Flash Fiction: Quantum Copy
What is reality?
“What are you doing in here?” the teacher asked as Kevin entered the classroom.
Looking the room over, he told her. “You’re not real. This room and everything in it are just temporary quantum copies.”
The teacher snapped out, “You need to leave.”
Touching his wrist, that teacher and three other students he’d already ruled out vanished. Along with them went most of the clutter. The walls became the simple quantum chamber walls; any unused desk also vanished. Even the tile floor in the front of the room was just the bare chamber floor now. He looked down at the watch and had the additional eight and a half minutes he expected from removing that much mass.
Looking at the shocked faces, he went on. “As I said, everything in the room, including you, is temporary. Getting rid of that mass extended how long you will continue to exist.” He stepped from the tile onto the bare chamber floor. “Take off your clothes and step onto the chamber floor, and I’ll get rid of more of the mass, giving you more time here.”
One girl, low on his list of possible candidates, shrieked. “Strip! Are you crazy?”
He pressed a watch button, and she, the desk she was sitting in, and the tile floor under her vanished. The room was silent when he continued. “We have no time to waste explaining. Do it or just vanish, and extend how long the others are here. Move fast. The longer all that stuff is here, the more of your time is used up.”
They began stripping. One bare chested boy said, “Why are we here? You brought us here, didn’t you?” while pulling off his pants.
It was the right question, and Kevin answered instead of vanishing him. “To find out if any of you are worth the investment to bring you fully into reality.”
“So, if we do as you want, we live; if not, we die,” asked one girl, the one fastest to get naked and already stepping onto the bare floor.
“More or less. And if you can’t deal with that, then stay with the desk and vanish when they do.”
She froze, nodded her head, and said. “I can deal with it. I just needed to know how things stood so I don’t fuck up and get killed.”
“I can’t,” said one half-dressed girl, pulling her pants back up. Kevin vanished her and everything near her, then two others that looked to be hesitating, one boy and another girl.
The first nude girl to get naked asked, “So you want sex slaves?” making sure he could have a good look at her.
Kevin locked eyes with her, then looked at the others. “If I give you semi-permanency, then I will be your owner, responsible for your every action, charged with removing you before you cause even the slightest problem. Sex is a minor thing. What I am looking for is loyalty.”
“Semi-permanency?” asked one boy.
“Yes, if you can convince me, I will give you a collar that keeps you stable in our reality and take you home. I can turn it off, and so can any policeman should you give them cause. Even the security systems of most buildings can shut you down, wiping you out of existence. If you can’t learn to live like that, then you need to vanish now.”
The boy speaking shook his head and said, “I can’t.” Kevin vanished him.
“Me neither,” said one girl, and he vanished her, too.
“Well, I can,” said the first girl that asked him if he wanted a sex slave. “If you want to own me, I have no problem at all with that.”
“I’m in,” said the remaining guy.
The two other girls standing there naked chimed in stepping onto the bare chamber floor. Kevin vanished every quantum pattern in the room but those four people and he looked down at his watch. “We have eighty-two minutes now before this pattern can not be maintained.” He looked at the first girl that say she can. “I am not looking for a sex slave. Frankly, androids are cheaper and better at it. He looked at the young man, “but you will share my bed, shower, bath, or whatever. You won’t be more that a few meters from me, ever attached to me by a quantum leash. That is how the law on owning a quantum duplicate works.”
“When is this?” said another girl. “If we are copies, that means this is the future.”
“2187, two hundred-three years from when you sat in that classroom. The law says no duplicating anyone from less than 100 years in the past, and only one duplicate can exist of a person without special need. The law looks on you as software, not people. Improperly working software or software that interferes in other things is to be deleted.”
The third girl asked, “If you are not looking for a sex slave, what do you want with me?” She too, he noticed, was trying to be as appealing to him as she could.
“Have you had a pet?” The first girl’s eyes narrowed, and he went on. “Owning living pets is now mostly illegal, and an AI pet does not fulfill that same need. If you want a pet, it has to be a quantum copy; something classified as software. If I am getting a quantum pet, I would rather it be a young man or woman, rather than a cat or dog. So which of you will make the best pet? I can only afford one collar and leash.”
If 200 years from now someone made a quantum copy of a teenage you and asked them to become a pet, would a teenage you accept? Leave a comment
Fictions Index
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