Escape from Paradise

Chapter 7: Jessie, Save The World

Through it was a late evening and the sun had not yet reached the horizon, the stars were already shining brightly. An old lady in a white coat squeezed a balcony rail with her hands. Her intelligent blue eyes inside deep wrinkled pits stared off into the distance where the pink sun was disappearing. There was sadness etched into her old face which spoke of many lost battles. But the failures had not blunted her will to fight, for she stood strong, straight and powerful.

Watching the sinking sun reminded her of an end, not only of the day but also of all things. It reminded her that darkness would come to humanity if she should fail at her task. It reminded her of the high stakes game and importance of her role inside it.

Back in the day, watching the sunset she would smoke cigarettes and curse and be angry at herself for constant fails. Now stress and cigarettes were her worst enemies. The world depended on her solving the great problem and she no longer had the luxury nor permission to waste her health.

From an open doorway behind her, a dim, tired male voice said, "Jessie, what if we ignored Juan's theory and reevaluated space jump precision according to the factual data? The factual numbers clearly prove that his theory is wrong. If he was wrong on the pathing he might have been wrong on everything else. From the beginning, we took it as granted and built our own theories on his."

The woman turned over her shoulder and in a calm loud voice said, "I know that his theory has faults and the results we get from his formulas have deviations but these deviations are within permissible levels. It doesn't matter if we misplace the newly constructed objects in space. What matters is that we are able to construct perfect copies. We don't have the time to rewrite the space jump theory books, Jack. The jumping works as it is supposed to on simple solid materials and that's what his theory is about. He never investigated the effect jumping has on living beings because he died before anything was teleported."

"I don't understand where we could have made mistakes then."

Jessie watched the horizon for a long silent minute.

Getting no reply, Jack added, "We have killed four test subjects. The committee isn't happy about that."

"Neither am I," Jessie murmured to herself.

"They say they will bring an investigator to check if we're not wasting our time."

"Don't they understand how much work we have done over the years? Don't they understand how far we have gone with those useless theories of our predecessors?"

"They believe we could do more."

"That's bullshit and they know it. What we need are two decent brains from biochemistry. Those we have in our team are tools." She squeezed the rail even harder and loudened her voice, "Useless cowards that can't invent shit."

A red streak of light stretched along the horizon. The sun had vanished and the air cooled. Rubbing her shoulders, Jessie returned to the room. Jack sat at the edge of his seat, leaned back as a butterfly which instead of wings had two old but tough muscular hands connected behind a thin gray bird's nest covering his head. A lone cold light bulb reflected on his glasses. On his monitor, an open letter stretched far beyond the boundaries of the bottom of his screen. The contents of the letter had tensed and saddened his usually calm, almost careless face.

Without turning to Jessie who stopped in front of a digital blackboard by a laboratory table, he said, "You can't blame them for the lack of will to play with human lives. Not everyone can be as cruel as we are."

"You should stop patronizing. My consciousness is clean. I have no regrets for what we've done. Jesse casually cleaned a formula off the digital blackboard and zoomed out a forest of physics and chemistry equations. "I say, tomorrow we do one more jump. This time we will amplify the magnetic field around the subject. With more power, we can map the brain and get more precise brainwave readings."

"We're missing something, Jessie, this won't work and we both know it. Try as we may, the problem is not in the mapping, it must be in the consistency of matter during the teleportation."

"If we fix the mapping we can talk about consistency. For now, the mapping is not good enough. Do not worry about the committee or the casualties. The whole world is our hostage, Jack. Everyone will do as we please. We are their only hope. They can send investigators. They can suspect us of whatever they want."

After a long inconvenient silence, Jack said, "I've been having an idea that you won't like. But please let me finish it before you judge me." He straightened up and turned on his chair to face Jessie, who wrote a long line of equations in the place of deleted one. "What if there is no solution to the problem?"

"There is. I am certain that there is."

"Perhaps the great designer did not intend us to leave. There are limits everywhere. There is a limit how far we can see through a microscope. There is a limit to how fast we can move with conventional propulsion. There is a limit on how far we can see through the telescopes. There are damned limits everywhere. What if we're attempting to break a limit that can't be broken?"

"It's that stupid virtual world theory crap you're talking about. It is a theory of fools, givers up who chose the easiest way, a way of denial and laziness. You don't seem like a giver up, Jack. Why do you talk nonsense all of a sudden?"

"I'm just saying that we shouldn't feel guilty for failing. We should not give in to the pressure the committee is putting on us. You're being too hard on yourself and on everyone else. We're not robots and we have time to finish this at whatever pace we need. The world won't end in a single day. When was the last time you had a casual conversation or taken a walk outside, Jess? Perhaps a short vacation would be a good idea. We have been bouncing against the wall for the last five years. A break would let us see the problem from outside the box. Perhaps, there is a way to solve the great problem, but we've become too narrow-minded to notice it. Maybe we don't even need to copy humans. Maybe a solution would be to put a human mind into a machine and then copy it or do something stupidly similar. "

Jessie ignored him. She stared at the forest of formulas. There must have been something she had missed, something that would account for the difference between transporting solid matter and living tissue. Why did a living cell differ from a block of molecules in a solid? Using Juan's formulas they had teleported liquids and gas. Why did stupid human cells fail to follow the same rules? After all, they were made of a combination of the same elements. Was there an unknown she had missed to evaluate?

She said, "John, as I said before, during the next experiment we will increase radiation. We need to take a more precise photograph of the subject's inner structure; cells and nerve impulses are not enough. We need to capture the whole electrical image to the tiniest possible detail. Radiography is just like a microscope image. If it has limits, we must try to break them and push to the very end."

"Such a powerful scan would fry the subject."

Hearing Jack talking back, Jessie sounded far from pleased, "I know. Perhaps a person is not meant to be in two places at once, Jack. Perhaps that is a rule. You mentioned quite a few stupid superstitious rules and limits before. What if there is a rule that one cannot copy a living thing."

"The committee won't be happy about this suggestion. Astronauts are in high demand."

"Who said anything about astronauts? Just take someone from a death row," Jessie angrily said throwing an accusing glance over her shoulder, her voice carrying a tone of dreadful totality: either do as she says, or disappear. She left no space for arguing.

"Prisoners' diet is terrible, their bodies are corrupted by diseases, toxins, damaged cells, and hell knows what else. The data of a prepared astronaut is a perfect thousand-page long fairy tale. The data of a prisoner would be a library of mazes mixed with porn. Mapping them would be an impossible task." After a tense silent moment, Jack saw that the answer failed to satisfy Jessie. He added, "If you'd give a week they might clean a few to the satisfactory level."

"Tell them to prepare three in five days."

Jacked opened up a blank letter on his computer and began typing. He spoke loudly half to himself, half to Jessie who he knew probably did not listen, "I pity the poor bastards, not for their death but for the crap they will need to get through to be allowed to die."

Jessie snapped, "Stop mumbling and after you finish the letter, find us two biochemists who aren't afraid to get their hands bloody."