The Never Born

Year 2130 CE

Year 2130 CE

The high-rises in Abu Dhabi rose into the gray sky and lost themselves. Were they real? Amir Rabah cocked his head at the shimmer on the building's edge. This was the giveaway he decided. What is real and what isn't? It was exhausting to live in a world where truth no longer mattered. He stared up and when he did he stumbled on the marble steps he was climbing. The steps were real. The World Supreme Court was real. Above him were the words carved into the Romanesque architecture. They didn’t shimmer. It was just he couldn't tell where the sky began.

He would have fallen if she hadn’t caught him.

Dr. Ellie Randolf took his arm and held it a moment and looked at him. She smiled though her eyes did not smile. “We don’t want to lose you now,” she said. “David beats Goliath. You remember that.”

Amir swallowed. “I don’t feel much like David.”

“Don’t worry,” she said. “Marquez will throw it out and you’ll go back to traffic court. And then Proxima will hunt you down and that’ll be the end of it.”

He nodded. He noticed Ellie wore red heels and the same shade on her lips and it didn’t belong in a place like this. But she wore them anyway. He held her arm longer than he meant to and then let go. He closed his eyes, breathed, and they went inside.

The chamber was full already and the voices were low. No one turned to look at them but he could still feel them looking.

Marquez sat above them. After a moment she said “Counsel. Please begin.”

Amir stood, though for a moment he didn’t feel his legs.

The room had gone still in that particular way—hundreds of people pretending not to move. Even the air felt held back.

“Counsel?” Justice Marquez said.

He swallowed. His notes were in front of him. Why didn’t he look at them?

“Your Honor… the Proxima b Initiative claims they transport human beings to the planet K2-18b in the constellation Leo.” His voice came out thinner than he wanted. He steadied it. “We intend to show they transport nothing.”

A pause. He let it sit. Ellie had drilled the coaching into him—leave space, let them lean forward.

“They copy,” he said.

Something shifted in the gallery. Not loud. Just a change in posture.

Amir felt it and kept going. “They have built a system that records a human being down to the molecular and neural level, transmits that information, and reconstructs it at a distant location. The person who arrives believes they are the original.” He glanced, just once, toward the defense table. “They are not.”

“On what basis do you make that claim?” Marquez asked.

“On the physics,” Amir said. “And on the outcome.” He turned slightly. “I call Dr. Ellie Randolf.”

Ellie didn’t rush. She never did. The sound of her heels cut across the floor were sharp and deliberate. She stepped into position and didn’t look at Amir. Her attention went straight to the bench.

“Doctor,” Marquez said, “keep this clear.”

Ellie gave a small nod. “I’ll try.”

A projection came alive behind her—flat at first, a flat gray plane suspended in the air.

“Space,” she said. “At least, the way we model it.”

With a flick of her hand, the plane bent. Not dramatically. Just enough to suggest a living thing twisting in 3-d space.

“Distances aren’t fixed. Under certain conditions, spacetime can curve. Fold enough…” The plane tightened, edges drawing inward. “And two distant points can be brought into contact.”

Two markers appeared. Earth. K2-18b. They hovered apart, then slid together as the surface warped.

A murmur ran through the room.

“The concept isn’t new. Solutions to Einstein’s equations allow for what we call wormholes. Pathways between distant regions.”

She let the image hold. Then—

“They don’t stay open.”

The surface snapped back flat. The two markers separated again.

“Under normal conditions, the structure collapses almost instantly. You can’t pass matter through it. Not meaningfully. Not anything as complex as a human body.”

“Yet Proxima claims they can,” Marquez said.

“They claim they have stabilized it,” Ellie said. “Expanded it. Made it usable.”

“And you disagree?”

Ellie paused. Not long. Just enough. “I disagree with what they say they’re doing,” she said. “Not with what they’ve built.”

That drew the first real reaction from the defense table. A shift. One of the attorneys leaned toward another.

Marquez caught it. “Go on, Doctor.”

Ellie’s gaze moved, briefly, to the defense. Then back.

“They’ve stabilized a microscopic worm-hole throat. That much is plausible, given enough energy and the right form of exotic matter.” She let the words settle. “But stability doesn’t solve the transport problem.”

“Explain that.”

“You don’t move a human body through that structure,” Ellie said. “You can’t. The energy requirements alone—” She stopped herself, recalibrated. “They’re not just high. They’re nuclear.”

“So what does move?” Marquez asked.

Ellie’s hand lowered. The projection dimmed slightly behind her.

“Information is duplicated at the exit node. A complete scan. Molecular position. Neural state. Every synapse, every electrochemical pattern.” She didn’t raise her voice. “That data is transmitted. At the destination, a body is assembled to match it.”

“And the original?” Marquez said.

Ellie didn’t answer right away.

Across the room, Blackwell’s attorney stood up. Smooth, controlled. “Objection, Your Honor. This is speculative framing. The Proxima b Initiative has demonstrated—”

“Sit down.”

Marquez looked back at Ellie. “The original, Doctor.”

Ellie’s eyes didn’t leave the bench.

“The original has to be accounted for,” she said.

“That’s not an answer.”

“No,” Ellie said quietly. “It isn’t.”

Another pause. Longer this time.

Then—

“If the system disassembles the body as part of the scan—and all evidence suggests it does—then the original is destroyed.”

A ripple, sharper now. Someone in the gallery breathed in loudly.

“And what arrives?” Marquez asked.

Ellie’s voice didn’t change.

“A copy,” she said.

Blackwell’s attorney was on his feet again. “There is no evidence—”

“This isn’t your turn.”

“It’s a mischaracterization of established—”

“Sit. Down.”

Marquez leaned forward slightly. “Doctor Randolf… are you telling this court that every individual sent through this system is killed?”

Ellie held her gaze.

“I’m saying,” she said, “that something dies. And something else wakes up believing it didn’t.”

****

Three thousand kilometers away, Daniel Carter slept fitfully, haunted by a dream he did not yet understand. He stood in a hallway, infinite in its length. Mirrors stretched on both ends. One before him. One behind. At first, the reflections were normal. Each movement he made echoed down the corridor.

Then something shifted.

The mirrors displayed him slightly out of sync, a fraction of a second behind, a fraction ahead. As he watched, the reflections began to age. A little stooped, a little worn. Faces carrying lives he had never lived. A subtle panic rose in him. One of the reflections looked directly at him—not reflecting, but observing.

He woke gasping, the images etched in his mind. He was terrified by the dream.

“Ellen! His wife was in the kitchen. He waited for her. He knew she would hold him and look in his eyes with the same expression he remembered on their wedding day. “I love you,” she’d say, and hold his face with her hands and then sweep his long hair behind his ears. “Why are you so frightened? Is it the dreams again?” He could remember his wife caressing the side of his cheek with her palm, the cool warmth of it. He sensed she shared his fear, his tenseness, and he avoiding her eyes. But it was feeling his wife’s trembling that broke his heart.

His son clambered through the bedroom door and jumped into his lap, the seven-year-old’s curious blue eyes looking up at him, his dad.

“It’s ok,” he remembered his son saying. “It’s ok.”

The three of them were at a park. It was spring and the sun shining. They’d packed a lunch and later they would picnic on the lake. Their dog, Squire, would chase the frisbee he tossed into the water. Squire would bound after the blue disk, his golden collie fur wet and flying. He’d bring back the disk again, and again.

He remembered his life in moments.

****

“Your Honor…I’d like to re-call Mr. Lloyd Blackwell to testify once again as the owner and CEO of Proxima Industries.”

“Mr. Blackwell, please take the stand.”

Blackwell leaned back in the witness chair, his face a pasty white. But it was his eyes that made Amir shudder. They were intelligent, radiating, and void of human empathy. Amir thought of cliched smoke-filled rooms. “Mr. Blackwell, Proxima has a patented monopoly on transporting human beings to another star system. Could you explain how this works?”

“Space curves,” Blackwell said. “As spacetime folds together, two points, one on Earth, the other on K2-18b, can touch.”

“From light years apart?”

“Yes. One-hundred and twenty-four light years actually. Certain solutions… I mean… certain solutions of Einstein’s equations… allow what physicists call wormholes—tunnels connecting distant regions of spacetime. Simple, really, in hindsight.”

“Yet,” Amir asked, “isn’t it also true that wormholes historically collapsed almost instantly under ordinary gravitational forces?”

“It is true. Yes. Scientists couldn’t, at first, over a hundred years ago now, transmit anything bigger than the smallest of particles across a lab, let alone humans.”

“So what changed?”

“Using the sun’s energy. We now transport humans to K2-18b in less than a second.”

****

In a quiet house outside Boston, Daniel sat at the kitchen table. A cup of coffee sat untouched before him. He could still feel the dream pressing against his thoughts. The infinite mirrors.

Anna moved in the background, precise in her motions washing dishes. His son, James, shuffled into the room, pajama rockets printed on his sleeves. Their dog, Squire, stirred under the table.

“Dad,” James said, “are you really going to another star?”

Daniel nodded. “Yes.”

“How long?”

“No one’s exactly sure,” Daniel said.

“Will you miss my birthday?”

“Maybe the first one,” Daniel said.

Anna leaned against the counter with her eyes trained on him. “I know they pay us. Lord knows we need the money, but what have they told you?”

“Something about quantum teleportation and wormholes.”

She shook her head. "You said wormhole experiments did not allow for human transportation. Just particles across a lab.”

Daniel laughed weakly. “Small beginnings.”

“Your nightmares? What’s that about?”

Daniel laughed nervously. “Hallucinations.”

“What if they’re not? You need to call Amir.”

“And do what? Amir is more friend than attorney.”

“Call him and tell him about your nightmares. Let him know about Proxima.”

****

“The Proxima b Initiative has a monopoly on space travel,” Blackwell continued. We’ve stabilized a microscopic wormhole, expanded it, and developed a quantum-matter transfer protocol.”

“You’re transferring humans?”

“We move what we’re paid to move,” Blackwell said.

“Humans?”

“Among other things.”

Amir glanced back at Ellie. She took Amir’s place.

“We declare the patent void, your honor. Proxima is not transferring anything. They are copying data, duplicating it.”

Blackwell’s lead attorney stood up, eyes sharp. “Objection, your honor. There is no evidence Proxima is duplicating human beings. The technology transfers live human matter. This is all proven science.”

“Overruled. I want to hear this. Go on.”

Ellie continued. “Their protocol allows a complete informational scan of a human being—every molecule, every neuron. The information then travels through a wormhole stabilized with exotic matter.”

“What’s your point?” The judge glanced at Blackwell. “You’re wasting the courts time.”

“The protocol does not transport matter,” Ellie said. “It creates a duplicate on Proxima b. The original body remains—or, if it is destroyed, which is the same as killing the original. Any copy generated at K2-18b is independent. But the original human being’s continued existence should maintain its legal and moral status.” Ellie gestured a finger directly at Blackwell. “Just because you can duplicate a human on another planet, doesn’t mean you can discard the original.”

****

The facility appeared out of a pink dawn as Daniel’s rode with security men in a jeep. The building waited, a pale stoned rampart, an isolated observatory on a rising butte, alone in the flat desert. They brought him in and antennas circled a central chamber before him. A low hum thrummed in the air.

A man dressed in white with a hair net explained he was a technician. He attached sensors to Daniel’s temple and arms. One of the sensors was loose and the man used duct tape to affix the wire. “That will do.”

Daniel followed the technician to the chamber's center where they placed him on a table much like a dentist’s chair. A metallic ring glimmered around a cube at the room’s center. Within the cube, the throat of the wormhole shimmered and the entry pulsated much like it was swallowing air, the tunnel surface pink, and gulping.

****

Justice Marquez nodded slowly. “And this relates to Proxima how?”

“Proxima has not sent volunteers to Centauri b” Amir replied. “People like our client, Daniel Carter, inherit memories of a family they never had. The duplicates on are templates who have no legal standing under Earth law. Proxima has classified the duplicates on K2-18b under a special interstellar treaty defining them as colonial labor assets, not citizens.”

“Mr. Blackwell?”

Blackwell leaned forward. “The process is voluntary. No human is harmed. All scans are performed with consent.”

Justice Marquez frowned. “And yet the claim is duplicates classify as labor assets? Is that true?”

****

“Mr. Carter, we’re beginning the quantum-matter transfer. You must hold perfectly still in order for the scan to record all of your molecular and neural structures. Without an instantiate we may not get a full duplicate at Proxima b.”

“Ok.”

“Beginning quantum-matter transfer,” the technician said

“And my original?”

“Disassembled during scanning.”

Daniel nodded.

In front of him, Ellie’s hand pressed to the observation glass. His son stared from beside her. They were escorted out as he opened his mouth to say goodbye.

Then the pulse began.

Light crawled along his arms and legs. The hum deepened and his chest vibrated. The hum now increased to a screech and he howled with his back arched against the chair. The room stretched, walls bending imperceptibly, a red glow from the throat of the tunnel reached for him.

Daniel Carter vanished.

****

“Isn’t it true, Mr. Blackwell, that the duplicates inherit the neural patterns of their originals?”

“Yes.”

Isn’t it true that memories of families, homes… pets, duplicate from a preserved human neuron template?”

“Yes,” Blackwell said. “But under an interstellar treaty, they exist outside Earth law. Their status is legal and clearly outside Earth jurisdictions from interfering.”

“But how can this be true if the original human remains on Earth? What do you do with the sourced human after the transfer?”

Blackwell hesitated. He glanced at his team. “Well, we… we harvest… store… the neuron and molecular patterns to use when we send other templates.”

“You what?” The Justice leaned into his bench.

“These have not been actual people for over a hundred years. We are creating the never born.”

****

Daniel woke lying on metal. Red dust filled the sky. Around him, hundreds of men stirred—identical faces just like his own.

A guard walked down the aisle. “Welcome to Proxima Mining Colony.”

Another man approached with his face. They sat in silence, watching hundreds of identical workers labor beneath floodlights.

“Do you remember them?” the other asked.

“My family?”

“Yes.”

Daniel nodded. “I remember saying goodbye.”

Across the distance stretched a mining camp.

Daniel thought of the mirrors.

A whistle sounded and he rose with the others and took his place in line. As he did, he pictured a porch, a boy waving, a dog barking, a woman smiling. Maybe they had existed once. Maybe not.

But the memory was enough to keep him moving beneath the red sky.