by Jaxon Reed
His live-in girlfriend, she thought, although he did not know it yet.
She extracted herself from the bed and padded barefoot to his terminal. She sat down, opened up a holo and began ordering herself a new wardrobe. She needed the basics to get through the week without constantly washing things.
The delivery bot would arrive with everything she ordered within the hour. This particular service took C.O.D., meaning the bot would accept tokens as payment. That sounded good to Stormy, unless Jock over there woke up by then, in which case she would have him pay for everything.
Meanwhile she picked out her side of the closet, moving his clothes over.
She looked around the small flat, deciding how she would rearrange the place.
11
Hsu said, “Obviously this works, since we’ve all seen your future self.”
Boggs nodded. He sat in the middle chair, next to Bainer who remained motionless.
Hsu said, “Now, I will have the machine create a duplicate of you for earlier this morning. The controls are quantum-based. What I tell the machine to do now, it responds in the past. That’s a little tricky to wrap your mind around, but that’s how it works.”
“No problem, Doc. I got it.”
“You met me in the room outside this door, or rather your clone did. You explained to me who you are and what you were doing here. Is that clear?”
Boggs nodded again and grinned at Jamieson and Collier.
“You will see and hear and feel everything your clone does in the past, in real time here in the present. Behind you is the clone bank and cellular replicator. What you will be experiencing is a neural link to a near identical representation of your present self. ‘Clone’ is not really an accurate term for it, but it will have to do.”
“Clone sounds good enough, Doc.”
Hsu smiled, unwilling to argue the point. But it was obvious from the expression on his face that he wished to distinguish the term and elaborate further. He used it reluctantly in this non-scientific setting only for the sake of convenience.
Hsu said, “What you will see and experience in the past will occur now, in the present, in your mind. You will stay in this chair for the duration. There are no such things as reappearing in the present a second later, or repeating things over and over again, understand? So for as long as you stay in the past, you will spend an equal amount of time in this chair during the present. That’s important. The amount of time remains the same, now and in the past. You are only looking at things in the past, in real time.”
“I got it, Doc. I’m here for the duration.”
“Precisely. Alright, if you are ready, we will begin. Please remain still while the system takes a scan of your body. It will process this and recreate a facsimile of you in the past.”
Boggs sat back in the chair while Hsu lowered the hood over his head. The agent gave a thumbs up to Collier and Jamieson, then placed both his hands on the armrests as the dome covered his face.
Hsu walked to a holopanel in the corner of the room and made some adjustments. A thin red line quickly traced around Boggs, going down to his feet then back up. His vital signs appeared on a holo above his head.
Hsu said, “Alright, at this point cellular replication is taking place in the past, at eight this morning.”
“That is phenomenal,” Collier said. “I mean, what you have done here is truly amazing.”
Hsu smiled and said, “We merged a number of existing technologies to get to this point. I adapted immersive online gaming technology with cellular replication and artificial cloning. Everything Agent Boggs sees and hears and experiences with his link in the past, he will experience in his mind in the present as if he were controlling a real life avatar in a video game. Only, instead of in an electronic realm, it will be his clone in the past.”
“Just like that?” Jamieson said. “You make it sound so easy.”
Hsu shrugged modestly.
He said, “I did not invent the gaming technology or cellular replication or clone banks. I just adapted these innovations for my own purposes. My contribution to science, initially, was the notion of using quantum-based optical cells to transmit data from the past. Placing everything inside a person’s clone just seemed more convenient, and was a natural progression of this train of thought.”
Jamieson said, “So, you had this thing lying around for four years, and you never had the urge to try it yourself?”
Hsu sighed.
He said, “Partly, the reason why I never attempted to use it was that the war proved to be a major distraction. And, this is not easily weaponized. All our efforts were focused on weapons platforms during the war, I’m afraid. We were intent on winning it.”
“That makes sense. But still . . . four years?”
“The other reason is, in part, I was waiting for the day when I greeted my own clone, walking through that door. I thought that was how I would know for certain I had used it.”
He smiled with that look of modesty again.
“I suppose that day never comes. Or at least, it hasn’t yet. But yes, that is the real underlying reason I have left the machine on while I’ve been involved in other pursuits. I’ve been waiting for that day all this time.”
-+-
A red line scanned down a clone blank. A line of identical clone blanks stood waiting behind it in the small room behind the chairs.
On the line’s way back up, a line of molecules pulled from a nearby vat of raw liquid base material, fashioning cloth, leather and metal replicants around the body.
When the scan finished, an exact duplicate of Morton Boggs stood in place of the clone blank.
A quantum neural link established itself and the clone opened its eyes.
“Wow. Cool.”
Boggs looked down the length of his cloned body, and realized it wore identical clothes.
“Everything’s here.”
He patted his side and felt the agency issued blaster in its holster under his arm.
“Now that is convenient.”
He looked around the room to get his bearings.
Behind him, several more clone blanks waited. They were humanoid in appearance, with a neutral skin tone but bereft of anything else. They could easily be turned into male or female, he supposed, and modified for height and weight.
They looked like . . . blank humans.
“Thus the name, clone blank. Wish I could have watched the process in full.”
He looked around for an exit from the cramped space and found one, a narrow doorway along the small room’s far wall.
He turned the latch and it swung out. Stepping through, he found himself back in the control room.
There on the corner chair, Bainer remained hooked up with the dome over his face.
“How about that?” Boggs said. “This thing actually works.”
He shut the metal door behind him and crossed the room. The outer door swished open automatically for him.
Several Republican Shipworks employees were already there, beginning the workday. They looked up in surprise to see a total stranger coming out of an inner room.
The elevator dinged and Pritchard Hsu walked out.
Hsu stopped when he saw Boggs, joining the group of surprised employees staring at him.
“Hi, Doc. I’m Agent Morton Boggs, AOJ. And, I’m from the future. Ha! I always wanted to say something like that.”
Boggs grinned at everybody.
He said, “Uh . . . what time is it?”
12
From her building in Eastside, Wilcox reached out across the neural net and linked up with her droid doppelgänger.
She examined the settings as she took over in the droid’s head. Republican Naval Intelligence had left several components modifiable.
After repeated complaints, Wilcox had dialed down the more negative characteristics of the droid’s adjustable personality. Now, her robotic autonomous self was simply grouchy.
Her coworkers already gave the dro
id careful distance, aware of the tongue lashings they might receive by crossing it.
The exception was Jake Applegate, who openly despised her. The senior assistant director hated the way Wilcox, or the droid pretending to be her, flouted the rules and ignored regulations. And, he increasingly seemed to be monitoring the droid’s every move, looking for mistakes.
Already he suspected her of being a droid, but when the real Wilcox cut herself in front of him by accident, his suspicions were at least temporarily eased. He had not yet caught on that both a real Wilcox and a droid version existed simultaneously.
So long as Jodi Fonteneaux remained the director of AOJ, nothing would change regardless of Applegate’s sentiments. Wilcox would continue working unimpeded, either as herself or via the droid body double. Or both.
Besides, she and Fonteneaux both knew Applegate had planted a bug in the Director’s office. They were keeping an eye on him at the same time he kept an eye on them.
The droid, with the real Gina Wilcox in her head, walked into a crime scene. The burned out building was in the Projects, one of the slum neighborhoods in the giant collection of cities and boroughs known as Octavia.
Decades ago, when both major forms of government among the Milky Way’s colonized planets decided to grant their artificial intelligence systems decision making authority, the AIs examined all aspects of the human condition and the underlying assumptions of political science.
During a period known as the Welfare Wars, great civil unrest spread throughout the planets, and the AIs examined the societal impacts of welfare and other government programs designed to help the poor.
First, they decided “income inequality” was a canard. In simulation after simulation, when income was distributed equally among the population it was quickly redistributed in the marketplace.
Some people sought to earn additional money through labor or the selling of goods. Others traded more away than they earned. Some saved money and invested in things that paid them back, like stocks or real estate, thus accumulating wealth. Others frittered away whatever credits flowed into their hands.
The AIs decided true income equality is impossible thanks to human nature. Even with forced equality, in a controlled socialist economy where everyone receives the same amount in salary each month, some people wind up poor while some grow rich.
The AIs also decided that government welfare induced ill effects in society at large. Doing nothing for money was not only unproductive, but counterproductive as well.
However, the problem of poverty persisted in real life. Thus, the AIs introduced the indentured servant program as a solution.
Those truly destitute received payment for ten years of service, enforced via a biocollar around their necks. Companies or individuals could purchase their terms of service and put the individuals to work.
The indentured servant system seemed demeaning to some, and there were periodic protests, at least in the Republic where protests were tolerated.
But politicians pointed to the AI systems, which designed the biocollars with built-in protections. Also, the matter was (perhaps conveniently) out of their hands.
Individuals entered the indentured servant system willingly, and they could not be forced to do things that threatened their lives. Nor could they be forced to do things of a more personal nature outside of their consent.
Some remnants of the old welfare elements predating the indent system persisted, including the Projects which were privatized decades ago after government housing subsidies were eliminated.
And now, Wilcox thought, staring through the eyes of her droid on the scene, they remained hotspots for criminal activity.
“It’s still smoky in there,” Applegate said, coming up beside the drone.
Wilcox detected a pleased tone in his voice. He was probably happy to beat her here and establish himself as Agent-in-Charge.
He said, “The fire department notified OPD when they found the bodies inside. Some of them appear to have been shot. Muni called us when they found missile launchers and heavy weaponry. Looks similar to some of the equipment used by our friends in the Black Goggles Gang.”
“Maybe these guys were their suppliers,” Gina said.
“You don’t know that. Maybe these are the real Black Goggles Gang. I may have just solved the case.”
Gina smiled back in her private office. The expression was duplicated on her drone in the Projects.
She said, “Let me know when you find some black goggles in this building, like we found in the other one.”
That’ll shut him up, she thought.
Sure enough, Applegate glared at the droid.
Menzinni from Forensics appeared, the cowlick covering his forehead bouncing as he stepped out the front door.
He shrugged at their inquisitive looks and said, “The fire burned up anything of interest. We can’t tell heads or tails from much in there. We do have IDs on all the stiffs, though. On the upper floors, which are relatively undamaged, we’re running traces of DNA and hair samples at the moment. I’ll be able to tell you who all used to live here in an hour or so.”
“Sounds good,” Applegate said. “Send the report to me, I’m the Agent-in-Charge.”
Menzinni shrugged again.
He said, “Sure thing. It’ll be in the system if Assistant Director Wilcox or anybody else needs to see it too.”
With that Menzinni left, intent on flying back to Headquarters.
Applegate glared at him, then transferred his ire to the bot.
Gina ignored him. Menzinni, along with others in the agency, knew the way the current flowed at the moment. So long as Fonteneaux remained Director, Wilcox would serve as the de facto second-in-command.
And that’s true no matter who shows up first at a crime scene, she thought with a trace of satisfaction.
Through the droid she said, “Be sure and secure all the weapons. Let’s find out if they’re League in origin and maybe try to figure out where they came from.”
Applegate scowled at the droid’s back as it walked away.
“I was going to do that anyway,” he called out.
But already the droid rounded the corner, heading for Gina’s car.
Across the street and near the very corner Stormy used a few hours earlier for her surveillance of the building, an old homeless man in a dirty bathrobe sat with his back against the wall watching all the activity outside his old building.
Richard Epsilon Ybarra chose the pseudonym Dirk after immigrating to Diego years ago. It was better than his childhood nickname Dick, or so he thought. Dirk was the hunky hero in Lucky Lou, after all. Nobody made fun of the name Dirk.
To his surprise, people in fact did make fun of the name Dirk, and they associated it with all the sexual connotations one might expect from a popular skin holo sobriquet.
Dirk sighed in resignation, watching the tall woman leave the scene.
He wondered when everybody else would leave and he could get back inside his building. There were scores to settle. He did not see who attacked and shot the place up before setting everything on fire. But he had a good idea who it might be.
And, Dirk thought to himself, she would pay dearly for crossing him.
13
Boggs walked into Jamieson’s office building and decided to take the stairs.
Much to his chagrin, his implant would not work here in the past. PLAIR kept saying something about a duplicate network ID, so even though the implant was identical to his real one, the small chunk under the skin below the clone’s ear was practically useless.
In the relative privacy of the stairwell he pulled out his weapon. This was likewise faithfully reproduced by the time travel machine. It had the same serial number as the original, and Boggs realized now why PLAIR identified his gun as the one used against Jamieson.
He also knew what he had to do, and he smiled at the prospect of taking a few potshots at his old battle buddy.
Boggs exited the stairwell and glan
ced to his left and right. The hall made a giant square shape. Several offices remained vacant, as evidenced by their lack of holo signs. Jamie’s office was around a bend.
The landlords must be desperate for tenants, Boggs decided. They probably gave him a break on rent.
He leaned against a wall around the corner, then tilted his head slightly so he could watch Jamieson’s door.
A few minutes later the elevator pod dinged open and a very attractive blonde woman came out. He pulled back so she would not see him.
She stopped at the door marked “J. Jamieson, Private Investigations.”
Boggs peeked and watched her retrieve a small compact mirror from her purse. She examined her face and puckered her lips.
He raised an eyebrow at this, his mind turning over ideas as to why she would need to check her looks before meeting his old friend. Was it innocuous or for more nefarious purposes?
She pressed the access pad and the door swished open. He heard a corny door alert go off.
“She walked into my office like a cool summer breeze. Soft, refreshing, and oh so uplifting . . .”
“Idiot,” Boggs murmured, smiling.
Several minutes later she left, heading back to the elevator.
Boggs readied his gun, watching and waiting.
Finally, the office door swished open once more. Boggs aimed for Jamieson’s middle, confident his Kelvingarb sport coat lining would absorb the blast.
Thip! Thip! Thip!
The little gun fired and Jamie went down. Boggs raced down the hall, heading to the stairs.
Outside, he stopped after he put a couple blocks between himself and the building, and relaxed.
“Well, that part’s over,” he muttered to himself. “I’ve got time to get back to Shipworks before they visit.”
He wandered off, looking for a bus stop.
He wondered how his clone disappeared. He had seen himself pop away while he prepared to use the time machine. Where did it go?
“I’ll guess I’ll find out soon enough.”
