"You are not George McNeal. You're a copy."
I'd never seen this guy in my life. A second ago, I'm lying in the great mass of the prototype machine, around me a rising hum of power and focus as the nano scan began. The next instant, I'm lying in some kind of iron lung machine in a strange room. Standing over me is a clean cut handsome doctor type wearing what looks like blue hospital scrubs made of silk. Then he says I'm not me.
Before I can say a word, he holds up his hands and says, "The scanning run was successful, we made you using the stored scan image. Some time has passed. I'll answer all your questions but right now, we need your help, and as soon as possible. Can you hold off for little while?"
I take a deep breath, then two more. Okay, outside of a strong rush of adrenaline, I feel fine, wired but fine. The project had been successful.
I focus on the guy. He is unbelievably good looking, like someone in the movies. He has perfect features, no five o'clock shadow, not a hair out of place, no moles, scars, or skin tags. He has the kind of skin that women will pay insane prices for. As I stare at him, he stirs, clears his throat.
"My name is John. This is important. You're safe here. We just need your help right now."
"Like what?"
"We have a situation that we need your advice on. I need to get your reaction, recommendations. When we are done it, I'll fill you out on everything else, get you oriented."
He's leaning over me but looks sincere. The scan had worked, the project had worked. Shit, they had taken the scan and build a new me. Okay this guy wants my help. I can wait a while. "What's the situation ?"
He hits a control on the side of machine. The top raises and I sit up. I'm still wearing the chinos and Polytechnic Institute tee shirt I had on for the scan so not much time has passed. The room is painted a cool white blue. The floor looks like a single sheet of grey marble. The one window looks out on the upper limbs of some sugar maples, still in the flush of fall colors. It's the size of a good living room, twenty by twenty with a twelve foot ceiling. We sit down facing each other, in a couple of plain green fiberglass chairs.
I stare at John a moment. We unconsciously took matching positions, leaning forward, hands on our knees. He isn't wearing any cologne but there is a fresh kind of shower smell.
"Look this isn't subjunctive." He pauses, then substitutes, "Hypothetical. Assume, as I ask you these questions, that they refer to real events. Dokey?"
I nod. He says, "We, the world have been contacted by an alien species, the Ord. They say they are part of a galactic civilization and they want to establish normal relations with this world. They say that if we want them to they will leave us alone as long as we want."
If this was some kind of Rorschach test, it's not obvious. He seems as earnest as a Young Republican.
"Ord technology looks only about a hundred years beyond ours. Physically they look a lot like us.
"The Ord contacted us by radio and then sent down a small ship with six passengers. At our request, they landed at an isolated area for crowd control but the whole thing is being viewed world wide."
He pauses and looks at me expectantly. My turn. Shit. Aliens. "What's the question?"
"What occurs to you?"
"What do they want from us? Is there any reason to be suspicious, to think they are hostile? Anything that says that they aren't what they say they are?"
He smiles and leans back in the chair. "They haven't made any demands or requests. What would you consider reasons to be suspicious?"
"What kinds of weapons do they carry?"
"As far as we can see, they have no weapons. They carry no devices at all."
"No Giant Robot eh? How do they dress? Do they wear uniforms? Are their clothes highly ornamented or simple? Do they make jokes or are they dead serious? What are they like? Can you tell anything about their social organization. Do they defer to each other, show any emotions?"
I'm into it now. Where or what had happened to me was pushed aside as I think about how to react to an alien presence.
We talk for three quarters of an hour. Then he pauses, as if reviewing a mental checklist and thanks me saying, "All this has been more helpful than you can imagine." He leans forward again looking intent. "Let's talk about you."
Right. I've almost forgotten. I'm a copy. I'm not me. What the hell does that mean?
"As you can see, the nano-scan project you were working on worked. It was the start for technology to scan a living organism, save and then use the scan to create an identical individual…" He pauses, puts his hands on either side of his skull like holding a helmet and says "with the mental state, memories etc. as the instant the scan happened."
He gets up and starts to walk around the room, pausing between steps. He had been intent when we were talking about the aliens. Now he seems cautious, like he's got bad news. "We don't use the word 'copy' which implies less central status or value, we use 'identical'."
What could this have to do with the aliens? "Why did you want to talk about aliens?"
"Because we are about to contact a race, the Worla, who are much as we were one hundred and fifty years ago." He looks at me. "Back when the scan was taken of George McNeal."
It takes me a beat to get it. A century and a half! I can't get enough air. I'm panting.
John instantly has his palm on the back of my head. "Put your head between your knees, breath deep and release, again." He talks me through half a dozen breaths and I gradually begin to catch my wind. The roaring of blood rushing in my ears subsides. He takes his hand away and I slowly sit up, breathing carefully.
He sits down again, leans forward, and slowly says. "What you're feeling now is temporal shock. It'll pass, just drift it."
It's starting to come together. I'm not me. Well, when we started the nano scan project we had wondered about what it would feel like to be an exact copy of another, so I had thought about it but the emotions are something else. Why am I here, what happened to the original me? A hundred and fifty years. I'm dead. No, someone else, the real me's dead. John watches intently.
I shake my head like throwing off a punch and say, "I'm okay, go on."
"You're also suffering from identity phase shock. That's waking up as a identical. For you, it's especially severe because you didn't grow up with this technology. It too will pass over the next few weeks.
"But pass or not these emotions are real. You are the earliest identical ever vived, with the greatest time gap. Think about, in your time, waking a man of the American Civil War era? Imagine his adjustment. Forget the problems of technology. He would have anachronistic views on what you called race, gender roles, social class let alone a total discontinuity of manners and customs. Concepts like ecology, system dynamics, cultural elementalism would only have minor resonance with him.
"He'd wash his neck before dinner, bath once a month, change his collar daily, and his shirt weekly. His skin would be pox marked and his teeth bad." John waves his hand at me. "We'll can clean up your health and appearance."
"Like the man from the Civil war, you are going to have to learn a lot. You should accept that it will take years. In a true sense, you will have to go through the socialization of a child."
God. A child again after twenty three years of school. What will I do for a living. They sure didn't need any nanotechnologist a hundred and fifty years out of date. Was I going to be out on the street? Did they still have shopping carts? I ask "How do I go about making a living while I'm learning what fork to use?"
John smiles and says "That won't be a problem. For as many years as you can stand it, historians, culturists, and thousands of netwriters will want to talk to you about your times. Anyhow, this is a society of abundance. You don't have to make a living. You'll have time to learn the knots."
"Ropes, learn the ropes." I was going to be a specimen. Probably in a bottle. What right did they have to jerk me out of my life?
"Look," I said, "an hour ago, I was a post doc, at the cutting edge of a new technological movement. Now I'm one of James Watts assistants ready to build an shiny new steam engine. What right did you have to do this to me? I didn't ask to be brought here."
John's surprised. "Because of the Worla. They're going through contact with civilization. It's a major transition for any species. It's got to go well. On the surface, they seem to be as paranoid as the broadcast media, news, movies, books, and net of your time. But we aren't sure. We have all the records but we don't know how you think. We don't know how the Worla think."
He gestures impatiently. "There is something you have to understand about identicals and scans. We can store a scan, we can read memories in a machine but we can't interact with a scan on a computer and get the same results. The only hardware a person's scan runs on is the person themselves, protoplasm, good old neural wetware. That's why the first thing I did was talk to you. Before our time impacts your thought process."
"Remember how strange the Secessionists seemed to you when you read about the Civil War? Well we can read their letters, diaries and speeches but we can't talk with them. And with your time, we don't know if people were really as paranoid about aliens and UFOs as it seems.
"You've given us seven good ideas for dealing with the Worla. If even one of them helps save them from a psychotic reaction to contact, it's important enough to cause some discomfort for you."
"So you drafted me."
"Right, conscript." John gets up, goes to the window and gazes out thoughtfully. I go over and stand a few feet away. I'm not ready to look out into this new world yet. The sunlight on the leaves lightly color his film star face.
"The other thing is that we don't do this lightly. The ethical problems identicals presented were as complex as that of cloning, capital punishment, or slavery. To us an identical's got all the rights as anyone else." He glances at me then stares out the window again. "Before you could be created, someone has to agree to take responsibility for you, to act in locus parentis."
John lowers his voice and looks at the floor. "My wife and I agreed to take this duty. You can call me Da."
He goes on thoughtfully. "We also have a five year old child. He didn't ask to be here."
John looks straight at me. "None of us did."