“Do I… need to come in here?” she asked.
The thin man smiled and nodded. “This won’t take long,” he said. “We’ve perfected the scanning so well that what used to take hours may now be accomplished in just under fifteen minutes. But this is not the key — your DNA is the basis for the print, while the scanning results are actually used for the finishing touches. The main thing is to capture the personality of the subject — your personality: the inner rainbow of the mind, your special light, whatever you want to call it. Recording and storing it in the mainframes that occupy the whole underground floor beneath us. Yottabytes and yottabytes of data — all that makes you, one, unique. And now, thanks to the algorithm for which this will be the final test, one more — doubled.”
Yes, she thought, entering a small room, the door slamming closed behind her, this algorithm wouldn’t exist without my husband.
She examined the memory foam mattress lifted upright at an angle on a shining hydraulic stand. She sighed and began to undress. At one point, as she neatly folded the black blouse and the tight pencil skirt Isak loved so much, she thought that the director was probably watching her on the screen out there. She shrugged her shoulders and went to the mattress. The time for shyness had long passed. Soon all employees in this company would have access not only to the image of her naked body but also to all her memories and thoughts. Isak explained to her that she shouldn’t worry, that this database — the data that made her her — would not be accessed by anyone without the appropriate password, a password that only the director of Alter Ego and Isak would have. She knew that for the commercial realization of this process one of the key conditions was the protection, safety, and inviolability of client data, but then again… how many people would be willing to risk exposing themselves to such an extent?
“We can start now,” she heard the director’s voice through the speaker. “Buckle up, please.”
She did. The hydraulics hissed, the color of the lights changed, the bed began to shift its incline, and Marija closed her eyes.
“Do you even know why you are doing this?”
Marija sat on the terrace of a restaurant overlooking the promenade near the Sava River with Tamara, her best friend.
“You know,” she said thoughtfully, “a few weeks ago we had a bad fight.”
“You and Isak?”
“Of course. I wish I could have a fight with Aleksandar.”
“Let me guess: you’ve been thinking about where your relationship is going?”
“Well, yes,” Marija answered. “I complained that he’s so closed off, that whenever I bring up my divorce from Aleksandar and our happy future life together, he just shuts down. I told him how much this was tearing me apart — how much it hurts me — that I completely give myself to him, that I sacrifice myself…”
“And?”
“Imagine what he said! Wait, I’ll try to remember exactly how he put it…” She frowned slightly after taking a sip of her cocktail. “Something like this: What are you actually sacrificing? Your relationship with your husband? As far as I know, it was ruined before we met… Would — if the situation were different — you sacrifice your relationship with your child for us? He went straight for the jugular.”
“That’s awful,” said Tamara with a smile. “But he’s your awful guy.”
Marija finished the last of her cocktail and lit up another cigarette. “You know, I shouldn’t have told you all this. About the experiment. I mean, it’s all still very top secret, a big project for Isak’s company, but you’re the only one I can really trust—”
“Don’t worry,” her friend cut in, and waved the waitress over to order another round. “I always keep our secrets. What are your plans? How are you spending these fifteen days while waiting for… your replacement?”
Marija leaned back in her chair while Tamara ordered two more cocktails, and waited for the waitress to walk away. “Isak organized a trip. The first eight days — Madrid, Barcelona, and Lisbon. Then a week in the Côte d’Azur.”
Marija sat back and put out her half-smoked cigarette in the ashtray. After a minute or so, she sighed and said: “I would love it if Aleksandar found someone… if he cheated on me. To find out. I think it would change everything.”
“Let’s call her… Marija 2.0. All right?”
The director was smiling so broadly that Marija felt nauseous. Or was the cause of that nausea deeper? She felt uncomfortable as she watched her copy sitting silently on a chair in a laboratory glass box.
She was dressed in a simple white nightgown. Bare ankles and feet with nails painted in her favorite color, arms folded in her lap. The eyes of Marija 2.0 were closed, the face completely devoid of expression.
She felt her mouth drying. Somewhere in the back of her head, a hard-core panic was setting in. This was not like standing in front of a mirror. This was something completely different. Marija gulped and moistened her lips with her tongue.
“Her memory now includes your experiences from the last few days to avoid unwanted holes in memory,” the director continued breezily. “Everything we recorded this morning has been smoothly transferred to her personality.”
“Please… please,” Marija said, “I want to… I want to see it… without clothes.”
The director looked at her, raising his eyebrows. He nodded his head and typed something on the tablet. Marija 2.0 opened her eyes, slowly stood up, and pulled the nightgown over her head.
Marija didn’t pay attention to the fact that her body — even if it was just a copy — was exposed to the view of the director and other lab technicians. An irresistible curiosity now prompted her to walk around the naked woman standing in front of her, to carefully see her body from all sides. Suddenly she wanted to see herself as Isak saw her. She was both excited and filled with anxiety.
She remembered yesterday’s conversation in bed, after having sex, when, half-jokingly, she said, You’ve done all this just so you can have a threesome — with two of me. He’d wanted to answer her, to dissuade her, but he’d only dropped a kiss on her lips that were still hot from his gentle bites and said: You know, I didn’t even think about it, but now that you mention it… well — I think it would be hot to see you make love to yourself. Would you do that for me?
Would she?
As she watched her replica, she felt a flurry of almost pleasurable anxiety. She used to fantasize about lesbian sex — she assumed that all women did — but usually in her threesome fantasies, where she and another woman (sometimes Tamara, sometimes another friend, or someone she didn’t know at all) shared the same lover, there would inevitably be those exciting, forbidden touches. But if the other woman was her, herself? She looked down the upright back of Marija 2.0, to her firm buttocks, sculpted muscles, golden skin with a few tiny spots, and thought about making love to herself — she knows exactly what turns her on, she feels it under her toes and under her tongue, the juices and the warmth that Isak feels every time they sleep together.
She snapped out of it and cleared her throat. “May I… hear its… voice?” she asked.
“Of course.” The director’s face lit up and again he typed something on the tablet. “Tell us your name.”
The creature before them looked at him for the first time and responded calmly: “Marija. Marija Vranješ.”
She couldn’t detect any difference in tone or inflection. It was creepy.