Alpha Say, Beta Do

Washed, attired in the space suit he wanted his duplicate to wear, and considerably more awake, Tindar stood before the reception desk of the Central Commercial Duplication Laboratories of North America with his governmental certificates of permission for his "duping." The white-uniformed woman receptionist studied his certificates, handed him an identification disc and waved him on. She pressed a button on the desk and the information about him was wired to the other stations.

An attendant met and ushered him down a long, cool, white corridor to the section of the building devoted to the duplication of living matter. Another attendant took him from the first and whisked him up in an elevator to the floor where, as the somber sign stated, "Duplication of the Human Being" was carried on. He was directed to a pneumatic chair in the waiting room and he sat down.

Tindar had never ceased to wonder at the startling work done in this massive building, which most people, over the course of the last hundred years of its use, had come to consider a natural part of the bustling, scientific worlds. C.D. Labs, holding a benevolent monopoly on the process, could duplicate anything composed of atoms and smaller than a three-storied dwelling in a matter of minutes. The products of such duplication existed only for a period of about eighty hours, but it had proved to be a tremendously utilitarian device in duplicating oil and coal for immediate use; in duplicating the bodies of persons undergoing operations for dissection before the operation; for creating microbes of diseases and studying their effects upon the body, after which they would conveniently disappear, and for duplicating persons whose talents or brawn were needed briefly for special problems. This last use had been a great aid to industries by providing living, breathing, duplicates of specially trained men in times of need; which times were frequent since the peoples of earth were spread so thinly over seven planets and thousands of asteroids.

A nurse came into the waiting room with a glass of brown fluid on a tray. Tindar, no novice at duplication, smiled at the nurse in recognition, took the glass and drank it down. It was a sedative that would put him deeply to sleep in a few minutes, so that he could be pleasantly oblivious to the slight discomfort of the duplication cell.

He followed the nurse into the "Dupe" room and ran a familiar eye over the shining and ponderous equipment. He knew the theory vaguely. Space, warped, formed positive and negative fields. These fields, subjected to warping and energy changes, formed nascent matter, unstable and simple. Warped again, the inchoate matter formed into molecular substances identical with the pattern electrically projected into it. Whatever was placed in the primary chamber was pierced back and forth at every possible angle by a thousand different types of rays and emanations from the energy sources about the primary chambers. These rays were then the energy directed into the swirling haze of nascent matter. An identical object would take form in about five minutes time and the product's differences from the "pattern object" could not be detected by the strongest microscope.

"Simple," the man in the street might say. Tindar, more familiar with the theory of operation, was also more conscious of the hundreds and hundreds of years of research upon which the theory was based. He had always held a tremendous respect for the scientists who fathered the amazing invention.

Tindar climbed up onto the pneumatic cot and was slipped into the primary cylinder. He was slipping slowly into the mist of sleep as the door of the primary chamber clanked softly behind him. He gazed for a moment at the thousand lens-eyes on the curving walls about him. The eyes suddenly shown with all the colors of the spectrum and bathed his body in a weird and twisted rainbow of heterogeneous rays....

Two Tindars awoke abruptly and sat up on the pneumatic cots. They saw that the cots had been moved and rested against another in a corner of the room. They looked at one another.

"Who's who?" one of them asked.

"We'll have to wait for the attendants," the other shrugged. It was odd. That was practically all you ever had to say to yourself.

Down the hall feet slapped rapidly on the floor and approached the "Dupe" chamber. A taut-faced attendant looked into the room and waved at them frantically with a trembling hand.

"Don't get off your cots, please, sirs," he quavered and was gone.

The Tindars stared at one another.

"Something novel," they both said.

"Listen to the hell they're raising in the other room," one said, breaking the identity of their thought streams.

Visor-phones were buzzing; at least a dozen voices were raised in a furious discussion. Another voice could be heard, pleading and distraught. More attendants ran up and down the hall before the "Dupe" chamber. Three uniformed men with faces as white as their uniforms rushed through the waiting room and faced the Tindars.

"Dr. Bronsky will be here in a moment, sirs," one of them said.

"What's the matter?" one of the Tindars asked.

"Dr. Bronsky will be here presently, sirs," the attendant repeated.

Dr. Bronsky came into the room with a retinue of flustered assistants. He nodded to the Tindars and worked his lips around as he waited for a pale little man to shuffle nervously into the room.

"Now, Endicott, how did you move the cots around? Try to remember." The doctor spoke with a fatherly air to the little man.

"I don't know ... I was thinking of something else," Endicott whined. "I was polishing the floors. They have to be cleaned by ten o'clock. I was working with the sterilizer on the floors. I moved the cots to get them out of my road. I thought they were identified."

"Thought!" snorted Dr. Bronsky. "Since when does a damned fool think!"

"I'm sorry, Dr. Bronsky," the little man pleaded. "It's a rule. The floors have to be cleaned...."