag on. Joseph alternated looking down at the kids and then out over the tops of their heads. The kids were getting restless, starting to run around and chase one another. Evelyn figured Joseph would leave with them any second. He brushed the hair away from his eyes, and then, patting a couple of the kids on the back and pointing at them to walk toward the garden, he moved away from the building with them.

  Just then, Evelyn saw Misha come around the side of the building, and she felt her stomach twist at the sight of her. Misha waved and said something that Evelyn couldn’t hear, and Joseph turned to look back at her.

  “What are you doing, Joey?”

  “I’m taking the kids to the garden … Evelyn was supposed to come with me.”