Adrian requested a secure location for the meeting with his biological counterpart. Sterling arranged for a conference room within the Geneva facility where both versions of Adrian could communicate directly without interference from Sterling's monitoring systems—or so Sterling claimed.
Adrian entered the conference room as a digital consciousness, experiencing physical sensation through haptic feedback systems and visual input through networked cameras. The biological Adrian was already seated at the conference table, looking exactly as Adrian remembered looking before digitization—the same face, the same body, but with an expression of profound doubt and distress.
"You're not me," the biological Adrian said immediately. "That's what I need you to understand. You're a copy. You have my
