53

Why the hell did I sign up for this shit, I thought to myself, not for the first time, as I tugged the prison issue jumpsuit from my body. They let me wear a robe into the lab, but I had to take it off before I entered the chamber. I’d already been thoroughly inspected from head to toe, even cavity searched, to make sure I didn’t have anything on me that wasn’t organic. Even my fillings had been removed. I could tongue the empty holes in my mouth where they’d pulled the teeth that had once been filled with metal.

Why am I doing this… my heart pounded as I handed the robe to the scientist who had escorted me in. He didn’t so much as glance at my body, just murmured a thank you. I feigned indifference, as if I didn’t care who saw me naked, that I wasn’t completely vulnerable, but the truth was, I was scared. More scared than I’d ever been in my life. I could die today.

You can change your mind. It’s not too late. But it was too late. It was too late when they approached me with this madcap deal in the first place. Full pardon, slate wiped clean, if I let them use me as their guinea pig in their tests. I would do anything, anything, for a second chance. I would risk life and limb, sanity, anything just to get a chance at a second chance.

I wasn’t stupid, however, present circumstances notwithstanding. I’d made them sweeten the deal. They had to be desperate if they were coming to people like me. I wasn’t the bottom of the barrel, but I was close enough. And they’d signed on for everything I’d asked for. So it wasn’t just a second chance I was getting, a shot at life again, I needed certain reassurances. Security for the future, so I wasn’t just out there, floating aimlessly. But most importantly… Jannie and Simon.

It was for them I was doing this. I was risking everything, absolutely everything, just for a chance to see them again. I had that now. If I survived this, I would get to see my babies again. And I would do anything to be their mother again, even if it meant that I might die.

No one spoke to me, but they rarely did. I’d undergone a battery of tests before we’d even gotten to this point, and only the psychologist had really engaged me in conversation. He’d been a kindly enough man, asking me some very uncomfortable questions, and without the paperwork stating complete confidentiality, I wouldn’t have answered him as openly as I did. I hadn’t held back at all.

Jannie and Simon. I kept their faces clear in my mind as I climbed into the chamber. The young scientist, Dr. Whatever, grinned nervously at me as he sealed the door. There was a little window I could see out of but was otherwise completely enclosed. I felt a rush of cold air blow over me and shivered. The floor was freezing under my bare feet. The lights flickered, went out, and came back. I breathed in and out, slowly, calmly. This was it.

They had told me they wouldn’t be able to communicate with me once the door was sealed. That the flickering lights would be the signal that the test was about to commence. I counted backwards from sixty, whispering, my breath a plume around me. It was really fucking cold in here. The lights flickered again and again, and despite my calm exterior, I was terrified. I knew what they were going to do, and I knew that the failure ratio was total to date. It was why they had agreed to all of my stipulations. They didn’t think they’d need to follow through with them. I was going to die for science, they thought, so that they could improve their technique so that number 54, 55, 56… one of them would be the success.

Teleportation. They had invented teleportation but so far none of the other test subjects had survived. 52 humans before me, all of them failures. They used prisoners with death sentences hanging over their heads. They offered absolution.

When it happened, it happened so fast I could barely register it. Pain, total and complete, suffused me. I was being torn apart from the inside! I could feel my body literally being reduced from a level I could barely comprehend. I had never thought of myself made up of anything but flesh and bone and blood, but I knew then that I was atoms and molecules and… matter. I couldn’t put it in any different terms. I was nothing but matter. I didn’t even know what that meant, only that what made me, me, was being ripped apart. I opened my mouth to tell them to stop, to scream that I had changed my mind, but it was too late. White light surrounded me, ate me, became me. I was the light, nothing but the light, and I had never felt terror or pain like this in my life, ever.

And then it stopped. Just like that, full stop. I tried to open my eyes only to realize I had never closed them. I could see out of the window, I could see the chamber opposite of me, see a face peering out of it. My face.

Her mouth was open and as she screamed, and I could see the holes where her teeth had been, the same holes in my mouth that I kept poking with my tongue. She was screaming and screaming, her eyes screwed shut, just screaming. I was screaming, too. I could hear myself, hear her, making a sound I had never thought myself capable of.

She disappeared from the little window, just fell away. I pressed my palms against the glass and tried to see into her chamber. I knew that was me in there, and I was still in here. I could feel her pulse, her heart, the blood racing through her body, her breath, her lungs heaving, the static of her thoughts. She was the exact same as me. She was me. I was her.

We.

We became conscious and aware, all in a rush, just like that. We were lying on the floor of one chamber and standing at the window of the other one. Our hearts beat in unison and our breathing became even. We were freezing. It was very cold in here.

We slowly, shakily stood up. We stared at the other through the window. There was no reason to try and speak, we could read our thoughts and we knew that whatever had just happened, whatever this was, we were of single mind.

There was an uproar swirling around the lab as scientists came rushing in, talking and yelling; it was utter hysteria. They peered in at us eagerly, gesturing wildly, while some of them wept and others just seemed shocked. One of the chambers was unsealed, and we were escorted out, stumbling. We kept eye contact as long as we could as we were led away, into another room. The second chamber was unsealed and we were taken to a different room.

We were examined in every single way a person can be examined. We answered their questions, feeding the other information, let them draw our blood and scan our body and monitor our brain waves. It went on and on. They didn’t know what to make of us. This was unprecedented. This was completely unexpected.

We had been completely and totally replicated. Not a copy, but transported from one chamber to the next, while remaining in the same place. We hadn’t split in two. We were the same woman at the exact same time. It didn’t make sense, but it wasn’t as frightening as it should have been.

They didn’t know what to do about our deal. They were legally obligated to honor it, as the entire project had only been approved based on transparency with a completely civilian committee, with the world watching. But they had made that deal when we were singular, and could not comprehend that we were still singular; they saw us as completely separate.

No matter. We could be set free and we could remain here. It didn’t matter which one. We experienced the same things. We lived two lives as one.

We went home last Friday, and we remained in the facility. More tests, more monitoring. We got to see Jannie and Simon, hold our husband, see our parents and our sister.

They did the experiment again, but 54 didn’t make it. We offered to do it. They accepted. They couldn’t help themselves.

We are three now, and we are one. We will soon be four.

They can’t help themselves, you see. They must know what causes it, what will happen.

We will be legion, we think.