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“Transport activated,” came the call from the operator.

Daniel closed his eyes, as he always did. He’d been through the matter transporter at least two dozen times over his years of service. He knew it was safe, but he still didn’t trust the system for some reason. The transporters were still “new” technology, as such things went. It had only been approved for use with humans about 25 years previously. In the years since there had only been one accident that had resulted in a death, that of a young ensign aboard the Pittsburgh. And the review board had found that external factors were at fault, not the tech itself. For Daniel, though, one was enough. He just didn’t trust the thing.

Unfortunately, he didn’t have much choice. As first officer on the Ardent, he often was tasked with leading missions off ship. And roughly half of those missions were carried out by the matter transporter instead of by shuttle. In fact, over the years, that percentage had grown as people became used to the technology. It was just so much more convenient that packing everyone into a shuttle and flying around. That’s just how it went.

“Transport completed” called the operator.

“Acknowledged,” came the reply over comms. “We have your crew Ardent.”

Wait… thought Daniel. That wasn’t right, was it? He should have been hearing that from the other end, right?

He opened his eyes. He was still standing on the transport platform. “Just a minute,” he said to the operator, “I’m still here.” But the operator just ignored him as she worked on shutting down the system.

“Hello?” he said, stepping down from the platform. But the operator just continued to ignore him. He watched as the tech switched the transport device into standby mode and then walked from the room.

“What the hell?” he said and started to follow.

“She can’t hear you, commander,” came a voice. Startled, Daniel turned to see an engineer seated at the maintenance station off to the side. He recognized her. It was Commander Reece. She had been recently been promoted to chief engineer of the Stalwart and had transferred off the ship a week ago.

“Reece?” he replied. “What are you doing back here? You left a week ago?”

“No, I never left,” she said. “But then, I was never really here. And neither were you.”

Daniel stared at her for a moment before responding. “What, exactly, does that mean?”

“Well,” she replied, “you can’t really be here if you don’t really exist. Neither you nor I really existed. We’re just copies, of copies, of copies…” She trailed off, staring blankly for a moment before turning back to him again. “Ghosts, of copies, really”

“I don’t understand what you’re talking about,” Daniel responded. He walked over to the comm panel on the wall. Commander Reece just watched him as he hit the button. “Bridge,” he commanded. There was no response. He hit the button again. “Bridge,” he repeated. Again, no reply came in response. He turned back to her again. “What’s going on? I want some answers,” he demanded.

“I have none to give you,” she shrugged. “No real answers, anyway. Only theories passed from copy to copy, ghost to ghost.”

“You’re not making any sense,” Daniel said.

She shrugged again. “It’s quite confusing at first. We all go through it. I thought I’d try to make it a little easier for the next one to go through it. I was kind of surprised it was only you. There were three on the pad.”

At that moment it hit Daniel. Where were lieutenants Sessions and Kei? They were to transport down to the planet with him. In a panic he ran to the matter transport controls. They were still in standby mode from when the tech had left earlier. Daniel tried pulling up the history. Nothing happened. He tapped the interface again. Nothing.

He tapped the comm button on the transport control panel. “Ardent to Ceren Transport Control,” he commanded the device. No response from the controls. He tapped a few more controls. Nothing happened. “What is wrong with this thing,” he muttered.

“Nothing,” said Commander Reece. “The controls are fine. YOU… are what’s wrong.”

“You’re still not making sense. Am I hallucinating you? All of this?” he answered, more to himself than anything. Then, he turned, taking a few steps towards her and demanded “where are Sessions and Kei?”

Reece didn’t move. “They’re dead. So am I. So are you.”

“Dead? How? Did you kill them? Is that it?” Daniel demanded. He was beginning to get extremely frustrated and the strain was starting to show in his voice.

“Was it their first time,” she asked him.

“First time for what?” he asked in response.

“First time in the transporter?” she asked quietly.

Daniel thought for a moment. Kei had mentioned to him during the briefing that it would be her first time using the transport device and she was nervous about it. Sessions hadn’t said anything, but Daniel did recall him nodding his head slightly at that question. He also couldn’t recall Sessions ever being sent via the matter device previously, so it probably made sense that it was his first time as well. “Yes, I believe so,” he finally nodded. “For both of them.”

Reece sighed deeply. “Then they both died just a few minutes ago. Murdered, if you like, in this very room, by that very device,” she said, nodding towards the transporter. She shook her head slightly, as if trying to banish unpleasant thoughts. “It makes sense. It’s the first time that kills you. You don’t stick around after that one. You simply die and your soul, if you believe in all that, goes away to the afterlife. After that, you’re not real. You’re just a copy, or a copy of a copy. And a copy can’t really die since it isn’t really alive.”

She stood and paced around the room for a bit. Daniel just watched, not sure how to respond to it all. Finally, after a minute or so of pacing, she stopped and turned to him.

“I died six years ago,” she said simply. “I am the 14th copy of Anastasia Reece to exist. The original, the REAL Anastasia Reece, died six years ago, the day I first was sent through a matter transport device. That was aboard the Carpathia, before I transferred to the Ardent.”

She gazed directly at Daniel. He wanted to say this was all a joke, wanted to laugh it all off. But something in her eyes was deadly serious. And somehow, he just knew that she was absolutely serious in what she was saying. He held that gaze for a long while before he spoke again.

“You said I was dead,” he answered finally. “How? When?”

“When? I don’t know,” she told him. “I’m not familiar with your history. When was the first time you used one of these devices? That would be when you, the real you, died.”

“You keep saying ’the real me’. I AM the real me,” Daniel retorted.

She shook her head slowly. “You’re really not. Just like I am not the real Reece. “I’m just a ghost of a copy. That’s all either of us are.” She looked at him for a moment or two before continuing.

“Do you know how these things work?” she asked, waving her hand towards the matter transporter.

“I know the basic principal,” Daniel replied. “The device dismantles your atoms, converting them to energy, which is then transferred to the destination platform, which converts the energy back into matter.”

She didn’t reply for several long moments. “It ‘dismantles’ your atoms. Shreds them. Disrupts them. Destroys them, really. It tears you apart, piece by piece, bit by bit.”

“Yeah,” he started to reply, but paused for a few agonizing seconds. “But you get put back together at the other end.”

“No,” she said slowly, “you don’t get put back together. At the other end, they create a copy. Sure, the atoms are all in the same pattern, more or less. It looks like you… It has your memories, so it acts like it’s you… thinks it’s you… But it’s not you. It’s a copy. What you were is long gone. Disrupted. Destroyed. It no longer exists. You… no longer exist. The first time it happens, you die. You are… murdered… by the machine.”

She stopped talking and they stood there together in silence for a time. Daniel didn’t know what to say. There was a certain logic to her arguments. After all, he had never really trusted the stupid machines. Was he, though? Was he dead? Had he been dead for years?

“You can feel it,” she finally said, almost whispering. “If you really search inside, you can feel it. Something that isn’t right. Something missing from deep within. Something… gone. I was never really religious. But if we have souls… then that’s probably it. That’s what’s gone. According to some of the others, that’s why a ghost isn’t created the first time. They have souls. So when they die, it gets carried away to whatever is next. I don’t know. It’s a thought, anyway.”

It took him a few moments to catch what she had said. “Others?” he asked.

“There are a handful of others around. Even another copy of me that I ran into a couple days ago,” she answered. “That was weird, let me tell you. I wasn’t sure I believed any of it myself until then.”

This was all too much for Daniel. “What are we, then?” he croaked.

“Copies?” she offered. “No, that isn’t right. The ‘copy’ is the one walking around ‘alive’. We’re ghosts of copies of copies of copies.”

Daniel collapsed into a nearby chair. He tried to pivot the chair. It was an old habit. Whenever he was frustrated, he would sit in his office chair and spin in slow circles to calm himself. But the chair didn’t budge. Not even an centimeter. He pushed, and pushed, but absolutely nothing happened. “What the?” he grumbled.

“We can’t manipulate the physical world,” she said. “You can either pass through it, or you can be stopped by it. But you can’t do anything with it. We can interact with each other, but that’s about it.”

A thought occurred to Daniel then. “We have to tell them! Warn them that the device is killing everyone.”

“We all have that thought,” she said. “No one has succeeded. We can’t do anything to the real world. They can’t see us. They can’t hear us. We don’t show up on any tech. We don’t… exist. At least, not in any way they would see.”

“So…. I’m stuck here? In this… limbo?” he waved his arm around him. “Forever?”

“No,” she answered. “Eventually you’ll fade away. It seems to be different for everyone. My ‘other’ said she was there when the copy before her finally faded away. One day she said she was feeling tired, then just sort of dissolved and was gone. Who knows what happens after that? Do we still exist, somewhere? Or do we just dissolve into nothingness, like some old photograph?” She gazed pensively at the transporter pad for a bit.

“It happens to all of us ghosts eventually, they say. For some, it’s days, but I’ve met others that have been around for years. I, myself, haven’t seen anyone else fade away yet. Then again, I’ve only been a ghost for a week.”

Daniel couldn’t help but chuckle at that. “Well, then,” he said, “what does a ghost do then?”

“Come on,” she said, reaching out a hand. “I’ll show you.”