“Sorry about this, hun," he said as they left in the direction of the elevator. Once they were on the ground floor, Simon removed the both the drones from Beth’s heart rate monitor and the ones in her head, then piloted them back to the van.
As the three were embarking the vehicle, Beth had found her way to the nurse's area of her ward, the nurse there was so amazed by Beth’s sudden recuperation that she forgot to question that she hadn’t seen her leave her room. The nurse escorted Beth back to her bed and informed her of the tests that would need to be administered when the doctors arrived.
Once Beth passed her confused and groggy stage, and the medical staff had given her time to breathe, she remembered the last few moments before all went black. She remembered the strange man who’d appeared out of nowhere and made an even stranger remark about how she was going to ‘help save the world’ from her ‘incompetent boyfriend and his cohorts’.
Chapter 32
The PRE-Innovations teammates observed Victor’s son, James, through the viewing window of the cloning pod, the boy was currently at a stage of growth equivalent to five years and should reach adulthood in the next couple of days. They would make a start on Julie’s clone once James was out of the pod. They had dismissed the idea of a second pod for simultaneous incubation of both offspring since, once the siblings were reborn, they weren’t likely to use it again.
When the James foetus had grown to be sufficiently recognisable as a human baby, Victor started to feel a modicum of sentiment towards the new life. He had never known their mother, hadn’t been present at an announcement of pregnancy, never felt the baby kick, skipped almost nine months of anticipation and was due to miss out on the childhood years, but he still felt an emotional connection to the child that shared his DNA. As the infant clone grew hour by hour in the pod, Victor couldn’t help but think of the absent memories at each corresponding points along the clone’s progress. What had he and this five-year-old James experienced together? If the child was growing up during humanity’s troubled times, just how difficult was his life, and what had Victor done to make it easier? Had he made it easier? Was he a strict father? These are things that he’d have to learn from James once he had adjusted to his new life.
Victor was eager to know why he and his wife had waited so long to have children. If they were only in their twenties, that would mean that he and Sarah had waited around a hundred years before becoming pregnant. He assumed that they had decided to hold off on procreation until they had successfully fixed their reality, after all, excessive breeding was what had caused it to break in the first place. That broken reality can’t have been the right place to bring up children, but then, why did they ultimately change their minds? He guessed that lack of contraception may have been a contributing factor, since there would have been no operational pharmacies in their underground bunker. Looking back, he wished that these questions had occurred to him while they still had the virtual Simon-Stan online.
Victor was beginning to become anxious about meeting his son for the first time. “Is cloning a person without their permission wrong? Even if the original is lost? Do you think we should have asked them what they wanted?” he asked the others.
“In the simulator?” Spencer asked. Victor nodded. “I suppose that might have been more polite, but the virtual environment may have come as a shock if they weren’t expecting it. Then you’d have to tell them that they’d been deleted, which would have made them even more upset. I’d say this is the best way for reducing the shock value. You’re over-thinking it, I can’t see a scenario where they would deny the chance, to be honest, the alternative sounds a lot like suicide. All we’ve done is displace them in time and brought them to a place where it’s safe to go outside, who wouldn’t prefer that?”
Victor nodded, feeling a little more assured.
“If they do decide it’s a bad idea, we can always put them back in stasis, the ungrateful brats," Spencer added, playfully.
“Then we’d have two brain-dead bodies lying around the place.” Victor laughed. “What are we supposed to do with those?”
“Donate them to hospitals for parts," Simon said without a trace of irony. “What? They’re just vessels, we can make more if they changed their mind.” He added, confused by their look of distaste.
“I suppose this technology does kind of make the body more disposable," Spencer said after a moment's thought. “The ‘we are not the body’ sentiment is easier to believe with this. I wonder what the religious will make of it. They’ll have a hard time convincing us there’s a soul when it’s so easy to transfer a consciousness between bodies, or even into a machine.” Spencer said.
“They may just freak out and assume we’ve harnessed the soul in some way, they’ve never had a problem with putting a religious spin on science, no matter how illogical it might be. I’d expect that it wouldn’t be too long until they tried to ban the technology because the people coming out of the pods must be in league with the devil. You know how the superstitious fear science.” Victor said.
“Well, people don’t seem to mind the idea of cloning if it’s to replace lost limbs," Spencer said. “We’re just replacing all their limbs at once, along with their torso and head.” The group laughed.
“Yeah," Victor said. “There will be no shortage of organs for donating. We could replace whole bodies when a person has a failing organ, they’d have a fully working system, and the working organs in their old body could be harvested. It really does make it sound like repairing a car. People will most likely lose their attachment to the physical when they see how expendable their bodies are. What we’re doing with James and Jules could be classed as therapeutic cloning, not reproductive cloning, since my kids lost their bodies completely, so I don’t think we’re breaking the ban. I’m sure there would still be plenty of people opposed to it, though.”
“What they don’t know can’t hurt them," Spencer said.
“How are we going to make them official?” Victor said. “They’ll have no birth certificate or National Insurance Numbers.”
“I’m sure I could do a little something about that," Simon said. “Doesn’t take much to plant records in a digital age. Especially with a quantum computer at your disposal.”
“Their mother’s out there and doesn’t even know she has children," Victor said.
“What are you doing to that kid!” a surprised voice wailed from behind them.
They turned to see Beth staring in horror at the cloning pod. Victor followed her gaze, the shock of her sudden appearance delaying his grasp on the situation’s gravity. He looked back at Beth and comprehension came rushing in.
“Oh no, this is isn’t what you think.” he exclaimed, in a panic.
“Do either of you know how to lock a door?” Spencer screeched at her friends.
“Do you?” Simon screamed back.
“You were last in!” Spencer’s voice was still raised.
“Quiet, you two, Beth’s freaking out," Victor said. “If you’re battling between fight, flight or freeze responses right now, Beth, please choose freeze, and stay for an explanation. Hell, choose fight if you have to, beat the crap out of me, just stay.”
“The man who put me in a hospital said something about taking revenge on you for destroying the world, I thought he was nuts, but clearly something insane is happening here. Do you have something to do with putting me in a coma?”
“I’d say that, in his mind, I probably did, but he’s a megalomaniac, his judgement isn’t sound.”
“Why… do you have… a child… submerged in a tank?” Beth said, words interspersed with the panting gasps of hyperventilation.
“He’s a clone," Victor said. Beth scowled and turned to leave. “No! No, don’t go, it’s true.”
Beth turned back. “What the fuck, Victor? This is unfathomable, what are you people doing here?”
“We’re a billion pound corporation, and run secret experiments with new technologies that we hope will one day chan
ge the world. In a nutshell.”
“What the fuck? Is this legal?”
“Well, there are no laws against it. I know this may look horrific and creepy, but we’re saving a life here with this.”
“I can’t believe I’m still here listening to this. How? How is it saving a life?”
“It’s difficult to explain, and probably hard for you to believe, but this body is a mindless vessel due to receive the mind of a man who lost his.”
As Victor was speaking, Beth noticed the clone twitch.
“He’s alive in there?”
“Of course he is, we couldn’t implant a mind into a dead body.”
“Please start making sense, Victor. You’re implanting a mind? You have brains in jars around here too?”
“No, just the data, not the biology.” he sighed. “Simon, cue up the nanobots.”
Simon realised immediately where Victor was going and did so.
“I know all of this sounds impossible, Beth, but I’m about to show you something that will appear just as unlikely; hopefully it will calm the initial shock, and you’ll be able to comprehend more easily.”
Simon had finished with the nanobot commands, and the swarm started to move through the mister and out of the hive, unnoticed by Beth as she was transfixed by the boy in the pod.
“Have you heard or read anything in the news lately about the new nanobot technology that is due to change the medical profession.”
“Yes, I was reading about it online today. Tech is my livelihood, I try to keep up.”
“Well, we were responsible for that, and the proof is right behind you.”
Beth turned, at first she was alarmed by the grey cloud that was hovering not too far from her, then the initial apprehension dissolved into confusion as the cloud shifted shape into a duplicate of Simon. Beth found a seat nearby and fell into it, staring between the two Simons. Duplicate Simon then morphed into a copy of Beth, the real Beth giggled. Not in an ‘I’m having a fun time’ way, but in an ‘I’m losing my mind and need to go back to hospital’ way.
“This might be a bit much to comprehend, but it’s real, and there are no ill intentions involved, we swear.” the Beth duplicate said, in her own voice.
The real Beth looked at Simon, who was now wearing a strange bicycle helmet with metal attachments. This was definitely a little hard to comprehend.
“The helmet allows him to control the swarm with his mind," Victor said, picking up on the confusion on her face.
“I think I might need to check back into the ward. This is not happening.” she began to hyperventilate again. “None of this is possible.”
“It is when you’re able to see the future.”
“Is that a step too far, Victor?” Simon asked. “This is supposed to be need-to-know, and she doesn’t.”
“Doesn’t she? Look around you. How are we going to talk her out of telling everyone about all of this? The truth is our only option.”
“You can see the future? I thought you were trying to convince me that what you’re saying is true? Talk of crystal balls and tarot cards won’t help with that.”
Victor went to the computer and booted up the video conferencing software.
“You might need to wait around here for about an hour or so, or the first time at least.”
“First time?”
“Don’t worry, you’ll probably not even experience the first time. We usually don’t.”
Victor made a note of the time while Beth looked at him like he was crazy. The sound of an incoming video call rang out from the speakers, Victor accepted the call. Beth examined the screen and the video of herself running there, the image didn’t replicate her movements, so it wasn’t live, but she had never been in this room before, so it had to be recent. There must be a time delay, even if it did appear that her image on the video approached the screen before she had a chance to do so herself. Victor was right beside her on the screen, Spencer and Simon were stood behind them. Beth looked over to her right where Simon and Spencer were still standing beside the pod, then looked back at the screen. The video couldn’t be a recording of her current visit, since she’d never been in that spot in front of the screen, and she couldn’t recall the events shown. Maybe it wasn’t a time delay at all, but something more sinister.
“Wait, did you give me something that caused a blackout, then make me record this? Is that why I was in a coma when I was found? I don’t remember this at all.” she motioned to the screen
“Hang on,” the on-screen Beth said. “Is that what this is? Is this something I’ve lost the memory of?” motioning at her own screen.
“What the hell?” the present Beth said. “I don’t remember any of this.”
Both Victors could see that Beth was starting to panic.
“Calm down, Beth,” both Victor’s said, neither in sync or using the same tone. “Ask her a question.”
Both Beths looked at each other for a moment.
“What are you talking about?” the present Beth asked as her video counterpart simultaneously said. “Ask who a question?”
“Past Beth first.” the on-screen Victor said. “Ask our Beth something that only you would know," he told the Present Beth.
“What was the name of your first hamster, and what happened to him?” Present Beth asked, humouring the group, expecting to prove them wrong and reveal that she was being tricked, leaving them with no reason to continue this charade.
“Bubble. I stood on him accidentally, and he died. Now you. Who was your real first kiss, not the one you tell everyone.”
“Robby Howard.”
“Shit. The. Bed,” they both said in unison, then after a pause. “This is real.”
“How is this possible?” Screen Beth asked Screen Victor, Current Beth waited for the answer.
“Well, long story short,” Screen Victor said “quantum entanglement. Say goodbye everyone, time to delete this timeline.”
“Later.” Current Victor said and hung up on the call.
“What? I wanted to see more of that.” Beth said.
“No point explaining it to both Beths at the same time, their time is obsolete, that version of you no longer exists as this current version of you now knows what she didn’t.”
“O...K.”
“Also, what would you have to talk about with yourself? It’s not like there will have been a bunch of new world events take place in the hour it took for you to become her. I’ll fill you in with the rest, where would you like for me to start?”
“The man who attacked me, he said something about revenge. Who was he and what did you do to piss him off?”
“That’s difficult to explain, but I’ll try. He was a future version of Simon here.” he motioned to Simon, who waved “He had gone mad and stolen our present Simon’s body.” He motioned to Simon again, who once again waved. “We’ve since returned our present Simon to his body, and all is well again, you’re not at risk.”
“Al...right, I’ll put that aside for processing. In the meantime, what did he do to me?”
“He stole your mind and hid it from us. We found it and heroically placed it back in your head. Yay?” Victor gave Beth a pleading look.
“No, not yay. Why would he do that?”
“He wanted to bribe me into giving him free rein to make three-quarters of the population sterile.”
“What? This is nuts. Why would he do that? How!”
“Well, you see, that little conversation we had a moment ago was from an hour in the future, if we went sixty years or so past that, we’d have been talking to a world where there’s no more human society.” Beth was clearly having trouble keeping up. “You see, in the near future, the population crisis will trigger a resource shortage catastrophe that wipes out almost the whole of humanity. We’re doing this to gather information on how to reverse it. Alternate Simon was prepared to take drastic measures, which we aren’t.”
Beth stared into space while she tried to rationalise the inform
ation.
“What’s the kid there for?” she motioned lethargically to the pod.
“Well, the alternate Simon that attacked you also kidnapped my future children’s minds before deleting their timeline by making sure I didn’t meet their mother. We found the data for their minds, but their consciousnesses need bodies.”
Beth was quiet for another moment, she felt that she was beginning to understand. Sort of; the basics at least.
“So that’s your son?”
“Yes, but his accelerated growth needs to continue for another day or two before we can replace his mind. His backup is twenty-four, his body needs to catch up.”
“You had a wife?”
“One that I never met because Stan orchestrated a change to my whereabouts on the day I first met her. Which was, coincidentally, the same day I met you. There’s no infidelity going on here if that’s what you’re asking.”
“This alternate Simon sounds like a real shit.” she said while eyeing the current Simon suspiciously.
“Don’t worry, this one’s harmless. His future-self was driven mad by his experience with the apocalypse.”
The situation, though bizarre was beginning to feel less so. The story was just too outlandish to not be the truth. Or the shock could have been too much for Beth's mind and her current state of acceptance was in defence of her sanity.
“Okay, what else?” she asked.
“I think that about sums it up. Yep.” Victor sighed, frowned and shrugged, palms up. “We can explain more specifics when you’ve had a chance to absorb all of this. Hang around for a bit, observe us, you’ll see there’s nothing untoward going on here.”
Chapter 33
That night, Beth had trouble sleeping. She’d also had problems with her scheduled live stream earlier in the evening; she couldn’t keep her mind in the game. Beth had made a few rookie mistakes during her play session, incurring a few derisive messages in the chat panel, branding her a ‘noob’. It was hard for her to concentrate on gaming when so much of what she thought of as science fiction has now been revealed to her as just plain science. On reflection, Beth decided that it would have been more sensible to have cancelled tonight’s stream, but her state of dazed confusion might have played a part in the lack of forethought. She had decided that — before Victor and his friends divulged any more of the details — she was going to sleep on what she already knew. Beth would make the decision on her next course of action after allowing herself more time to process. By the sounds of it, she didn’t have too many options. If Beth decided to tell anyone what she’d seen, as she understood it, they could just rearrange time so that she had never seen anything in the first place. Victor had said that he wanted to be completely honest with her and deleting her knowledge of what he was doing was not his preferred choice on how to move forward. He had also told her that it was important that what their operation remained a secret as the time drive technology would be dangerous in the wrong hands. Sooner or later others would independently follow in their footsteps, but right now they were making sure that any use of the technology was based on the right side of morality. Beth had to admit that, in her opinion, Victor was right in that respect. She didn’t trust her government and couldn’t be positive that they wouldn’t turn this technology into something oppressive. People would be powerless against it and power corrupts, their leadership didn’t need to be exposed to any more corrupting factors. If corporations were to rule the world of the future, as some theorise, the least Victor’s team could do was make sure that one corporation had its heart in the right place and an unstoppable advantage.
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