Sci-fi Short: Jump Start - Part 6

How did I get here?

He was in a ground car sitting outside Swale’s, he had a terrible headache and no recollection of how he had gotten there. He assumed that he had gone there with Steve Nixon after work.

Steve must have got them started on his favourite cocktail, The Geisha, then after sinking a few he stumbled out to find this ground-car. After all if a certain level of alcohol is present in the blood you’re not aloud to be around any airborne vehicles.

Why then couldn’t he remember a single bit, not even how they got there? Come to think of it he could barely remember yesterday. His mind felt like it had been dressed in a dense overcoat of fog, he even shook his head a couple of times, hoping that would somehow bring him clarity.

He thought about asking the ground-car to take him to Cybertec, but instead decided to get out and walk the three and a half blocks to his company’s headquarters.

“Wait a minute, why am I going there?”

He had stopped in the middle of a busy pavement. He had pulled up so suddenly that the three people walking immediately behind him ran into his back. A tall woman with a severe haircut and eyes that looked like they had been altered to look like those of a big cat glared at him as she walked by.

The memories came back to him now, he was meant to be robbing Cybertec. He was going to take the Lad-DNA interface chip, along with whatever secrets he could find. Perhaps then he had gone to Swale’s with Steve as an alibi? He searched through his memories for any clues as to why he had woken up in a ground-car but came up with nothing.

He was at the front entrance to Cybertec, he craned his neck upwards. In this light the Cybertec ‘scraper was perhaps the most impressive one in the whole of the CRZ. It’s gleaming façade of carboplas, ferrocrete and diamond substrate lit up the evening sky for one hundred and fifty floors.

Suddenly he remembered why he’d been in the car, there was an entrance around the back for ground traffic only. Damn, what was wrong with him?

He spun round and started a half-jog-half-walk back to the car and hoped that it was still there. The car hadn’t spoken to him either when he was inside or when getting out. Hopefully that meant he had obtained it on some kind of long hire basis.

As he made his way back through the emptying streets the plan, his plan started wisping back into his brain. He was meant to take the ground car through the ground traffic entrance, from there he was meant to use the low-level magno-lift to the thirty seventh floor.

Once there he would swap lifts and get up to the one hundred and ninth floor where the main lab was. The system would let him in because it had been tripped out and would be in reset mode.

Why?

The others, of course, the others were there to create a diversion. They are the ones who would have tripped the system, though who the others were and how they were meant to trip the billion dollar security system he couldn’t remember. Anyway the lab would let him in and from there he was to get the Lad-D interface chip and use the autodoc to place it within himself. Once he had done that he would go home and wait . . .

Wait for . . .

For what?

Probably for whatever drugs he’d dosed himself with to wear off. He was surprised that he hadn’t left himself a note or something. Then again perhaps he was paranoid that he’d leave that note as evidence somewhere.

There it was! It was still sitting exactly where he’d left it.

Oh thank the fates! He approached the car and slid smoothly inside, he barely allowed himself time to take his seat before uttering the single word command.

“Destination.”

Or should that be destiny? He thought to himself. As suspected the car wheeled its way towards the Cybertec ‘scraper. Once there it headed straight for the ground traffic entrance and deposited him at the corner of the huge atrium that housed the various magno-lifts that attended to the many thousand Cybertec employees.

He checked his internal timepiece:

21:37

Even though he wasn’t aware, or couldn’t remember if he was meant to be sticking to a particular time schedule. He knew that he had wasted seventeen minutes leaving the car and then returning. He hoped that whatever trick they had used to trip the security system, wasn’t time sensitive.

On the thirty seventh floor now, into lift West-eighteen. The lift came and took him up the building, a capillary delivering a single blood cell straight to the heart. The glass wall of the magno-lift was behind him, he glanced instinctively back as they passed the eighty fifth floor where he worked.

Mouth open heart stopped, in the opposite lift . . . North-four was it? Who knows? Who the fuck cares? He was staring at, at . . . was that him?

He watched as a man that looked and moved like him in every way stepped into the elevator and rode it down towards the base of the Cybertec tower. He pressed his face up against the glass, using every single bit of zoom on his eye aug. The man had his back to him and they only passed each other for the briefest of seconds.

But yes, it was definitely him, he had a fucking clone right here in the building. He was in a trance as the lift pulled smoothly up to floor one hundred and nine.

He stepped out of the car and walked towards the lab, he knew now what the plan was. He must have created a clone, no, multiple clones, it was the only way to trip the security system. With multiple entries of the same person with the same DNA clearances, the system would malfunction and go into reset.

Obviously he would have found this out and maybe even the exact amount of time it would be in reset mode for. Sure enough when he reached it, the door to the lab acquiesced to his open command. He realised that all secure areas within the lab, as with the rest of the building, would be wide open.

It took him less than two minutes to locate the Lad-D interface chip. As he lay on the autodoc gurney waiting for it to insert the thing into the base of his spine he realised why he couldn’t remember anything and why he felt like he was acting on autopilot.

“That wasn’t a fucking clone, that was Jason Pullman. I’m the clone.”

He felt the sting of the local anaesthetic being administered to his spine. Moments later the androgynous autodoc voice informed him that the procedure was complete, he swung his legs off the table and stood up. As he walked towards the door dawning realisation washed over him like the first rays of sun on a cold winter’s morning.

“Well, well Jason old chap, I would never have thought you’d have it in you. However I see your dilemma; what else could you possibly do? Killing me, us, is the only recourse left to you. Though I’m sure you would have used more sanitary language; something like destroy the clones.

Hmm, if I were you, which of course I am, I would have some kind of insurance policy against this kind of thing happening. The last thing you/I would want is a clone rebellion. So I would drug me, a time-release or better yet some kind of triggered delivery that I could control.

Perhaps using that Lad-D interface chip that I’ve so conveniently inserted into my spinal column.

Hmm, pretty sure the autodoc will find it if asked.”

The Clone turned round and headed back towards the autodoc.

“Well then Mr Pullman, it appears that it’s either me or you; and seeing as with this Lad-D interface inside me I’m a much better version of you. It’s only fair that I should be the one to carry on living, whilst you are the one who is destroyed.”

As he lay back down onto the autodoc a thin smile began to play itself across the Clone's lips.

“Before I kill you though, I want my fucking memories back, all of them.”

Cryptogee