Kiln People

The glossy, emulated skin was the color of deep space. Agile hands danced over my controller-array.

“What are you doing?” I demanded. The ditto had its own cubbyhole.

“Tidying up this mess while waiting for you to come out of the john. Your search avatar thinks that it’s tracked down most of Maharal’s missing in-town movements.”

I glanced at the screen. “Yeah? Eighty-seven percent coverage ain’t bad … for the time Maharal wasn’t at home or the lab. What are you getting at?”

Again, a sardonic smile.

“Oh, nothing, maybe. Except that some of these so-called sightings may not be Dr. Yosil Maharal at all.”

I gave the ditto a hollow look, which only invited more disdain.

“Care to make a wager, Boss-me? I’ll bet my inload that Maharal’s got you fooled. In fact, he’s been tricking everybody for a very long time.”

12

Leggo My Echo

Out of politeness, I waited till the crippled purple preacher finished her sermon before I stood up to leave the Ephemerals. Unfortunately, the sweetly inspirational tone was marred by an altercation that broke out in the vestibule as I made my way outside. A man whose skin tone verged egregiously between golem-beige and human-brown shouted while waving a placard covered with in flowing, cursive script:

You all miss the point.

There’s a next step a’coming …

Angry congregants milled, trying to nudge the interloper through an exit without shoving — on the offchance that he might be real. The uncertainty fostered by his ambiguous coloration was augmented by sunglasses, along with flaming red hair and a beard that could either be fake or genuine. The fellow was committing half a dozen misdemeanors just by looking this way — like some kind of ditto-human crossbreed — an effect he must have been aiming for.

“You’re all a bunch of daisies!” he cried, as a dozen or so Ephemerals crowded him toward a side door. “Colored on the outside, but dull as flesh within! Don’t you know it takes blood to pull off a revolution? The protoplasm elite will never give way to the New Race without violence. They’ll cling to domination till they’re wiped off the face of the Earth! Only then can we progress to the next level!”

I had to admit, standing there, that sometimes you just gotta admire the passion of the truly insane — a passion that bulls right past all sense or reason. I mean, was he really suggesting that dittos can exist, somehow, independently of organic originals who were woman-born? How was that even remotely logical? The variety of inventive ideas — and ideologies — that people can come up with never ceases to amaze me, especially when they’re stoked by the ultimate drug, self-righteousness.

Turning and departing by the front door, I descended wide stone steps to the street with the fanatic’s words still ringing in my ears.

“Get ready!” the crackpot yelled in a fervid voice that seemed to cling, even as I walked away.

“A new age is coming for the ditsenfranchised … if you prepare!”

Nobody wanted to talk about the waiter who caused a brief uproar last night, at La Tour Vanadium.

When I arrived, most of the restaurant staff — contract specialdits from busboys to maître d’ — were darting about wordlessly, clearing away lunch and setting tables for the early di

Optimists predict that someday a real body may last as many decades as a ditto has hours. Well, far be it from me to begrudge this.

Wearing cheap paper overalls from a vending machine, and still feeling throbs in my back from that hasty patch-up at the Ephemerals, I knew I wouldn’t impress the manager. One copper-colored eye narrowed behind a monocle-spex, sca

Would Albert do that, just because I refused to clean his toilets? Could I already be on the hit list of some pervo hunt club? Worse, he might declare me a danger to society. A police exterminator could be swooping down, right now, like an avenging hawk …

I was betting my life on Albert’s softheartedness, unable to renounce his first frankie.

The manager flipped up his monocle, handing back the smudged ID. “As I told your house computer, there is nothing to investigate. You can’t seriously be interested in yesterday’s little accident! Since when is it a felony to spill some drinks and break a little glass? We obtained waivers from every customer, offering free meals in recompense.”

“Generous, but—”

“Is someone reneging? Is that why you’re here? We can call an online jury to watch recordings. Any reasonable panel—”

“Please. I’m not here to plant a grudge lien. I just want the waiter.”

“There’s nothing to extort. He was covered by our insurance, until we terminated his contract.”

“So he was fired. Did he work here long?”

“Two years. This morning he had the nerve to claim that last night’s incident wasn’t his fault. His ditto never made it home, so it must have been hijacked and replaced by an imposter!” The manager sniffed disdain. But if I had hackles, they’d have risen.

“Give me contact info and I won’t bother you again.”

He glared. It would be simple to snub a utility green. But what if Albert himself followed up?

“Oh … all right.” His monocular flipped down as he signaled commands. Then, with a dismissive grunt, he turned away.

Damn. Instead of speaking or writing the name, he sent an info-blip to Nell! I could phone her for it, but then maybe I’d have to talk to Albert, like a teen crawling back to Dad. Double-damn. Heading for the exit, I wondered about this obsession to solve one minor riddle before I expire. The matter seemed unimportant. Why worry about it?

I stopped in the doorway, my cheap green senses adjusting to daylight, when something caught my eye. Literally. Like a gnat darting nearby, it came buzzing near my face. I swatted, deterring the pesky thing briefly. Then it came back.

Premature ditto decay can attract scavengers, and there was plenty of damaged pseudoflesh hanging off my back. I swiped at it again. It tumbled — then streaked right at me, diving with unca

I fell back against a wall, clutching my eye. Worse than the pain were the explosions of color! Skyrocket flashes converged, forming shapes. Forming letters:

No time

Take a cab to Fairfax Park

Pal

13

Doing Their Ditto Work

Unconsciousness can be disturbing to a realperson.

For a ditto, it’s like death. And wakening is akin to being born again.

Where am I?

A sideways glance tells me I’m still in Irene’s hive. Across a wide chamber, I glimpse the huge pale figure of her archetype body — the queen — tended by more than a dozen reddish mini-copies. Full-sized versions come and go swiftly on errands. Not one says a word. No one has to.

In bleary contemplation, I envision an atom’s core and its surrounding fog of virtual particles. Irene-duplicates keep emanating from the maroon-colored mass to perform missions for the hive. Others — aged and experienced — spiral in bearing the modern nectar: knowledge to accumulate and share with more copies. And at the center, a realperson whose role it is to absorb and redistribute that knowledge, using imitation bodies to do everything else.