#digital doubles

The entire screen is black save for two pairs of white dots. Spaced evenly apart and uninterrupted, unblinking. Perhaps some pixels were dead in the screen, but no amount of tweaking or even changing devices move the round spots. So the ECHO recording plays on, with the time stamp counting down every millisecond in the corner to assure the watch that the video is indeed playing.

The only noise that puts the speakers to work is the rhythmic beep…beep…beep of Timothy’s heart monitor in the background. Damn thing must be broken—the doppelgänger was the only one who could set these recordings up so someone had to have knocked the desk when they were moving him back into his room. Yet those spots are hypnotizing, unwavering, and entice your curiosity.

A few tense minutes of nothing changing, of setting a comfortable rhythm of watching the white spots and the heart monitor filling in the ambiance.

Then the beeps start to pick up pace. It’s a gradual increase, but it’s jarring enough to draw you out of the lull. You blink—did those dots move? No, still four unmoving white dots all in a line.

Distortion on the screen, just a flicker, and suddenly you notice the color is shifting on those dots. As the heart monitor’s beeping climbs at an alarming rate you notice the white turning to red. The distortion gets worse, those are getting brighter, you think you see a flash of a grin and—!

Flatline. You watch the screen and the two pairs of now bright red spots on the screen. They continue to stare right back…and then close, slowly. The sound cuts before there’s any indication of Timothy’s revival. The kid couldn’t die there, there were more recordings after, but the sound dissolves into static and the screen starts to glitch.

It had to be broken, corrupted…

Until there’s a high pitched shriek that echoes out from the the speakers and the image bursts into clarity. A message spelled out just for you.

Anyway, they'd absolutely destroy that AI. Seriously, Timothy and Handsome Jack spent time programming these digital copies, but once they're out of Tim's possession their cruel nature will shine through. 

“Everything is stable Alpha.” Timothy had his doubles constructed as his ‘lab assistants’. They were taking care of the work on the hardware, triple checking that the machines were going to work. All they needed was the doppelgänger’s code and they could run their first physical test with the New U.

Timothy was understandably nervous about this test. He’d spent weeks modding Handsome Jack’s reconstruction data and he was finally backed into a corner where he was forced to test it. It was supposed to re-create a body…a dead body, but a body all the same. A body that would look like him, but one that carried the reputation of a madman.

“Alrighty alrighty…” Shoving himself back from his terminal, Timothy let the inertia carry him on his wheeled chair across to the keypad for the New U machine. Probably the only section of floor without wires just so he could move between the two. “Lets just turn this baby on…make sure its ready to accept the modified construction—JD you set up the material at the the coordinates I gave you right?”

The digital double standing off in the corner gave a thumbs up, looking very bored with his involvement in this project. “Perfect. Now,” Timothy pushed back to his terminal, fingers carding through his hair before he set them back against the keyboard. “Everything is ready compressed..ready…just have to send it.”

He was hesitating. The start command was set, with a finger hovering over the enter key to initiate the test. Timothy’s doubles both stepped up behind the original, peering over his shoulders to see what was taking so long. “Second thoughts?”

“No! I just—you guys have guns ready right? I don’t know what this will actually create.” A pistol was offered to Timothy over his shoulder and he took it with a quiet ‘thanks’. “Now we’re ready. You two be ready to catch it when it completely reforms. I need to be able to examine it for defects  so I can match them up with mistakes in the data, and head trauma won’t make that any easier.”

After receiving verbal acknowledgement of his orders Timothy sent the start command. The digital doubles left his side to stand on either side of the New U as it blinked to life. As the data was registered the device hummed, low and loud as the lens lit up and the construction began.

Timothy turned away from the terminal to watch the process, sucking in a careful breath when it started from the feet and moved up. “Please be right the first time. I don’t want to do this again.” Not just the coding, but this whole process of reconstruction the body of his dead boss.

Too bad he’d turned away from his screens or he would realize that the body being reformed might not be as dead as he hoped. The New U had taken in the edited data, only to kick it back out with a warning flashing over the screen. It needed a proper construction file to work, and when Timothy didn’t provide it when prompted it scanned for the proper file itself. What it found was the base that the doppelgänger had been working off of, and it was quickly uploaded in the rejected file’s place.

“Craaap that doesn’t look right.” The reconstruction had made it up to the chest and the clothes weren’t right. Timothy had thought he’d changed the clothes to the Hyperion t-shirt so that it was easier for the machine to form the body beneath it. Turning back around he set his hands on the panel—

“Wha—Don’t touch him!” Timothy’s shout startled the digital doubles and they jumped back as the New U finished. They noticed how their original no longer called the body ‘it’, but before they could contemplate the figure dropped and caught his own weight.

The digital doubles ‘ooooh’d at the sight, forgetting the plan when something went wrong. Timothy looked absolutely mortified, his heart pounding and his breath short. A small part of him thought he was already dead as he mechanically reached for the pistol his replicas had given him.

Jack was left to recover his bearings on his own. The masked face was turned down as the man sucked in air like he’d just run a marathon. “What is this? Where am I?” It was a bit of a struggle to stand, but the restored CEO managed. His vision was swimming and his balance was a bit off, but he was most definitely alive and whole. Those Vault Hunters—the Warrior—that bitch!”

Click

BANG

The decoys watched as the reformed Handsome Jack fell back, a fresh hole through his skull. It was almost humorous, though neither of them so much as cracked a smile. Timothy was standing, shaking, pistol still raised and eyes wide as he tried to register that he’d actually managed to get a good shot. “I—holy crap I just killed him. I just—he was alive and I killed him I brought him back he wasn’t supposed to come. Back!”

“Uh Alpha?” One of the copies tried to interrupt the doppelgänger’s panicked ramblings. “He’s deconstructing and the New U is still on.”

The body on the floor was being digitized before the blood could even pool. Timothy almost shrieked as he kicked his fallen chair out of the way to get at his terminal. “Cancel the reconstruction cancel—It’s too late! Cut the main power to the machine! I don’t care how just DO IT!”

His doubles had been ready to argue. Cut off before they could even start, the pair looked at one another and shrugged. “Okay.” The body was already gone and the New U was starting to hum again. Timothy’s whimper was drowned out by the noise, the digital decoys both gaining wicked grins as their hands crackled with blue energy. “Alpha’s orders! Can’t have your face showing up again Jack!” They simultaneously thrust their hands into the machine, sinking in up to their elbows as their expressions became outright maniacal.

Electricity danced over the device and the digital pair lit up, first blue and then white, before all of the lights in the room exploded. Timothy dove over his panel at the first sign of an explosion, ducking his head and covering the back of his neck with his hands. The noise in the room went from high pitched, wall shaking to absolute silence when the lights went out.

There was a hint of smoke in the air, and when the doppelgänger finally worked up the courage to lift himself up he heard something spark. “Guys?” Another spark, this time from above and he ducked back behind the terminal. It was his only shield, and Timothy didn’t emerge again until the red emergency lights activated.

The ground around the New U was scorched black, the machine itself fried. There was no sign of his copies, but no trace of Jack’s body either. “Idiots. I did not program them to be that reckless!” Vaulting back over the terminal Timothy bent over the keys and started searching for their data. He’d uploaded them from his portable digistruct device so they would have a constant source of power to stay constructed, but he had no idea what happened to them when they deconstructed like that.

The system had hiccuped, so a few programs had to be reset before he could find their files and activate them again. There were no chances taken; he uploaded all of their data directly back into his portable device, cursing under his breath as his heart refused to stop racing. “We are not doing that again. That was a terrible idea we cannot do that again.”

Timothy’s eyes were fixed on the upload bar, worrying his lower lip when it wouldn’t go any faster—was it trying to load more data than before? “The hell—hey!” Activating the portable constructor, the doubles appeared as holograms. They looked out of it, even without their full colors and physical forms restored. “Why are your files bigger? What did you do?”

“Whoa, easy Alpha.” Came the heavily digitized response. “We just overloaded the machine. Maybe the files just look bigger because you’re anxious.”

“He’s right, your readings are still registering hi—“

“Don’t! Don’t tell me the numbers. Just finish transferring and then we’re leaving. Got it?”

As previously stated Timothy has named the pair (spoiler alert he's not that creative). They are DJ and JD respectively. When they're in battle and acting as decoys their personalities and individual tweaks in their codes might not be noticeable, but if you walk in on Timothy when he has the pair constructed in private it can quickly become obvious.

Both digital doubles, as also mentioned before, have been reprogrammed to have these almost AI-like qualities. Most of it is from Timothy's messing with their code, but every now and again Jack would take them away from Tim to experiment himself. The technology was obviously useful and he needed to study it to determine if it would be worth mass producing or just creating a copy for himself. That, and he didn't trust Timothy to capture what it truly meant to be 'Handsome Jack' when it came to the programs. He started out in code, and what better person to program the pair than an expert?

DJ is hands down the bigger nerd of the pair. He still has the cruel streak both doubles share, but he reflects that ham and charm you might see in Jack from his early days. He's normally the first to speak, tossing out the inspirational tag lines and the compliments to Timothy, his counterpart, and Jack. He starts the circle jerks, and basks in them. His voice, when altered, is digitized rather than having a shift in pitch.