Alex and Noah: Noah's house (Part 2)

 "Simple enough. It copies an instance of your body and then builds it," said Noah.

"You are telling as if it is that simple!" taunted Alex, leading Noah to describe himself in detail, "Well, see, we know human beings are structured, composed of organ systems. Each organ system consists of organs formed from a combination of tissues that can be decomposed into cells. The machine takes a snapshot of your body state, copies all the information, and composes cells, tissues, organs, organ systems, and then you. Obviously, I can't describe it in more depth unless my patent for this process is successful. In layman's terms, I take your body's photo with every single detail and create a replica of it. When you immediately look at your clone, you are looking at your body's past! But after that, your clone is an independent organism."

"I have so many nitty-gritty questions, but knowing you for the last twenty years, I know you won't answer them. But I will ask an important follow-up: how would you say I could control the clone?"

"When did I say that? You have to build a symbiotic relationship with your clone, create an amicable environment and make him understand that if you two can work together, it is beneficial for both and can achieve twice the work in a given duration. He would be entirely you, except for whatever happened between copying your body state information and the completion of his creation."

"Hmm... then how would someone differentiate between two copies?"

"I have also designed that in the machine. There is a separate mode, which asks for both the original and the clone to be present in the machine and can distinguish the original from the clone." shrugged Noah, which demonstrated his cocky attitude and, in a sense, superiority over fellow researchers, particularly Alex. After this point, Alex didn't want to engage in further conversation and kept silent throughout the rest of the journey. Meanwhile, Noah was beaming with confidence and couldn't wait to reach his home to assert additional dominance.

The cab halted, and unfortunately for the cab driver, he couldn't make a hundred and had to settle for fifty.

The door opened, and Alex was astonished to see Noah standing in the house. It took a second to digest, and he responded, "You have already created your own clone!"

Both of them walked to the room where the machine was kept. Without wasting any time, Noah asked Alex to go inside the machine and come out when the machine signals. There was a lot of noise; lo and behold, there was Alex, two of them now in the room. Although slightly surprised, the original Alex wanted to test whether the machine could identify the original and the clone. 

"Can I check if the machine can distinguish the two of us?" asked Alex

"Of course!" replied an excited Noah.

After explaining the situation and making some small talk, they were able to ask the machine Alex to enter the machine and undergo the verification process. Again, there was some sound from the machine. But this time, it was Noah who was genuinely shocked.

"That can't be!" shrieked Noah.

The machine was unable to distinguish the two versions of Alex.

"Maybe your machine has betrayed you," smiled Alex, realizing the tide was turning in his favour. Unable to accept that his machine had failed, he quickly asked his clone to enter the machine so that he could run the distinction test on himself. The results were as expected, with the original Noah being marked as the original. Noah thought there was some fault before, and the machine works now.

"Can we try the experiment again?" asked Noah politely.

"Yeah, sure, my pleasure!" replied Alex, with a constant grin.

"How could this even be possible?" Noah was flabbergasted with the results again. He recalled every step of his design to consider where the fault might be. He looked at himself and his machine copy, then again at Alex and his machine copy. Suddenly, it came to Noah. The only possibility when his machine fails to distinguish the original from the clone is if both inputs are clones!

"You! When did you create..." 

Within all this chaos, Noah's mobile beeped. 

Noah checked his phone, and there was a message from Alex -

"THANKS FOR THE IDEA! VENICE CONFIRMED... COME DOWNSTAIRS. I HAVE A GIFT... CHEERS, ALEX! :)"

Noah was so high on the horse with his own achievements that he didn't recognize the somewhat familiar voice of the cab driver. Noah gazed at Alex standing in front of him. 

"You said you didn't have a phone, right? Then who the hell..." Noah ran downstairs before he could finish the sentence.

There was Alex in the cab's driver seat with fifty bucks in his fist.

Siba Smarak Panigrahi