«Are you okay?» It was a woman's voice.
James blinked open his eyes to see her delicate face framed by her long pink hair, her eyes smiling at him sadly. His brain stalled. The silence between them drowned out the noise of the station. When he finally spoke, his throat was dry and cracked. «That wasn't a phone.»
He was sure she'd think he was insane. He'd been living alone for too long. His hand was shaking uncontrollably as he reached his hand out and touched her face. He needed this. She pressed his hand against her cheek.
She shook her head slowly. «They know who you are now.»
paulalexgray Infusion
At the magistrate's command the silver walls shimmered and shifted. The translucent intellipolymer glass revealed a sweeping vista. Light spilled over the robotic assistants that swarmed around the client. Morgan Velt nodded his grizzled head and croaked a comment.
«At my first infusion this planet was a wasteland. And now look at it! Glory be to the human race.»
«You have created a paradise for our people.» Said the magistrate as he adjusted the controls.
A doorway opened and the clone was brought in. Naked and trembling he was half dragged by two guards. Blood dripped from his nose and his left eye was swollen and blackened. The magistrate gasped in surprise.
«What is this?» He shouted.
«Infusee put up a fight your honour. Had to subdue him.»
«This is an outrage!» Hacked Morgan as a robot wiped blood from his lips. «My new body should be pristine, not beaten like a dog.»
The clone stood and stared out to the room. Through his one good eye he marvelled at the sunlight outside, the first he had ever seen. Until now his existence had been in the depths of the building. Each day filled with demanding physical rigour designed to condition his body to the strongest possible level. And now, the clone knew his time was coming to an end. Today was his infusion, where his life would end and where the client's would begin anew.
The doctor beckoned to the medbed beside Morgan's. Above the jagged looking stamen of the Infusion device hung, a cable riddled needle that would at once wipe his consciousness from his mind and infuse the soul of Morgan.
«Magnificent.» Said Morgan and the clone looked to him. He recognised himself in the withered face. A reflection through time.
«Well done magistrate. The specimen is perfect. Even if your guards were over zealous.»
«We aim to please. We shall begin. We look forward to welcoming you into your new body.»
«Excellent.» He chuckled. «I look forward to celebrating my five hundredth. In this form I'll be able to enjoy it a lot more!»
The guards moved the clone forward, one of them barking a harsh command.
Outside in the sky above the clone watched for the sign. The clouds broiled and then he saw it. A streak of light and then a flash burnt high above.
In the room machines hummed into activity and pulsed with energy. As the guards unlocked his enerbinds the clone pretended to fall but spun around grabbing a scalpel with one hand and kicking the table up into one guard’s face.
The clone leapt up and smashed his two hundred pounds of muscle into the guard who crumpled against the wall. As the second reached for his stunblade the clone swung out with the scalpel slitting his throat and sending a shower of blood out onto Morgan.
Alarm bells rang and the magistrate yelled for the clone to stop. The clone ran quickly up the stairs and threw the magistrate to the ground below with a sickening crunch.
Morgan screamed as the window exploded. Outside the fastship had used its cannon to blast a hole in the glass. Wind roared in and a doorway opened in the ship's side.
The clone watched in awe as his rescuers beckoned.
Morgan’s voice hissed out. «Such insolence! You were made, not born. You have no freedom, no life. No soul. You are my vessel made anew!» He coughed and more blood spilled. «And you dare to defy us? We shall destroy you. All of you!»
The figure in the ship beckoned, making an urgent sign with his hands. The clone knew that the sentinels would soon rush in.
Walking to the old man, the clone tilted his head and reached out. With one hand he tenderly wiped the blood from the man’s lips.
«Your time has been long and rich» intoned the clone «but you are well overdue.»
Raising his fist high the clone smashed it into Morgan’s chest feeling the brittle bones snap. The old man cried out in pain.
The heartbeat indicator began to spike erratically. With a smile the clone ran and leapt into the waiting fastship. As the sentinels burst in the fastship soared away, a flare of light in the morning sky.
PaulLev Synchronicity
It’s been this way all of my life. Like when I was in high school, and we’d be reading our homework assignments out loud, and some kid would stand up right before me and read pretty much what I had written. Not that he’d cheated or anything. I never showed my work to anyone. And yet he’d written my ideas, even using my words. I had a hard time proving that I wasn’t the cheat. «Great minds think alike,” the more enlightened among my teachers would say. But that was too pat. I knew something else was going on‑I just didn’t know what.
It happened on the radio, too. I’d be singing a song, driving somewhere, and I turn on the radio and that very same song was playing. Yeah, I know that they played the Beatles a lot back then - still do on the oldies stations I listen to - but I mean, the Beatles have a pretty big catalog. What was the likelihood that «Dr. Robert» was on the radio right after I’d been singing it?
When I got to college and grad school, I began to search for similar patterns in history. There were plenty. Alexander Graham Bell and Elisha Gray invented the telephone, independently, at the same time. Pretty much the same for motion pictures - invented independently by Edison in the U. S., Friese—Greene in England, and the Lumiere Bros in Paris. And of course Wallace came up with a theory of natural selection all on his own, at the same time as Darwin.
I was starting to put together a dissertation proposal on this very topic, when I came across an article published in an obscure journal — «On the Ubiquity of Independent, Simultaneous Invention.» I was crushed, but not really surprised. I left the doctoral program and took a job in my uncle’s shoe store‑I was in de feet, ha ha.
It was not that bad, though. I had no talent for shoe sales, so I wasn’t vulnerable to the trauma of someone else coming up with my ideas. No danger of someone stealing my notion of a better display case, because I wouldn’t have had that dumb idea in the first place. That was a relief. I went along like that for a good few years.
But the job also gave me lots of time to think and look around the Internet on my iPhone when there were no customers in the store. I began looking into quantum mechanics. Some scientists thought that just thinking about subatomic things was enough to affect them, and our mentalities might actually be in touch in some way with the past and the future, through some kind of time–unified quantum mechanical field. Maybe I and all the people who seemed to co–opt my ideas were connected to some future Omega point, the Platonic source of all ideas!
And sure enough, a few hours after I came up with that hypothesis, I found a book on Amazon on the exact same topic by some physicist I’d never heard of.
No problem. I should have known. Better to sell shoes. Yes, ma’am, we do have that style, and right in your size.
But the urge to break out of this is still strong, and I recently came up with another plan. Science fiction. Maybe if I presented what I know about this synchronicity not in a science book, but in a little science fiction story published somewhere online, it would slip under the radar. If it was not known in the future, maybe the quantum mechanical effect would keep it unknown to anyone but me until after it was published now, in the present. Lots of big ideas began with science fiction - Asimov and his robots, Verne and his submarines and rockets to the moon, right?