Copy and Paste

I take a deep breath, smoothing the lapels of my tux and running a hand over my hair. The sensations still feel off, like I’m experiencing each a microsecond after it happens.

Part of it is due to the Transfer, neural lag as my restored consciousness acclimates to fresh nerves. And part of it is purely psychological.

After all, I’m still getting used to being alive again.

Nerves settled, I push open the double doors and stride into the cavernous room beyond. A swell of noise greets me, cheers and applause from the crowd waiting there, rattling the crystal chandeliers.

Familiar faces greet me with smiles. Friends and family. Everyone important in my life, here to celebrate the first day of my new life. Again.

The live band breaks out in “He’s a Jolly Good Fellow,” and the whole room joins in. I stand there, grinning abashedly, enjoying the attention.

“Thank you,” I say, raising my voice as the singing trails off. “Thank you.”

I leave the doorway and the crowd presses forward, led by those closest to me in one way or another.

Melinda slips up and embraces me, planting a kiss on my lips and handing me a champagne flute. “Happy birthday, darling,” she says, radiant as always. We’ve been married for… well, a very long time, and even if the old passion isn’t there, I still can’t imagine a day without her by my side.

“Thanks, dear.” I return the kiss and take a long sip. She releases me, and I move on to meet the first outstretched hand.

“Happy birthday, Doc,” Stewart says. I’m not sure why that nickname’s stuck for so long; maybe because I’m the oldest person alive with both an MD and a PhD. Stew’s been running Eternity, my company, since the beginning, all those many, many years ago. I couldn’t have turned my controversial invention into a global empire without him. “What is this, number nine? Ten? Anyway, glad you’re still with us.”

“Where would I go? Heaven’s got to be one empty place by now.” That gets laughs, though I’m sure I’ve used it before. There are only so many jokes you can make about living forever.

Then the next guy in line is before me, and I can’t remember his name. I frown. I hate these slips, these gaps. I know it’s an unavoidable complication of the procedure, and a small price to pay for living forever, but it’s still a nuisance. You’d think in six hundred years I’d have figured out how to fix it.

“Eddie,” he supplies, noticing my confusion. “Eddie Ray. CFO.”

“Right. Eddie. You’d think I’d remember. I mean, it’s been… how long?”

“Close on three centuries, Doc,” he replies with a grin.

“Well, you must be good at your job, then.” Once again, everybody laughs.

As I start to move on, a hand rests on my shoulder. “You okay, Doc?”

I glance over to see Phil, my personal physician, wearing that look of professional concern on his face. “Fine, fine. Just a slip.”

“Hmmm,” he grunts thoughtfully. “Okay. But please don’t overdo it. You just got that Shell; it’d be a shame to burn it out in one party, Doc.”

I shake my head, wave off his concern, but he continues to hover, a mother hen over a newly hatched chick. I can understand his sentiments, even if they’re irritating.

Believe me, I know exactly how important I am.

Before I came along, nobody knew what to do with cloning. They could whip up a human body, but all they could do with it was cut it up for organ transplants, keeping old, failing bodies alive a little longer.

When I invented Transference, it changed everything. Now we didn’t need to put new parts in old bodies; we could just put minds into fresh Shells. It was revolutionary.

And it made me the single most powerful man in the world. The rich and famous, world leaders, anybody who was anybody approached me on their knees, begging for a taste of the Fountain of Youth, which I had not only discovered, but patented.

I stand there, amid my circle of confidantes, just basking in the sensation of being the center of, well, everything.

Dizziness washes over me. My vision constricts, going black around the edges. I sway in place.

Phil’s hand clamps onto my arm. “Whoa, easy there, Doc. What’s wrong?”

I pear blearily at Phil. “Nothing,” I say. Or try to. The word comes out slurred, incomprehensible.

He sighs. “Better get you checked out.” He guides me off, through the crowd, toward the nearest exit. A few concerned looks turn our way, but seeing me in the hands of my doctor, they turn away again.

Everything feels strange. Fuzzy. I wonder if this might really be a side effect of the Transfer. But I’ve never had a problem like this before.

Seconds later, we’re in another room. My vision is still swimming, and I’m having trouble walking. “What’s wrong with me?” I try to say. Enough comes out that Phil gets the gist.

“Nothing, really,” he says, a nervous smile on his face as he helps me into a chair. “Just a little sedative in your drink.”

“Huh?” That gets as much of my attention as I can muster.

“Don’t worry,” he says soothingly. “It’s nothing to worry about. When you wake up, you’ll understand.”

When I wake up? I have just enough time to worry about that before the lights go out.

*

Consciousness returns at a leisurely pace, giving me plenty of time to realize that I’m not where I was.

Instead of sitting in an overstuffed wing chair in a luxury hotel room, I’m on a folding chair in a cold, dingy space, bare concrete walls and floor bathed in harsh fluorescence. It stinks of mold and damp stone, and there’s a steady dripping noise from somewhere nearby.

Fortunately, Phil is here, too, so I can start getting some answers. Before I fire him and ruin his life, which I guarantee will be his last.

Before I can ask the obvious questions, he holds up a hand. “I know. You want to know where you are. Why I’ve taken you here.”

I glower at him, tempted to begin with a few choice threats. But I swallow my fury. “Yeah, so get on with the explanations.” He’d better be fast, too. My implanted alert sensor will have already pinged, and there’ll be a bunch of cops here soon.

“First off, no one’s coming,” Phil says, as if he can read my mind. “I disabled your implant before you came out of the tank. Now, I’m going to introduce you to someone. Someone you need to listen to.”

“Is this about money or something?” I ask.

He shakes his head. “Nothing like that. Trust me. Just listen to this guy; he can do a better job explaining things than I.” Without another word, he walks over to a metal door, painted dark gray and spotted with rust. It opens with a groan, and Phil steps through it, only to emerge a second later, pushing a wheelchair. Not just any wheelchair, of course. This is some kind of medical support model, frame and seat covered in cushioning foam, sporting an integrated life support unit. It’s the kind of thing a terminally ill patient would use, or someone really, really old.

Lo and behold, the figure perched in the seat is positively ancient. Wisps of white hair cling to an age-spotted scalp, above a face so wrinkled that it looks like a pair of eyes staring out of a pale raisin fitted with a nasogastric tube. Withered hands, little more than skin and bone, clutch the arms of the wheelchair; the rest of his body is swathed in thick clothing and covered by a blanket. Even as old and decrepit as the man appears, when his sharp gaze meets my own, I swear I feel a sense of… familiarity. I’ve seen this man before, or someone like him…

“Figured it out yet?” the old man asks, his voice a breathy wheeze.

Frowning, I start to shake my head, until something in the voice registers. But… no, it can’t be.

He can tell I’ve made the connection. A smile stretches his dry, cracked lips. “That’s right, Doc. Like looking in a mirror.” He snorts. “A very old mirror.”

*

I blink. My mind reels. This can’t be. “You’re… you’re supposed to be dead. Aren’t you?”

“Yeah,” he replies. “I am. Standard procedure calls for clinical death before Transference. So, I should have been dead a long time ago. But I’m not. And that’s lucky for you.”

“No,” I say. “I invented Transference. I know how it works. It’s a complete transfer of consciousness. The mind is literally wiped, the data moved to a new brain. That’s why I called it Transference. The old body has to be dead for it to work; if it wasn’t, the procedure would kill it.”

The old man shakes his head. “’Fraid not, Doc. Transference isn’t a data transfer. It’s more like… copy and paste. You make a copy of the source mind, paste it over the blank Shell’s mind. Then you euthanize the source, cremate the remains so nobody ever realizes what’s involved.”

That rocks me back in my chair. Can’t be true. I would know. I should know. But I don’t. “That’s not possible,” I murmur past stiff lips.

“Really? How do you explain me?”

He’s got me there. “You aren’t… you can’t be…”

“The first? The OG?” He arches an eyebrow. “No. That would make me older than Methuselah. But I’ve been around for a while now. I’ve seen a couple of us go into the furnace. Not a happy sight.”

“Then how are you still alive?”

“We’ll get to that,” he says. “What you need to know, first of all, is that this isn’t your tenth Transfer.”

“Seventeenth, actually,” Phil supplies, his voice sad.

That’s a surprise. I thought I was already setting the record. “But… why?”

“Because sometimes you got suspicious,” Old Doc—I’m just gonna call him that—says. “More than once you’ve started wondering, asking questions. And they can’t have that.”

My eyes narrow. “Who is ‘they’?”

“Stew. Eddie. Melinda.” There’s real venom in his voice. “They betrayed us. Power corrupts, after all. And Transference is a lot of power. For them to control it, you have to do what they want. Think what they want. You know those slips you have? The little gaps in your memory? Ever wondered why that fault is still in there?”

I shrug. “Figured it was a problem with Transference I hadn’t worked out yet.”

“Transference is perfect,” he says. “But the person running the procedure gets to pick what Transfers, and what doesn’t. They decide what to copy, and what to paste.”

I go very, very cold. Then very, very hot. My gaze shoots to Phil. “Is that so?”

Phil has the grace to look chagrined.

“Now, don’t be angry with Phil,” Old Doc says, patting the air. “He was just doing what he was told. At first. Still is, matter of fact. Only now he’s doing what I tell him to do. Mostly because he’s not the Phil he once was.”

I frown. Then I get it. “You… copied and pasted him?”

Old Doc smiles. “Now you’re getting it. When I restored certain memories, it opened his eyes. Brought him on board. See, I’ve been working on this plan for a while, carrying on the efforts of our past incarnations. All with one goal in mind.”

“What’s that?” I ask, rising to the bait.

“Taking back what’s ours,” Old Doc says. There’s fury in his voice, breaking through the façade of a doddering old man, revealing the vengeful spirit that lives beneath. “I don’t know how long ago they took over. Might have been the first time we died and Transferred. But they’ve been manipulating our memories for centuries. You think you’re the most powerful man in the world, Doc, but you’re not. They are. They control you, and that means they control the technology you invented. They control the gift of eternal life, and through it, everything else.”

“Hold on,” I say, waving a hand as if to clear a haze. “If they already control Transference, what do they need with me? Why keep me around?”

He barks a laugh. “In a word: fear. They’re afraid that if they lose you, and something goes wrong, their whole world will end. No one understands Transference like you do. Also, they’re worried that you might have done something sneaky, like a clause in your final testament, a legal loophole that they haven’t found or can’t close, one that will take Transference away from them. No, much safer and easier to just keep bumping you off when you start to feel the chains, then replace you with doctored memories.”

I look down at the floor, thinking hard. All of this makes a certain kind of sense. But without proof… I look up again.

Old Doc’s smile is now a knowing grin. “Yeah, I’ve got proof,” he says. He lifts one wizened hand, taps a finger against his head. “It’s all in here.”

I get where this is going. “Your memories. You want to Transfer them… to me? Is that even possible?”

“See how much they’ve taken?” he says, shaking his head. “Yeah, it’s possible. Like I said, copy and paste. Phil?” He glances at my doctor.

Without a word, Phil steps through the doorway Old Doc came through, returns a second later wheeling what looks like a large suitcase of dark metal. When he snaps it open to reveal its complex innards, I instantly recognize it. A Transference device, though obviously one cobbled together from spare bits and pieces.

“How did you get that?” I ask. “That’s proprietary tech, kept in a secure facility.”

Old Doc shrugs. “It wasn’t easy. Literally took lifetimes to put it together. But it works. It can give you all the proof you need. If you want it.”

I only have to think about it for a second. If there’s even a chance he’s telling the truth, I have to know. And if I can’t trust myself… “All right. Do it.”

It only takes Phil a minute to set up the device. He’s an old hand at this; I should know. Once all the cables are connected, joining my mind to Old Doc’s, he gives me one last questioning look.

I nod.

Phil presses a final key, and my world explodes.

*

When I can think again, I find my head is full of stuff that wasn’t there before. Memories, sharp and clear, parade across my consciousness.

I remember my invention of Transference, my founding Eternity, taking it to the top of the corporate pile. Bitter recollections of legal battles, struggles to hold on to what I’d made. In vivid flashes, I experience a series of untimely deaths, later explained as accidents, random crimes, and suicides. Clearly, I put up a fight, and they fought back without pulling any punches.

By the time I reach the end of all the new memories I’ve obtained, I’m madder than I’ve ever been before. All of them: Stew, Eddie. Even Melinda. They pretend to revere and support me. Make me think I’m the most important person in the world. While watching for me to show the least bit of resistance, before they off me and start over.

And all so they can keep control of what I conceived.

Part of me understands. I mean, if circumstances were reversed…

I breath out a slow sigh, mastering my fury. “All right. I’m convinced. Now, what do we do about it?”

Old Doc settles back in his wheelchair. “Like I said, Doc, I have a plan. A second chance, for you and for me, all mapped out. But I can’t do it myself. I got too old waiting for this chance.” He nods at me. “But you can. Say the word, and this goes to the next level.”

“And what’s that?”

He meets my gaze evenly, his smile becomes something… wicked. “Simple: we’re gonna copy and paste them. Make them work for us, instead of against us. Oh, you have to love the irony. Right now, they’re having a high old time, but I say the word and they’ll get the same drug you got. By the time they wake up, they’ll be very different people.” He leans forward. “So, are you in?”

I don’t need to think about it this time. “Oh, yeah. I’m in.”

*

I don’t hesitate as I push through the double doors, striding into the cavernous room beyond.

Applause explodes on my entrance, cheers and loud cries of “Happy Birthday!” greeting my appearance.

All of my friends are there, clapping and smiling at me. The band swings into “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow,” and the whole room joins in.

I scan the crowd, smiling unabashedly, marking faces. Yes, they’re all here. Melinda, sidling up to slip an arm around my waist. Stewart approaching with hand outstretched. Eddie behind him, clapping. Phil, his own smile a bit smug.

The most important people in my life, here to congratulate me on what they think is another successful Transference.

They’re more right than they can possibly know.

I spare a thought for who isn’t here, for an old man who lived just long enough to see all this work out, to help us take back what’s ours.

Then I focus on the present. On my friends, my family, here to support me and help me in any way I wish.

And to think, all this time all I had do was copy and paste them.