by J.J. Mainor
Chapter 14
Remy fell into his chair and buried his head in his hands. All he could think about was Roxanne up on that ship in Pittman’s quarters. He might not care so much about Freedom and his dutiful lieutenants, but that girl was not part of his military. Roxanne’s only crime was being a woman on a ship full of horny men, and for that alone Remy would not help Dirk destroy the Freedom.
It had been a mistake coming down to the planet, thinking he could resolve this dispute. The same science that gave them medical miracles left these blue collar workers as callous toward life as the soldiers paid to die. Yet sadly, the Confederate General who attacked for nothing more than a dinner recipe seemed reasonable by comparison. These men accepted their deaths and only desired to take as many Republic forces with them as they could. How did Remy think he could broker peace with these monsters?
Ares slipped by Eddie and took the seat across from Remy. “Don’t judge Dirk too harshly. He’s just trying to keep us alive as long as he can.”
“You think declaring war on the military is the way to do that? You think if you kill enough of them, they’re just going to pack up and leave you alone? Let me tell you something about armies. They are like hornet nests. You rile them up and they won’t stop stinging you until you’re the one out of commission. If you think they’re out to kill you, they’re not going to stop because you kill a few of them first. They’re only going to come at you harder.”
Ares look at him rather curiously. “You have no idea what’s going on out here, do you? I can see you’re still looking at everything around you as if you’re still on Earth. Everything is so cut and dry. You’re either alive or dead. Good or evil. All of us have the same rights as anyone else, and end of the day, we can all go back home with our families, play with the kids and snuggle up with our wives. Let me tell you something, it’s not that simple for any of us.”
“You’re wrong, Ares. You still have rights. You still have your family. Just because you’re not on Earth, don’t think you left that behind for good. You can go back.”
“No, I can’t. Dirk can’t. Eddie over there can’t go back. I doubt even you could go back now. Tell me, do you know who you are?”
“I’m Remy Duval. I’m the UN inspector assigned to the RS Freedom.”
“Are you sure?” Ares’ question put a chill in his bones as he tried to remember how many times he had been scrambled. He inferred from his new friend that the process somehow created a unique individual. But Remy refused to believe he had given up his beliefs and his identity simply because he had transported about, taken apart and reassembled like a house made of children’s blocks.
“No matter what happens to my molecules, I will always be Remy Duval. I will never stop believing in the basic tenants of human rights. And I will not believe that your life on Earth is gone.”
Ares could see the guy needed a demonstration. He rose from his seat and signaled Remy to follow as they again left the mess hall. It was just a short trek down the hall to crew quarters where they held the few survivors they had managed to scramble from the battlefield. Five men in all, still in their suits. The guards refused to allow them to remove their helmets, and they had been denied medical attention.
Ares approached the first soldier and ripped his helmet off. “What is your name and serial number,” he demanded.
“Private Josh Fields, SE60 292 015.”
Ares threw the helmet back into the kid’s hands and moved on to the next man. He ripped off the helmet revealing an identical face. Though this prisoner had a slightly confounded look in contrast to Remy’s overt shock, his hair was identical, his eyebrows matched, and even his lips had the same dimples at either end.
“What is your name and serial number?”
“Private Josh Fields, SE60 292 015,” he returned less sure than the first man. Ares repeated the show with the remaining three, turning up two more Private Josh Fields.
“We unmasked the corpses we pulled from the field and found the same thing,” Ares shared. “We have found only four distinct individuals copied over and over again. There might be more; we didn’t get a large sample.”
Remy looked to the four identical faces, all looking each other over trying to grasp their doppelgangers. Apparently they didn’t know any more about this duplication than Remy had. Still it was eye opening, not for the extent of abuse over the scrambler, but for the miners’ attitudes towards the men they had taken arms against.
“So you justify this death because all these soldiers are copies of someone else. You think because they share DNA, that makes them less of a person?”
“They are not people!”
The disgust registered more with Remy than with those Ares just insulted. “They may be copies of one individual, but they became original beings the moment they were created. They are no different than identical twins, born of the same zygote, but earning their own memories and becoming their own people the moment they’re born. That Josh is no longer the same Josh as that one, and each one has as much right to exist as the original they were copied from.”
Ares slammed his fist into the wall, denting in the sheet metal. “I don’t care what rights they have. We are at war.”
“Then treat them as prisoners,” Remy protested. “Your government signed the Geneva Convention. You have the same responsibility as that military commander outside. These men deserve food and water. They deserve medical attention.”
Suddenly Ares’ attitude shifted as he erupted into laughter. “Medical attention would be great if we had a doctor. But we had to put him in ‘storage’ just like the administrator.”
Unfortunately for the bullet wounds among the prisoners, simple medical procedures with the scrambler were far more difficult a task than simply materializing someone from a saved pattern. As Ares explained from what he understood, the doctor could dematerialize the injured individual. Then he could take a previously saved healthy pattern and splice the healthy body part into the newer pattern. Like grafting skin over a burn or transplanting a failed organ, the doctor could make the repairs with a computer instead of a scalpel.
Using the scrambler for medical procedures required skill with both medical knowledge and computer skills to graft the patterns successfully. If the graft was off by one line of code, the reintegrated person would be disfigured. He could even die. To treat the prisoners’ injuries, they needed the doctor.
“Why did you get rid of the doctor,” Remy asked. He wanted to know what made the doctor as despised an individual as the administrator responsible for their situation.
And Ares had to think long and hard before providing the answer. The truth was far from pleasant, and he didn’t know if he wanted to see it again. This inspector before him promised help. He didn’t think the promise could be kept, but Remy was genuine in his concern. This battle could not be won, they all knew that when they decided to resist. If they wanted any chance of the war being won, then the truth had to leave these walls. This UN inspector was the only chance they had of spreading their gripes.
Ares waved his escort to follow. They moved through another series of corridors, bearing the stains of creeping rust and the scents of sweat and hard labor. The medical bay looked to be the only foil to the filth and grime that had overtaken this facility in its two brief years of life.
It was a much smaller, compact operation than the one Remy had visited aboard the Freedom. There were no private rooms off the center examination area. The only privacy patients seemed to have was a curtain that hung around each bed. He couldn’t imagine surgery being performed here, but then again, it was easy to forget, as someone not accustom to life in space, that surgery had become obsolete.
Ares took up a small controller from the doctor’s desk and showed it to his friend. “This button will shift us into another dimension.” He paused to let Remy absorb the statement. Like himself when he first came upon the secr
et, Remy hardly believed this fantastical dimension. “We’ll be able to see this realm, but we will be invisible to this realm. I have to warn you before I push the button that you have to be careful should you try to go there later by yourself.”
Remy was willing to put his skepticism aside until he saw the evidence of this dimension for himself. A week ago, he wouldn’t have believed in teleportation. He didn’t believe food could be created seemingly from thin air before Anders had introduced him to the scrambler in his room. Yet, he had seen this technology used in such horrible ways, Remy would take any warnings this man had about this new dimension seriously.
“There is no atmosphere in this other dimension. Our doctor created a new room in which he could trap air, but outside that room, there is nothing. They tell me I had to learn the hard way about wearing an environmental suit if you go exploring.
“Also, you’re taking a chance that you’re not shifting into another object. There is equipment in this secret room; a computer, surgical trays, a bed. Since you can’t see them before you cross over, you’re taking the chance that you’ll merge with something already over there. And when you come back, you better make sure you’re standing in an open space so you don’t return into a wall or another person.”
“So you can pass through walls and things from this dimension?”
“Yes, and no,” Ares responded almost cryptically. Physical things in this world have some presence across the dimension, so you won’t go falling through floors or flying off uncontrollably through the walls, but you can pass through everything with a little effort.”
Given the dangers and uncertainty in the journey Ares proposed, Remy wondered how big a secret their doctor was hiding to take on those risks. He signaled he was ready to cross over, so Ares took his hand. His guide put his finger to the button, then looked to him to give him one last chance to back out.
“Let’s do this,” Remy affirmed.
He took a deep breath to ready himself for the crossover. As Ares closed the gap between his fingertip and the magic button, a rush of footsteps outside the medical bay announced the arrival of Dirk and a handful of armed men.
“Put it down, Ares,” he ordered. The finger was relaxed and the journey ended before it was undertaken. Remy looked upon the armed men with disbelief this secret could be that damaging to their efforts.
