by Dena Nicotra
“No. I’ve changed the security coding and jammed the frequency sequence. We’re safe for the next several hours, and that’s more than we need.”
“Can you tell me if there’s a bathroom in here? I think I’m going to be sick.”
“Through my office, down there on the right.”
I nodded and walked away in the direction he’d pointed. Mic’s office was modest, and comprised mostly of dark mahogany bookshelves. I paused at his desk to pick up a picture frame, which went into animation mode as soon as I looked at it. A blonde woman dressed in a wedding gown lifted her veil, and then Mic moved into the frame. I could see from his profile that he was smiling. His head dipped, and he placed his hands on either side of her face before he kissed her. The frame dropped from my hands and hit the carpet. He’s married. My heart felt like it was in a vice. Of course, I didn’t know if she was still alive, but just seeing him with her made me realize that he’d had another life. One that he shared with a woman he’d loved enough to take as his wife. I picked the frame up from the floor and replaced it on the desk. I found the bathroom and quietly closed the door behind me. My reflection in the mirror looked haggard at best. I used the toilet, and then splashed cold water on my face. I cupped my hands under the stream and took several deep gulps before shutting it off. Wiping my face with a hand towel, I told myself that it didn’t matter what his life was like before…it wasn’t like I was planning to marry the guy anyway. I dropped the towel on the counter, clicked off the light, and avoided looking at anything else as I passed back through his office to the main room.
Mic was busy at a massive piece of equipment, pressing buttons and turning a series of dials. My eyes followed the machine from the ceiling. Ben was encased in a large glass egg-shaped dome. His body lay still on the gurney, but as my eyes reached his feet, I sucked in my breath.
“Oh my God, did you do that?”
“Yes I did. It’s the bio-printer I told you about.”
“You… made him a new foot?”
“Uh-huh.” His tone was so casual, as if he’d done this a million times.
“Is it mechanical?”
“No, it’s one hundred percent his.”
“But is it human flesh?”
“Yes, it’s genetically sound, re-generated human tissue taken from his own tissue structure and his cells.”
“Fuck me! That is crazy!”
“I’d love to take you up on the offer, but right now we’ve got work to do. You’re next.” I crossed my arms over my chest and leaned against the wall.
“Mic?”
“What?”
“…I’m afraid.”
“No reason to be. You saw how fast I fixed Ben’s foot right?”
“Yes, but…that’s not the same. A simp is different. I’m going to be staring at a mirror image of myself.”
“It’s no different than having a twin.”
“Yeah, but unlike you, I’ve never had a twin.”
“I realize that, but if you can find a positive in it…”
“I’m trying. I wouldn’t have come if I hadn’t thought it was worth a try.”
“Then what are you waiting for? All you have to do is take off your clothes, crawl up on that table and relax. It will only take about an hour.”
“An hour?”
“Give or take.”
With some coaxing, I finally relented. I stripped out of my clothes and got on the table as Mic instructed. The metal felt cold against my back. I took small breaths as the glass dome lowered around me. I could hear Mic through a microphone and he encouraged me to relax. Scanners above me moved in a synchronized fashion from my head to my toes. Sensors Mic had placed on my forehead and chest monitored my pulse and heart rate. I closed my eyes and tried to imagine I was in another place, but as soon as I thought of anything remotely relaxing, my eyes shot open. Time stood still while the machines did their work.
Eventually, Mic’s voice came through the speakers and I realized that I had dozed off. “We’re done. Just give me a moment to complete this final circuitry, and I’ll have you up and out of there, all right?”
“Okay,” I said. When the glass dome lifted, I sat up and swung my legs off the table. Mic came to my side and kissed me on the lips. “How do you feel?”
“Fine. Rested, actually.”
“Good. I infused your cells in the process.”
“With what?” I asked, feeling horrified over what that could entail.
“Relax, I simply hydrated your body and balanced your electrolytes.”
“Oh. Thanks.” Ben was sitting on a stool at a metal table. He grinned and waved at me, and then returned to what he was doing. To my amazement, I realized he was eating what looked like a cheeseburger.
“Can you believe this? It’s the best meal I’ve had since I don’t know when.” He shook his head and took another over-sized bite.
“Where did he get that?”
“It’s not from the same place he got the foot, but close.” Mic said with a laugh.
“Is it safe to eat?”
“Oh, come on now. How do you think I managed in here for so long?” He draped a white sheet around my shoulders, and I pulled it around to cover myself.
“Okay, I want one too…but I want to meet her first.”
“She’s not ready just yet. Let’s get you something to eat first, and then she should be, okay?”
“Okay. I let him lead me to the desk next to Ben, and ate the 3D burger Mic placed in front of me. It felt creepy to eat it, but I had to remind myself that fabricated foods had been an integral part of society for decades. They followed genetically modified organisms that produced crops. Those initial efforts produced severe problems, and technology had evolved. Fabricated foods had been deemed safe for longer than I’d been alive. It was just strange to see it at this level.
“If you could whip up a six pack of beer and some smokes, I think I’d be fully satisfied,” I said wiping my mouth.
“Done. You’ve earned that.” I raised an eyebrow. “Are you telling me you can poof out a pack of smokes and some beer?”
I fully expected him to punch in some code at the monitor, but that didn’t happen.
“No, Lee, I’ve got a fridge in my office and a carton of smokes in my desk. Sit and rest a minute. I’ll be right back.” I watched as he disappeared down the hall, and then he returned with the requested items in hand.
“Yeah, but is it cold?” I asked with a laugh.
“Of course. Warm beer would be rude after all I’ve just put you through, right?”
He kissed me on the tip of my nose, and then helped me down, to lead me back to his office so that I could get dressed. Ben seemed content with his food, and remained in the other room.
“He has lung cancer,” Mic explained.
“Can’t you fix that for him?”
“I’m not a doctor although with the advancements through IDE, it has been done…for those who could afford it.
“Yeah, I know how it worked in the past.”
“I didn’t design the way the government made things work, Lee. We did have several programs for the unfortunate…” He trailed off when he saw the look on my face.
“Well?”
“I offered to try. It would require creating a simp physician, and making some significant adjustments to our plans.”
“But you could make it happen, right?”
“Yes. I could make that happen if he’d been interested…”
“He refused?”
“Yes. He did. He said that he wanted to join his wife sooner rather than later. How could I argue with that?”
“I guess you can’t. There’s something ironic about being able to extend life in a world where people are so anxious to leave it.” I exhaled smoke at the ceiling and then sat back in the leather chair against the wall. I didn’t want to look at the picture on his desk, so the spot I chose was as far away from it as I could sit.
“Mic? I think you’d better come
back in here, buddy,” Ben called out.
“She’s awake,” Mic said quickly, extinguishing his cigarette in his beer can. I did the same, and raced after him.
My double was sitting up on a gurney, looking up at the ceiling. Instinctively, I knew she was looking for all possible exits. In the back of my mind, it bugged me that she was nude in front of Mic.
“What the fuck?” said my simp-double when she saw me. A cold chill ran up my spine, and I immediately took a few steps back. What alarmed me was that I was thinking the exact same thing.
“Do you want me to shut her down for a minute, Lee?” Mic’s voice brought me out of a daze.
“No, it’s okay,” I said, taking a step forward. I knew I was going to have to deal with this sooner or later, and it was better to get it over with before we had to get back out on the road. I had to marvel at the likeness. She even had the same scar on her right forearm. The one I’d received from running into a branch when I fell from a tree I was climbing in a neighbor’s yard. I looked deep into her eyes and felt a strange conflict in my brain. On one hand, I felt the need to connect to her…and on the other, I wanted to smash her skull in, because she represented everything that I feared…and hated.
“Are you done staring at me now?” Her voice was my own, and yet it sounded foreign — like the way you feel when you hear your voice on a recording. She crossed her arms and glared at me. I smiled and shook my head.
“Yeah, bitch. I’m done staring at you. Just remember, you’re nothing but a cheap imitation of the real thing.”
“And you’re as fragile as a piece of glass, like all humans are.”
“Mic, I think I need another cigarette,” I muttered, turning away from my double.
He pulled the pack from his pocket, shook one out, and handed it to me. I took it from him with shaking fingers and turned to go back to his office. I needed a moment alone to process this.
“Cigarettes kill more humans than cancer used to. Would you like me to inform you of the statistical information related to your bad habit?” said my double. I turned back to face her.
“Now you’re just proving what a pain in the ass you are going to be.”
“In that case…Mic, can I have a cigarette please?” She said ‘cigarette’ like a damn non-smoker, and the way that she looked at my lover made me want to kick her fucking teeth in.
“Later. Let’s get you dressed, for now.” Her eyes followed him as he moved to collect a stack of clothing. He placed the items next to her on the table. She got up, obviously indifferent about her nudity and began to dress herself.
“Damn fine creation,” said Ben appreciatively.
“Do you mind?” I snapped.
“Sorry,” he muttered as he wiped his mouth.
“Okay, I need a minute to myself.” I left the men and my biosynthetic, computerized doppelganger. I returned to Mic’s office and sat down on the small leather couch where I could sort out my thoughts. I felt numb, and secretly longed for my mother. It was the first time in a long while that I had allowed myself to think about her. We’d never been extremely close. I was always a daddy’s girl, but she’d always had a positive effect on me. Her steadfast presence in the background of my life offered stability, and the way she would focus on the most mundane facets of life as if they were highly important had a way of making you feel important. My thoughts drifted to a discussion we’d had over the importance of appearance. She wanted me to dress more like a lady, and stop spending so much time at the deli with my dad. In hindsight, I guess she may have been a little jealous that I preferred spending time with him over her. I drew my knees up to my chest and blew smoke out. How quickly I would slap on a dress now, if it meant seeing her smile just one more time.
“Hey, you okay?” I hadn’t heard him come in, so I flinched at the sound of his voice.
“Yeah, of course. I’m just trying to get used to arguing with myself.”
“I know it seems strange, but she’s not you, sweetheart. She has no soul and no heart. She is an imitation of life, built to help us.”
“I’m just a little freaked out by it all, Mic.” I doused my cigarette in the empty beer can on the desk, and averted my eyes so that I didn’t have to look at the framed photo on his desk. I was feeling my usual “fight or flight” feeling, and the look on Mic’s face wasn’t helping me.
“Can you just trust me for a little while on this? I know that you don’t like it. I don’t like it either, but I need you to just give it a chance. I promise you, if she shows any signs of turning, I’ll take her out myself.”
I nodded, unable to say anything. “Ready?” he asked, extending his hand for me to take.
“Ready.” We walked back to the laboratory area, and I was surprised to see Ben engaged in a conversation with her. I clenched my jaw and moved around a large table to a cabinet with glass doors. I opened the cabinet, and after a few moments of searching found an item that would suit my purpose. I removed a scalpel from a glass jar. Closing the door to the cabinet, I walked over to Ben and my simp-double. I glanced over at Mic, who was watching me with a look of intense curiosity. I gave him a daring smile and turned my attention to her.
“Excuse me, I don’t mean to interrupt, but you need to give me your hand.” My double looked up at me and then without hesitation, she held out her right hand. It felt smooth and warm. “You see, I can’t have people getting the two of us confused.” She tilted her head to the side the way a dog would after hearing an unfamiliar sound.
Using the scalpel with my other hand, I promptly carved a neat “S” in her forearm. I was not gentle about it. Synthetic blood oozed from the spot and Ben blinked several times as if his eyes could not accept what I’d just done. My double did not flinch, nor did she ask me why I had just carved up her bio-synthetic flesh -- another reminder of how immune to pain simps are. Mic cleared his throat, a gesture that I was beginning to recognize as his way of dealing with situations he found annoying or frustrating.
“We can call her whatever you want, Lee,” he said.
“Let’s call her “Two,” I said with no emotion. I dropped her hand and stepped back. “Two it is,” said Mic.
“Two. I like it,” said Ben. I could tell he was uncomfortable with my actions, but he didn’t say anything to protest.
“All right, let’s get focused, because the day is getting away from us, and we need to get out of here if we want to make it back before night falls.” Two moved to pick up a towel from the table, and wiped her arm clean. I decided I would do my best to ignore her, for now, so that I could focus on getting out of IDE alive.
“So where’s that hovcar of yours?” I asked.
“It is on the roof in my private parking structure. There’s an elevator, but to get to it, we’ll have to exit through the main doors and deal with the simp guards that are out there waiting. I can attempt to pause them, but we know that is a temporary solution. We won’t have enough time to get all the way to the parking structure before they reanimate. If there are others—and we know that there will be—well, we will have to take them on as we go. It will be dangerous, to say the least.”
Ben scratched his chin while he thought about this. “If you attempt to pause them, won’t that…pause her?”
“No, because she’s a replication of Lee’s cells, plus she’s securely coded.” Ben nodded as if that made perfect sense. Nothing about any of this made sense. I began to pace. I needed out of the sterile room. I needed to feel the fresh air on my face. I needed to get back to the desert where it was safer.
“I’m up for the fight.” We all turned to face my double. Admittedly, my jaw dropped.
“That’s what I was counting on Two,” Mic said, with his chin up in the air. His eyes locked with mine as the “I-told-you-so” smirk spread across his face. This garnered my best response: my middle finger. Okay, maybe she could prove herself useful. If her help got us out of here alive, it might just make me feel a little differently toward her. Mic gave us a seri
es of instructions as he busily prepared a care package of fabricated food. I grabbed a small stack of white hand towels, and the scalpel I’d used on Two, and put them in my pack. I also took a quick inventory of my own gear: the chunks of glass in my pocket, two bullets in my gun, and my blade in my boot. I hoped it was enough. Ben readied himself with his kukri gripped firmly, and when we agreed that it was time, Mic positioned himself at the code panel. He punched in the necessary numbers, then nodded at me. I slid my finger across his tablet as he’d instructed. We would have less than thirty seconds before we were faced with simp guards.
When the doors opened, at least a dozen simp guards stood in various positions. None of them moved. We had to maneuver around them to get by, which made me extremely tense. I knew that the pause would be brief and that if it were to end at this point, we’d all be dead. Two sprinted by me on my right and was at the end of the hall in an instant. It wasn’t the appropriate response, considering she was on our side, but it pissed me off that she could move so fast. She reached the elevator and punched in a code that Mic had given her. The three of us were running to join her, but just as the elevator opened, she suddenly stepped away from the doors and charged back in our direction. My gut screamed to gun her down, but I couldn’t react fast enough.
“Get to the elevator, I’ll catch up!” she shouted. I turned to look over my shoulder and saw that she was already in the fray with the simp guards. It looked from my vantage point, that the men were nothing more than throw pillows. Their bodies were flying through the air and hitting the walls around her as she delivered a series of spinning roundhouse kicks. One guard she hit bent backwards at the knees, his head hovering unnaturally a few inches from the floor before he sprung back up. He moved in a blur to get behind her as she fought off others, and I felt compelled to run to join in. As if reading my thoughts, Mic grabbed my arm. “No, Lee, she’s got it. We have to get to the hovcar!” I grudgingly allowed him to tug me forward. We reached the elevator and Mic punched in the code as fast as he could. The doors seemed to take forever to open, and while I stood there panting and gulping air in to my lungs, I watched my double work to keep us safe. Her efforts looked like choreographed acrobatics combined with martial arts, but she moved unlike any human fighter could. Her skills were beyond commendable.