Anne-1

“Why can’t I move my arms?” The words come out faintly, almost a mumble, and the sound of my voice is already startling. It sounds like me… but then it doesn’t. I struggle to open my eyes. My eyelids resist as if they didn’t quite understand the command. Not from tiredness, from disconnection. As the light starts to filter through my lashes, my whole body feels as if a satin sheet is being pulled from around me, tickling over every inch of my skin.

“Darn! D— Da— Darn!” a man stutters to my left, testing his voice too.

I see a hand rising to my shoulder and I realize I’m not naked. The hand is mine. I feel the weight of the arm over my chest, and the other hand between my legs. My eyes are wide open now, only to see a bright surgical lamp over me. Wait. “My hand,” I say.

“I know,” someone else says to my right.

I’m not the only woman here. Though she must be very young.

“Weird, huh?”

I can’t see the wrinkles on my knuckles. The veins lie deeper. And the spots. Those two spots that had suddenly appeared on the skin, one red near my thumb, one white, are no longer there. My hand looks thirty years younger. Thirty years of hot summer sun. Thirty years of freezing winters. The diapers, the fevers, the dishes, all vanished. Weird, yes.

As soon as I can lift my head from the table, I hold myself up on my elbows and I look around. To my left, a boy barely in his twenties sits in a grey jumpsuit, all freckles and green eyes. Cute, I would have said a long time ago. He’s running his hands all over his body. I guess he wants to make sure he has all he needs. To my right, a stunning young woman. Probably the same age. She’s tall and Black, and the light reflects on her skin in a beautiful shade of gold. She’s in a grey jumpsuit too. Beyond her, someone else lies on another table, another boy, judging by the low pitch. He keeps passing his hands in front of his eyes like birds gliding through the air.

Dizziness grabs hold of me as I sit up. I keep my head low. My legs hang from the edge of the surgical table. Around me, I hear other bodies shifting, the sounds of waking and stretching.

“Group 2, please report to the dining room in five minutes.”

The voice — the soft, calm kind of voice you could select for your AI agent — seems to come from nowhere and everywhere at the same time. Somehow, I feel attached to it, as if something in me had already agreed to trust it.

Five minutes. How? The cuff of my jumpsuit lights up as I raise my arm. There’s a screen there. Right now, just a countdown. Weird.

The woman to my right and the guy to my left get to their feet almost at the same time. She sets her feet on the floor slowly, carefully. “This is new,” she says as she looks at me with a blinding smile. “My knees,” she adds, as if I should understand. “My knees don’t hurt.” I smile back at her and I lower myself to the floor.

“I wonder whose bodies these are.” The voice comes from the fourth person. He’s still lying down, moving his hands through the air.

The three of us look at each other, our lips pressed in thin lines.

“What do you mean?” the freckled guy snaps. “I’ve had this mole since I was born.”

Silence takes over the group.

Then something beeps. Somewhere. Everywhere. I feel a dull pulse on my wrist. We all look at our cuffs. 2 minutes.

“Albert,” says the guy on the farthest table. He’s sitting up now. His bronze face carries the dark shadow of a beard that seems to grow by the minute.

“Franz,” adds the freckled guy, holding out his hand.

“Franz, a mole is not memory,” says Albert, without taking it.

Franz’s fists are tight now.

“My name is Selene,” says the woman. She steps between Franz and Albert, hand extended. They both take it.

The beep returns, and the vibration in the cuffs is more insistent this time.

“Group 2, the adaptation doses are ready for you in the dining room.”

Selene and Franz exit the room following the signs on the wall. I stumble after them.

“I’m Anne, by the way.”

“Hello, Anne,” Albert says from behind me.

“I thought you weren’t coming,” I say.

“I wasn’t. Now I’m curious.”

He looks amused.

“Why? I mean, why are you curious?”

“Because of you.”

I thought nothing could surprise me anymore. And then, here he comes.

“I don’t understand.”

“Exactly.”

Before I can add anything, the corridor opens into a room with a big table. Twenty chairs, but room for thirty. A smaller, round table sits in a corner. Five boxes wait there. Five glasses too. In the middle, a pitcher. Probably water.

“Someone’s coming,” says Franz with a frantic little grin as he rushes to the table. He starts reading names out loud, each one followed by a number. Anne-1, like the rest of us. Except for the spare box: ‘Phillip-6’.

Albert opens his box and chuckles. “He must be the king.”

I look around. No mirrors, no bathrooms. My hands are young and smooth, but look like my hands. What about the rest?

“Here, honey,” says Selene, pulling out a chair for me. She feels older than all of us, though she looks barely grown. I sit and she holds my hand in hers on the table.

“Selene, do you mind if I ask you something?”

She is calm. I feel the calm in her gaze. She nods while she pours herself a glass of water.

“How old are you?”

“You don’t need to answer,” I rush to say.

“Eighty-six.” She looks at me as she speaks. “And a half,” she adds after a moment, as if the number wasn’t enough.

“Weird, huh?” I reply.

We stare at each other for a second.

“I’m sixty-four,” says Franz.

Then Albert adds, “No, you are not.”

Franz’s hands sit flat on the table. His chair scrapes on the floor. He stays there.

Albert is looking at Selene, not at him.

“That was only your age when your consciousness was scanned. Teleportation is impossible. We all knew that.”

Silence falls like a dense cloud over the table.

The boxes are small. Inside mine: a name tag, a blister pack with six pills, a card. Then there is a sheet with instructions:

1. Take a pill when prompted by your cuff.

2. Drink lots of water.

I am so thirsty that it sounds good to me. I pour myself some water too, swallow one, and feel it go down. My cuff hums, and a wave of tingling runs through my body, as if the hum had synchronized with the pill.

“Whoooa… These pills are the best jelly beans I’ve ever had,” says Franz. “And, believe me, I tried everything when I was young.” He’s leaning back in his chair. He stares at the ceiling, his legs stretched out, his arms loose. There are two empty blister slots on the table in front of him.

Albert is holding his pill up to the light, then exchanges a glance with me. Selene holds the glass to her lips but her pill is still sealed. I’m starting to think I might have been too quick. Albert shrugs. “I’m still number one,” he says, and gulps it down.

I look down and catch my eyes in the back of the open lid. Young, clean. The eyes that had not seen a mother die, a son leave. My eyes, now bright and overflowing, set in a face I only remember from the pictures in my mother’s house.

“Honey?” Selene holds my hand again. Her hand is cold, trembling, but her face shows a gentle smile.

I squeeze her hand tighter.

“Selene, you need to take the pill.”

Selene shakes her head. “She wants it back,” she says.

“She? Who?”

“The girl who was here before me.”

Albert raises a brow.

“Nah. Nonsense,” snaps Franz. “As far as we know, this could be just a simulation.”

Albert turns to him.

“Hey, look at you! That extra pill really did it, didn’t it?”

“Just take the second pill, man. Those teenage hormones are driving you crazy,” says Franz.

“No worries, I’ve always been a dork,” Albert replies.

Franz stands up and begins to wander around the room. He opens drawers, tries chairs. “I know what I’m talking about, I’m an astrobiologist.”

For a moment, I can’t connect the dots.

“The simulation, I mean,” adds Franz.

Selene lowers her head onto her folded arms. She’s sweating and her skin looks ashen under the light. Selene, the moon, I remember. I pour more water into her glass.

“Selene, take a sip, please.”

She does. She lifts her head and drinks the whole glass. I stand up, refill the pitcher from the water fountain by the wall and bring it back.

“She should take the pill.”

The voice reaches us before the man does. A guy enters the room, maybe almost thirty. His jumpsuit is blue. He walks with the confidence of someone who knows where he stands. He doesn’t look worried, and that, somehow, calms me too.

“Sorry, crew, I’m a little late. My name is Phillip, as you have probably guessed already.”

He greets each of us with a practiced grin as he takes a seat. Franz slowly drifts back to the table.

My cuff hums again. Selene’s beeps insistently. Almost too loud. Phillip reaches over the table and taps it twice. It falls silent. “Selene, trust me, I’ve seen this before. Just get it down,” he suggests.

Albert and I swallow the second. Franz, the third. His cuff beeps twice. Phillip ignores it. He keeps his gaze on me. He produces a vial from his box and empties it into Selene’s glass. Then he nods once, just as the tingling runs through my body again. A gasp escapes me before I even realize it is coming. Sounds are sharper, my vision clears as if it had been blurred all along. I feel good. In place.

“Selene, honey.”

She can barely lift her head. I support her forehead with one hand as I bring the rim of the glass to her bluish lips. She takes two sips and I feel relieved and guilty, mother and daughter, young and old, all at once. No one speaks for a minute.

“So…” says Albert. He pauses until all but Selene are looking at him.

“Mr. Six, please, enlighten us.”

“Yeah,” Franz adds. “So which is it? Simulation or body snatching?” The words stumble out as he speaks. A light German accent slips through.

“You are going to be disappointed, Herr Professor.”

Phillip looks amused.

“No simulation, then,” adds Franz.

A sardonic grin crosses Albert’s face. “What difference does it make?”

Franz freezes, and then bursts into laughter. “I know!” he says.

“What?”

Selene is sitting upright again. She’s not sweating anymore.

“What do you know? Also, what did you put in my water?”

I can’t look at her, though I know she is looking at me.

“Mr. Six here has some magic tricks in his box,” says Albert.

“Yeah! What else do you have in there, Mr. Six?” Franz chimes in.

“Phillip, please.”

“What—” Franz starts again.

Phillip raises his hand, asking for a pause. Then he looks right at Selene.

“I gave you only enough to stabilize you. What you are feeling is normal.”

“Normal?” Her brow tightens.

“Each mind gives the sensation its own explanation,” says Phillip.

Then he looks at each one of us in succession. “These bodies are yours. They have always been.”

“Not that I want to complain,” says Albert, interrupting. “But last time I checked I was fed through a tube down my throat.”

That makes sense to me. Somehow, the tubes explain him.

Phillip nods once, waiting for the silence to return.

“We gave DNA samples. These bodies were reconstructed from them. When the scans arrived, they added the rest: our consciousness, our experience.”

“Wow, that sounds… intimate. Where did you learn that?” Albert snaps.

Franz thumps him on the shoulder. “Ha! There you go, man!”

Albert looks at Franz, his face flushing for a second, then smiles and thumps him back.

They both look drunk, and I feel a little dizzy too. Selene is the only one in control now. Selene and Mr… Phillip. She’s calm, but when the cuffs hum again, I notice she doesn’t take her pill.

“Who gave you permission?” she asks. She keeps her gaze low, rubbing her hands together as if she were spreading lotion.

“All of us did,” Phillip says. “Or our originals did. There was no other way to cross such a distance.”

I need to know this. “And then? What happened to us?” I speak slowly. I can barely make my tongue behave.

Phillip spreads his arms wide.

“No,” I say. “Not this us. Us, the originals.” This time my words come out clean. No need to control them. I’m desperately thirsty. The pitcher is empty. I stand up and refill it again. They all stay silent.

Phillip sounds very confident. “They continued with their lives, of course.”

“They, us, who cares, right?” Albert spits out, looking as sober as he can manage.

Phillip nods slowly. I think I hear a sigh too. “I see. That’s what the card is for.”

Before I can take the card from my box, Selene collapses to the floor beside me.

“All right,” Phillip says, still weirdly calm. “This is it. This one is my fault.”

He takes a bigger vial from his box and fills a syringe. Then he presses the plunger and injects the liquid into Selene’s arm, slow and steady. She winces, murmuring something.

“No, don’t—” she says, trying to shake her head, but she is unable to continue.

I pull her chair closer and lift her feet onto the seat. Franz holds a glass of water out to me. My cuff hums again and I swallow the pill before I even think about it.

“Don’t bother,” Phillip says beside me. He’s looking at Albert, who is trying to pry Phillip’s box open. “Each box only opens for its owner.”

When Selene tries to push herself up, I sit behind her. From there, I take the glass of water from Franz and offer it to her. She waves it away and turns her face from the glass.

“It’s just water,” I say. But she still refuses to drink. I lift my face to Phillip. He nods once.

“The cards hold a message you recorded after the scan. And anything you, or your families, chose to send after that.”

Franz rushes to find his card. Albert doesn’t. I want to, but Selene’s interest pulls harder. She drinks the whole glass of water and asks for another.

“But,” says Phillip, “let me ask you something, Selene.”

She stares at him as if he had the one answer she could live with, so I raise my eyes too. Phillip refills the glass and hands it to me. Then he waits until he is sure everybody is listening.

“Selene, why did you drink that water?”

The question is strange enough to keep us silent.

“You were thirsty, right?”

“You have a headache, right?”

“You are lying on the floor, right?”

I nod slowly. Selene does too.

“What difference does everything else make?” Phillip says.

Albert looks at him for a long second. His beard looks three days long already.

“Exactly,” he says.

“All the difference,” Selene says. Then she takes the glass from my hand. “But I’m still thirsty.”

“How do we read these?” Franz asks, with a sudden shine in his green eyes. Green as damp grass on a summer day. He holds his card with both hands.

“There should be headsets in those drawers.”

“I know where they are!” Franz runs to the sideboard beside the water dispenser.

Selene sits up. I go find my card. As soon as I find it, Franz is back with four headsets. Then he sits and puts his headset on.

“Slide the card into the slot on the left side,” Phillip suggests. The rest of us wait in silence. After just a few seconds, Franz whispers, “Schwesterlein.” His mouth twists, then he presses his lips together. “I’m a great-uncle…” He raises a hand to his eyes, as if checking the headset is still there.

Selene looks at her cuff for a moment and presses a pill out of its blister. When she brings it to her lips, I sit. I turn the card over and over between my fingers.

The woman who recorded this message already lived another life. I had no say in it. Why should she have a say in mine? Jan could be there too. My son. Did he ever come back? Did he ever…? No. Not today. Not now.

I throw the card back in the box and close the lid. Albert sees me. He says nothing.

“Phillip, where’s the bathroom?”

He points toward the corridor.

As I walk in that direction, I realize it is the first question that belongs entirely to me. Then, for a second, I wonder if even my refusal had already been expected.

There is a mirror over the sink. Of course there is.