"Double Exposure": Part 4 - June 19, 2025
The exciting conclusion to the teleportation caper...
Every Thursday, Silver Gecko Publishing highlights one of my stories, either a work of short fiction, a novel, or an audiobook. This week’s selection is the short story “Double Exposure,” from the anthology THE GHOST READERS AND OTHER STORIES, available on Kindle, and in paperback.
This serialized story offers my Substack readers a chance to enjoy one of my longer pieces in total for free. This falls into the realm of sci-fi action, the kind of movie that would have been made in the 90s with someone like Arnold Schwarzenegger beefing through the role.
You will see some familiar themes, especially in this climax. Much of the creative force behind this was from late nights wondering if teleportation via the Star Trek model did not result in annihilation and reformation. And, of course, there’s the nightmare thoughts of what might also be lurking in the realm between telepods… and if any of that can ever find a way out.
If you like the story, be sure to buy a copy of THE GHOST READERS AND OTHER STORIES, available on Kindle, and in paperback for many other stories like it.
In the last segment, David had tracked down a duplicate of the recently assassinated Jacob to learn the dark secrets behind teleportation science. He has arrived at his dead friend’s laboratory to discover what might be lurking in wait to escape…
-Kevin Carr
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Illustration by Avalon_Art (@Avalon_Art) from Pixabay
Double Exposure: Part 4 by Kevin Carr
Progressive steps, Jacob’s words he had said in the ambulance haunted me. As time goes by, the copies spiral to a goal. I have not seen that goal reached, but everything I have sent through will degrade in these progressive steps to this creature trying to escape.
Suddenly, the telepod at the far end of the room lit up. An inhuman wail cut through the air, appearing from nowhere and fading in like the riff of a cool jazz rhythm. The telepod door opened to reveal a creature in the mist.
This one was void of humanity, yet it still remained incomplete from the monstrous goal that these goblins before me had apparently set.
Just one more step, I thought as I saw the monster creep from the telepod. The Jacob McCormick at the controls needed only to initiate one more copy. Just one more step and it would be free. I could not let that happen.
“The project had been a good idea to begin with,” Jacob had explained to me as he lay dying from the painful embolism in the ambulance. “It did not appear to be too difficult at the start. Teleportation simply converts animate matter into an energy signature, transfers that energy to a different location, and rematerializes the matter from that same energy. It’s only an apparent baby step to synthesize matter from a stored energy signature. In theory, you could be scanned in a telepod, and stored in memory. Then, if that person happens to die later or disappear, a new “clone” could be generated quite easily from any other existing matter source.”
This was what the Solar Navy had approached Jacob with a while back. This technology had many benefits, the most obvious of which was we would never again lose a great mind like Einstein, Hawking, or Garriss. They could be scanned, then regenerated years after their death. Generals, officers, and their troops could be sent into battle without fear of them never returning. Even if they died, they could be regenerated.
This process worked well at first for inanimate objects. An exact copy was made. But when living creatures were duplicated, there was a problem. They came out physically fine, but their minds were useless. The brains functioned perfectly, but void of any conscious thought. Only extremely low-level creatures like bacteria and insects showed signs of clear copies.
Because Jacob was a genius, he knew how to fix it. A “personality matrix” was what he called it. What I understand from my limited knowledge of artificial intelligence in computers is that he created a pseudo-mind within the computer’s programming and used that to store what we might call the soul. This personality matrix kept the stored mind and soul stable.
When word leaked from the Solar Navy of the nature of Jacob’s work, he became a very hot item to foreign governments. Many were willing to kill for this technology. Fearing for his life, Jacob scanned himself every day in case he was killed. The personal equipment he kept on himself monitored his vital signs remotely. When they stopped, his computer automatically generated another version of him. That was what I saw die in the ambulance: the first copy of Jacob McCormick.
Apparently, Jacob had not contacted the Solar Navy after regeneration. He was too scared. He wanted to hide from whoever assassinated him. Lawrence Unger visited his apartment this morning knowing nothing of the regeneration situation. They tried to generate their own copy of Jacob McCormick.
But there was a flaw in Jacob’s programming. The personality matrix was only stable for about sixteen hours. After that time, it deteriorated rapidly. The subjects came out insane and psychotic. They were uncontrollable. But the minds did not simply deteriorate. There was an apparent direction of this disintegration with an alien final goal. Every creature that Jacob put through the test deteriorated into the same hideous thing that I saw emerging from the telepod. It did not matter what Jacob started with, but given time, the personality matrix would deteriorate into this globular monster.
Something was inside the programming of Jacob’s personality matrix, and it was trying to escape.
I only had to look at the successive steps from man to monster to realize its hideousness! I knew at that moment that I could never let this thing emerge.
Screaming, I burst into the apartment. The Jacob McCormick copy that was at the computer terminal rose and spun around. I saw a monstrous mind in Jacob’s eyes. What stared at me now was no more the human Jacob McCormick than the beasts that wriggled from the telepod.
This Jacob’s eyes were mad.
That’s why I had no qualms about erasing the top half of his body from existence with my disrupter.
Instantly, the monstrosities charged, some crawling, some wriggling, and some hobbling like a wolf with a broken leg. They lived in the midworld between human and hell, but they knew enough to protect themselves.
Luckily for me, my disrupter was faster than any of the stepping stones. I dispatched them in a rain of denim rags and tie-died ribbons.
At the conclusion of my slaughter, I stared at the telepod. I did not know what to do.
Should I destroy it? Should I save it? Should I hide it?
Whether fortunate or not, the decision was made for me. The acrylic door to the telepod spat out a blinding light. As if crossing from another dimension, I heard the banshee shriek. The machinery around the telepod hummed.
One more step, I thought. I could feel the insanity in the air. This is it.
I ran forward and ripped open the telepod door. Within, I saw a creature too hideous for words, with a melting face and gnashing teeth, as it appeared to take form from nothingness.
This was it! This was what was trying to escape! After enough time hiding in the computer’s programming core, this thing had flung off its shroud of humanity to emerge as a full-fledged terror!
This creature was not the weak human/hell hybrids that had preceded it. I could smell how strong it was – a bitter aroma of rotting seaweed. This thing had hidden in Jacob’s programming for a long time. It was hungry, and I could feel it salivate for my flesh. One clasp of its heavy jaws, and it could sever me into pieces.
There was only one solution. Surely my disrupter would have minimal effect on it in its full form. But, I could use my disrupter to stop it before it truly entered my world.
I rammed the barrel of the disrupter into the energy feed at the base of the telepod. A strong energy blast into the power source of a working telepod would cause a chain reaction in the core. The successive blast would be powerful enough to destroy the machines, the monster, and the man at the helm of this mutiny of life.
I had no choice. I could not unleash this monster onto the world by action or inaction.
So I acted... just as I felt the hard, sharp claws of the beast materialize on my shoulder. The bitter aroma of the monster filled my nostrils. I gagged on my own bile.
With the barrel of my disrupter nestled in the port, I squeezed the trigger.
Just as the beast’s teeth poked into my flesh, a miniature sun engulfed us both.
THE END