The story “The Quantum Mommy” (“Armelina II”) by Michalis Manolios was published for the first time in 2005. It was translated from the greek by Manolis Vamvounis.
The mother ship Europa II has reached Europa, Jupiter’s satellite, and deployed the Hope spacecraft to its surface. Armelina is ready to be teleported inside Europa II for a three-month mission. After greeting her daughter Agape, she enters the teleport cabin but something strange happens: Armelina arrives at her destination and at the same time is still on Earth after being replicated.
A teleport malfunction is the basis of the story “The Quantum Mommy”, that tells some of its possible consequences. First of all, Armelina, who is teleported from Earth to the spaceship Europa II, finds itself replicated. One of the problems is to explain it to her daughter Agape, understandably confused.
The Europa II mission is very important so Armelina’s teleportation was broadcast worldwide. This means that what happened is in the public domain and this strange quantum phenomenon forced mission managers to act with great caution.
Armelina, in both of her “copies”, is concerned about her daughter Agape, who immediately starts asking who is her real mother. The Armelina who remained on Earth has the burden of trying to explain to her in understandable terms what happened and that now she has two moms.
Meanwhile, testing and analyzes begin to understand the reasons for that transporter malfunction that gave such unlikely results. A device that has turned into a replicator can be useful in many ways but not to solve the problem of the two Armelinas. For someone, having a replicator might be the most important thing.
“The Quantum Mommy” is developed through the contrast between practical and legal problems but also material interests of the situation and the more human ones. Eventually, the two Armelinas seem the only ones who really want to solve the problem while all the others are stalling for several reasons.
The idea of replicating a person is developed in an interesting way but for exactly for that reason I’d have liked to see a greater depth. “The Quantum Mommy” still seems to me a good story that offers food for thought so it’s worth reading, also taking advantage of the fact that it was published along with “Aethra” in an ebook available on Amazon USA
