"Aleksandr Abramov, Sergei Abramov. Horsemen from Nowhere ("ВСАДНИКИ НИОТКУДА", англ.)" - читать интересную книгу автора

"None in the least. Our blood was even the same." Then I told them
about the microscope.
"How about memory? Recalling things from childhood and later. Did you
check that?"
I related everything about memory. What I couldn't understand was what
he was trying to get at. But he .explained himself:
"The question that Admiral Thompson asked, is a disturbing one,
frightening even, and it should put us on our guard. If duplicates of human
beings are going to put in appearances in the future and if, say, duplicates
appear that are not destroyed, then how are we to distinguish between a
person and his model? What is more, how will they themselves distinguish
each other? I believe that is a matter not so much of absolute identity, but
of the confidence of each that precisely he is the real person and not the
synthesized one."
I recalled my own arguments with my ill-fated double and was completely
lost. Zernov saved me.
"A curious item," he said, "the doubles always appear following one and
the same dream. The person seems to be immersed in a red or crimson (violet
sometimes) cold jelly-like substance that is always very thick. This
undisclosed substance fills the person up completely, all his internal
organs, all vessels. I cannot assert definitely that the filling takes
place, but the person seems to be convinced of it. He lies totally incapable
of moving, as if paralysed, and begins to experience sensations akin to
those of one hypnotized: as if someone invisible were probing his mind,
going through 'every cell of his brain. Then the crimson darkness vanishes,
his mind clears and his movements come back. He believes that he has had an
absurd and horrible dream. In a short time, the double is at large. But
after waking up, the person has had time to do something and to say
something, to think something. The double does not know this. When Anokhin
woke up he found two vehicles and not one, both with the same dent in the
front window and with the same welded piece of metal on the tractor tread.
For his double, this was a discovery. He only remembered what Anokhin
remembered prior to immersion in the crimson work. There were similar
discrepancies in the other cases as well. After waking up, Dyachuk shaved
and cut himself. His double appeared without the cut. Chokheli went to sleep
drunk from the glass of alcohol he had swallowed, but he got up sober, with
a clear mind. Now the duplicate appeared before him drunk, he could hardly
stand up, his eyes were misty, actually he was in a state of delirium
tremens. I think that in the future it will be precisely this period of
action of the person immediately after waking up from the 'crimson dream'
that will help, in doubtful cases, to distinguish the original from the copy
if other ways have not been found by then."
"Did you also have a dream of that nature?" someone asked in the hall.
"Yes, I did."
"But you did not have a double?"
"That is exactly what is worrying me. Why I turned out to be the
exception."
"You were not an exception," Zernov's own voice answered him.
The speaker stood behind the others, nearly in the doorway, dressed
somewhat differently from Zernov. The other one had on a splendid grey suit,