The glass tablet sat there, pulsing with a serene, neon-green glow that felt like a personal insult. "Welcome to the Beta?" I hissed, my voice cracking in the empty kitchen. "I didn't sign up for a beta. I signed up for a quiet life with one table and a moderate amount of sourdough!"
Panic is a strange fuel. It doesn't make you smart; it makes you decisive in all the wrong ways. My first instinct wasn't to read the manual. It was to erase the evidence. If the man in the black sedan came back, I didn't want him finding a glowing piece of alien hardware sitting on my illegally duplicated furniture.
I looked around for a weapon. My eyes landed on a heavy cast-iron skillet sitting on the stove. Still wearing my grandfather's leather gloves, I gripped the handle.
"Beta this," I muttered.
I swung the skillet with every ounce of frustration I'd accumulated since the toothbrush incident. The heavy metal slammed down onto the glass screen with a resounding clang that should have shattered the tablet into a thousand digital shards.
Instead, the skillet stopped an inch above the surface, hitting an invisible, elastic barrier. The tablet didn't break. It rippled.
The green light turned a violent, electric violet. The text on the screen dissolved into a swarm of geometric symbols that looked like a cross between QR codes and ancient runes. They spilled off the glass, flowing across the table like liquid light.
"Oh, no," I gasped, dropping the skillet.
I tried to back away, but the violet light was faster. It leaped from the table to my boots, racing up my legs like a static shock. I scrambled to pull off my leather gloves, thinking they'd protect me, but the moment my bare skin was exposed, the light surged into my palms.
It didn't hurt. It felt... right. It was the "tingle" from earlier, but organized. It was like a thousand messy files in my brain were suddenly being snapped into neat, labeled folders.
I fell to my knees, gasping, as the light vanished into my pores. The kitchen went dark. The tablet was gone. The second table was still there, but the glowing glass was nowhere to be seen.
Then, a voice—cool, genderless, and echoing directly inside my skull—spoke.
[CALIBRATION COMPLETE.]
I squeezed my eyes shut. "Get out of my head. I'm crazy. I've finally lost it. Stress-induced psychosis. That's all this is."
[NEGATIVE,] the voice replied. [SANITY LEVELS WITHIN ACCEPTABLE MARGINS. STRESS SPIKE DETECTED DURING INITIAL MANIFESTATION PHASE. PROTOCOL 01: DELAYED SYSTEM INTEGRATION SUCCESSFUL.]
A translucent blue window flickered into my field of vision, hovering in the air like a HUD in a video game.
SYSTEM STATUS: ACTIVE
USER: ARTHUR PRINGLE
CLASS: REPLICATOR (BETA)
[LOG: SYSTEM DELAYED BY 24 HOURS TO PREVENT TOTAL PSYCHOLOGICAL COLLAPSE. USER HAS REMAINED FUNCTIONAL DESPITE SPONTANEOUS FURNITURE CREATION. CONGRATULATIONS.]
"Congratulations?" I crawled over to the original kitchen table and pulled myself up. "I spent the morning thinking I was dying of a stroke! You let me walk into my job with a double-headed printer!"
[INITIAL ANOMALIES ARE NECESSARY FOR DATA COLLECTION,] the system chirped. [YOU HAVE LEARNED THE THREE LAWS OF REPLICATION THROUGH EXPERIENCE. WOULD YOU LIKE TO VIEW THE QUANTITY LIMITS?]
I stared at the floating text. My heart was finally slowing down, but the world felt tilted. I wasn't just a guy with a weird touch anymore. I was a platform.
"You mean the vanishing things?" I asked. "The way the bread disappeared but the table didn't?"
[CORRECT. MASS SUSTAINABILITY IS TIED TO YOUR VITALITY. ONE PERMANENT ECHO ALLOWED. ALL SUBSEQUENT COPIES ARE TEMPORARY. DURATION IS INVERSELY PROPORTIONAL TO QUANTITY.]
I looked at my hands. No tingle. No static. Just a calm, steady warmth.
"And the gloves?" I asked. "Did they actually work, or was that just my brain trying to cope?"
[LEATHER IS AN ORGANIC INSULATOR. IT BLOCKS THE CONDUCTIVE PATHWAY OF THE REPLICATION AURA. HOWEVER, SYSTEM INTEGRATION NOW ALLOWS FOR MANUAL TOGGLE.]
I looked toward the fridge. Usually, I'd be terrified to touch the handle. I willed the 'Aura' to stay off and reached out. My bare hand touched the cold metal.
Nothing happened. No second fridge. No pop.
"Manual toggle," I whispered, a small, dangerous smile creeping onto my face. "Okay. This changes things."
[WARNING,] the system pulsed red. [PRIMARY THREAT DETECTED: 'THE COLLECTORS' HAVE MARKED YOUR SIGNATURE. URGENCY: HIGH. WOULD YOU LIKE TO VIEW RECENT SCAN DATA?]
My smile vanished. The man in the black sedan. He wasn't just a government agent. He was a 'Collector.' And according to the blue box floating in front of my eyes, he was already on his way back.