Transfer of Matter
A short story
I am the giver and taker of lives, I tell myself as Sophie bounces into the chamber on the low gravity.
“The big day tomorrow, Newton,” she says, stripping down to her bra and panties, revealing her perfect hourglass.
You’ve no idea.
Smiling, I usher her into the sleek, black booth but see, now, that she’s shaking.
“Just relax,” I say. “There’s nothing to fear.” I’ve died twice and been resurrected both times. I lock her in.
Who am I kidding? Every departure could be your last.
I should know: I designed the damn thing!
At the control desk, I initiate the pre-scan and check the results. Pleased to see no body composition anomalies, I walk back to the booth and open the hatch.
Sophie flicks her long, blonde hair away from her eyes. “All good?”
“Perfect.”
Her smile is hypnotic.
For a single, middle-aged man such as myself, she’s everything that could possibly be hoped for in a woman — except for the niggling fact of her marriage!
As soon as she’s left the chamber, Tony barges past, already down to his undies. The way he acknowledges me with a nod and then does leg raises, rather than talk to me, makes me truly wonder what Sophie sees in him. I clear my throat to get his attention, and when he looks, at last, I usher him into the ToM booth.
“Looking forward to home?” I ask.
“Hell, yeah!” he barks in my face.
I lock him in and initiate the pre-scan. Like all humans, 99% of Tony is made up of six elements — oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, calcium and phosphorus — but, boy, he’s missing some pretty basic other ingredients, like manners!
I’ll never forget Sophie’s astrobiologist quip that the most peculiar extra-terrestrial she’s discovered here is Tony.
I unlock the booth and gesture him out. “All good. Don’t forget to fast, and I’ll see you again tomorrow.”
“Can’t wait to get off this rock,” is his way of bidding me adieu.
Miners! There are people who’d die to be on Titan.
Ha! Everybody dies to be on Titan.
◊ ◊ ◊
In my quarters, I gaze through the porthole at the Sun, a lone star in the hazy, beige sky, well aware that the smog denies surface dwellers the best view in the solar system: that of Saturn and its ring. It’s a complete tease to know that it’s out there, so close, but just out of reach…
Tomorrow, Sophie will leave with Tony, contracts expired, never to return. I’ll scan the molecular composition of their bodies and beam their body plans across the solar system at close to the speed of light to Earth, where their replicas will be instantly constructed.
The machine is a work of genius. No one would dispute that. Everyone is enamoured with arrival, of course, but it’s departure that triggers all the fuss. While I recreate a person at point B, I terminate a person at point A. It’s the abortion debate all over again, reinvented for the modern times, and I’m a serial killer, responsible for the deaths of hundreds. Perhaps that’s my justification, my excuse, my rationale for what I’m about to do: a redemption of sorts.
Please… I won’t tolerate self-delusion.
What does “I” even mean anymore? Is it really me sitting here staring out at the dark, hydrocarbon dunes, or am I the pile of atoms left behind in Seattle four years ago when my body plan was beamed out here, or am I both?
Geez… I’m doing it again: getting all philosophical before departures. Like a breach in a pressure suit, it needs to be contained right away. I need to have a detached word with myself.
Come on, Newton.
I know it’s not really such a conundrum. It’s no different to monozygotic twins: They have a shared, identical (albeit short) history and become discrete entities — except for the general tradition of not systematically killing one of them!
I reach for my tablet and finger-swipe through my photos. I gaze at the picture of a teenage boy who shares my name, the same curly hair and the same need for spectacles. If anyone asks, for convenience, so as not to bore them to death, I’ll tell them it’s me, but to point out the bleeding obvious, the person sitting here claiming to be Newton Cox is a foot taller, going grey and has a well-paid job. The two are not one and the same.
I know, of course, that there’s a psychological connectedness. I can remember a gangly, stuttering Newton asking Ella Mayfield to the high school prom and her laughing in his acne-ridden face; I can remember Jake Rivera taunting that Newton will die a virgin. However, if I’m honest, these are dim memories, merely copies of copies of copies…
It’s times like these when I have to be strict with myself, go all nihilistic and admit that the concept of a person is murky at best.
It helps to in my line of work.
Lina Ignatova: Nothing
Nothing is ever nothing. What a paradox! Everything is something, in a way.
◊ ◊ ◊
My alarm buzzer startles a dream, leaving a few fragments behind to clutch at — the image of Sophie and I doing sudokus together, my fingers running through her hair. Then, the day’s schedule floods my thoughts, erasing it entirely.
I shower and dress damp. Nibbling on a rice bar only makes me nauseous. Can I actually bring myself to do this to her?
My feet pad on the floor as I bounce my way along the cold metal corridor, the solitary walk of the executioner. The slide door opens, and cheers and laughter emanate from the lounge. Is this really the appropriate mood for two on death row? When I hop in, Sophie and Tony are stood at the centre of the crowd. Everyone has their beakers raised to the couple.
“Here he is,” Tony says, hiding his beaker behind his back, an empty vodka bottle on the table nearby.
With a quick sweep of my head, I count twelve. “Good morning,” I say. “I see everyone’s here.”
Thanks for the invite.
Sophie springs over to me, while the others resume their banter, and says under her breath, “Hey, Newton, I’m sorry about all this. Tony wanted to have a few drinks and he thought you’d get grumpy with him if you found out.”
“Well, at the end of the day, it’s his life.” I raise my eyebrows twice to let her know that I’m actually pretty laid back.
She smiles, revealing her perfectly aligned teeth. “I wanted to say thanks,” she says, “for being such good company over the last 18 months. I’ve really enjoyed our chess sessions and chats about physics and” — she glances over her shoulder, then continues in a whisper — “for listening to me when Tony was driving me nuts.” She rolls her eyes.
Perfect in every way. “It’s been my absolute pleasure.”
She takes a deep breath then begins to cry.
“Sophie!” I gasp. Her tears are vindicating: She doesn’t want to leave me after all. I pull a hanky from my pocket and wipe her cheek dry. I don’t even care if Tony sees me doing it. He needs to know he lacks the finesse for such a fine specimen.
“I don’t know what came over me,” she says.
“It’s OK.” I smile. “You don’t need to explain yourself.”
“Actually, I do. I’m anxious about the trip.”
“Oh.”
“Tony couldn’t care less about using it, but me…” She forces a smile.
“The best thing is not to think about it too much.”
“I know. You’re right.”
“I’ve overseen a hundred departures. What could possibly go wrong?”
◊ ◊ ◊
Tony steps into the ToM booth. I can still hear the others outside the chamber whinging about not being allowed in. Company policy, I’m afraid.
“Chop, chop, Newty baby. Let’s get this over and done with.”
It really grates when he calls me that, but, as I’m never going to see him again, I decide to be civil. “What’s the first thing you’re going to do when you get back?”
“I’m gonna go sink my teeth into one of those new McMammoth burgers.” He mimes this action, then winks at me. “Best invention this century.”
I really don’t know why I bothered asking.
I lock Tony in then make my way over to the control desk.
Scientifically, there’d be a lot to learn if I sent Tony back to Earth and failed to provide the correct figures for, say, calcium at the other end. He’d probably need to be scooped out, a complete gelatinous mess. It couldn’t happen to a nicer guy.
Since the scan takes a little over an hour to reach Earth, and it’s another hour or so for receive confirmation, I decide to play solitaire on my tablet to pass the time.
Michael Hauskeller: Mother Knows Best
I know it’s got to be done. Even so, I still feel bad about it. If it were up to me, we would cancel the whole thing. Fortunately, it’s not. It’s up to Mother, and Mother knows best.
◊ ◊ ◊
A beep from the console stirs me from the game, and I rub my eyes. The message on the screen reads: “Transfer of Matter for Tony LeMarr has been successful.”
I wonder whether Tony realises that he’s in two places at once.
I open the hatch, grasping a claw hammer. “Sorry, pal, but it looks like we’re gonna have to do this the old-fashioned way.”
Tony cowers in the corner. “Are you fricken serious?”
I swing the hammer down on his head, causing a sickening, skull-splitting crunch. Blood spatters on the sterile walls. Again and again, I strike —
I shake the grisly scene from my thoughts. Fortunately, for you, my friend, I’m a consummate professional, mostly! My finger hovers over the “Continue” button. Sayonara, Tony. I press it, the whole process feeling both satisfying and frustrating.
I bound over to the main door, open it and announce that Tony has been successfully sent. Then, I call for Sophie.
She shuffles into the chamber, almost sleepwalking. Her usually radiant face is now vampire-drained of its colour. An apparition of her former self, she merely nods as I wave her through. “I’ll message you,” is all she can muster as she steps into the booth.
Who am I to object to this terminal helplessness?
I seal her in and her fate with it.
◊ ◊ ◊
The beep of the machine is like an ECG flat line.
Well, this is it: the moment of truth, the point of no return. My heart pounds like tribal drums. My breaths become shallow. My finger hovers over the euphemistic “Continue” button. Can I really do this to such a person? I swallow involuntarily.
Who made me a god in the first place?
There. It’s done. Decision made. I’ll live with the consequences, come what may.
I twiddle my thumbs. Then, I stride over to the main door, open it and take a step into the lounge. They all look around expectantly.
“Sophie has been successfully sent,” I say in monotone.
“Party over,” one of them responds, and they begin to get up and leave.
I shrink back inside the chamber, shut the door and lock it again. With my back against the wall, I slide down onto the cold, metallic floor, where I gnaw away at my fingernails, shaking.
When I’ve composed myself sufficiently, I pick myself up and walk over to the ToM booth. My hand wavers by the handle as I psyche myself up to open it. When I do, Sophie’s jaw drops. Her brow knits as she tries to process this unexpected turn.
“What’s going on?” she asks.
I gaze at the floor, unable to answer her.
“Newton,” she demands, “have I been sent?”
I inhale sharply. “Yes.”
“Oh, my!” She stands and sways as if punch drunk. Her hands shoot out to steady her head. Then, she buries her face in them. “This cannot be happening… How?”
“An error,” I answer, the equivocation killing me. An error of judgement perhaps.
“An error,” she repeats. “Tell me straight: Has this happened before?”
“Never.”
She freezes then peers at me through splayed fingers.
I know what’s coming next.
“What happens?”
She can’t bring herself to ask it outright; I can’t stand to see her squirm like this. I must put her out of her misery, so to speak. “I’ll fight for your survival.”
Sophie mouths the word survival as if suddenly a blasphemer of Babel. When meaning has digested, she sighs and puppet flops onto the floor.
Right now, I’m her knight in shining armour. I step into the booth and try to help her up, but she pushes me away, eyes widening. She begins to massage her forehead with a hand. “Mum… Dad… Tony…”
“It’s going to be hard for you to get your head around it all.”
“Hard? They’re my parents. Tony’s my husband.”
I scrunch up my face. “Well, legally —”
Sophie’s glare clips my sentence. Then, her face softens. “I may as well be dead.”
“Don’t talk like that.”
“It’s true.”
“You can have a good life still.”
She scoffs at this.
“Look, I take full responsibility for what’s happened. After all, these are my machines, and I’m head technician.”
“Damn right, you’re responsible. As soon as I’m off this rock, I’m going to hire myself a lawyer and sue your ass.”
“Apologies in advance, but since you’re not a legal entity, I’m proposing another solution.”
“You’re a God-damned piece of work! Do you know that, Newton?”
“I’m just saying it how it is. Now, please, hear me out.”
She hugs her knees to her chest and begins to rock gently on the floor.
“You know I’ve got plenty of money, and I’ve got an offshore bank account.” My hands are shaking now. “I-I-I’ll quit my role, and we can go and live somewhere without anyone ever knowing… We’d be great companions for one another.”
Her brow furrows.
Am I moving too quickly?
“Who knows?” I continue. “One day…”
“One day?” she repeats. “Oh, my God.” Her hand covers her mouth. “There was no error, was there? You planned this all along. Didn’t you? You deliberately kept me alive.” She lances me with her stare. “Go on: I want to hear you say it.”
I avert my eyes. “I-I-I don’t know what to say.”
“Grow some balls and admit it!”
I feel myself physically recoil at this ugly side of Sophie. Perhaps Tony’s uncouthness has left its mark after all… No, I tell myself. She’s going through unimaginable stress. That’s all it is.
She may as well know.
“I-I simply couldn’t preside over your termination. Over the last year and a half, I’ve come to respect you professionally and… grow fond of you. There! I’ve said it.”
My feelings are entirely naked for her to see, and now there’s no turning back.
“Are you out of your mind, Newton?”
I clench my teeth. “Once you’ve been transferred, that’s debateable.”
“So, let me get this straight: You actually thought that I might’ve said, ‘Hey, that’s fine Newton. Let’s go live somewhere together, and, hey, give it a few weeks and we’ll probably fall for each other’. Let me tell you a few home truths. One, if I was back on Earth and saw you in a bar, I’d walk straight past you. You know why? Because I’m not the faintest bit attracted to you. You don’t float my boat. The reason why I’ve given you the time is simply down to the fact that there were only 12 people here to talk to. Home truth number two: chess is boring. If I had to play another game with you, it’d probably kill me. I only played it with you because I really needed to take my mind off Tony. I chose to spend time with you because I didn’t see you as a sexual threat. You’re deluded — deluded and sick!”
Her words are bleach drops in the eyes of a test rabbit. It’s Ella Mayfield laughing in my face before the high school prom all over again. All I ever wanted was to connect with someone, for them to understand me — for their intellectual companionship at the very least. I thought that Sophie was the one, but she’s not the person I thought she was. I utterly miscalculated.
“Let me out of here!” she demands, standing.
“Hang on. Let’s just think it through.”
She flaps and claws at me to get past, and it’s all too much for me: her repulsed reaction, my gross misinterpretation, the implications for my future. I reach for the hypodermic syringe in my pocket, remove the safety cap and plunge it into Sophie’s arm. She shrieks once she realises what’s happening, screams for help, but the struggle in her is already waning, her body surrendering to the sedative.
I lay her gently on the floor then step back. Seeing her in such a helpless state makes me shudder. A wave of self-loathing flows though me.
I need to quarantine these feelings. Think fast, Newton. Think fast.
I bolt across the room to the closet to get the wheelchair. I wheel it over to the ToM booth, heave Sophie into it and strap her in tight. I gag her just to be on the safe side, a tear rolling down my cheek.
◊ ◊ ◊
Sophie begins to stir in the wheelchair, her eyelids blinking. When she spots me still at the control desk, staring back at her, she tries to struggle free from her bonds, but her resistance is futile.
I check the screen to see if Tony has responded to my message yet, but there’s nothing. Come on, Tony, hurry up, will you!
“I’m so sorry, Sophie.”
She tries to reply, but her words are muffled from the gag. Her lancing glare says it all in any case.
I can’t take it anymore. I stride over to Sophie and turn her chair around so at least we’re not facing one another. Returning to the console, I see that I have a response from Tony, finally.
This better be good, Newton, his message begins. I’ve just walked out of my own welcome home party for your dumb testing and am now sitting in the booth as you asked, bored out of my fricken mind, so hurry-the-hell up and do whatever it is that you’ve got to do, will ya? Tony.
Charming as ever!
I initiate his arrival.
◊ ◊ ◊
The ToM booth whirs, LEDs flickering on the control desk. I jog over to the main door, open it and check that no one’s out there. Satisfied it’s empty, I push Sophie out of the chamber into the lounge. Now, I creep back into the chamber, over to the booth, bracing myself for the eruption I know is coming.
When I open the hatch, Tony is sitting with his chin in his hands, elbows resting on his knees, eyelids semi-closed. Once he’s registered it’s me, he leaps up and marches over, his chest puffed out like some kind of Neanderthal. “What-the-hell are you playing at, Newton?” He prods me in the solar plexus, his face inches from mine, beer on his breath.
I put my hands up defensively. “It’s Sophie.”
“What do you mean, ‘It’s Sophie’?”
“She’s in the lounge next door.”
“What-the-hell are you on about? She’s at the party, where I left her, you dumbass.”
“And she’s in the lounge. If you don’t believe me, go and look for yourself. There’s been a dreadful mistake.”
He shakes his head at me, growls, then storms out of the chamber. I lock the door quickly behind him then run over to the control desk, where I set the booth for transference in five minutes, the hatches to unlock and the delete-transfer-history to automatic. In a cold sweat, I step into the booth, close the hatch and perch on the bench, my heart racing.
“I guess this is it then, Newton. We have to make this deal, now. One of us, the lucky one, will get off this rock. Whichever one of us remains, though, has to stay tight-lipped. Agreed?
“Agreed. Either way, neither of us die on this day.”
Transfer Imminent flashes across a display.
◊ ◊ ◊
The barista calls out, “Colin,” and it takes me a second to respond to my alias by raising an arm. He places my coffee on the table and walks off, weaving his way around the bustling tables.
The feeling of 28-degree heat on my Vitamin D-deprived white skin, the distant sound of the waves gently lapping onto the beach and the aromas of cuisine that hasn’t been dehydrated and vacuum-packed are sheer bliss… but my reflection in the café window is troubling. The Newton staring back at me is a stranger, his hitherto greying hair dyed now a uniform chestnut, his bespectacled identity permanently lost to back-street laser eye surgery, but it goes much deeper. Can I really shed the skin of my former life so completely? To anyone who asks, now, I’m no longer a scientist, an inventor, a traveller of the solar system. I am Colin… plain, boring Colin, who acquired his small fortune by winning the lottery in some obscure country, or by inheriting it from a long, lost uncle — I can’t quite decide which.
I wonder whether Newton B, as I’m calling him, has actually gotten the better end of the deal. Despite being behind bars, he’s at least, authentically, still Newton. And the broadsheet story before me — hailing his redemptive act for duplicating Tony for Sophie B, as they are calling her now — just grates.
That was my idea, and I’m not getting the credit!
My freedom for my identity.
I slurp my coffee — then tense as I detect darting movements in my peripheral vision. A man in a dark suit and dark glasses is walking towards me. I look left and see another suit heading my way. Behind me, I spot another. The first suit to reach me flashes his badge.
Newton, you treacherous bastard, we had a deal!
◊ ◊ ◊
The officer escorts me handcuffed along the corridor to the cells. “This is the craziest shit I’ve seen in my life,” he tells me. “I can’t believe they managed to keep it out of the press for as long as they did. Are you ready?”
I give an exasperated sigh and shrug.
He opens the door. I take a deep breath then step into the room, where I’m confronted with five duplicates of me in separate cells. All five Newtons stand now and clap me as I’m led into an empty one. Looking through the bars at them staring back at me is like standing in a mirrored elevator.
The officer chuckles. “I’ll leave you guys to catch up.” Then, he leaves the room.
I turn to face the Newton in the cell next to mine.
“I’m Newton ‘B’,” he says, finger-quoting.
“The Newton B?” I clarify.
“Please, call me Newton.”
Through clenched teeth, I say, “You’ve got a nerve. We had a deal. You owe me an apology.”
“I owe you nothing of the sort. I kept our deal, the deal between us.”
“Then, how do you explain all this?” I demand, throwing my hands up in the air.
He bows his head. “I know you’re mad at me, but you’ve got to try and see it from my perspective.” He pushes his spectacles up to the bridge of his nose. “I sat in the booth, after you’d transferred, thinking, ‘You were out for self-preservation. Why not me, too?’ And it was harder for me because I didn’t have your cash advantage, so I was going to head north to Vancouver and get a job as a farm hand, save up and come and find you some day, and plead for or blackmail some money from you.” He glances over his shoulder. “After that, it was a free-for-all. Newton C hitched south to Portland, hoping to fruit pick and do the same eventually. Newton D was going to be a removalist in Salt Lake City, Newton E a kitchen hand in Winnipeg until he was caught getting out of the ToM booth Earth-side after Tony had alerted the authorities. Newton F was going to play chess on the streets of San Fran for bets but didn’t even get to transfer as they’d shut it down by then.”
“I still don’t get it,” I say.
B looks me in the eye. “Now, this is a little complicated, so make sure you’re paying attention, Newt. So, E kept his deal with D but snitched on C, who remained tight-lipped about B, me, but snitched on A, you. Then, when they brought F back, he snitched on D, who snitched on B, me! Did you get all that?”
“Of course, I got all that: I’m a fricken genius!”
B laughs. “So, you see, they all technically kept to their deals, just not to the spirit of them.”
I shake my head, not knowing what else to say or do.
“A AND I NEVER SNITCHED!” Newton B hollers.
“YOU’D HAVE DONE THE SAME, B,” they all holler back in unison from their cells.
“Yeah, I know,” B replies, shaking his head. “The talk is, though, that since you’re the only legal entity, the rest of us may walk free.”
I feel equal parts pride and anger and yell out, “SEE! I’M THE REAL NEWTON!”
This triggers a chain reaction of “I’M THE REAL NEWTON, TOO.”
“We’re all the real Newton,” B says to me. “You know better than that.”
I slump down onto the bed and bury my face in my hands. “What have I done?”
“Oh, snap out of it, A. You just haven’t had time to think it over properly. Look around. This is what we’ve always wanted: connection, companionship, family. We all understand each other perfectly, have the same quirks and interests. Now…” B reaches under his bed and pulls out a chessboard. “Can I challenge you to a game?”
My eyes widen as I stare at the board, the possibilities beginning to fill my mind.
“You’re on!”
◊ ◊ ◊
Stuart Bush-Harris on Daily Philosophy:
Cover image: Midjourney.
