Complete Stories (127 page)

Zack-5 thought back to his earliest independent memories—of the first few minutes after he’d been qloned from Zack-1 last fall. The initial entanglement had been so strong that he’d felt like one person in two bodies, the two of them sitting side by side on the qloner’s comfortable bench seat. Zack-1 had pointed out the QRM lock—forever hovering at the edge of Zack-5’s awareness.

The lock had the shape of a twelve-sided solid with some of its faces stretched out and glued together, forming a hypershape that resembled two pretzels sharing a common skin. Mathematicians called this convoluted form a Poincaré dodecahedron, and physicists regarded it as the best possible representation of a Higgs boson. Within the curved hyperpretzel, a standing wave sang, encoding the archetypal Zack Wigfall state function. The QRM lock was a permanent record of the collision event where Zack-1 and a Higgs boson had transmuted into Zack-1 and Zack-5.

With this record watermarked into Zack-5’s essence, any attempt to use the qloner on him would backfire. An encounter with another of the qloner’s Higgs bosons would turn Zack-5 himself back into a Higgs boson—rather than generating a Zack-6 qlone. It was an ineluctable consequence of the Pauli exclusion principle. Didn’t Woogie know this?

He had a second drink and felt for psychic vibrations from his deceased prototype. He seemed to hear the
skunch
of vertebrae crushing into a spinal cord. That one final sound—and then the cosmic dial tone.

The jet was every bit as plush and solid as Zack-5 remembered it to be. Idly he wondered if “remembered” was the right word. He felt a little cheated that most of his memories weren’t really his own. All he’d ever done, really, was work in the Qodoq labs and conference rooms. Not like Zack-1.

Zack-1 had lived well, and even in death he was getting a special deal. He was leaving four copies of himself, four Zacks molding the world along the lines that he wanted, four qlones expanding the reach and power of iQyoo. And—who knew?—maybe Zack-1 was alive in heaven, too.

Zack-5 imagined he could see the dead man’s soul peering down at him, as if from inside the warped volume of the QRM lock. Animated by Zack-1’s face, the shape seemed like a shiny blown-glass ornament on the heaven-tree of night. Zack-1 had an urgent expression, as if he had something important to say. But the message wasn’t coming through.

Zack-5’s thoughts circled back to himself; he wondered if qlones had independent souls. In those first minutes of existence, he and Zack-1 had been a single soul in two bodies. Had the soul split in two when they drifted apart? Or were they still one? Zack-5 was in any case certain that his progenitor’s soul hadn’t pulled back to leave him an empty shell, a qlippoth, a golem.

“I’m the soul man,” he sang to himself, feeling the two drinks. He stood up and pumped his hips as if he were already in bed with Woogie. He was lucky that she’d chosen him over the other three qlones. He was lucky that she wanted another Zack at all.

But how was he supposed to make more qlones? He couldn’t qlone himself, and the single existing qloner was personalized to run only on Zacks. Zack-5 visualized the qloner, feeling for a workaround.

It had been Zack-1’s little joke to house his qloner within a white 1967 Impala lowrider, replacing the huge engine with fiddling tangles of matter-wave tubes and optical quantum circuits. The hulk sat high on its hydraulic shocks in the cliffside meadow behind the house, facing the Pacific Ocean.

If Zack-5 were to get into the Impala, the qloner would recognize his Zack-like state function and power up its quantum circuitry. Moments later the fiber optic cable taped to the car’s steering column would guide a singular submicroscopic particle towards his chest.

It was strange that a Higgs boson could scatter off an object and form an identical qlone, drawing the necessary mass-energy from the uncertain crevices of spacetime. And it was stranger still that a second zap could turn a qlone into a Higgs boson again.

Woogie and Trevor Tang were waiting at the airport, Woogie stylish in Prada stunna shades and a pink silk suit, her blonde hair blowing across her face, her lips thin but enticing. Trevor wore black jeans, a black linen shirt and mirror-shades. In the brilliant afternoon sun, his nose cast a sharp shadow across his high cheeks.

“Zack’s back!” said Woogie, more cheerfully than Zack-5 had expected. She hugged him and gave him a quick kiss with, yes, a flicker of her tongue.

“I’m so sorry to hear about—” began Zack-5.

“I want to stop thinking about that,” said Woogie, holding him out at arm’s length and studying him. “My backup copy’s here! You look perfect.”

“Except for the QRM,” remarked Trevor Tang. “Makes him a little less than a man, huh?”

You had to stay on top of Trevor, or he’d eat you alive. “More than a man,” Zack-5 shot back.

“That sounds promising,” said Woogie.

As Trevor drove them to the Wigfall house, Zack-5 leaned forward over the seat, chatting up Woogie, reveling in her voice and scent.

“Is the funeral today?” he asked presently.

“No funeral,” said Woogie. “And no death announcement. All his horrible relatives would want a cut. We cremated the body this morning and threw the ashes off the—” She broke off and stared directly at Zack-5 for what felt like a very long time. “I’m so glad you’re here. Things will be like they used to be.” She reached out and touched his cheek. “Happy?”

“I’m—wow,” said Zack-5. “You’ve got no idea how much I want you.”

“I don’t need to hear this,” said Trevor sullenly.

“Shut
up
,” said Woogie.

And then they were pulling into the driveway of the Wigfall estate, a California Craftsman mansion walled in on three sides and with the back lawn rolling to a cliff that dropped dramatically to the rocky sea. The house was flanked by magnificent wind-warped Monterey pines. “Just leave us on our own for awhile, Trevor,” said Woogie. “Zack will catch up with you later.”

“I’ll wait fifteen minutes,” said Trevor, increasingly aggrieved. He jerked his BMW to an abrupt halt and stalked off towards the retrofitted garage that had served as Zack-1’s private research lab. Trevor himself had an apartment over the garage.

“He’s got such a crush on me,” Woogie told Zack-5 with a conspiratorial smile. “We have to be a little careful how we handle him.”

Woogie had a way of making you feel like you were in on a secret plot with her. Intellectually, Zack-5 knew not to set much store by this—but emotionally he was in her thrall.

Although he would have liked to sweep her up the stairs to the bedroom, she led him into the den. They sat on the couch, with him wrapping his arms around her and swearing his eternal love.

“It—it really is you, Zack,” said Woogie running a slow finger over his lips. “I’d thought—I’d thought maybe you wouldn’t have a soul. And that you’d just be a useful—tool.”

“Useful for what?” said Zack-5 guardedly.

“Taking care of your wife,” said Woogie. “Keeping iQyoo going. Making qlones.”

“Look, it’s impossible to qlone me,” said Zack-5. “I was thinking about that on the flight out. The QRM lock is—”

“I’m not talking about qloning
you
,” said Woogie gently. “Qlone Trevor. And then you can send his qlone to take over at Qodoq. He’d feel really good about that.” She planted a wet kiss on his lips, and ran a teasing caress over his fly.

“Can we please go to bed and—”

But now Trevor was at the front door. “Did you ask him, Woogie?”

“You two are in cahoots?” said Zack-5. He was seeing a pattern that he didn’t like. “Is Trevor your lover, Woogie?”

“Not any more,” said Woogie. “I only want you. But I promised Trevor I’d get the Rochester job for his qlone. If you help him with that one thing, he’ll be happy, and you’ll be able to stay here. Win win.” She wafted out of the parlor. “I’ll be waiting upstairs.”

“Mmm,” said Trevor, narrowing his lips and eyes.

“I’m supposed to qlone you and hand over my Qodoq job?” Zack-5 said to Trevor, liking him less all the time.

“You have all the real Zack’s memories,” said Trevor. “So you know how the qloner works. And you really do want to help me. Otherwise I could make things hard for Woogie.”

“How do you mean?”

“I captured some video of her putting the body into the lab’s smelting furnace this morning.”

The whole set-up stank. Instead of answering, Zack-5 strode out the back door of the house. Trevor followed along.

The gleaming, fancifully pinstriped Impala sat at the sloping edge of the cliff, slanted up on its extended front shocks as if considering a dive into the sea. The sun was setting over the Pacific, flooding the scene with honeyed light. April in California.

“The personalization feature is a circuit based on a square root of NOT gate that’s tuned to my wave function,” said Zack-5. “Yeah, I can turn it off. And then the qloner will kick on when anything at all lands on the front seat. It won’t have to be me sitting there with the beam aimed at me.”

The two quantum mechanics opened the Impala’s big flat hood and began tinkering. Trevor was a good sidekick for nitty-gritty tech work. As they fiddled with the quantum circuits, Zack-5 began forming plans. He’d let Trevor qlone himself and maybe help Trevor get the Qodoq CEO post. Fine. He’d settle in with Woogie and start living the live he’d been born for. Great. But then? He cast a sidelong look at his rival’s callow, implacable profile. Trevor was bent over a chrome wrench, tightening a lug-nut on the matter-wave generator.

A ray from the sinking sun bounced off the wrench into Zack-5’s eye, triggering the mental image of the warped polyhedron. Within it he once again seemed to see Zack-1’s face.

“Trevor killed me and he’ll try to kill you,” said a ghostly voice. “Push him over he edge. Make him take the fall.”

Which meant a change of plans.

“I’m outta here, Trevor,” said Zack-5, standing up and slamming the hood. “Qlone your ass off, you piece of crap. As of tomorrow morning you’re fired. And no way do you get the Qodoq job.”

Without waiting for an answer, Zack-5 trotted into the house and locked the doors. “It’s me!” he called to Woogie as he armed the security system. The windows were all but unbreakable. They’d be safe in here for the night. Thinking towards the end-game, he went into the den and got out the unregistered .45 automatic pistol he knew to be stored in the wall safe. And then he went upstairs.

Woogie stared at him wide-eyed as he laid the gun on the dresser.

“I’m glad you’re okay,” she said, her voice unnaturally high. “I was a little worried that—”

“That Trevor would murder me like he did Zack-1?”

Woogie broke into tears. “I’m sorry. It got out of hand. Trevor was only supposed to scare him. But Zack was going to divorce me. I didn’t have a choice.”

“Divorce you, eh?”

“For that silly fling. But I’m truly done with him! Now that I have a fresh start I won’t mess it up. Come to bed with me, baby.”

The sex was good, much better than second-hand memories. And loud. When he dropped off to sleep, Zack-5 wasn’t thinking all that much about Trevor. Let him stew, let him be the one to overplay his hand.

It was just after dawn when the cries from the back yard awoke him. He looked down from the second floor window, holding his pistol at the ready. The fog was so thick he couldn’t even see the Impala. Close to the house were seven dark shapes, zombies in the mist, seven Trevors. In its default mode, the qloner was only willing to fire out a boson once every ninety minutes, otherwise there might have been a hundred or a thousand Trevors down there. Hearing Zack-5 open the window, the seven gathered below, baying like wild dogs.

“We want her! She’s ours.”

“Oh no!” cried Woogie from the bed.

“Talk to them,” Zack-5 told her. “Put the hex on them, Woogie. Sling your charm. And I’ll take them down.”

“Hi, boys,” said Woogie, sashaying to the window. “Maybe I should be Snow White for you Seven Dwarves.”

While Woogie kept the Trevors going, Zack-5 readied the clip of the automatic, wiped the gun clean of his prints with an alcohol pad, and wrapped the weapon in a handkerchief.

And then he crept out the front door and circled around the side of the yard. He unclipped the boson tube’s optical cable from the Impala’s steering column to hold the business end in his hand, pointing it well away from himself. He used his handkerchief to drop the pistol on the driver’s seat. It weighed enough to activate the qloner circuits.

“Continuous mode,” Zack-5 murmured into the Impala’s open window. Once it was running, the qloner accepted Zack-spoken voice commands. This particular prompt would set it to spitting out a boson every second.

The rising sun was gilding the fog. Aiming by instinct as much as by sight, Zack-5 directed the qloner’s output stream toward the Trevors. It was as if he couldn’t miss. One, two, three, four, five, six. Their freed Higgs bosons left short, pink, curly trails.

And now only the original Trevor remained. He came charging across the lawn, mad with envy and rage.

“Terminate activation,” Zack-5 told the Impala. Cunning as a judo master, he let Trevor wrestle him into the Impala and tug the now-inert boson beamer from his hand. He slid all the way across the car’s seat and opened the far door.

Getting no results from the qloner tube, Trevor snatched up the pistol and began pulling the trigger. Fully in tune with the rhythms of the moment, Zack-5 ducked before the first shot. And then the gun clicked emptily. Back in the bedroom, Zack-5 had removed all the bullets but one from the clip.

“Lower shocks and roll forward,” he told the Impala as he slipped out the door.

The car hit the rocks below, shattering the unique circuits of the qloner. Seven interchangeable seagulls pecked at Trevor’s remains.

Zack phoned the police about his psychotic groundskeeper’s mishap, called the qlone in New Zealand to tell him that the Qodoq job was his, and went upstairs to Woogie.

It was good to be alive.

============

Written on July, 2008.

Flurb
#6, 2008.

“Qlone” is my treatment of a classic golden-age conundrum: what happens if you make multiple copies of yourself? In this tale, the copies are competing to edge each other out. When writing SF, one generally wants to use some contemporary science buzzword to “explain” the more or less magical devices being used. Here I drew upon the so-called Higgs boson, whose nature and reality were, as of the story’s writing, quite unclear. I particularly like the name “Higgs boson,” as it makes me think of pigs, and of squealing plump pink particles with curly tails.