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A Science Fiction Story

Written by Gary Raab

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David White could never quite remember the avalanche that killed him. One moment he was skiing with his friends in the mountains of Alaska- a fantastic trip into what seemed, to the urban young man, the ultimate wilderness- and the next moment there was a thundering crack, incoherent cries and screams coming from his companions. Then suddenly an old man, his face half-hidden behind the longest, thickest beard David had ever seen, was leaning over him. The old man was dressed in a flowing white robe and his wrinkled hands gripped firmly a sort of staff that looked remarkably, to David's untutored eye, like a shovel which he was using to keep himself propped upright, the bent-bone hunch on his back causing him some difficulty in standing. "How do you feel, lad?" the old man said in a sympathetic voice, with an accent David guessed to be vaguely Scottish.

"Wha . . ." he began somewhat stupidly, staring at the smooth, shapeless grey light on every side of him. "Is this heaven?" he asked uncertainly.

"Humph! Don't I wish!" the old man snorted. "Now that you're finally awakening, we can get rid of all of this paraphernalia." He reached into a pocket hidden in the folds of his robe and brought forth what appeared to be nothing more than the remote control of a television set. He punched a button and the grey vagueness surrounding them disappeared into the clinical dullness of an ordinary looking hospital room. David found himself seated in a chair next to the empty bed with the old man seated directly facing him, between the sink and the bathroom door, which was half-open to reveal a functional, but plain toilet.

"Where am I, then?" David asked, blinking at the sudden shift into the brighter light that was reflecting off the ceiling from hidden fixtures over the head of the bed. "Was I in some sort of accident?"

"You could say that," the old man said with a grin that his long, flowing mustache didn't entirely hide.

"I was . . I was skiing, wasn't I?" David asked, wrinkling his brow as he struggled to remember. He looked down at his body, dressed scantily in a typical hospital gown. "Did I break a bone or something?"

From what he could tell everything in his body seemed to be in the right place and condition, but he supposed one could never tell about such things.

As the old man leaned back in his chair his upright shovel tipped backward slightly clanking against the sink. "You'd think after all these years I'd have learned how to handle the thing, wouldn't you?" he muttered under his breath, in the manner of one voicing his thoughts out loud, and not really expecting any kind of intelligent response.

"What . . . why are you carrying a shovel in a hospital, anyway?" David asked. "Are you a custodian or something?"

"Do I look like a custodian?" the old man seemed obviously offended.

"No, not really," David admitted, gazing at the man's white robe. "What are you, then? And where am I?" He turned his head back and forth, looking about the sterile hospital room for some sort of clue. "Is this Fairbanks or someplace like that?"

"Or someplace, I'd say," he old man told him, leaning forward until his eyes were uncomfortably close to David's face. He peered at him for a moment, then snorted. Then, to David's relief he leaned back once more. David noticed that the old man smelled strongly of what was obviously some kind of hospital disinfectant, not unpleasant but not the cologne David would have chosen for a night on the town.

"You seem well enough integrated," the old man said with satisfaction. "Do you feel strong enough to stand, or should I send for a nurse?"

David gripped the sides of his chair and levered himself upward experimentally. "I guess I'm okay," he said, pushing himself to his bare feet.

"Good lad," the old man said encouragingly, as if he were a master speaking to his pet. "Come to the window, then, and take a look at where you are."

The old man took David's arm, more as an encouragement than as any actual help, and led him around the foot of the bed to the window, covered with a venetian blind. David guessed it must be late evening or night, considering the small amount of light coming through the slats. As the old man grasped the cord and pulled the blinds slid smoothly upward to reveal a deep, starlit emptiness. David leaned forward, gawking at the brilliance of the many glowing orbs scattered about like an overgrown and bloated Milky Way. For the most part the stars were mere specks of light, but others were remarkably like the lights on a Christmas tree: blues, reds, greens, and yellows, and large enough to appear as small spheres rather than the usual pinpoint of the typical star he was accustomed to. A full half-dozen of the Christmas-bulb lights were as large as dimes, a couple were as large as quarters, and one- a dull brick red one- was the size of a beach ball. But what was particularly impressive was that there was no landscape beneath them. To all appearances the window was looking out into the depths of outer space. An outer space with no planets whatsoever attached to it. "Oh wow," David whispered. "What is this? Some sort of computer simulation or something?"

The old man rubbed the long mustache hair over his mouth in what may have been an attempt to stroke his upper lip. "Well, that tells us something about you, too, doesn't it, lad?" he asked. "For one thing, it helps to set you in the proper time frame. For another, it shows us you're a cynic, and a silly fool to boot."

David turned sharply toward the old man with a flash of anger. "Hey!" he complained. "Your bedside manner could stand a little work, there, fella."

"Sorry, sorry," the old man said, waving his hand as if to dismiss it as a matter of no consequence. "One of the curses of being old is that we tend to speak our minds. You'll find that out yourself some day, assuming you ever live long enough. But then, you already have, haven't you?" He chuckled at his own humor and returned to his chair next to the sink.

"What do you mean by that?" David asked, gazing out with admiration at what he still believed to be a man made simulation. "Whoever did this, is pretty good, isn't he?" he commented.

"Hardly!" David wasn't quite facing that direction, but he could swear that he saw, from the corner of his eye, the top of the shovel flash and flicker briefly. He turned in surprise to make sure, but by that time it was behaving as if it were nothing more than a somewhat worn, not entirely clean, shovel.

"What's going on, here?" David asked suspiciously. "I think I'd like to see a nurse after all, or maybe a doctor. Who's in charge of me here?"

"I am, as a matter of fact," the old man said with a half-buried smile.

"You are!" David echoed with dismay. He glanced around as if trying to find something to reassure him. The room seemed nothing more than a dimly-lit, commonplace hospital room with people in vaguely nurse-like outfits rushing back and forth in what he could see of the corridor outside the open doorway.

"No reason to be in quite such a panic, lad," the old man laughed, leaning back in his chair and once more clanking his shovel against the sink. "I won't harm you. Quite the opposite, in fact. And I truly am a doctor, though perhaps not quite the kind you're used to. Doctor Edgar Maiaphus Bott, at your service." He inclined his head slightly in a regal manner.

"How come you're dressed so funny?" David asked suspiciously.

"I suggest you get used to it," Bott advised. "Come young man, sit down and think for a moment. Surely you can see that you are not in what you would consider to be a normal situation."

David glanced uncertainly out the window and then back at the old man seated next to the sink. "What do you mean?" he asked carefully.

"Come, lad, sit down and let's talk," Bott urged.

David returned slowly to his chair and sank down, wide-eyed, to stare at the older man's placid, if bushy, face.

"What's going on, then?" he asked.

Bott sighed and spun his shovel lightly until it was resting sideways on his knees. "You won't go catatonic on me, will you, lad?" he asked. "I mean to say, you won't overreact if I tell you something truly shocking, will you?"

"I might," David said cautiously. "Why? What did you have in mind?"

"Well, some of our Replicates do tend to react in a somewhat . . . eccentric manner, shall we say, when they first learn the truth," Bott laughed. "One can hardly blame them. Just consider how disconcerting it must be to find oneself suddenly several centuries in the future. Well, of course, you can consider it, can't you, since that's what's happened to you. And none of the others are from nearly so far back as yourself, certainly. Not even close, in fact."

"You're kidding," David said, but his heart wasn't really in denial as he gazed back at the starry window, a strange tingling sensation running up his spine.

"Indeed I am not," Bott assured him. "I'm afraid I don't know the exact year you've come from, all we had to go by was your clothing and your general situation when your remains were found . . . oh, excuse me, perhaps you'd rather not discuss that just yet. The concept of one's own death and resurrection, so to speak, can be rather disconcerting, but I can tell you that the year, at present, would be described by yourself as two thousand six hundred, and sixty-five." The old man said each number slowly and carefully, as if to let it sink in as deeply as possible.

"Ah." David leaned back in his chair as he took in what was said

Now, as it turned out, the young man was an avid, if not fanatical, science fiction fan. There had been, in his earlier years the demand of schoolwork and chores and, later, the necessity of earning a living, to restrict his reading time, but he had still managed to read just about every book of the genre he could get his hands on. In his early teens he had dreamed of being in similar adventures as his literary heroes, rocketing across the vast reaches of the universe. Traveling backward and forward through time as easily as one would ride up and down in an elevator. But with the maturity of his twenty-five years and the need to find his way in the 'real' world, such dreams had faded into the background. Never to be entirely forgotten, however, and if given half a chance he would have leapt aboard the first starship bound for . . . well, bound for anywhere it would take him when it came right down to it.

So he wasn't exactly appalled to find that one of his dreams had come true. Though it did take a few minutes for the enormity of it to sink in. When it did, he broke into a broad smile.

"Hey, this is terrific!" he shouted, and he threw back his head and laughed.

Bott eyed him with obvious concern. "You're not about to go hysterical on me, are you, young man?" he asked.

"I . . . I don't think so," David wiped a tear or two from his eyes. "I was just . . . well, it is kind of cool, you know."

"Cool being some vernacular for something good, or something bad?" Bott asked uncertainly.

"Oh good, good, definitely," David assured him. "So where are we? In some sort of outer space research station or something? I assume that's why you showed me the window, to let me know we're not on planet Earth? What is this, some kind of experiment for bringing the dead back to life? Maybe cloning or something like that?"

Bott brushed his hand across his wrinkled forehead. "You're going far too fast, young man," he complained. "I must say, you're taking this all remarkably well. Not to press against any possible wounds, but you are aware, are you not, that this means that you have lost virtually everything from your former life? That all of your friends, relatives, loved ones have long since perished and you are trapped, so to speak, in an entirely and utterly alien world from which you can never return?"

"Like I said, you could stand some work on your bedside manner, Bott," David frowned, feeling a momentary pang at the thought that his parents and two brothers, his sister and his friends were lost to him forever. But then, being young and tougher than he may have appeared, David made a quick adjustment and realized that they hadn't been suddenly killed or robbed of their lives by some enormous, terrible catastrophe. They had simply gone on living through their life spans, whatever those had been, and had perished in the natural course of human affairs. It was kind of sad to think of it, but then all death was sad, when it came right down to it. And he was, after all, or had been, dead himself....

"So!" he said suddenly. "What happened to me? I mean, why am I here? How did you bring me back? And back from what?" he added, wide-eyed as a new thought occurred to him. "I guess I must have . . . I mean, I must have died, right?"

"You certainly did, young man- just what is your name, if I may ask? A name would definitely be more convenient than referring to you by the number of your case file. A rather long and difficult sequence to memorize, I might add."

"My name is David White," the young man told him. "But I did really die, then, didn't I?"

"Well, in a manner of speaking, yes," Bott agreed shifting somewhat uncomfortably in his chair. "This may be a rather difficult subject for you, if you're at all squeamish about such things." He paused with a questioning look on what showed of his face around the whiskers.

"How squeamish do I have to be?" David asked with a gulp.

The old man sighed. "That depends. The first thing, see, is that you really aren't . . . what was it you said? You really aren't David White."

The young man scratched his head. "But I am," he said after a pause. "I mean, how could I not be?"

"Oh, in several different ways, actually," the old man told him. "This is the Twenty-Seventh Century, after all. We've developed our technologies in various areas quite further than you may imagine. But you spoke of cloning. I presume you mean the concept of growing an entire organism from a single cell, or perhaps what was once known as DNA patterns?"

"Well, yeah, something like that," David said with that awkwardness laymen tend to feel when in the company of those they believe to be experts.

"Yes. An entirely valid concept, but with certain limitations and natural, inherent restrictions. You understand, however, that such a reproduction would be an entirely different person? Oh, granted, it may have the same physical appearance as the original, even down to the smallest detail, but the mental contents, shall we say, would be entirely different. The emotional patterns, memories, personality, and so forth are not stored in the cell, after all, or in your supposed DNA, but rather in the brain, and those are influenced by experiences through a lifetime rather than being inherent in the genetic pattern of the body at birth. Reproducing the body by cloning is no different, from that point of view, from normal reproduction by common biological processes. You understand me here, I hope?" He fixed David with a penetrating eye.

"Yeah, well so I'm not a clone," David said. "What am I, then?"

"All in good time, David White, all in good time," Bott soothed. "I am merely helping to prepare the groundwork, so to speak, for your proper understanding."

"Don't take too long," David urged. "I mean, I kind of want to know."

"Entirely understandable," Bott agreed. "But I was merely saying, you must try to understand that there are several aspects to any physical organism, even in a mental sense. There are the various physiological aspects, meaning the many organs and glands of the body affecting personality, the brain itself in its various structures and chemical interactions, but we need not go into areas which may be relatively controversial to someone of your time period, steeped as you were in superstition such as . . . well, I must tread carefully, here, of course."

"I don't think I'm very superstitious," David objected. "I'm not exactly afraid of black cats or of walking under ladders or things like that."

"I should be quite reluctant to walk under ladders, myself," Bott remarked. "Who knows what sort of malicious childishness might be dropped on one from above? And black cats . . . that is for another time, I fear. I was referring to other things. Not, for your information, religious as such but merely beliefs about what the individual is and is not. At any rate," the old man went on, shaking himself physically as if to force his mind back onto the subject at hand, "I was trying to explain that there are aspects of the self which can be reproduced from virtually any cell in the body, aspects which can be reproduced from structures in the brain- and these would include many of the more superficial character traits, many emotions, and more commonplace memories, though not all- and aspects which cannot be duplicated in any way whatsoever, though we need not go into those at this time."

"Are you talking about the soul?" David asked suspiciously.

"A mere word, and defined differently by everyone who has ever attempted to discuss it," Bott said dismissively. "But for convenience's sake, I'll agree with you that what might be termed the soul cannot be reproduced, and thus it cannot be brought back to life by any means we currently have available. Perhaps fortunately," he added with a thoughtful frown.

"You mean I don't have the same soul as I had back there?" David asked with a squeak of amazement in his voice. "That's just stupid! I'm the same person! I know I am. I mean, I feel like I'm the same, and that must be . . . "

"I said it was a difficult subject," Bott interrupted smoothly. "And I also said that memories, or at least many of them, are stored in the brain in such a way that they can be replicated in a similar, equivalent structure."

"Oh come on, now," David exploded in disbelief. "You mean I have some of the same memories as I had back there but I'm not the same person?"

"Well, you're not the same body, obviously," Bott told him. "That was smashed beneath an avalanche. Even if we had been able to resuscitate that, you wouldn't have been happy with the result, I assure you."

David gulped. "That sounds kind of nasty," he said.

"With good reason," Bott agreed.

David looked down at his body, more or less lost in the floppy hospital gown. "Yeah, well, I look pretty much the same," he said. "Unless . . ." He stood up suddenly and gazed at his face in the mirror over the sink in the dim light. "I look the same to me," he said after a careful examination.

"You are very much the same, superficially," Bott assured him. "But let us continue in a bit more organized manner, shall we? I believe I've told you that your body was rather badly smashed in the avalanche?"

"Yeah, you said that," David said with a frown.

"I apologize if this is all somewhat unpleasant, David White," Bott said in a kindly tone. "But believe me, there are reasons why you would prefer to know the truth at this stage and not later."

"Okay, so tell me," David demanded. "I suppose this is leading up to some bad news?"

"I can see that you are somewhat cynical by nature, David White," Bott remarked.

"Hey, you just said I'm not David White, didn't you?" the young man demanded. "So why don't you call me Lab Rat X or something like that?"

"Don't be bitter, young man," Bott urged him. "To all effects and purposes you are indeed David White. Or you are the only David White in existence at this time, and in this place, and that should be all that matters to you in a practical sense, wouldn't you agree?"

"How would I know? This is your home turf, not mine," David said feeling frustrated and confused.

"Then believe me when I tell you, to all effects and purposes you have every right to think of yourself as David White. You see, they did manage to recover most of your brain, frozen in the avalanche as it was, and by various means available to us we managed to replicate the vast majority of those memories into an equivalent structure, which you presently possess. And if it makes you feel any better, there was certainly some cloning done to make your present appearance more or less equivalent to that of your original body. Though you aren't flesh and blood, of course."

What should have been blood, if he had had any, drained from David's face. "What!" he exclaimed. "But I . . but I . . . " He pawed frantically at his body as if to reassure himself of its solidity.

"Well, you see, almost no one is anymore," Bott said in an almost apologetically tone. "Hardly convenient, you understand. Too many limitations on movement and the like, with the earth destroyed and all."

"The . . . the earth . . . " David croaked weakly.

"Well, it has been some six centuries since you died, you know," Bott reminded him. "Thing have happened. We've had some truly mind-boggling wars since then, and in one of them they just happened to destroy the earth. Not our side, of course," he added hastily. "The other fellows. Not very nice people at all, as you can imagine."

"Yeah, I can imagine. So how . . . how did anybody survive? I mean, where are we? And what about . . I mean, you said something about finding my brain . . . " he gulped but got it out, "in an avalanche or something. If the earth was destroyed, them why wasn't I . . that is . . . I mean how . . ."

"Oh, it can all be explained, I assure you," Bott told him. "In the first place, your brain was actually discovered . . . I'm sorry if this upsets you," he said, as he noticed David's rather green expression. "Let's just get it all over, shall we, and then you won't have any more bad news to look forward to. At any rate, your remains were discovered some time before the earth was destroyed. By that time anyone who would have protested was long dead, and so your body was turned over to the scientists of the day. You know how scientists like to study things," he added with a grim smile through his whiskers.

"Yeah," David said weakly.

"Yes. Well, the brain was remarkably well preserved, and fortunately the scientists of the time didn't merely destroy it in their clumsy investigations. They preserved the greater part of it in a freezer in a research center in a military base . . . well, somewhere in whatever nation it happened to be in that time. It's hard to keep track of the old geopolitical units, since they've long since disappeared in the destruction of the earth."

"I suppose you mean the United States," David sighed.

"Perhaps," Bott shrugged. "At any rate, it was fortunate that the preservation was in such a situation, for when the world was destroyed the military base was preserved by a Shield. It became a mere fragment, understand, not large enough to qualify as a full terroid, as we term the larger habitable remains of the planet, but it did manage to retain most of the life-sustaining mechanisms available at that time. It still exists, in fact, though now it's in the hands of the Enemy," he said darkly.

"What enemy?" David asked, not certain he really wanted to know.

"Now that truly can wait," Bott told him. "Let us continue with the curious journeys of your brain, first, shall we? When the fragment fell prey to the Enemy's advance we managed to evacuate the greater part of its resources to the Lesser Cluster, including the freezer with your brain in it, and then, for various reasons we need not go into at this time, it was decided to attempt a full restoration of as much of the original self of the stored brain as possible, and here you are, so to speak." He leaned back in the chair with some satisfaction at having finished his tale, though David's head was still spinning with confusion and unanswered questions.

"Well, I guess that's quite a story, all right," he said finally, "but it still doesn't explain why I'm not flesh and blood. And I sure seem to be, as far as I'm concerned."

"Of course you do!" Bott exclaimed. "What kind of hospital would we be, if we couldn't do a good job with the simple details of replication? Though you'll find a few, shall we say, improvements as you go along. No sense replicating such things as the allergies we found patterned into the original DNA structures, would there be? Or the tendency toward cancer, which was due to cut your life short at an early age if we hadn't removed it. But no need to discuss such refinements at this time."

"What am I then, some sort of laboratory freak?" David asked bitterly.

"Well, hardly that, if you're referring to your new constitution," Bott protested. "As I said, most people are now Replicates. That or Firsts, which is very much the same thing. Of course we Firsts still have our original brains, and so what you yourself termed the soul, while you and the other Replicates are more or less a new creation. And there are certain experimental factors included in your makeup which, for legal reasons, we are unable to install in . . . forgive me a moment," he said suddenly. "My tool is beeping."

"Yeah, I noticed," David said, and he watched with amazement as the old man held a quick dialog with his shovel.

"I'm afraid we must continue this conversation elsewhere, David White," the old man said a moment later. "Something of a crisis seems to have developed and the hospital is under attack."

"Under attack?" David squeaked. "Who's . . . I mean, what's going on?"

"All in good time, all in good time," Bott said smoothly. "Now if you would just come with me, perhaps we should seek out safer quarters." And taking the young man's arm he rose from his chair.

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The White Knight of Outer Space
By Gary Raab
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