By Andrew James Woodyard
The replicator sat next to the only window in the habitat. Outside was nothing but a foggy orange haze and lifeless rocks, where freezing-cold carbon dioxide rain fell. Inside the replicator, a ceramic bowl was slowly filled with steaming-hot mechanically engineered chicken soup with matzo balls, manufactured by laser light.
Ivan hopped up and down with excitement and clung to the counter by the window, watching the soup being fabricated through a round window in the replicator.
“Calm down, Ivan,” his father said, tuning the holo-set, “I told you, it takes a few minutes to finish replicating.”
Ivan was skinny, with his ribs showing under a government-issued standard gray #7 shirt. “Can’t it go any faster, daddy?” he asked, looking over at his father.
His father shook his head and smiled. He was just as thin; he wore a mechanic’s jumpsuit stained with grease. He looked away from his son and back to the holo-set, finding a program he liked.
Ivan looked at the news program being projected into their living area, grinned, then whined. “Can’t we watch animations?”
His father sighed. “You watch your animations all day long with the mother-bot, Ivan. I want to watch the news, then when I go to bed you can watch whatever you’d like again until you fall asleep.”
Ivan sat down next to his father on the cot, but didn’t look at the holo-set; he kept his gaze on the replicator, which was emitting a dull red glow on the other side of the room. The little screen above the replicator had pictures of various food items that were arranged in rows, like soup, chicken legs, fruits, and a few pastries.
Ivan’s father turned up the holo-setup’s volume.
“… isn’t an issue with Extracom Intersolar, sir; the issue is with the people that are making illegal replications of our products!” an angry little man in a finely crafted suit said via hologram, his appearance fuzzy and colored only in red. “Industrial replicators were designed to convert waste materials for raw-”
He was interrupted by a tall man with glasses. “Sir, with all due respect, you certainly can blame Extracom for these,” he paused, “these thefts, as there is no other word for it; Extracom invented the device; they marketed it; and they miniaturized it.”
The angry little man shook his head back and forth dramatically, then pointed threateningly to the tall man with glasses. “No, my employers did no such thing; pirate producers tampered with the designs! The United Nations needs to do something about this; we’re losing trillions of credits a year in profit because criminals are now free to distribute the complete matrix assemblies of everything from apples to zinc pens into the data streams!”
In between the two men was an obese man with a round face in a dark suit. “Gentlemen, please,” he said, “we’ve all heard this debate a hundred times on this program. You could blame Extracom for inventing the replicators, you could blame the so-called ‘pirate distributors’ out on the outskirts of the Solar System for copying the data-codes, you could blame database sites such as, let me see if I can remember, the Starways Market, Hacker’s Bay, or the Farmstead. And yes, one could go out on a limb and call the people that are actually replicating these matrices thieves.”
The angry little man scoffed. “There’s no other word for it. Any man, woman, or child who replicates a federally listed product matrix is in violation of over fifteen interplanetary laws! Companies like Extracom are dedicated to producing the rare materials and foodstuffs that feed this Solar System, not to mention our colonies, and if this type of theft isn’t stopped, then hundreds of thousands of hard-working people on Earth will lose their jobs as a result.”
The tall man with glasses slammed his fist on the table before them. “And, once again, Extracom invented the replicators to begin with! That’s all I’m trying to say, sir.”
The replicator in the habitat began to beep, and the red glow from its screen dimmed. Ivan’s father looked over, then got up and walked over to the device. The news debate continued on the holo-set. He opened a little door on the front of the replicator, and using a potholder, took a steaming bowl of soup out of it, then set it down next to his son on a little table.
“Careful, Ivan, it’s really hot.”
Ivan smiled, took a plastic spoon from a nearby drawer, and dipped it into the soup, while steam billowed from the bowl. “Is it really chicken, Daddy?”
His father nodded. “Well, replicated chicken. Nothing in it was ever really alive, but it tastes the same, and it’s just as good for you as the real thing from Earth.”
Ivan took a spoonful of soup from the bowl, with a big chunk of replicated chicken on the spoon, and sipped the broth. He swallowed and nodded excitedly to his father.
“There are matzo balls in it too, just like my mother used to make. You’ll like them,” his father said. He then turned back to the replicator, and scrolled through a database of foodstuffs using a touch-pad.
Back on the holo-set, the three men continued their debate.
“…Mr. McLaughlin,” the round-faced man in the middle said to the tall man with glasses, “Do you know what this is?” he said, holding up an apple. “Do you, Mr. Bennett?”
The two men on either side of him looked insulted. Mr. Bennett leaned forward. “It’s an apple, Dr. Chan. I can’t speak for anyone else, but I’m not an idiot.”
“Neither am I, Mr. Bennett,” Dr. Chan replied. “This, my friends, is a magic apple.”
The two men on either side of him leaned back in their chairs.
“Do you know what makes it so magical?” asked Dr. Chan.
Mr. Bennett scoffed again, then said sarcastically, “Go ahead and explain.”
Dr. Chan took a bite out of the apple, chewed, and swallowed. “This apple was produced legally through one of Extracom’s replicator devices. The matrix is stored in the Extracom central database from an apple that is exactly like it down to the molecular level. That apple, let’s assume, was grown on Earth in an orchard from a tree, presumably owned by Extracom, or by one of its many producers. That apple, my friends, originally came from a seed, did it not?” he asked both men.
Mr. Bennett did not reply, but had an angry look on his face.
“Yes it did,” Mr. McLaughlin replied, with his arms crossed over his chest.
“Thank you,” Dr. Chan replied. “Gentlemen, that apple came from a seed that came from another tree, where an apple grew in turn from another seed. Now, suppose someone were to take an apple that was scanned into a database, such as this apple here, and-”
Mr. Bennett interrupted. “Dr. Chan, we aren’t children; we know where you’re going with this.”
Dr. Chan sat back in his chair. “Then allow me to finish what I have to say, as this is my show.”
Mr. McLaughlin grinned.
Ivan’s father watched the program with great interest, then programmed the replicator to produce an apple of his own. Ivan was too preoccupied with his bowl of soup, ignoring the boring news program. Liquid methane rain continued to fall in torrents outside in the frozen wasteland of the tiny moon they lived on.
On the holo-set, Dr. Chan leaned forward toward Mr. Bennett, holding the apple before him. “Mr. Bennett, you understand that I can legally use a replicator that I purchased from the company you represent to produce an apple from that matrix. I could then continue to make copies of my apple from your company’s matrix until my limit was up, is that correct?”
Mr. Bennett nodded, but did not reply.
“I’ll take that as a yes. Mr. Bennett, you are aware that the technology exists, call it pirate technology if you’d like, although it is perfectly legal to own it by Interplanetary Law, which can be used to create a new matrix based on your company’s matrix of this apple. In other words, anything I replicate from your database with a replicator, I can then upload myself into another database, and then replicate from that.”
“That, Dr. Chan,” Mr. Bennett began, leaning forward again and pointing, “is where the problem begins: Extracom sells their products for a competitive price — a fair price,” he added.
“How’s it fair to the titanium miners of Pluto-Charon,” Mr. McLaughlin asked, “they make less than forty credits a week, barely enough to afford their nitrogen dues and housing?”
“Mr. McLaughlin has a point, Mr. Bennett,” Dr. Chan added, “and it’s something I wanted to mention: the majority of the people that are replicating your products are poverty-stricken, and couldn’t normally purchase them even if they wanted to.”
Mr. Bennett shook his head back and forth. “Theft is theft, Doctor.”
“Is it?” Dr. Chan asked. “So if a miner on Charon planted a seed from an apple he legally purchased from your database, and grew his own apple tree, then are any of the apples grown from that tree stolen?”
Mr. Bennett looked flabbergasted, shook his head slightly, and replied, “No, those would,” he paused, “they would… be grown legally,” he admitted.
“Then how is it that anything replicated off the Farmstead or Hacker’s Bay, produced from legally purchased matrices, can be considered to be stolen?”
Mr. Bennett did not reply.
Ivan finished his soup as his father made his way back over to his seat, with a shiny new red apple in his hand.
“Daddy?” Ivan asked his father.
His father looked at him. “Yes, Ivan?”
“Are we thieves?”
Ivan’s father looked at him gravely for a moment, then bit into the apple, chewed, and swallowed. “No, Ivan. We’re farmers.”
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