Argh. It’s too bright! Turn that light down! My eyes squint further shut, pulling my hands up to cover them. Goddamned hangover.

“Please refrain from rubbing your eyes like that. Hold still while I check your vitals.” An unknown sing-song voice with a bizarre cadence speaks up from beside me. Suddenly, everything comes rushing back; the lab, the machine. Being trapped. I feel a cool touch pull my hands away from my eyes and back down to whatever I was laying on, and without my fingers in the way I can see. I’m in a small, stark room. Looks like a doctor’s office, save for a large window covering the upper half of the right wall; this room is sunken into the floor for some reason. I reach into my pocket to grab my phone, but I totally whiff; no pocket there at all. All my clothes have been removed, I’m just laying here in a simple hospital smock. 

I look up to who’s poking and prodding me, and get a bit of a shock. It’s one of those house robots that have been showing up here and there. Someone had put clothes on it, dressed it up like a doctor, with one of those big white coats and everything. It’s face was all broken up though. It had this weird pearlescent blue material streaked all haphazard through it, like someone had broken it apart and then filled it back in with the wrong material. 

I recoil pretty immediately. Situation is pretty stressful enough, and I’ve had enough of these magic… science… whatever machines poking and prodding me for one lifetime. If I never saw another one it'd have been too soon. I sit up and scramble around for the walls, trying to find a door anywhere in this place. 

“Brian, come on. Sit back down, everything will be fine. It’s just a basic check up.” The machine… crosses its arms, sitting down on the doctor’s cot thing I was just on, and starts tapping its foot against the floor. Ok, no, absolutely not. They definitely did something to that machine that I want no part of. They’re going to dissect me or something! Rip me apart to find out what happened in there!

I turn around to look up at the window; it’s too dark up there to make anyone out clearly, but I can see a few people milling about, a couple getting into place at a desk right up next to it. I run up to it, pounding on the wall underneath it. “Hello! Hello, I’m stuck here! Please, I don’t know what happened, but you have to let me out!” I slam everything I have into the wall under the window, trying to get the attention of anyone up there, hoping beyond hope that they’d actually help me instead of… I don’t even want to know. “Please! Please, I don’t know why I’m in here!”

Bzzzt! An intercom goes off above me, situated right below the observation window. “Brian, please. You need to calm down. Panicking is only going to make things worse.” Oh, my god, it’s Frank!

“Frank! Frank, oh my god, it’s you!” I could actually cry right now. It’s just them up there, It’s still going to be ok. “Please, you gotta get me out of here! Talk to whoever put me here, I need to get out right now! There’s been some kind of mistake or something!”

Again the intercom gives its telltale ‘on’ noise. “Brian, it’s me, Bianca. The one you met last night.” I nod, not even sure if she could see me from up there. If they’ve got an intercom, it’s safe to assume there’s cameras too. I look around in the upper corners until I can find one, nodding to it instead. “Listen. You’re not imprisoned or anything, we’re not going to hold you forever. You’re in a quarantine room. We just need to get some vitals and know if you’re safe to be around.” What? Safe!? “That’s why Sabrina is doing it, she can be sterilized if need be. So please, return to the diagnostics test.” I turn my head back to the machine as it pats the bench next to it. 

“Sabrina? Do you mean the robot? And what do you mean safe?”

Quickly I’m corrected by the girl on the intercom. “Don’t call her that. She’s an Android.” Oof, touchy.

I turn my head back to the camera, trying to bore holes into it with my eyes. I just repeat myself. “What do you mean ‘safe to be around’? What in the world did that thing do to me last night?”

A third voice came from the intercom. “The tests, Mr. Robinson. If you ever want to leave that room, that is.” This one is cold, acidic, harsh. There’s the anger that I was expecting from the start. I look back to the machine again and sigh. I don’t want to, but if it’s the only way out.

“Fine, I’ll let the robot test me.” 

Loudly and quickly two voices ring out from the intercom and the machine in tandem to correct me. “Android!” 

I can’t help but look and feel a little sheepish as I saunter back over to the bed next to it. “Sorry.” I sit down, and the rob… the android gets up to hold my hand in front of me softly.

“Apology accepted.” Suddenly she pulls my arm back and over onto a outjutting next to the cot, with several vials and needles on it. “Now, I’m going to need some blood. Stay still this time.” 

I wince, look away, try not to think about it. Look back up to the big window of people staring down at me. “You still haven’t told me what’s going on. I have no idea why I should be here.”

“That’s the thing,” the angry voice says, “you shouldn’t have been. Not a single one of you should have been in here, and what I’m trying to find out is why did the integrity of my experiment get compromised last night?” 

I clench my fists tight, the nails digging into the palms of my hands. “Listen, man, I was only here to pick someone up. If this thing was so dangerous you should–”

“No, you listen young man. I’ve already had to explain this once so pay attention. You’re extremely lucky that you aren’t already dead, that you didn’t walk into there and electrocute yourself or scramble your brains upon entry. If you managed to change one value on it you could have walked out of there half a man, or worse. Twenty of you goddamned brats would be running around, ruining every other project in the building.” What? Twenty? This is so confusing, everyone is dancing around what actually happened.

“Please, I just want to know. What does that machine do?”

Frank’s voice on the intercom again, thankfully. The angry guy was wearing me down. “Listen, Brian. They’re going to explain everything. Just promise me that you’re going to stay calm about it.” I nod softly to the camera.

Bianca speaks up again. “We’ve been trying to crack a solution for resource dwindling. What if we could just make more of it, whenever we wanted? Think of all the good that could change in the world! No more food shortages, no more fuel wars. We’ve been trying to use technomancy to control and improve the fabrication process, but it’s still extremely unstable. We’ve never been able to get something working out of it yet, but we’re so, so close to cracking it.”

“No, we are not.” The angry voice just ignores me entirely. “And we never will be, thanks to this. You realize the second this gets out we’re finished? And not just the project, this kind of scandal absolutely destroys people. Entirely because a witless child drunkard was allowed to wander around in my laboratory.”  

“Hey!” I yell up at the window. This asshole doesn’t even know what he’s talking about. “I was only there because I was trying to keep my friend safe! It was an accident!”

He scoffs through the intercom. “Well, you failed. He shouldn’t have been there either, none of you should have. And your reward, Mr. Robinson, is that you’re not safe.”

“He’s safe.” I look over to the android, who’s spinning my blood around in a vial in front of her, the blue lines on her face glowing slightly. “No microbials, no abnormal viral loads, parasite free, no obvious signs of mutation or degradation. There should be no issue with his reintegration at this point.” Oh my god, that machine could do all that? I really did get lucky.  

The vague shape with Frank’s voice leans over to the other two. “Ok, he’s clean. We should get him out of there.” 

I perk up at that. “Yes, please! Let me out of here! I’ll sign an NDA or whatever, I promise no one will ever, ever, ever hear about this!”

“Maybe we should wait,” Bianca’s voice calls out. “Clear out the room first–”

“No.” A vaguely familiar voice that I can’t place, not any of the three at the console. “I want to see it.”

Bianca sighs, and I see her moving her fingers in the air and then, suddenly, the door is where it should be, a big hermetically sealed one. I shudder a bit; it reminds me of the doors on the machine. It didn’t mark its arrival with a pop into existence or make some tear in the universe. It’s just as if what should have been there the whole time had finally come home to roost.

God, I hate magic. 

I climb the stairs slowly, the android hot on my heels. As I reach for a large ‘Open’ button on the side of a second set of doors at the top, I feel a soft hand on my shoulder. “Breathe for a second. This is going to be a shock, but we’re going to figure it out.” I nod, close my eyes. Breathe in deeply. And then open the door.

First thing I feel is Frank giving me a massive, bone crushing hug. Bianca is still in her seat, fidgeting like mad. She looks like she hasn’t slept yet, poor thing. Behind her is an older man, I’m assuming the angry voice. Shaggy salt and pepper hair, thick glasses, a few days worth of stubbe. He’d be almost handsome if he weren’t currently staring me down with a huge scowl on his face, and contempt in his eyes.

“Sure you should be touching that thing, Frank?” The fourth voice, the eerily familiar one. I look up to the back of the room, at a guy leaning against the wall, semi-hidden behind some stack of databases or something, his head down. Thumb fiddling with a little…

“Hey! What are you doing with my lighter? Who said you could touch that, give it back!” It’s bad enough that they’re going to lock me in some room and talk down to me all morning with these vague threats, but now they’re going to steal my stuff? What gives any of these people the right!

“Oh, I didn’t take jack from you.” He stands up straight, heads out from his little hiding spot. Wait. Oh my god, he doesn’t just have my lighter, he’s got all my clothes on too! He’s got my shoes, my jeans, my coat, my… My…

He’s got my face.

“What the hell?” He… He hunches back over, crossing his arms, looking like he doesn’t want to be here any longer either. If I thought that mean voice was giving me a death stare, he’s giving me a look that screams ‘I would tear you down cell by cell if I could’. He. I. He’s… “Wait. Wait, wait, wait. You… You wanted to make more of something… It’s a duplicator! So you… the machine made a clone of me? He’s my clone?”

I… He scoffs.“That’s cute. And pathetic. It thinks I’m the copy.”

The angry man leans back into his chair, pressing his glasses up to his face. “Use your brain, boy. I told you, this is the second time I’ve had to explain all this.” I feel Frank’s arm squeezing me even tighter, but the wind was knocked out of me before he could even get started.

Oh.

Oh.

Oh Christ.

I slump down against the wall, onto the floor, clutching my heart. My breaths come out hot and heavy. “Hey, Brian. Look at me.” I look up to see Frank leaning over, hand on my shoulder, holding my arm. “Hey, you’re going to get through this, ok? We’ll figure something out, right?”

“Figure something out?” I spit it out at him. I can’t help it, what an absurd thing to say. “How in the world do you ‘figure out’ being some… fake, clone thing! What is there to figure out! I’m just supposed to go on with the rest of my life knowing that I’m some kind of freak accident? Some sort of magical chincery wearing a me skinsuit?”

“Pfff,” the other… real me scoffs. “Like you’re going to have that long to worry about it.”

“Brian!” Frank gets up and roars at him. “What is wrong with you! We’re supposed to break it slowly!”

“What’s wrong with me! It’s a fake! Just more magical bull that only makes everything worse. You heard what that thing said, it’s just some cheap thing running around with my–”

“What does he mean?” I interrupt their argument, I don’t need to bother listening to either side of that display. I don’t care about Frank defending my honor or the other me screaming. I don’t blame him anyways. What matters is… “What else aren’t you telling me?”

The angry man huffs and turns around, clacking at a keyboard for the computer set up next to his seat at the table. “The experiments haven’t come out correct in any capacity. We had thought they had for a while. So we moved on to animal testing, exactly one time.”

“Professor!” Bianca leans forward, covering one hand over her mouth. God, is it really that bad? “He doesn’t need to actually see that! He shouldn’t have to see–”

“No,” I again interrupted. “I need to see. I want to see. Something bad is happening to me, I deserve to know.”

The professor nods and pulls up a video file of some kind of monkey on a big monitor above him. The monkey looks completely emaciated, not a spare ounce of fat on it. Bored as hell too, sitting in the same room I was just in (albeit fitted for housing an animal rather than being a doctor’s pad; I wonder how much they moved into there last night?) “This ape was the one animal trial we attempted going into the duplicator. It had been a few months of copying books and files, printed test objects, and the like. We even attempted to copy some food, some ears of corn and some harvested rice. And then this poor fellow here,” he points to the monkey playing with a few blocks in his room, “goes through the machine. Things seemed fine at first. But then it grew lethargic, sickly. Its weight started to rapidly fall. No matter how much we fed it, the thing just kept dropping pounds. Its condition deteriorated slowly. I eventually did a scan of it, and had readings of it necrotizing from the inside out. This is the final recording of it.” 

The animal in the video’s eyes seem to glaze over, its movements slow down. It seems like it’s falling asleep for a moment, starting to crumple over in front of its wood blocks. Until a rumbling growl starts to come from its throat. Suddenly the monkey juts back up, whips its toys at every wall in the room, and starts screaming. I’m not talking loud animal whoops, I’m talking primal, horrifying screams. Like it was in the kind of pain it didn’t even know could exist before this. It starts tearing huge chunks of fur from its skull, from its body. It’s trying desperately to get something out of it that won’t leave. And then chunks of flesh come with them. It's… just ripping itself apart, chunk by chunk, screaming its death wail the entire time. The exposed skin on its face goes ashen white, and the hairless skin at its feet go bright red, like the blood had broken free and pooled out entirely in one spot. And then, just as abruptly as the start. All sounds stop, it closes its mouth. Flesh starts sloughing off in large chunks on its back and side. A bone in the leg is exposed, and soon snaps with a brittle loud crunch. It topples to the floor, where it just starts… rapidly melting. Its flesh is boiling away, turning to slime, its bones are drying and blowing off as dust. Its eyes roll around in the sinew pit, looking up at the window, before they too are consumed by entropy and dissolve into the viscera, little jets of ocular fluid squelching out in desperate arcs before merging with the puddle of once-ape.

The entire video was barely ten minutes long.

“Of course, an event like that halted testing. We went over everything else with a fine tooth comb. We found the food had been rotting much faster than its original components. And even a few of the earliest duplicated objects had worn, missing patches on them. We found what was happening was that the duplicated items had mana interlinking them. For solid, inanimate objects that might be fine, at least for a while. But anything with a cellular structure would test those bonds, wearing them out. After a while the mana would just give out entirely, and then nothing would stop total cellular degeneration, a complete breakdown from the atoms on up. The more complicated a duplicate was, the faster it would fail.” 

Thank god I was already sitting, my head felt heavy and yet hollow at the same time. Pin pricks went off around every surface of my body. A pit didn’t so much form at the bottom of my stomach as it did overtake my entire abdomen. I didn’t even feel like I was in there; it was as if I floated over my own self, looking down on this thing made of cotton and lies.

My mouth was dry, my tongue was thick in my throat and heavy on my jaw, but I managed to ask. “I’m dying.” Most of the people in the room look away. The other me hadn’t been looking at us at all, seemingly tuning us all out back in the corner. The professor just nods at me. “How long.”

He adjusted his thick glasses on his face. “The objects made it several months, the food a handful, the ape the majority of one. I’d be surprised if you made it past a week.”

CassieSandwich

No one should ever have to look at themselves. I stay away from graveyards, they are a cliche in my death obsessed generation.

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