by Ben Bova
Yet I had to do it. To prove to Ingrid that the transmitter wouldn’t destroy my soul, if for no other reason.
So I fiddled around with the power feeds and the connections between the plasma chamber and the thin mesh grid in the middle of the platform that served for the beam’s focus. The same damned flimsy sheet of monofilament that I wanted to transmit to the other side of the lab sat on the grid just as it had for the past two weeks, like a permanent symbol of frustration.
Entanglement. All the equipment had to do was to match the quantum states of the monofilament’s atoms and transmit that information to the receiver across the lab. That’s a lot of information to juggle, but I had six oversized quantum computers lined up against the lab’s wall, more than enough qubits to handle the job. In theory.
I checked the computers; they were connected in parallel, humming nicely, awaiting the command to go to work.
Everything checked, just as it had for the past two weeks. I went to the master control on the other side of the bench. I noticed my three grad students edging toward the door. They weren’t worried about the equipment exploding; they knew from experience that I was the one who blew up when the system failed to work.
Sam was standing by the door, arms folded across his chest, a curious expression on his face: kind of crafty, devious.
“Ready,” I called out. Then, “Stand clear.”
The latter call was strictly routine. The nearest human body to the equipment was several meters away, by the door. Except for me, and I made sure I was on the other side of the apparatus from the focus grid, shielded by the bulk of the plasma chamber.
As if I needed protection. I pushed the keypad that activated the equipment. It buzzed loudly. The plasma chamber glowed for a moment, then went dark. The sheet of monofilament stayed right there on the focus grid, just as it had since the first time I tried to make the godforsaken junk-pile perform.
I took a deep breath and started counting to one hundred.
Then I heard a scuffle behind me. Turning, I saw Sam had a hammer-lock on one of my grad students; he was dragging the kid toward me.
“He had this in his pocket,” Sam said, tossing me a slim plastic oblong from his free hand. The grad student was grimacing; Sam had his arm screwed up pretty tight behind his back.
“It’s a remote of some kind,” I muttered, turning the device over in my hand.
“He clicked it on just before you pressed the start button,” Sam said.
I turned to the student, W. W. Wilson. He was the beefy kind; I was surprised Sam could hold an arm-lock on him.
“Woody,” I asked, dumbfounded, “what the hell is this?”
Woody just glared at me, his chunky face red with either anger or pain. Maybe some of both. He was a biology graduate who had volunteered to work in my lab for a little extra spending money.
Sam hiked the Woody’s arm up a little higher and said, “You either tell us or I’ll personally pump you so full of babble juice your brain’ll shrink to the size of a walnut.”
“Go ahead and torture me!” Woody cried. “I’m prepared to suffer for my faith!”
“Let him go, Sam,” I said. “We’re not the Gestapo.”
Sam shot me a disapproving frown, but released Woody’s arm. I clicked the cover off the remote and studied its interior. It seemed simple enough. It looked somewhat like an old-fashioned cell phone. But it had no keypad, no display screen.
I looked up at Woody. “What frequency band does this work on?”
Woody just scowled at me as he rubbed his arm.
“I can find out for myself easily enough.” I started for the array of test equipment stored in the lab’s lockers.
“Microwave,” Woody muttered. “Just enough power to scramble the recognition circuitry.”
“Sabotage,” Sam growled. “A goddam saboteur planted here by the New Lunar Church.”
My heart sank.
“Not that bunch of pansies,” Woody snarled. “I was sent here by the New Morality, straight from Earthside headquarters in Atlanta.”
Sam jabbed a finger at him. “You must be doing real well in your bio classes.”
“I lead the class discussions in Intelligent Design,” Woody said, with some pride. “I can tie those Darwinians into pretzel knots.”
“And you screwed up Dan-o’s experiment.”
“I’ll do more than that!” Woody suddenly leaped past Sam and me and grabbed the cover of the plasma chamber. He ripped it off and threw it to the floor.
“I’ll wreck this Devil’s tool once and for all!” he yelled, reaching for the focal grid. The grid was oversized, much bigger than I needed it to be; I had scavenged it from a colleague’s experiment with a PET full-body scanner. Yet Woody was wrenching it out of its hold-down screws; the screech of the screws ripping out of the benchtop was enough to freeze my blood.
I was paralyzed with shock, but Sam sprang onto the kid’s back like a monkey jumping onto a racing horse, knocking him on top of the lab bench. They wrestled around on the half bent focal grid, arms and legs thrashing, grunting and swearing. Woody was much bigger, of course; he got atop Sam and started punching him with both fists.
It seemed like hours, but it was really only a few seconds. I finally came out of my surprised funk and grasped Woody by the shoulders and pulled him off Sam. I threw him to the floor; he hit with a heavy thud.
Sam sat up, a little groggily, on the focus grid. His nose was leaking a thin stream of blood; otherwise he looked okay.
“Sam, are you all right?”
He shook his head slightly. “Nothing rattles. That kid can’t punch worth shit. Hey, look out!”
I turned. Woody was on his feet. He slammed a fist onto the control panel keyboard. “Die, spawn of Satan!” he screamed.
The power thrummed, the plasma chamber pulsed, the overhead lights dimmed and then went dark. The emergency backup lights came on. But nothing else happened. Sam still sat on the focus grid, with that damned sheet of monofilament beneath his butt.
I swung around on Woody and socked him in the jaw as hard as I could. His head snapped back, his knees folded, and he collapsed to the floor, unconscious.
Sam whistled appreciatively. “That’s a helluva punch you’ve got there, Dan-o.” He jumped down from the bench and bent over Woody. “He’s out like a light.”
And from across the lab, where the receiving grid was, Sam Gunn said, “What’m I doing over here?”
I stared at Sam, clear on the other side of the lab. Then I turned back to Sam, who was still standing by the bench, right beside me.
Two of them!
I think I fainted.
When I came to, both Sams were standing over me. I was sitting on the floor next to Woody’s still-unconscious body, my back propped against the lab bench.
“Are you okay?” one of the Sams asked me.
“You need a doctor?” asked the other one.
I looked from one to the other. Identical, down to the number and location of his freckles.
“It worked,” I said. “The experiment. It worked!”
“Of course it worked,” said Sam I.
“Once this bozo stopped sabotaging it,” Sam II said, casting a frown at Woody.
My erstwhile lab assistant was groaning now, his legs shuffling back and forth. His eyes fluttered open.
Both Sams grabbed his arms and helped him up to a sitting position.
Woody looked at each of them in turn, his eyes widening with horror, his face going pasty white. He screeched like a giant fingernail scraping across a chalkboard, scrambled to his feet, and bolted for the door. My two other grad students were right behind him. They all looked terrified.
“Unclean!” Woody yelled as he tore out of the lab. “Unclean!”
Both Sams shook their heads. “He should’ve said ‘Eureka.’“
I struggled to my feet unassisted. I felt a little woozy, my legs rubbery, but my mind was whirling madly. I did it! I proved that entanglement can
be used not merely to transmit macroscopic objects but to duplicate them: a human being, no less!
Visions of the Nobel danced through my head.
But then I thought of Ingrid. What would her reaction be?
A little unsteadily, I headed for my desk and the phone. Both Sams trailed along behind me.
Time for the moment of truth.
I PHONED INGRID right then and there, and asked her to come to my lab. In the phone’s smallish screen, her exquisite face looked more curious than anything else.
“To your lab?” she asked. “Right now?”
I nodded. “Big news. I want you to see it before anyone else does.”
Her expression changed immediately. To dread. “I’ll be there in a few moments.”
I paced the lab from one end to the other while the Sams got themselves into an argument.
“First thing we do is set up the tax shelter.”
“Better secure the spacecraft first. That Bishop MacTavish is going to try to seize it.”
“Let her! Once the tax shelter’s in operation we’ll have money pouring in.”
“Never let the enemy cut off your line of retreat.”
“We don’t need the ship anymore! We can just about print money, for God’s sake.”
“Print money?” Whichever Sam it was suddenly got a thoughtful, crafty look on his snub-nosed face. “Print money.”
The other Sam grinned at his twin. “Duplicate financial instruments. Ought to be a pile of money there.”
“Duplicate women!”
“Wow! Twins!”
“Made to order.”
“Now wait a minute,” I said. “The duplicator is mine, not yours.”
They both turned to me, their faces identically disappointed, stunned with betrayal.
“You wouldn’t refuse me the use of your contraption, would you, Dan-o?”
“After all, I’m the one who got you started on this experiment. Without me, you’d still be doodling with theory and equations.”
Before I could reply the lab door swung open and Ingrid strode in, looking like an avenging angel in a gold sweater and hip-hugging jeans. I nearly fainted again.
She said not a word, but stared at the two Sams for what seemed like an hour and a half. Both Sams grinned impishly at her and then bowed, simultaneously.
“You did it,” she said to me in a near-whisper.
“It was sort of an accident,” I began. “I had no intention of duplicating Sam.”
Ingrid sank to the nearest stool. I thought I saw tears in her eyes.
“Oh, Daniel,” she said, in a sorrowful moan. “Now all hell is going to break loose over you.”
TO SAY THAT all hell broke loose would be an exaggeration, but not much of one. News of my success spread throughout Selene in a microsecond, it seemed. My grad students must have shouted it out to everyone they passed in the corridors, like Paul Revere warning of the redcoats.
Ingrid looked truly heartbroken, but when the Sams told her about Woody her chin snapped up and her eyes suddenly turned fiery.
“The New Morality?” she asked. “He said he was sent here directly by the New Morality?”
“Straight from their headquarters,” Sam I replied. Or was he Sam II?
“In Atlanta,” the other Sam added.
“They bypassed me to plant a spy in your laboratory?” Ingrid asked.
“That’s what he told us,” I said.
“They never told me about it,” she murmured. “They knew I’d be opposed to such a low trick.”
“They didn’t trust you,” said a Sam.
“No, they didn’t, did they?” Ingrid looked crestfallen, heartbroken. “They merely used me as a distraction while their spy did his best to ruin your experiment.”
“But they failed,” I said. “And I succeeded.”
She nodded, her expression turning even bleaker. “And what happens now, Daniel? What happens to you, my love? What happens to us?”
Before I could even begin to think of an answer, a quartet of Selene security police strode into the lab.
“By order of the council,” their leader pronounced, “these premises are to be evacuated and sealed until further notice.”
The Sams started to object, but the officer went on, “And Sam Gunn is hereby placed under protective custody.”
“You mean I’m going to jail?” both Sams yelped.
All four policemen fixed the two Sams with beady gazes. “Which of you is Sam Gunn?” their leader asked.
“I am,” said both Sams in unison.
The officer looked from one Sam to the other, obviously trying to decide what to do. Then he turned to his cohorts and commanded, “Bring ‘em both in.”
THE FOLLOWING MORNING I was awakened by a phone message inviting me to a meeting of Selene’s governing council, which would convene at eleven AM precisely. “Invite” is a relative term: when the governing council invites you, you show up, on time and ready to cooperate.
It wasn’t a trial, exactly. More of an executive hearing. It took place in a windowless conference room up in the executive office tower that rises from the middle of the Grand Plaza to the roof of the dome. The room’s walls were paneled with smart screens, much like the screens down at the Earthview restaurant, but when I entered, shortly before eleven, the walls were dead blank gray. Not a good sign, I thought.
The entire governing council of Selene was already seated at the oblong conference table, all six of them. Douglas Stavenger himself sat on one of the chairs lined along the wall. He hadn’t been on the council for years, but as the de facto leader of Selene, the man who had led the battle that resulted in Selene’s independence, he had obviously taken an interest in our case. He looked much younger than his calendar years: as everyone knew, Stavenger’s body was filled with nanomachines.
The council chairman was a prune-faced man with thinning gray hair. Obviously he didn’t take rejuvenation therapies, which led me to the conclusion that he was a religious Believer of one sort or another. He directed me to the empty chair at the foot of the table.
As I sat down I heard a raucous hullabaloo from the corridor outside. All heads turned toward the door, which burst open. Both Sams stalked in, escorted by a squad of uniformed security guards. Both Sams were yammering away like trip-hammers.
“What’s the idea of putting me in jail?”
“Who’s in charge here?”
“What’s this bull droppings about protective custody?”
“I want a lawyer!”
“I want two lawyers!”
“You can’t do this to me!”
One Sam Gunn jabbering nonstop is bad enough; here were two of them.
Pruneface, up at the head of the table, raised both his clawlike hands over his gray head. “Mr. Gunn!” he shouted, in a much more powerful voice than I’d have thought him capable of, “please shut up and sit down! There!” And he pointed to the two empty chairs flanking me.
“Why am I here?”
“What’s going on?”
“This is an emergency meeting of the governing council,” the chairman explained, in a slightly lower tone. “An informal hearing, if you will.”
Both Sams trudged grudgingly to the foot of the table and sat on either side of me.
“Now then,” the chairman said, from the head of the table, “Dr. Townes, could you kindly explain how in the world you produced a duplicate of Sam Gunn?”
I blinked at him. “You want me to explain how entanglement works?”
“In layman’s language, if you please.”
I glanced around at the other council members. Three women, two men. In their forties or older, I guessed from their appearances. Probably at least two of them were scientists or engineers: Selene’s population leans toward the technical professions.
I took a deep breath and began, “Basically, my device assesses the quantum states of the atoms in the subject and reproduces those quantum states in the atoms at the receiving end of the equ
ipment.”
“It is a matter duplicator, then?”
“It was intended to be a transmitter, but, yes sir, it has functioned as a duplicator. There are still some details that are not quite clear, but—”
The door behind the chairman slid open and Ingrid entered the conference room, wearing a gold-trimmed white uniform with a choker collar and full-length trousers.
“I’m sorry to be late,” she said, her face deadly serious. “I wasn’t informed of this hearing until a few minutes ago.”
Everyone stood up.
“Bishop MacTavish,” murmured the chairman, indicating an empty chair halfway down the table.
Once we seated ourselves again, the chairman explained, “Bishop MacTavish is here as a qualified ethicist.”
“And a representative of the New Lunar Church,” said the councilman on the chairman’s right.
The Sam on my left squawked, “What’s the New Lunar Church got to do with this?”
“Excuse me, Mr. Chairman,” Ingrid said, “but I’m afraid you’re working under a misapprehension. I am here in my capacity as legal counsel.”
“For Rockledge Industries, et al,” muttered the Sam on my right.
“No,” Ingrid replied. “I am representing Dr. Townes.” And she smiled so sweetly at me that my heart nearly melted.
Both Sams leaned in to me and whispered, “Watch out. This could be a trap.”
Was Ingrid a Judas goat? I refused to believe it. But the possibility gnawed at me.
When the council members started asking me questions about my experiment Ingrid rose to her feet and said sternly, “This council has no legal right to question Dr. Townes, except as to how his work might affect the safety of Selene and its citizens.”
“But he’s duplicated a human being!” one of the councilwomen sputtered.
“Sam Gunn, no less,” grumbled the councilman beside her.
“I am morally opposed to such a duplication as much as any of you,” Ingrid said, still on her feet. “I regard it as little short of blasphemy. As a Believer and a Bishop of the New Lunar Church, I am appalled.”