Pullman briefly wondered what kind of ancient evolutionary response caused the pricking sensation on his tongue as he walked hurriedly towards the North-West magno-lift. His elevated heart rate and sweaty palms were more obvious. However Pullman had noticed that ever since childhood, anytime he was in danger he acquired a metallic taste accompanied by a pricking sensation on both sides of the base of his tongue.
That same taste and sensation was with him now as he stood impatiently in front of the lift doors trying not to let any of the emotion he was feeling leak out into his body. He let a smile play itself out on his lips as he realised that soon he’d have enough money to buy a body augmentation suite that would allow him to completely control his fight or flight responses.
For now though he simply had to accept the uncontrollable, nervous rat-a-tat-tatting being made by his left foot as he waited for the lift. Being in the building at this moment was one of the stress points of his plan. However there was no way to avoid it, he simply had to be there when the clones entered the building.
It was the only way Pullman could cover the fact that he had actually left for the night. The fact that he had gotten them all to use different entrances and lifts did not help aleviate his nervous disposition.
Earlier on he’d lied to Steve Nixon about wanting to catch up on some work and how he wasn’t feeling Swale’s tonight. Steve had tried for an annoying amount of time to change his mind. He kept on going on about needing a “wing man” to aid him in his attempted conquest of Joanna Deakin from Corporate Accounts.
In a way Pullman admired the way that Nixon seemed blissfully unaware of his standing when it came to finding a mate. There was a definite hierarchy that existed both inside and outside the company. Where you stood in the heirarchy was entirely based on the number and quality of the augmentations you could afford.
Perhaps, he thought to himself, in Pullman’s grandfather’s time a man could successfully fake exactly what rung of the social ladder he stood on, and convince someone of higher standing to copulate or even procreate with him.
Now though times were different, subtle tell-tell signs indicated where you stood in today’s society. Joanna Deakin would still be considered a low-level grunt by many. However working in Corporate Accounts gave her a salary that could afford her a suite of augmentations way above the level of Steve Nixon’s. Therefore he didn’t stand a snowball's chance in hell of getting more than a drunken, glancing peck on the cheek from her, and even that was in question.
Good old Steve, he still believed that sexual selection still played its part in the evolution of the human race. Sorry mate, but Darwin is spinning in his grave right now. The wheels of evolution doth grind too slowly in the face of human endeavour.
In a lot of ways Pullman wished he was more like Steve Nixon, blissfully unaware of the short hand that circumstance had dealt him. Steve was intelligent enough to get a grunt job at Cybertec, but not so much that he was aware of the pain of his own existence and limitations.
Steve would eventually find a wife on his level. Not because he would eventually realise that he had to find someone with a similar set of augs. More so because he would stumble across a female that, like Pullman, was all too aware of the aug game.
The lift had finally deemed to put him out of his torment by arriving on his floor and allowing him to embark. Waiting for the lift to descend he realised that he would miss Steve’s cheery optimism, and pondered that it was the only part of his plan he had any sort of regret for.
One of the clones would be making his way to Pullman's office at this very moment. Once there it would have an uncontrollable urge to take the pills that Pullman had placed in its jacket pocket. Tomorrow morning it would be Steve Nixon that would find the clone slumped at his desk.
Suicide would be the verdict, simply couldn’t take the pressures of modern living anymore. He regretted that, and if there was any way to tell Steve that he was still alive after all was said and done, he would do so, but he knew that there wouldn’t be.
Unfortunately though it was the only way to cover up the fact that the real Pullman had left the building. Of course when they discovered the theft of the Lad-D interface they would work out it was Pullman who had stolen it. At that point they would probably figure that he had killed himself because he knew he’d eventually be caught. However they’d have no idea exactly how he’d managed to get the tech out of the building.
Three of the other clones would also have a ton of depressing thoughts that they simply could not shake. After they played their part in confusing the Cybertec Tower security system. They would each take themselves to separate facilities in the Forgotten Zone whereupon they would also take their own lives. Their bodies would be dissolved in a particularly corrosive acid and nothing more would be left of them. Fango had assured him that this part of the process would be entirely automated and no humans would be involved in the disposal.
The last clone was the most important part of the whole endeavour. It was the one that Pullman had to give the most memories to. The FabTech chip processor that Fango had given him had allowed him to edit memory in a way that was previously thought impossible. It allowed him to place suicidal thoughts in the clones and at the same time making them think that these thoughts had been there for some time hence.
However the last clone had to have almost the same memories as Pullman himself. It – and it helped Pullman to think of the clone as an it, as opposed to a him - had to remember that Pullman wanted to steal the Lad-D interface. It also had to know that he was dealing with Henry Fango of FabTech. It basically had to know everything apart from the plan to use clones to pull off the theft. Instead Pullman had implanted half-true memories of a collusion with Coulson, the company that installed the Cybertec Tower security systems.
The magno-lift stopped at the landing pad, five floors above street level. Pullman walked out of the lift and hailed an air-taxi, making sure to use his personal comms aug as opposed to his Cybertec one. As Pullman stepped into the taxi to take his seat his thoughts drifted back to the final clone.
Pullman had not been happy at the fact that the clone would have no other choice but to hide the interface chip in its own body. The lab in which the chip was held had its own security system and any attempt to remove unauthorised tech would result in a building-wide shutdown. The only way to get it out was to place it in the body, thus disguising it as a privately owned augmentation.
Again this was another stress point in the plan, Pullman was only about ninety five percent sure that this would work. If the Coulson Security grunt he had managed to get drunk some months earlier had been wrong, then the whole plan would collapse. Cybertec would go into building-wide shutdown and the authorities would find two Jason Pullmans in the building, one dead and one alive. After questioning the clone it wouldn't take them too long to work out what had gone down.
Even if they didn’t realise the alive Pullman was a clone and simply jailed him. He, the real Pullman would be screwed, he’d have no chip to sell to Fango, who would drop him like a hot stone. Then of course he'd be on his own, unable to live his life as Jason Pullman, because he’d show up on the grid and they’d come for him.
Pullman briefly entertained the idea of becoming some kind of Forgotten Zone fugitive. He quickly dismissed these thoughts as he didn’t like the direction they were taking. “No” he thought to himself; “I have to be positive, it will work the clone will leave the building with the tech inside him.”
After which the clone would fly out to the Forgotten Zone to meet its fate via the slow acting poison Pullman had inserted into its body. Whereupon he would retrieve the chip from the clone and hand it over to Fango and thus becoming a very rich man.
He stared at the city below the dull gloom of the air-taxi's dimmed internal lights barely lighting his face. Pullman whispered to himself the words of Dante Alighieri;
“Through me you go into a city of weeping; through me you go into eternal pain; through me you go amongst the lost people”
Title image: Miguel Bruna on Unsplash