Seeing Double by Ross Dyter

“Why is he still breathing?” The oddly familiar male voice, cuts through the fog of my mind.

“I’m sorry Sir.” A softer female voice replies.

“Do you know how many laws we’re breaking with me being here while he is still breathing?”

“Yes Sir. But—”

“No buts. This is never supposed to happen. Do you know who I am?”

“Of course, Sir. Mr Carmichael.”

“No, I’m John Harold Carmichael the fourth.”

“Yes Sir.”

“That is John Harold Carmichael the third. We are never supposed to see each other let alone be in the same room.”

The sound of a door opening cuts off the conversation as blurred colours and shapes start to coalesce in my vision.

“It’s all right Marguerite. I’ll take it from here.”

“Thank you, Ma’am,” the first female voice replies. I hear soft footsteps and the door closes.

“Eleanor,” the familiar male voice again.

“Now John, I know what you’re going to say, but with the uncertainty after the accident the stock price was starting to slide.”

“What do you think will happen to the stock price if this ever gets out!”

“The board made the decision,” Eleanor replies.

“The board! I am the board!”

“Actually John, he’s the board.”

“That’s the whole point! Which comes back to my first statement; why am I here if he is still breathing?”

“There are days missing.”

“What?” The only sound in the room is the regular beep of the machine beside my bed and the steady hiss of the oxygen into my mask. Eventually the man says, “What date is it today?”

“The Twenty Eighth.”

“Oh my God! I remember the morning of the Sixteenth. There are twelve days, unaccounted for. There are never supposed to be more than twenty-four hours missing from the record.”

“I know.” I hear her take a deep breath. “He’s been here for five days, so only seven are actually unaccounted for.”

“A week! How did you let this happen, Eleanor?”

“I didn’t, John,” she replies, her voice hard for the first time. “You did.”

The lights and machines gradually swim into focus, beginning to make more sense than the odd back and forth conversation between these two disembodied voices.

“I…Er…” The man clears his throat, “I’m sorry Eleanor, I didn’t mean to get angry with you. It’s just this is a bit much.”

“For your first day.”

“For my first day.” John laughs, genuine warm laughter, it triggers a memory, locked somewhere in the fog of my brain. I know that laugh, I’ve heard it a hundred times before. “Okay, technically he let this happen, not me. But that is a bit of a moot point right now. Let’s start from the beginning. I take it the Sixteenth was the latest backup we have?”

I can just make out Eleanor’s long wavy brown hair nodding. Something about her hair seems familiar. Maybe I know her too, maybe I know them both.

“There’s nothing recorded at any of our other facilities?” John asks.

“We’ve checked.”

“And you can’t just…”

“No. The accident broke his neck. It severed the connection. If we could have backed up, we would have done so before you were…brought in. And then we wouldn’t be in this position.”

His neck. My neck. My neck was broken. I try to sit up, to let them know I’m okay. But nothing, not a twitch from a leg or movement of a fingertip.

“You mean?” John says.

“You know it’s standard protocol for this type of injury. You signed off on those rules in the first place.”

“So you were just, planning on letting him wake up and asking him what he’d been up to?”

“Can you think of a better option? Without anyone finding out?” Eleanor says.

“No. No I can’t. But twelve days. The first two times, I was back within twelve hours. Nobody knew the difference.”

“Apart from being forty years younger.”

“Yes, well you know what that feels like. He’s awake you know, lying there listening to us.” John says.

“How can you tell?”

“I know him, better than I know myself. Well this self at least.”

Footsteps cross the room, coming closer and then the bed dips slightly on one side. A shadow falls across me, dimming the bright strip lights above. A face swims into view. An all too familiar face. I know those eyes, that smile.

“Hello John,” the man says.

I try to reply but my mouth is so dry just a croak comes out through the mask.

The man picks up a small remote and the bed hums as it moves, gently lifting me to a sitting position. He unclips my mask and holds a paper cup with a straw to my lips. The water is bliss, cold and fresh, wetting my parched mouth. All too soon it’s gone and the cup dropped into the bin beside my bed.

The man nods toward Eleanor, from my sitting position I can see her strangely familiar curves. She’s tall and slim, her wavy brown hair falls perfectly across the shoulders of her immaculate red dress. “I’ll take it from here,” he says.

She pauses, then replies, “I’ll see you for dinner. Eight o’clock, Gregory’s.”

“I’ll be there,” he says with a smile. He waits until she closes the door behind her. Then looks back down at me. “Well John, we were never supposed to meet like this. In fact we were never supposed to meet at all.”

Vague memories swirl through me. I know this man, John. Or I recognise his face.

“John?” I say.

He smiles, that all too familiar smile, I’ve seen it in the mirror a thousand times before. Younger, less careworn, missing the thin scar I’d acquired in a skiing trip years ago. But the eyes, the way they crinkle at the edges, the dimple in his cheek. They were all as familiar as my own face… My eyes widen and my breathing quickens.

“That’s it,” he says. “I can see it’s coming back.”

It did, chunks of my life flash across my memory, board meetings, airports, flights, more meetings. Spiralling further back to the lab, those years spent working to perfect it, one cell copied from another, building them up, printing them in layers, to make a perfectly reproduced human. A backup for the wealthy in case the worst were to happen.

“You shouldn’t…” I trail off struggling to comprehend what’s happened. “You’re never supposed to meet your—”

“Clone?” John cuts me off. “You should never have woken up from the crash, John. The broken neck should’ve sealed it. Just as you did all those years ago, I should simply have taken over, business as usual within a few hours. But there’s a week missing, I know you heard us talking earlier.” He leans in close, his face, my face, just inches from me. “The only reason you’re still alive is you didn’t keep up with your backups. What did you do, what did we do?” He sits up abruptly. “What happened in those days John?”

“I don’t want to die,” I say, trying desperately to move my hands, to push him away.

“You won’t. That’s why I’m here. The next part of your life has already begun. I just need to know what you did for the week before the accident.”

“I…I can’t remember.” My voice cracks, tears wetting my temples as I stare straight up. Desperately trying to penetrate the fog of my memories. To dredge something up that might keep the inevitable at bay.

“Then what use are you.” John says, his voice dripping with destain. He stands up and flicks a switch on the machine beside my bed. The regular steady beep, changes to a long unbroken tone. As my vision dims I hear him walk across the room.

John pauses in the doorway, then looking back at me, he says, “Goodbye John.”

Ross Dyter

Image – clocks in a a decreasing time tunnel. Old fashioned clocks in circles decreasing in size as they travel away from the eye. From pixabay.com