A Stand-In for Dying

by Rick Moskovitz

  “Good morning, Cisco,” said Ray.

  “Good morning, Marcus. I’m glad you’re here. We’ve all been waiting for you.”

  “What’s going on?”

  “We think we’ve made a breakthrough in the Scotty project. We wanted you here for the final test.”

  “Scotty?” thought Ray. There was nothing about it in the UDB. All the research at the Ministry was top secret. Nothing had yet been published about Scotty. And if information had been uploaded to his MELD chip, it must have resided on an encrypted partition. The encryption key would have been encoded within Marcus’s memories and was unavailable to Ray.

  “Then let’s see what you’ve got.”

  Cisco led him down the corridor until they reached an open door. Five people were huddled around a circular platform about two feet in diameter. Nothing was on it. When Ray entered the room, they greeted him with enthusiasm, then turned their attention back to the platform. Ray’s curiosity brimmed, but he refrained from posing any question that would betray his ignorance. He returned the greeting and waited in silence.

  His patience was rewarded. The air above the platform began to shimmer. On the surface of the platform at the base of the shimmering tube of space, a shape began to form, at first transparent, then gradually becoming solid and acquiring color. When the air above it was no longer agitated, there stood on the table an irregular round lump of a tan substance that looked glossy and wet.

  Everyone in the room applauded. Then someone handed Ray a spoon. They parted to make way for him to approach the table.

  Ray responded to their expectations by plunging the edge of the spoon into the middle of the mound. It yielded easily. He filled the spoon with the substance, withdrew it and held it before him. All eyes were upon him, waiting for the next step.

  He took a deep breath and brought it slowly toward his mouth, then licked it. He smiled. Then everyone around him smiled.

  “Ice cream,” he said aloud. “Coffee ice cream.”

  The room burst with applause. Ray now understood the significance of the experiment and chuckled at the name of the project.

  “Scotty,” he thought, “a character from the videology of the last century, an engineer aboard a spacecraft in charge of teleportation.”

  “Beam me up, Scotty,” had been a tagline for every scientist in pursuit of making teleportation a reality. The roots of the technology had begun earlier in the century with the teleportation of a single subatomic particle across space, using a principle of physics called “spooky action at a distance.” Once unlimited amounts of information could be communicated over long distances and three-dimensional printing devices became sophisticated, solid objects could be reproduced instantaneously at long distances with considerable fidelity. But actual teleportation, in which the molecular structure of objects was taken apart and reassembled at a distance, remained elusive for decades.

  That made the scoop of ordinary ice cream, now melting into a puddle on the table before him, the Holy Grail of applied physics. This wasn’t merely a reproduction, a printed lump of matter. It was the real thing, down to its molecular structure, incorporating all of its physical properties including texture, taste, and temperature.

  Someone brought out a bottle of champagne and plunged it briefly into a bucket of dry ice. Champagne had resurfaced as the celebratory libation of choice once the vineyards had recovered from the prolonged droughts and the scourge of HibernaTurf.

  The cork was popped and glasses poured all around, all except for Cisco.

  “Aren’t you going to have some?” asked Ray.

  Everyone but Cisco laughed. Ray blushed. What was he missing? His mind flashed suddenly to Haley Sellica. Like Haley, Cisco was a highly sophisticated SPUD. He was capable of complex cognitive tasks, including understanding and simulating emotions, but he was not designed to process food or drink. While it might have been possible, what would have been the point?

  Ray had arrived in Marcus’s life and his laboratory at an inflection point in history. Teleportation wasn’t just a parlor trick. It was a tool that would enable anyone who had it to master the reaches of the universe. Soon it would be possible to transport living things and ultimately people across unlimited distances. Whoever owned this technology would have vast power over those who did not, which made Terra’s words particularly ominous.

  Would he be forced to turn over this technology to her and to the Director, whoever that was? Would it be used for the good of mankind or for treachery? And did they already know about it or would he be able to hide it, at least until it became public knowledge? Ray was now responsible for Marcus’s discovery. For now, at least, it felt like an enormous burden.

  31

  IF MARCUS WAS going to live in this antiquated body, he would at least make it as strong and lean as possible. Nobody knew better how to do that than him after years of rigorous physical training. He’d have to find a starting point that his new body could tolerate. He may have left his strength behind, but he hoped that his skills had accompanied his consciousness across the divide.

  The first day of training he ran five miles on an Endless Park in the Presidio. He was struggling for breath by the end of the run, which was just a fraction of his usual distance in his former life. As he bent forward supporting his hands on his thighs, he could hear his pulse bounding in his ears, a sign that Ray’s cardiovascular system was working at its limits.

  “The aneurysms,” he thought. “Am I risking another blowout?” The thought was accompanied more with detachment than fear. Marcus had once thrived on risk, dancing on the precipice of death just to feel alive. He wasn’t about to let the peril in his brain cripple him and keep him imprisoned in a wreck of a body.

  After a week on the Endless Park, it was time to step up his game. He found a fitness center that offered many of the same virtually enhanced activities that he’d enjoyed before. The first day, he chose a bike tour. He sat on the stationary bike within the isolation booth and linked his mind to the program via his MELD chip. The walls disappeared and he was in the hills of northern France, surrounded by other cyclists all pumping furiously to lead the pack. The wind whistled past his ears. A light drizzle made the road slick, while distilling the bouquet of the surrounding fields of blooming wildflowers and wafting the sweet scent past his nostrils. He inhaled deeply as he took the lead.

  In this virtual world, Marcus Takana was his own avatar. While his host’s body worked to turn the pedals of the bike and benefited from the workout, Marcus got to feel like himself, at least for a while during this familiar activity. The arms and hands grasping the handlebars were sleek and sinewy. His thighs rippled with strength. There was no bulge around his middle, only taut ridges of muscle. But when the ride ended, so did the illusion, and he arose from the bike exhausted and dripping with sweat, his wet shirt drawn taut across his paunch.

  “Too slow,” thought Marcus. “There must be some way to speed this up.”

  He considered the various drugs that had been developed over the last few decades that were intended to simulate the effects of exercise, causing weight loss and muscle development. While several had proven beneficial for paraplegics and people with genetic wasting diseases, none had surpassed the benefits of vigorous exercise or had significantly accelerated those effects. And like all drugs, there were both known and unknown risks. That made them particularly dangerous for Marcus with his bionically altered brain.

  “Better to go gradually,” he concluded. Sudden changes would be a red flag to Lena that something essential had changed about her husband.

  As his fitness improved, though, he looked for more ways to amp up his workouts. As competitive as Marcus had been in his scientific pursuits, he was equally competitive athletically. In his former life, he’d gravitated particularly to activities that pitted him directly against others. His favorite such pastime had been spherical racquetball. Through the virtual interface, he’d been able to match himself within a universe of other players
with those of equivalent skill. Resuming this sport would be the best test of both the dexterity developed in his prior incarnation and the waxing strength of his current one.

  Marcus stepped inside the racquetball booth. There was the familiar multiaxial cage with its three gleaming titanium rings and the harness in the center. The design had been borrowed from a 20th century NASA trainer intended to acclimate astronauts to the rigors of zero gravity activity. It maintained the user’s core at the center of the structure, even as the rings rotated freely along each of the three axes of space so that the wild and often random spinning didn’t induce motion sickness. While the original NASA structure attached hands and feet rigidly to the framework, this cage was modified so that each extremity was bound to a flexible band and could move freely against the resistance of the bands. These movements translated in the virtual environment as running and spinning while swinging at a moving target, all against resistance.

  He strapped himself into the harness, looped the bands around his hands and feet, and engaged his MELD chip with the program. A series of avatars appeared of some of his former adversaries. He selected one of mid-level skill for his first practice session. When he started the program, a transparent sphere materialized around them, painted with a matrix of crisscrossing lines, each completing a perimeter around an axis of the sphere.

  They squared off in the center. A ball appeared in the periphery. Marcus lurched forward. As his body tumbled into a spin, he swatted at the speeding object, propelling it against the sphere. It recoiled, ricocheted once from another point of contact, then was struck by his opponent’s racquet. As it bounced off the sphere directly behind him, he spun around and whacked it squarely to the side. Three bounces and he’d won the point.

  Marcus hadn’t felt more like himself since the switch than he did in this competition. And his competitor recognized him by his avatar. At least for a while he was Marcus again, earning the respect of his opponents with his skill. Another week and he was squaring off against the top ranked players, winning as often as losing.

  The fat around his middle began to melt away. His muscles gained definition, beginning with his biceps and the quadriceps of his thighs. The changes were too striking to escape Lena’s notice, but it was a while before she spoke up.

  “What’s going on, Ray?” she asked one day when he returned from the gym. “Have you been seeing someone else?”

  “What do you mean?” Marcus replied. “No, of course there’s nobody else. Why do you ask?”

  “You’ve lost so much weight. And just look at you! You’re so fit. You’ve clearly been working out. You look at least ten years younger.”

  “I just got tired of looking old and fat,” said Marcus. “It was time to get in shape.”

  “But it’s happened so fast,” said Lena. “You must be working out hard. I’ve been worried about you.”

  “Worried? Why?”

  “After your stroke, you became even more sedentary than ever. You seemed terrified to do anything that might risk another bleed. And you haven’t touched me in months, Ray. You’re like a stranger.” Tears welled in her eyes. She was sobbing too hard to go on.

  “The stroke...changed a lot of things, Lena,” said Marcus. “I didn’t want to die. It paralyzed me.” He paused. “But then I knew I couldn’t go on like that forever. I had to reclaim my life...and my body.”

  “But you still haven’t touched me,” sobbed Lena, “so all I could think of was that this was for another woman.”

  Marcus took her by the shoulders and looked directly into her eyes. Her body was shaking.

  “There’s no other woman,” he told her. “It’s all been for me...and for you.”

  She nestled her body into his and put her arms around him. He encircled her shoulders with his arms and hugged her tightly. Her body quieted. She nuzzled his cheek so that her lips were close to his ear.

  “I’ve missed you, Ray,” she whispered. “I’ve missed touching you and having you touch me. It’s been so lonely without you.”

  Marcus felt his penis engorging, becoming rigid against her body, filling him with confusion. He’d found Lena pleasantly attractive, but hadn’t been drawn to her sexually. It would have been hard for her to compete with Corinne, who was both youthful and exquisitely beautiful. He’d never imagined being with anyone other than Corinne. And yet his feelings of arousal with the woman in his arms were unmistakable.

  Lena brushed her lips across his, then settled in for a lingering kiss of such warmth and passion that he became lost in her embrace, suddenly in this moment in this body, oblivious to the knowledge that he didn’t belong there or with this woman. Then he was lying naked behind her, sliding inside her, tenderly caressing her belly and thigh. And when they finally stopped moving, for the first time since the switch, he felt...safe.

  32

  OF ALL THE SURPRISES awaiting Ray in his new life, not the least was the remarkable nature of his body. One of the first things he noticed was the absence of pain. He’d long experienced pain in his neck and shoulders, a consequence of repetitive friction from his lifelong tics. It had been with him so long that he’d barely paid attention to it day to day. But the sudden absence of pain, or of any manner of discomfort, was striking. And the involuntary movements were also gone, apparently hardwired to the body he’d left behind. This new body seemed to fit seamlessly, its motion flowing smoothly in response to his will.

  It felt wonderful to be young again, but the life force within him was beyond anything he’d ever experienced before, even as a child. It seemed to radiate endlessly from his core, reaching beyond the boundaries of his body.

  Ray remembered that the body he was eventually to inhabit would be endowed with eternal youth. What other extraordinary properties would accompany that? He’d have to put this body to the test to determine its limits.

  Night was falling as he left the Ministry of Discovery. A car had come for him, but halfway home he decided to walk the rest of the way, letting himself out at the edge of Rock Creek Park. He would cut through the park to Marcus’s home in Crestwood on its east side. A jogging path wound along the creek’s edge toward the north. A handful of people could be seen in silhouette against the twilight sky, scattered along the trail, but moving almost in unison at a measured pace.

  The sky was overcast. Once the last light of day was extinguished, it was nearly pitch dark all around him. The vintage lamps along the path were too dim to illuminate more than a few feet around the base of each, leaving the long spans between lights in shadows.

  Ray picked up his pace, joining with the rhythm of the joggers while maintaining some distance from the pack. His steps were so light and his strides so smooth that he barely felt the impact. It felt almost as if he were floating.

  Then rustling in the trees to his left was followed by footsteps at a sprint. His path was abruptly blocked by a tall, shadowy figure. A blade held aloft glinted in the reflection of one of the street lamps, plunging rapidly toward his face. His left hand shot up in defense, catching the blade in the center of his palm, piercing it through and through. The pain was excruciating, but he held his arm rigid, keeping the blade at bay. With his assailant momentarily off balance, he landed a blow with his right fist squarely on his jaw. The force of the blow sent his attacker sprawling, releasing the handle of the knife, the blade still imbedded in his hand.

  Ray grabbed the handle with his free hand, extracting it with a sharp tug. Warm blood spurted in pulses from the wound, then suddenly stopped. His adversary sprung from a crouch to tackle him. Ray dodged the blow with unexpected agility, thrusting his foot in his attacker’s path. The man stumbled, then rolled and recovered, disappearing into the woods.

  Ray held his palm before his eyes. As intense as the pain had been, it had already dissipated. Blood around the wound had dried. Its edges were nearly closed, no longer leaking blood. He clenched his fist. His fingers all flexed with full strength. The tendons were intact. The puncture wound on the bac
k of his hand was closing before his eyes.

  “What an amazing body!” Ray thought. “It’s practically indestructible.” His body rocked with laughter. He should have been terrified, but instead was thrilled. He’d never felt so alive.

  He had no idea what would have happened had the blade come down between his eyes. Perhaps he could have died. But short of a mortal wound, this body was incredibly resilient. It was capable of pain, but only as long as the damage lasted. And it was astonishingly strong and quick.

  While his response to the attack answered many of Ray’s questions about Marcus’s body, it raised new questions about his life. Random muggings in the park hadn’t occurred for decades. Nobody carried anything worth stealing anymore. Transactions of value all occurred over the UDB and there were sufficient safeguards to prevent people from entering transactions in response to threat.

  “So this wasn’t a random attack,” Ray thought. “Someone must want Marcus dead.” He accessed his MELD chip and replayed the action, noticing particularly the force that was returned through the blade of the knife in his hand as he held it off. It had been well-matched to his own strength.