March 2075

"You're awake?" came a friendly voice through the mental fog.

He was unable to reply or remember where he was. His muscles felt oddly disconnected and everything tingled. The brightness around him felt cold and there were many noises he could not even begin to identify. Beyond the awareness of light, he could see nothing and, try as he might, he could not recall any memories of what had happened.

"Come on, stay with me. Focus on my voice," came the voice again. It sounded familiar but he could not place it.

Suddenly another voice spoke, "Pulse steady, blood pressure down but recovering. Neural activity erratic. Should we give him another stim shot?"

"No," replied the familiar voice. "Give him a few moments to stabilise."

Suddenly his own voice returned, barely a croak at first but he was able to form words, "Wh... what..."

"Take your time, Callum, you're an idiot, but you're still alive."

"Alive?" he croaked weakly. The brightness began to slowly resolve itself into vague shapes.

"Yes, well for now. You were meant to be restricting the testing to bio-ents. What madness made you try it on yourself?"

"Neural activity normalising," reported the unfamiliar voice.

A wave of intense tingling washed over his entire body. He felt all his muscles tense involuntarily, spasm and then a strange coolness replaced the tingling, and he relaxed. Even without moving, he knew he had control of his limbs once again. Squinting and blinking improved his vision a little. Seconds later he could properly make out the people in the brightly lit room around him. A face, with ginger hair and several days growth of stubble, he could almost identify was leaning close over him, and two other people, still strangers, were further away, peering at him.

"Callum, you're an idiot. But it worked! The damn thing actually worked!"

"Worked?" he croaked, still with no recollection of what they were talking about.

He suddenly realised he was lying on a trolley bed. The room around him seemed familiar too, it was the first aid room in the Centre. Centre? What Centre? The Bio-Physics Particle Manipulation Centre. Some details were flowing back now, but other areas were still a total blank. He could remember the bio-ents, or in full "biological entities"; Rather unsightly clear plastic sacks of genetically engineered biological organs. Essentially a life-form in a bag; heart, lungs, muscles and rudimentary nervous system, functionally alive but with no brain or sensory organs. They were the closest researchers could get to live animal experiments without breaking the law.

His muscles felt weak as he tried to hoist himself into a sitting position.

"Get him another pillow!" said the familiar voice. It took another few seconds to put a name to the voice.

"Gordon?" he croaked.

"That's me," he turned to the others in the small room. "Get him a glass of water."

Memories of Gordon emerged from the vagueness of his memory. A very intelligent man, younger than himself. His co-researcher.

"What's going on?"

"You don't remember? Mind, I don't even know how you are still alive."

"What happened?"

"History! That's what happened."

"History?"

Someone pushed another white pillow behind his back, allowing him to lift himself a little higher.

Gordon laughed, "You've just made history as the world's biggest idiot and the first man to transfer himself from one location to another as a beam of pure energy."

"The matter transporter! I remember now. It worked?"

"You were working last night, preparing for another round of tests on the bio-ents. I was out in the carpark, about to head home, when the lab alarms went off. When I got back in here, you were unconscious in receiving pod A and the transmitting rig was going into meltdown. We shut it down, put out a small fire and got you to the first aid room. It was only after that we found the others."

"Others?" he replied after taking a sip of filtered water from a disposable cup.

"Yeah, we've got some serious ethical questions to address."

"What others?"

"Your body is about twelve times more massive than a bio-ent. It looks like you brought the other four fusion reactors and the two backups online to provide the extra energy for the transfer. As far as I can tell, which isn't very much as so much of the kit is fried, you forgot to reset the relay thresholds or set any way for the stabilisation system to wind down the power after the transfer. Without someone at the controls, it went into meltdown."

"Because there was no one there to turn off the power feed once I was in the transmission rig?" said Callum.

"Precisely. Once you had been transported, the system was still operating at full power. Last week's test of sending the same bio-ent to three locations in sequence probably saved your life. Until we've scanned the software we won't know for sure, but it looks like the same routines kicked in and dealt with the energy overload by sending a copy of the same data to the other receiving pods. Then we arrived and shut it all down."

"Copies in the other pods?"

"Oh yes, Callum. Now you're not just an idiot, but you're three idiots. As I said, ethical dilemma."

"There are three of me!"

"Yeah. We've been calling the others Callum B and Callum C. According to the logs and the CCTV, you were formed a full thirty seconds before either of them, so we're treating you as the original Callum."

"Are they... healthy?"

"For now, yes," replied Gordon. "We nearly lost both of them, but they've stabilised too. They're both still unconscious right now, but as far as we can tell they are identical to you."

Callum dropped back onto the pillows. He could not remember why he had decided to experiment upon himself, but he was sure he had never intended to copy himself. Any elation at seven years of experimentation and research finally reaching fruition was tainted by the almost nightmarish sensation of knowing he had inadvertently duplicated his entire being. Beyond feeling dazed, he did not know how to feel about that.

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