Short Story - The Copied

by Iain Lowson

Found this old story, written back in 2005. It's a bit of fun, nothing more. The product, perhaps, of reading loads of Christopher Brookmyre's brilliant work. Ummm... It's a bit sweary too. You have been warned.

-------------

The Copied

Angus sat in the luxurious toilet, shocked, stunned and emptying quickly. 

All in all, it was the best place for him to be when he heard the news. It meant he could give full reign to his true feelings. He could, in short, shit himself. Only without consequences amounting to much more than a quick wipe and a button press. 

The consequences of his overhearing the conversation between the air hostesses at all would be far more serious, and Angus would be glad that his explosive ‘Fuck me!’ died on his lips when he heard his name being mentioned.

“We need to get that McAllister guy out of business before we use the copiers.”

“Sure thing.  Can you handle it?”

Angus didn’t like the tone of the laugh that came before the reply.

“I’ll just pop another button. He’s been staring at my tits the whole flight anyway. He’ll do what he’s told. I’ll tell him the pilot wants to see him. Part of his prize or something.”

“Good idea. When were you last copied?”

“Last time we stopped over in Riyadh. You?”

“Oh, weeks ago now.”

“Shame. You likely to miss anything?”

 “Nah, just that last time with Angelo.”

 “The Emirates pilot?”

 “Yeah, that’s him.”

"So, nothing much then. You could take one of the spare copiers.”

“Nah. I’ve left myself a note not to repeat the same…”

There was an insistent beeping. Angus thought he heard shouting in the distance.

“Oops, gotta go! Seems there’s a rush on on this one.”

“See you in Shaqra’!”

“See you!”

Angus was left alone to wonder what the fuck that was all about and what it could possibly have to do with the first part of the conversation. The bit that had left him about a pound of well processed food lighter. The bit that had started;

“Who’s the bomber this time?”

There was a bomb on the plane. No one seemed to care, except for the fact that the stewardesses were going to be alright and, Angus guessed, so would the rest of the crew and the incumbent business class passengers. 

Except him, of course.

Someone didn’t want him to be alright. Someone didn’t just not care about Angus McAllister. He was used to that. No, the problem was that someone was actively not caring about Angus McAllister, and Angus McAllister was pretty pissed off about that. 

He’d won this trip to Miami fair and square. He’d known full well that the connection between Battlestar Galactica and Miami Vice was Edward James Olmos. He’d filled in the on-line entry form, including the irritating extra, non-compulsory survey questions about his DVD viewing and purchase habits. Angus was damn sure he was going to take full advantage of the facilities afforded to him by the win. Those, so far as he was concerned, included any and all opportunities to survive any and all attempts to blow him the fuck up.

Finishing his overly dramatic (and productive) visit to the luxury loo, Angus resisted years of motherly indoctrination and didn’t flush. Calling on his intimate knowledge of how Snipes and Russell would have dealt with this situation, he listened by the door for a moment. In the distance he could hear some kind of commotion, muffled by more than just a curtained corridor beyond the cludgie. 

Sure enough, when he poked his head around the door, looking back to where business class ended and first class began, the usual dividing blue cloth had been replaced by a very serviceable and solid door. Angus noted that there were no obvious handles. He hoped that the majority of the cabin crew were dealing with the bomber and passengers beyond – the muffled shouts, screams and occasional pounding on the door seemed to confirm this.

Angus jumped as a calm voice spoke right into his ear from a speaker in the bulkhead.

“This is an urgent call. Would all business class passengers please engage their copiers. I repeat, this is an urgent call. Please engage your copiers. If you are unsure how to do so, a member of our crew will be happy to assist you.”

The message continued in French, segueing into German and then to Japanese as Angus crept stealthily down the short corridor to the business class cabin. Keeping low, wishing Steven Segal hadn’t been killed off so quickly in Executive Decision, Angus moved behind the first row of seats. These were empty. He heard none of the usual muffled i-pod traffic, nor the occasional quiet tapping of laptop key pads. These had been replaced by what sounded remarkably like the sounds of a dozen or so photocopiers going a bit mental. 

Over to his left, Angus could hear one of the cabin crew quietly talking to one of the other passengers.

“Just relax, sir. You won’t feel a thing.”

“What do I press when I’m in?! What do I press?!! This is my first time in one of these!”

“It’s ok sir, the process is entirely automated. Just lie back and press the glowing button here. The canopy will close and the machine will do the rest.”

“Are you sure?!”

“Yes sir. I’m sure. I’ll be using one myself in a few moments sir.”

Angus looked around him as the whining passenger asked again to be shown what sounded like a simple enough process. Peering between the chairs, he saw that the armrest covers had rolled back to reveal raised areas with moulded, recessed hand shapes. The right hand indent had a large glowing button, all ready to be pushed down. Angus figured the panicked business type to be a serious muppet. Either that or the stewardess had already popped that promised blouse button and he was enjoying the view too much to let her go.

As he craned his neck to see what else was going on, Angus saw that the chairs that had been occupied by his fellow jammy bastards, as he liked to call them, were now covered entirely by opaque half cylinders. Lights were sweeping up and down inside to the sound of the photocopier noises. The occupants could be seen inside as the light passed over.  Maybe it was just his cynical imagination, but Angus was convinced the bastards were smiling smugly. Somehow, they were going to get away with it – with dying.

“I’m havin’ some of that, ya bas” Angus muttered.

Angus made his move, leaping out from behind a seat and quickly swinging himself into it. As he did so, the stewardess spotted him. The steward who had been helping her through the flight, taking over serving Angus when his questions about ‘extras’ had become too unsubtle to ignore, was alerted by her shout. But, for the first time ever, Angus was quicker than someone in authority and, again for the first time, he got himself into where he shouldn’t have been quick enough not to be caught. 

Even as the furious steward made a grab for him, Angus was slapping his hand down on the big red button. The seat collapsed back, and the cylinder snapped up around him from the sides of the contraption, swatting aside the steward’s snatching fingers. The capsule ends flipped into place and sealed, cutting of the protests of the cabin staff and the wails of the newly-panicked businessman with a pressurising thunk-hiss.

“Welcome, passenger, to the Mark 14 Personnel Copier. Please relax. Your future is guaranteed.” The computer voice was calm and soothing, even as the steward pounded on the dark glass in frustration. There was a quiet, rising whine as the equipment in the chair began to run up to speed. “We wish you pleasant dreams and a successful and bright tomorrow.” 

“Ya fucker!”

Angus felt something stab into his left bum cheek, and he briefly panicked until the swift onset of anaesthetised oblivion swept him away.

----------------

During the first year, Angus learned to hate sand. 

The complex was supposed to be sealed, but the damn stuff got everywhere. As he pushed his brush and vacuum combo around the operations floor and the various identical corridors, Angus had also decided to hate air stewardesses. He’d even come to loath air stewards, having been largely ambivalent toward them in the past. However, he’d always hated rich businessmen, so there was at least one comfortable, familiar thing to cling to from his old life.

His old life. 

That had officially ended over the Atlantic ocean when a terrorist bomb was detonated prematurely, killing all on board save a few lucky business men and women who had missed their flight thanks to a breakdown of the speaker system in the VIP lounge at Heathrow. Handily, the official flight crew for that day had also survived, as they had all been struck down by a bug they’d picked up from their hotel. The names of the crew who had been killed were kept out of the public eye at the request of the relatives.

The media ‘star’ of the tragedy had been one Angus McAllister, who had won a luxury trip to Miami. His eagerness to be aboard what was to be his first (and last) flight out of the country ironically sealed his fate. His wife and family had been handsomely compensated by both the insurance pay-out and the organisers of the competition, who revelled in the chance for some free advertising for their online DVD rental service.

Angus knew all of this because he had been shown the BBC News 24 footage by his new ‘employers’. They found it all very funny, particularly when Angus had to be restrained on seeing that his best mate had moved in on the ‘grieving widow’ and obviously had his slippers well under the bed.

Officially dead, Angus had been put to work. Forbidden to leave the underground complex, or to even visit the upper levels, the angry wee man sullenly shoved his brush‘n’vac machine around featureless corridors and rooms. All around him, no one deigned to speak English save to order him from one place to another.

The only variation was when a plane went down somewhere in the world and the copiers were used. That had only happened once since Angus had been there, and he only got access to the arrivals suite after the passengers and crew had been clothed and allowed to leave. Laughing and joking at their survival, they had trooped past him as he stood helpless, an armed Arab guard at his side glaring promises of violence at him, daring him, begging him to try to speak.

When he’d first arrived so abruptly, Angus had been dragged from his copier and held, face down and naked on the cold stone floor.  He’d seen the other passengers being led away, and endured the harsh words of the cabin crew.  The guy who’d failed to catch him stuck the boot in before he left. That was when he learned to dislike stewards and stewardesses. Even the naked ones.

Angus had been painfully cuffed and bundled off to a security office. The guards there also awarded Angus the Order of the Steel Toe-Cap, only relenting when he was too battered to stand unaided. A flustered and angry little Englishman in a suit came in and, sat in a high-backed leather chair, watched as Angus was hoisted, groaning, onto a metal stool.

“You should not be here, Mr McAllister, so officially you are not.”

“…fuck you, ya wee…”

A crashing blow to the jaw shut the Scotsman up, half tumbling him from the chair. Drooling blood, Angus stared viciously at the guard. The heir-apparent to the Aryan nation sneered and dragged his prisoner back up by the hair.

“You are, in every way that matters, dead” the suit continued, playing the evil genius to perfection. “We cannot allow you to leave and reveal what has happened, so you will stay here for as long as you are useful.”

The suit stood to leave.

“When you are no longer useful, you will die a second and final time. I suggest you be useful for as long as possible.”

Angus had resisted at first, but the media coverage of the bombing had quelled any outward signs of rebellion, so Angus had been put to work. He worked, ate and slept alone. His only contact with others saw him ignored or ordered about.  Occasionally one of the guards would growl at him. After a while, though, even they ignored him. Lost in the drudgery of his days, time ceased to have any meaning, and a year passed unnoticed in the monotony of routine.

----------------

It was Richard Branson who saved Angus.

That was ok as it was Angus, technically, who saved Richard Branson. 

Team effort, and all that.

Angus spotted him the first time across the vastness of the operations floor. Some hundred or more copiers squatted there, their cables snaking up to the metal ‘organiser’ rack suspended from the immense domed ceiling. The racks of cables led to what Angus assumed to be a fuse box on a massive scale. The control room for the whole system was set at the opposite side of the huge room, looking like a high-tech port-a-cabin. It was manned 24 hours a day by a crew of two white coats, and guarded by no less than four armed guards of various nationalities.

Angus was vacuuming up rogue grains of sand at the base of the fuse box. The constant hum and crackle didn’t help the slight queasy feeling Angus got every time he stood too close to the monstrous machine. He’d been looking away, rubbing his temple, when he saw someone dressed in the same drab overalls as he was forced to wear. This was a shock to the Scot as, in the entire interminable time he’d been in the complex, he’d never seen another skivvy.

Shutting off his equipment, Angus slowly walked around the edge of the operations floor, his eyes fixed on the drab spot in the otherwise immaculate, Bond villain lair he called home. Half way around, watching the man in olive working on one of the banks of computer equipment that blinked and buzzed behind the oblivious crew, Angus thought he recognised his fellow beast of burden. He was so caught up in this that he tripped over a bundle of cables and went down, hard, in a clatter of cleaning equipment.

One of the multi-national force of bastards that were on hand to make his life that little more depressing ambled over to shout at Angus and bundle and batter him out of the room. This was not before McAllister saw, with a sharp blow of recognition more palpable than the sharp blow of rifle butt, that a green clad, shaved and shorn Richard Branson was staring at him, open-mouthed, from the control room.

----------------

That there was another poor sap like him in the dismal complex was in itself enough to change everything for Angus. That it was someone familiar was a revelation on the scale of the burning bush, or even the casting of Patrick Stewart as Xavier in the X-Men movies. The effect of seeing Branson in the same pickle as himself energised Angus. 

Keeping his head down and his face in neutral, he began to pay attention to his surroundings, rather than just glowering at them. He began to watch the guards and the other staff, rather than just blaming them. Angus began to work out where things were, and where doorways might lead, rather than just stomping about in a sulk.

Drawing on years of training by Bond, Bristow and Bauer, Angus began to plot and plan. Sand had been Angus’ mortal enemy, cabin crews and guards aside, but now it became his greatest ally, his informant from the outside world. He tracked its progress through the level he was entrusted to clean. Quickly, Angus realised that there were two main ways into the operations level for the staff. However, there was a third way in for the sand.

In one of the side corridors, a little-used access to a storage area, Angus was touched by the hot breath of freedom. Mounted to the ceiling, held tantalisingly out of reach by thin metal rods, an air duct ran down, curving from the initial drop to run toward a noisy filtration and air conditioning unit where fans finally propelled the cooled breeze onwards. Elsewhere in the building, the ducting was too narrow to allow even snake-hips Cruise to complete an unlikely task. For a man as large as Angus, it was truly an impossible mission. The main intake ducting was a different matter.

The corridor had always been a bad place for sand. As Angus stood looking at the ducting as though for the first time, he saw where the sand was building up. Walking forward, he stood where a dusting of golden grains crunched slightly underfoot. Turning his face upwards, Angus’ eyes immediately smarted as the encroaching grit fell on them. He blinked the sand away then, eyes closed, he lifted his face heavenwards again. 

A warm breath kissed his pale face, and Angus imagined more than heard the desert winds.

“Right, ya bastards” he breathed. “Elvis is leaving the building. And so’s his pal.”

----------------

It was another two months before ‘Elvis’ finally got to speak to his ‘pal’, and that was only because the cleaner King caught himself the flu. A few of the guards and other staff had gone down with it, and the air conditioned box that was the copier complex spread it pretty quickly. Angus was lying sweating and groaning in his cot for the third morning running when the door opened and the globetrotting, multi-millionaire adventurer with the megawatt smile shuffled in carrying a tray.

 

Branson bobbed his stubbled head to the guard who’d accompanied him as he came in. The guard sniffed at him and stayed outside, looking miserable and imminent as the next flu victim. The visitor pulled up a box and sat down, laying the tray on the cot bed. Angus gazed blearily at him, at the lack of hair in particular. The visitor noticed.

“Oh, that” he said, smiling ruefully and running his hand over his head with a rasping sound. “They did this when I first arrived. Apparently I need to be reminded I’m not the original.”

“What?” sniffed Angus, giving up trying to rise and slumping back.

“The original me.” Richard started to help Angus sit up.

“Aye, how come you’re here when you’re out there?” Angus asked when Branson finally stopped fussing. “I mean, I’ve seen the show and everything.”

“Show?  What show?”

“That daft Apprentice rip-off” Angus said, investigating the tray. “You’ve no seen it?”

“In case you haven’t noticed, we don’t get good reception down here” Branson replied, prickling. “Just don’t tell me it’s a reality game show.”

“I willnae tell you then” Angus said.

“Well, that settles it” Branson said, grimly. “We’re getting out of here.”

The tray yielded a mystery soup that smelled really good and a flask of hot water. Arabic letters couldn’t hide the Beecham’s-like nature of the packets of curative powder that went with that. The Virgin boss mixed one of those while Angus slurped gratefully at the soup.

“How you planning to get out”, Angus queried between spoonfuls. “You got another balloon up your sleeve?”

“Why is it that no matter what I do everyone always starts on about the damn balloons.”

“Well, make a big enough arse of yourself and folks remember it” Angus said, smiling. After a moment, Branson smiled back. He shook his head.

“No, I’ve no balloon.” He sat back as much as the box allowed, thoughtfully stirring the cup of hot flu remedy. “Actually, I’ve no idea at all.”

Angus watched his companion as he ate. The Scotsman knew better than to blurt out his plans to the first potential ally he encountered. He’d seen Die Hard and Police Story 2. Better to see what was what.

“How’d you end up here? You didnae crash so far as I heard.”

“No”, Richard confirmed. “That was the problem.” Angus flicked him a Rodger Moore eyebrow, so the man went on.

 

“There was a false alarm on a flight I was on. Some maniac with a bomb. I got rushed into the copier and some over enthusiastic steward pushed the button.”

“Bastards” Angus stated with as much vehemence as the flu allowed.

“Indeed. I was told after the event that the bomber was brought down by a fellow passenger. So, I survived.”

 

“So, how come they kept you here? They figure no-one would notice or something?”

“Well, there couldn’t be two of me wandering around now, could there?”

"Two of you?” Angus was confused. “What’re you on about?”

“They haven’t told you?”

 

“Naebody tells me anything!” Angus began, anger and volume rising. Richard shushed him, glancing nervously at the door. “What’s going on?” Angus continued, more quietly.

“The copiers are just that. I’m surprised you hadn’t guessed already.” As Richard said it, the penny dropped for Angus. He sat, back with a sigh, his eyes closing. Branson continued.

“I didn’t die. I’m just a copy of me. Well, of him. It can get confusing.”

“I died” Angus said, quietly.

“No, you didn’t. The original you did.”

“Why didn’t they just let me go” the Scot said, his voice a whisper.

“You would have told everyone about what had happened, about what you saw.” 

Richard Branson’s copy looked almost embarrassed as he watched his fellow prisoner thinking it all through. Realisation began to weigh down on Angus McAllister. He began to understand stuff about his fellow man that he’d always known but had never dealt with. It hurt, and it made him angry, and it made him sad.

“Then everyone would want some” Angus murmured.

“Yes” Branson sighed. “And that can never happen. Business travellers like their little perks. This little conspiracy is truly global, and goes all the way to the top.” Angus saw real regret and a little bit of self-loathing in the copy’s eyes. The man handed him the medicine, taking back the empty plate. Setting the flask and medicine to one side, Branson picked up the tray and stood to leave. He looked back at Angus, fire in his eyes.

“I don’t know how, but we’ll get out of here.” Angus understood in that second how the original Richard Branson had gone from rags to riches, and he made a decision.

“I’ve an idea. I need to get better first, but I’ve an idea. What about when we get out? What then?” Angus McAllister fixed Richard Branson with a searching stare which was returned with a look of determined resolve.

“I can get us out of Riyadh. Or rather, I can” he said, smiling that electrifying smile that technically belonged to someone else.

Angus himself was still smiling when he finally fell asleep. It was the first truly restful sleep he’d had since arriving.

 
----------------

It took Angus another week to get well, helped by occasional visits from Richard. It took another month and more before they were ready to make their move. This was principally because it took about two weeks after their initial meeting for the guards to be talked into allowing Branson to grow a beard again. In the end they agreed only if he grew a full one, and not a goatee.

Even mindless thugs for hire have standards.

When the necessary facial fuzz was of an appropriate length, Richard Branson’s copy caught a nasty dose of the flu. He was tended, appropriately, by Angus. Despite his famed constitution, Branson was hit particularly badly by the flu. It was the vomiting that was the worse for the poor man. Even some of the guards were moved by his plight. One in particular was moved clean off his feet.

Standing outside Branson’s cupboard, virtually identical to the one McAllister occupied, the French guard who had escorted McAllister grimaced slightly as he heard the sound of enthusiastic vomiting from within. A bucket was being put to good use, judging by the metallic drum roll. 

A moment later, Angus appeared. He looked sheepishly at the guard and nodded his head back the way he came.

"Huey and Ralph should be on their way soon” Angus said. The guard looked puzzled.

“Qui?”

“Never mind.”  Angus glanced into the bucket. He suddenly looked alarmed. “Jeezus!  Is that blood?!”

The guard understood something was wrong. Angus turned a little too quickly to show him the noisome contents of the bucket, and some slopped over the side. The guard leapt back, but not quickly enough. His shoes took the brunt of it, but his smart uniform trousers were sporting various pieces of partially processed vegetable matter. The guard instinctively tried to rub at the trousers, even as a horrified Angus bent to help.

"Oh man I am so sorry!  Here, let me…” The guard pushed him aside, almost knocking him over, a stream of Gallic invective expressing his doubts over McAllister’s parenting.

“Fair enough” Angus said, throwing his whole rising bodyweight into the uppercut that lifted the guard slightly before dropping his body to the floor and his consciousness into darkness.

 
“Clear!” Angus called. A slightly pale but otherwise flu-less bearded Branson popped his head around the door.

“I hate having to do that” he said, helping Angus pull the guard inside the cupboard. 

“He deserved it” Angus stated as they put him on the cot bed, drawing a blanket over him and placing the vomit bucket beside him.

“No, not him” Richard corrected. “I hate making myself sick.”

“Aye, and I hate cleaning it up” said the Scotsman. He threw his companion a roll of paper towels. “You can clean up the mess in the hall. I need to grab the ladder and tools.”

----------------

Ten minutes later, the unconscious guard doubling for a supposedly ill prisoner, McAllister and Branson made their way by the service corridors to where the air from the outside world was sucked into the complex.

A further fifteen minutes later, the guard who had been set upon woke up. Tumbling from the cot bed, he discovered the bucket of Branson. Further enraged, and having been neither tied up nor left without his radio, he instigated a full scale alert and began to think up new and original ways of slowly killing his attackers.

As a mark of how little the guards actually knew the building they supposedly provided security for, it was a further ten minutes before they found the ladder, tools and the dismantled air ducts. As one, the security team rushed out to begin their search of Shaqra’.

Five minutes after they had left, as silence reigned, Angus and Richard lowered themselves out of the ducting leading to the air conditioning units, stole some lab coats, and walked out of the building via the side exit. A hostel on Alarbaen Street provided a means to blend in, and a bunch of Australian students offered a lift. After that, it was simple.

 A while later, the manager of the Al Faisaliah hotel in Riyadh was very surprised to see Richard Branson and his security advisor walk through the front door, fresh from an adventurous trip through the desert during which they had lost all of their baggage. Fortunately, Mr. Branson, sir, had a very good memory for his account numbers and the pair were able to stay for a few days in comfort, make quite a few phone calls and receive quite a few rather anxious visitors, before flying back to the UK.

Business class, of course.

----------------

One year later, thanks to a generous business loan from an undisclosed source, a certain Brans Richardson and his business partner Alistair McAngus were able to set up a new film production company based in Bristol. Called Original Copies, they made films people actually wanted to see and were quickly hailed as the salvation of the British film industry. McAngus, known for his encyclopaedic knowledge of film and television, later married Angelina Jolie in a lavish ceremony in Thailand.

Jammy bastard.