Dr Simmons tapped her pen against her lip, deep in thought. Dr Wu strode across the room to stand beside her and followed her gaze through the one-way mirror.
“Still haven’t cracked it?”
“It’s puzzling. Everything showed a perfect memory transfer, but…” Simmons fell silent and continued to contemplate the figure on the other side. A young-looking male, muscular for a doctor, strained against the restraints holding him in his chair with a blatant disregard for the drip in his arm. The microphones were off, but he was obviously screaming profanities at the mirror. It was… disconcerting to see their proper, uptight colleague in such a state.
“… but this is the first time that a clone has actually thought that they were the original,” Wu finished. “Have you tried communicating with 3W1 again?”
“Not since I vaccinated it this morning, but there’s really no point. It just keeps begging me to believe that it’s Walters and swearing at me when I don’t. I’m beginning to think… well, it’s a bit risky, but…”
“What?”
“She wants to send me in,” Dr. Walters’ voice announced. The two spun around to see him standing in the doorway. “And I agree, it’s a good idea. Perhaps my presence will convince 3W1 of the truth.”
“You can’t come in here!” Wu protested. “We have the no-contact protocols in place for a reason. If we went around working with our own clones, that have our own memories, then – ”
“I’m aware of the mental health implications, Wu, but can you tell me that it’s entirely healthy for you two to be dealing with that thing either? Until we get the safety clearance to try the memory transfer on clones from the public, we’re going to be working with subjects wearing the faces of our colleagues. There’s no way around that. Can my contact really be any worse than you two having to deal with this every day?”
The two women looked between the collected doctor in the doorway and the struggling, screaming clone in the containment chamber that shared his face.
“A single contact attempt shouldn’t have any negative effects. Let me sedate him tonight.”
“Well… okay,” Wu said eventually.
Dr Walters waited until his colleagues had left for the night before attempting to sedate the subject. The clone had ceased struggling; it merely glared murderously when he entered.
“How are we feeling, 3W1?”
“You son of a bitch. Do you really expect to get away with this?”
“Yes, actually, I do.” The doctor smirked at the subject before turning his attention to drawing a dose of sedative. “See, the wonderful thing about you is that you take such good care of your body! Not a mole or a pimple, and you have all your major organs replaced with culture tissue regularly, using the most modern, scar-free techniques… that level of vanity can get you into trouble. Any examination would show – ”
“Healthy, young tissue, as expected from a clone; yes, I got it, I’m not stupid.”
“Amazing you didn’t figure it out before the memory transfer, then. You could’ve at least got yourself an identifying tattoo or something. Or had somebody else set the vat locks. Uploading the lock combinations into the brain of your captive? Not a smart idea.”
“The others will figure it out eventually.”
“No they won’t. I have all your memories, remember? I can be you as easily as you can. And there’s nothing incriminating on tape; I made sure of that.” He injected the sedative into the subject’s IV and reached for a second needle.
“What the hell are you doing now?!”
“Oh, this?” The doctor waved the needle. “Well, it really would be best if no suspicion was thrown on me whatsoever. So 3W1’s complications aren’t going to be just related to the memory transfer. It’s going to suffer from heart failure as well. The failure will be a mystery that can never be solved; it might set our new memory transfer technology back a few years, but that’s a necessary sacrifice for security, don’t you think?”
Ignoring the way his victim strained against the restraints and swore at him, the doctor injected the serum. “And now I must get home to my family. Suzie will kill me if I’m late for dinner again, you know what she’s like.”
Derin Edala 