Linkage: The Narrows of Time

Chapter 18

Reflection





Kleezebee turnedaround, as did Bruno and the imposter, all three of them facing thebusiness end of Lucas’ gun.

“L?” Kleezebeeasked, before extending his hands out in front of his chest. “Wait,it’s not what it looks like.”

“Yeah, what does itlook like?” Lucas replied. It startled him that Kleezebee calledhim “L.” He’d never done that before.

“Please, put the gundown and let me explain,” Kleezebee said.

“Where’s mymother?”

“Your mother is safeand sleeping upstairs.”

Lucas pointed the gunat the imposter. “Who the hell are you?”

“I’m you . . . thereal you.”

“What?”

When the elevator’sbell chimed again, Lucas didn’t turn to look at it right away.Instead, he slid four steps to his left to maintain a defensibleposition against all parties in the room. When he saw who camerolling in out of the elevator, he lowered his weapon withoutthinking, almost letting it slip through his fingers. “Drew?” Asmile erupted across his face, but it vanished when he realized theperson sitting in the wheelchair could be another imposter. “Whatthe hell’s going on here?” he asked, pointing the gun at theperson in the wheelchair, then at Kleezebee, then at his double. Hekept switching targets, waiting for something to happen.

Bruno took a steptoward Lucas, but Kleezebee stopped him with an arm bar maneuver.

Lucas pointed the gunat Bruno and held it there.

“Easy now, let’sall take a breath and not do anything rash,” Kleezebee said,stepping in between Bruno and Lucas. “We’re all friends here.”

“What are you doingin my brother’s wheelchair?” Lucas asked the cripple.

Drew smiled. “It’sme Luke, your brother. Please put the gun down before someone getshurt.”

“No chance,” Lucassaid, shifting targets again. “Someone better tell me what the hellis going on here before I start shooting.”

“That wasn’t me outthere,” Drew said.

“You’re going tohave to do better than that,” Lucas said, shaking his head. “Isaw my brother’s brains get splattered all over the desert. Youcan’t be him.”

“Maybe I couldexplain?” Kleezebee replied.

“I’m all ears,Professor.”

“Why don’t we startwith how you got away from Alvarez?”

Lucas decided to playalong, hoping answers would be provided before his itchy triggerfinger took control. “I overpowered the guard and took his Humvee.When I went to Mom’s house to get her, I saw you guys out front andfollowed you to the hockey arena. Nice transporter, by the way.”

“Did you kill him?”Bruno asked.

“No reason to. I justcuffed him and left him in the desert with a canteen of water.”

“Then this ain’tover, boss,” Bruno told Kleezebee.

“We’ll deal withthat later. They’re safe as long as they remain here.”

“I’m still waitingfor an explanation,” Lucas said, wiggling the gun to get theirattention.

“Bruno, it’s timeto show him,” Kleezebee said.

“Sure, Chief,”Bruno said, stepping forward in front of Kleezebee. He extended bothof his arms straight out from his shoulders, then tilted his headback and closed his eyes like an evangelist preparing fordeliverance. His arms and legs started to quiver slowly at first,then intensified into a full-blown seizure. The contours of his faceand body twisted and contorted, morphing its symmetry into somethingunexpected. His body mass receded, shrinking to two-thirds of itsoriginal size. The convulsions tempered to calm before he brought hishead forward from the tilted position. He looked at Lucas with adevious smile, his cheeks now soft and smooth.

Lucas felt agut-wrenching pain after witnessing Bruno’s metamorphosis into sexyMary Stinger, dressed in a short, plaid skirt and sheer pink blouse.She was wearing a pair of six-inch stiletto heels and no bra. Thevideo equipment illuminated her body from behind, allowing Lucas tosee much more of her figure than he had ever dreamed of, or wantedto, given the circumstances.

“How do you like myfigure now?” Mary asked, using Bruno’s grizzled voice. Shestepped out of Bruno’s duty belt, which had fallen past her slenderwaist and landed on the floor.

“What the hell?”Lucas gasped, regretting that he has lusted after Mary for the pasttwo years. How could he ever trust his eyes and his hormones again?

“Bruno is one of ourinfiltrator units,” Kleezebee said in an even tone.

Lucas shuffled twosteps back and pointed the gun at Mary. “An infiltrator unit? Sohe’s . . . she’s . . . what? A robot?”

“Not exactly,”Kleezebee said. “Bruno’s a genetically engineered bio-morph . . .a synthetic replica of the original entity.”

Lucas’ imposterlaughed. “I had this same conversation just a little while ago.Talk about déjà vu.”

Lucas poked Mary in thearm to see if she felt real. “You’re a bio-morph?”

Kleezebee replied, “Hehas the ability to mimic different organisms and assume theiridentity. He looks and acts just like the original but can beprogrammed to carry out a specific mission.”

“So which is he, aclone or a robot?”

“He is something inbetween. Bruno’s a synthetic that can transform at will to anyidentity or shape. All he needs is a good supply of sugar to generatethe energy needed to sustain each transformation.”

It was all starting tomake sense to Lucas. He understood why Bruno was addicted to allthings chocolate. The security officer consumed mounds of donuts andcandy for the sugar rush, then used the energy to transform andassume different identities. Lucas was astonished when he thoughtabout how lifelike Bruno had acted for the past eighteen months. Henever would have guessed the man wasn’t human.

“How many infiltratorunits are there?” Lucas asked, watching Bruno change back into hisregular self. He knew he would never look at Bruno the same way, atleast not without thinking about Bruno’s alter ego, who was nolonger standing there in a short skirt and heels.

“Bruno’s not theonly one. However, the exact number is classified on a need-to-knowbasis.”

When Lucas thoughtabout Bruno and Mary being the same person, he discovered adiscrepancy in Kleezebee’s story. “Wait a minute. Something’snot right here.”

“What’s that?”Kleezebee asked.

“A few days ago, whenwe were escorted to NASA’s facility, Bruno was up top and Mary waswaiting for us down on the twentieth floor. How could he be in twoplaces at once?”

“Let me show you,”Kleezebee said, calling forward one of his video technicians to standnext to Bruno. Lucas hadn’t realized it earlier, but all the videotechs were wearing the same pentagon-shaped watch as Bruno. Kleezebeeprobably gave the watches to his staff as gifts.

Bruno extended his leftarm and the tech his right. Their index fingers touched in the middleas if they were plugging into each other’s body. Their fingertipsfused together into one scarlet-colored mass, which resembled thesemi-liquid substance found inside a lava lamp. The blob shimmered asit slithered across the connection, slowly encasing the tech’s arm,then spread to his torso. Eventually, the goop smothered his entirebody.

For the next fifteenseconds, the tech’s body fluctuated under the gelatinous layer likea waterbed mattress swaying in an earthquake. When the spasmssubsided, random sections of the gooey substance disappeared,revealing more and more of Bruno’s appearance from underneath. Whenall of the bio-morph material had dissipated, the tech’s appearancehad been replaced by an exact replica of Bruno, clothes and all. Theonly thing missing was Bruno’s duty belt and sidearm.

Both copies spoke toLucas in perfect unison in Bruno’s voice. “Hopefully, now youunderstand.”

“So you can makecopies of copies,” Lucas answered. “Impressive, but that stilldoesn’t explain what happened in the desert.”

The imposter said,“Jesus Christ, don’t you get it? You’re a goddamn copy. So wasthe Drew that died.”

Lucas didn’t sayanything. He needed a moment to think.

“Trust me, you twoare replicas and were sent there to die,” the imposter said.

“Okay, let’s assumefor a moment I believe you, which I don’t. How did you know Alvarezwas going to kidnap us?” Lucas asked Kleezebee.

“We have a spy insidethe general’s unit. He informed us that Alvarez was coming afteryou. Remember my note to Trevor outside the conference room?”Kleezebee asked. “That night in the hospital, I had Trevorreplicate both of you while you were asleep. We knew Alvarez wasgunning for you, but we didn’t know when or where he would strike.It was the only way to protect your Authentics. Alvarez had to thinkLucas and Drew were dead; otherwise, he would never stop looking forthem. That meant we had to let him kill you. Since we needed you andD to act like your Authentics, we could let you know you werecopies.”

Lucas’ remembered thesticky stuff on his hand when he woke up in the chair in Drew’shospital room. His mind flashed a vision of the gooey material thathe stepped in when he was washing his hands in the bathroom sink.Then he remembered Trevor’s big orange suitcase and wondered whatwas inside of it. It was starting to make sense. Yet, still, hedidn’t believe he was the copy. He felt real. Kleezebee must havethe two of them confused. “No, I don’t believe any of this.”

“Maybe you need toshow him the Med-Lab, boss,” Bruno said.

Kleezebee did notrespond immediately. Instead, he walked to the front left corner ofthe room, and stood near an eight-foot-wide section of empty wallspace. In front of him was a red, wall-mounted fire extinguisher.Kleezebee opened a sliding compartment hidden underneath theextinguisher’s nameplate. Inside was a digital security keypad andbiometric scanner. He entered a numerical security code and pressedhis left thumbprint against the scanner.

An empty wall segmentslid up and disappeared into the ceiling. The hidden section wasactually a thick, reinforced metallic door that had been covered inmatching wall fabric, concealing its existence. Beyond the door was aroom roughly the size of Drew and Lucas’ lab.

“Welcome to ourmed-lab,” Kleezebee said.

Two stainless-steelsurgical tables were standing in the center of the med-lab withdepressed sections spaced evenly across their surface. They wereseven feet long with raised edges like a coroner’s table. Aboveeach table was medical equipment and directional lighting that hungdown from the ceiling. A well-stocked mobile surgical cart wassitting between the two tables, adorned with instruments andsupplies.

Wall-mounted shelvingsurrounded the room and was packed with clear glass containers aboutthe size of a janitorial mop bucket. Each container was filledtwo-thirds full with a scarlet-colored liquid. The ceiling carried asupply of two-inch diameter tubes, which connected each container toa furnace-sized machine along the back wall. An enormous,blond-haired technician was standing in a lab coat in front of themachine, with his back was to the entrance.

Lucas walked into thelab and pointed the gun at the male technician. “Turn around andlet me see your hands.”

The tech turned aroundand smiled. It was Trevor, their Swedish lab assistant.

“Jesus Christ, doeseveryone know about this except me?” Lucas asked.

“Let us show you,”Kleezebee said.

Trevor fetched a glasscontainer from the shelf closest to him and poured its red substanceinto one of the surgical table’s depressed areas. It oozed out ofthe container like semi-frozen red pudding.

Kleezebee called in oneof his operation techs from the video room and had the man roll uphis sleeve. Kleezebee submerged the tech’s hand into the scarletmaterial and held it there for a good twenty seconds.

“We call this stuffBioTex, which is synthetically engineered living latex,” Kleezebeeexplained. “Once his hand is submerged, the BioTex will process hisDNA and begin the replication process. It requires at least fifteenseconds of contact in order to create a genetic map of the donor’sbody, and then download the subject’s memory engrams.”

“Living latex?”Lucas asked.

Kleezebee withdrew thetech’s hand from the BioTex. “We prefer to call it BioTex, whichis short for Bio-mimetic Latex.”

Lucas stood there,watching the BioTex coagulate and thicken as it spread itself acrossthe length of the table. It rose up from the table like bread dough,eventually assuming the shape of a featureless human body. Soonafter, its facial structure began to materialize and show through thescarlet substance. Its mouth, eyes, and nose formed first, then itshair sprouted and grew to full length. Eventually, its entire body,including genitalia, took shape. The final step was the appearance ofits lab coat and clothes. When the metamorphosis was complete, anexact copy of the male technician lay before him on the table.

“If the replica is aperfect copy right down to its DNA, how do you tell the copy from theoriginal?” Lucas asked, thinking about his own status.

Kleezebee picked up ahandheld electronic device the size of a paperback book. “We usethis scanner to check the validity of any subject. When it encountersthe bimolecular resonance of BioTex, it lights up red. When it sensesan authentic human, it lights up green.” Kleezebee aimed the deviceat Bruno's chest. After three seconds, the unit lit up red. "Redmeans he's a replica." He pointed the unit at the imposter."Green means he's an Authentic. If I pointed it at you rightnow, it would light up red."

Lucas didn’t buy it.He was the authentic, not the imposter.

Kleezebee held up thescanner. “L, can I scan you to demonstrate?”

“Why are you callingme ‘L’?”

“That’s the namingconvention we use for replicas. We call them by the first letter oftheir donor’s name. Is it okay if I approach you? It’ll only takea second.”

Lucas finally agreedand Kleezebee held the scanner only inches from Lucas’ chest.Kleezebee activated the device and it lit up red, just as theprofessor said it would.

Lucas lowered hisweapon.

Bruno tackled Lucasfrom the side, pinning him spread-eagle to the floor. Trevor inserteda four-pronged electronic device into Lucas’ neck, sending anelectric discharge coursing through his body. His hands, legs, andarms went limp.

“Get off me,” Lucasyelled while being crushed by Bruno’s weight. He watched hisfingers slowly melt away, turning into the runny scarlet substance.It was true—he was a replica.

More of his body began to dissolve into BioTex and moments later, hisvision went dark and so did his existence.