Dating : Natalie

“Hello? Can you hear me?”. I tapped the glass with my finger twice, the scientist standing across the pod gave me a disapproving stare. “Sorry, all of this just feels so unreal”.

Between us, in the middle of the room, was something that I swore I’d only ever see in movies or video games. Approximately the size of an individual bed, the stasis-pod before me was an all glass, tube-shaped chamber held by two iron rings on each end. Attached to the rings were screens, cables, and tubes that transported some sort of green liquid in and out of the container.

Floating there, was a naked human body. My naked human body. The same dark brown eyes, same bony nose, same slightly lopsided lips, same height and same weight. Everything except my hair, as the body there was completely hairless, was recreated from myself to perfection on that strange body inside the container. “If it looks exactly like me, then it should also think exactly like me, right?”

“In a way, yes. This android is still without a consciousness. It doesn’t think yet”.

It. Remember, that thing isn’t human, it’s not you. It’s not flesh, everything inside there is synthetic.

When I signed up for the mars colonization program that the government put out, I was surprised to see almost no requirements, no scholarship, no previous experience on anything related to space, and almost no physical constraints. The reason was simple, I would not be the one traveling, an android clone made of my own image would be sent instead. The pay was okay, at least for someone struggling financially like myself, and it would take less than a month, so of course I signed up.

I looked closer, I noticed the nose of Natalie was making bubbles in the liquid. Yes, I named her Natalie, they allowed us to and people always told me I looked like a Natalie. “It may seem like it breathes, in reality it doesn’t need to, but we’ve made them capable of simulating every human physiological need. Don’t worry, it’s not drowning”, said the scientist to me when he noticed. “You see, their task is not to be the true colonizers of the planet, but simply act as a test on how the new conditions would impact the human body”.

I guess that made sense, but I wouldn’t know. I know next to nothing about those subjects, I’m just here for the money.

“Alright, it’s time you return to your bedroom and get some rest. You were the last one, tomorrow you’ll all get your pay, and we’ll take you back to the city”. For the last three weeks I’ve been living on a residential facility they constructed for the thirty people they hired for the program.

“The launch is in two days, you’ll see it on TV”.

I wanted to see Natalie for a bit more, but I reluctantly agreed and made my way back to my room. On my way there, I started to feel my extremities numb and my eyes close involuntarily. I thought it was just tiredness, since they woke me up from sunrise to run physical exams. When I finally got to my room, I collapsed in the bed.

I had weird dreams; shadows carrying me around, flashing lights, stings in the back of my head. Then everything turned green and everything felt silent and cold.

When I woke up, I couldn’t see anything, my vision was blurry and the room was very dark, with the expect ion of dim green lighting all around me. When I tried to breathe, all I felt was cold water dragged to the inside of my nose. I opened my eyes and started to sway my arms and legs in panic.

Orange lights started to flash above of me and a message appeared, seemingly floating, in front of me. “ERROR-18195-STASIS:INACTIVE”. I don’t understand. “PLEASE STAY CALM”.

That’s when the lights turned on. I was in a storage room, inside a stasis pod suspended from the wall. Not only me, to my sides and in front of me was every pod made in the facility. Dimly lit from the inside, you could see every android floating inside, unconscious. The orange letters flashing in front of me were not floating, they were displayed on the glass of my own container.

As I swayed my arms more and more violently, thinking that I’d drown soon, I felt the cables and tubes behind me, connected to the back of my head. My eyes opened wide as a realized what was happening, and as I started again to feel the numbness in my hands, I caught a brief glimpse of myself reflected on the glass of the pod. There it was, the familiar face I saw every morning in the mirror, the dark brown eyes, the bony nose, the lopsided smile. The hairless head.

I exhaled and inhaled again, now sure that nothing would happen.