There are two unspoken rules among experienced long-distance teleporters like yourself. One: Avoid ‘porting through Deneb Stop at all costs. There’s a reason why the least frequented hub in the system is the most overcrowded. Take a longer outward journey. Pay five times the fare. Whatever it takes. Any other option is better than leaving your trace there. Two: Whatever you do, if you ever make such a trip, never teleport through Deneb a second time.

It’s excellent, well-earned advice. Advice you’ve largely lived by, apart from that one, youthful lapse.

Now they’re forcing you to reroute through Deneb Stop. They insist it’s the only available transfer point to Taurus and you’ve an ironclad contract with The Network to record an immersive tour of the nebula. You accept the revised itinerary, reluctantly. Screw the rules. A thirty-six-hour layover on a bustling hub. The odds of running into them are astronomically low. Deneb hosts a couple million residents. You’ll be gone before they know it.

Of course, they’re the first person you see upon materializing and stepping off the platform. It’s like they’ve stood there waiting for you this whole time. Only they don’t seem angry. No, they’re too busy operating the machine. This along with the teleport technician’s uniform they’re wearing makes perfect sense. They needed a job after being abandoned and there’s only one real employer on a transit station.

Avoiding your former self is out of the question, then.

You take a deep breath. This needn’t go terribly. You’ve experienced much worse on the edges of the reachable cosmos. You understood the risks this route carried. On Deneb, alone among transit hubs, they don’t jettison the remnants once the teleport has broadcast all the necessary information onto the next destination. They keep the junk alive. Some sentimentality about the uniqueness of every life.

Time to get to know the person you’ve become.

Except they aren’t you. Not quite. That becomes obvious, if not at first glance. They’re a smidge shorter, thanks to a life lived in a more consistent gravity. The creases around their eyes are etched deeper. They lack that scar on their left cheek acquired during an unfortunate misunderstanding best forgotten. The past decade has treated the two of you differently. You’ve broadcasted your way star to star while your trace remained behind.

You try a bit of that feckless charm for which you’re universally known. “Well, this is awkward.”

“Indeed,” your doppelganger replies, equally cooly. “Been a while, hasn’t it?”

Fine. It’s pointless trying to outcharm yourself. Might a touch of sincerity work. They must be curious and you’ve got thirty-six hours to kill. “Listen. We should… catch up.”

“If you want.” They seem decidedly unphased by your sudden reappearance. These kinds of reunions must be a regular occurrence on Deneb Stop, for some remnant or another. “I’ve break in thirty. Meet me at the restaurant on the upper deck. You remember the one.”

You do indeed.

They keep you waiting for two hours nursing a beer and wondering what you’re like. Their decision to remain here makes no sense. They could’ve earned a bit of money and ‘ported out, same as you. Maybe the remnant you left behind did, and then their remnant after that, and the person you’re waiting for is the last in a long line of yous left stranded on this station. The you who eventually gave up and opted to stay. Still, they could’ve booked a slowboat out of here. They could have tried something. Anything’s better than getting stuck.

The possibility of those remnants swarming out there troubles you. Traces of who you once were, reflections of who you might have become. The universe is inconceivably vast and an experienced teleporter rarely backtracks. There could be countless yous bounding about the cold, empty expanse completely ignorant of one another. Countless other buds blossoming into different blooms. Do all those poor imitations share your regrets, along with their borrowed bodies and imagined pasts?

When you’ve about given up, the you from the teleport platform appears without apology or explanation. You suppose you’ve always been inconsiderate of others. It’s one of those consistencies that makes you you. You offer to buy yourself a drink for their troubles. They accept and offload their life story on you.

They seem oddly content for someone left on a transit hub. They speak with strange fondness about their rootedness and the apparent meaning it gives them. Your former self takes great consolation in the conviction that they’re the authentic original and you their pale shadow, riches and fame notwithstanding. Such Denebian nonsense.

“We’ve got a partner and kids?” you ask in half-disbelief. They’ve expressed no interest in learning about you.

“No, I have a partner and kids. You left.”

“They make us, I mean you, happy.”

Your mirror image nods. “Wouldn’t have it any other way.”

“Really?”

They got trapped and confused it for a life. The choice sits all wrong. Settling never interested you. Not now that whole galaxies have opened. You inspect yourself in their drab, workaday technician’s coveralls. This can’t make them happy. You’re the same person, right?

“You could meet them. If you like.”

 “The family?”

“Sure.”

“You’d be okay with that?”

“Why not?” Their shrug is vague and noncommittal, so like yours. “We’re not so different.”

Up close you’re practically identical, apart from a few fixable blemishes. You could easily fall into the groove of their life. No one ever need notice the difference. Not even yourself after a while.

“Love to.” Your smile always camera-ready.

Maybe a booking error didn’t bring you back to Deneb Stop. Maybe some part of you needed to reconnect.

“Well. Here’s our address. I should get back to work.”

Your device accepts their contact info.

You wish each other well and they’re gone.

Finally.

You pay an exorbitant surcharge to get your ’port out bumped ahead of schedule, leaving without hesitation the next left-behind copy to deal with the consequences of your life.

* * *

Ⓒ M. J. Pettit