[Secret Project] Chapter 2

Dupes Chapter 2: Me Two

“Who the hells are you?” my doppelgänger asked.

“Fritz Baine,” I told him. “Who the hells are you?”

“Is this a joke?” he growled. “Did Jaheem and Lucie put you up to this?”

“Mate, this is weird for me too,” I said. “Just tell me who you are.”

“I’m Fritz Baine, arsehole! So obviously you’re not. Although, I must admit, you’re doing a fine job of posing as me. It’s uncanny.”

“Oh for crying out loud, I can’t believe you’re trying this on me. Look.” I pulled out my ID badge, and held it up for him to see. “See? Fritz Fucking Baine.”

He stared at it intently, then pulled out his own badge. I peered at my name and likeness printed on each card. Holding my badge next to his, I sucked in a breath. Completely identical, right down to the scratch on the bottom right corner.

We exchanged a long look. It was beginning to dawn on me that this might actually be what it appeared to be. And I could tell from the look in his eyes that he was thinking the same thing.

“Alright,” I said, as I began to pace back and forth. “Alright. Alright. Alright. Let’s entertain this crazy notion for a moment. You’re not an imposter, and this isn’t an elaborate prank.”

“Alright…” he said.

“Excluding the prankster theory, which is still by far the most plausible one, I can think of three possibilities. Scenario one—”

“I’m delusional,” he interrupted. “You’re just a figment of my imagination.”

I blinked at him in surprise. “I was going to say I’m delusional.”

“Maybe we both are, and neither of us is Fritz.”

“Now you’re just getting silly. Scenario two: one of us crossed over from a parallel world. A version of Earth that differs in some small way from this one.”

His mouth dropped open. “Alright, that’s just creepy. Those were the exact words I would have used.”

“Really?” I said dubiously. A prankster would say something like that to mess with my head. “Do you know the third scenario then?”

“Absolutely,” he said. “One of us is some kind of clone or android or alien shapeshifter or whatever. Whichever of us is the fake Fritz may not even know it. The real Fritz’s memories might have been implanted in his head.”

Now it was my turn to show genuine astonishment. “You took the words right out of my mouth.”

“I’d like to add mind reading prankster to the list of possibilities,” my doppelgänger said.

We both peered at each other, trying to find a flaw in the mirage. I put my hand to his shoulder, and shoved, just as he did the same to me. Both of us stumbled backwards.

“Hey, watch it, arsehole,” we both hissed. “Alright, that’s just weird.” Again, we spoke in perfect synchronicity. “Cut that out!” After the third time, both of our mouths snapped shut.

I sat down heavily on a stool by the workbench. “You’re a pretty tangible delusion, I’ll give you that.”

“You think I’m pretty?” he said. “I’m touched.”

“Funny,” I said. “Let’s test the second scenario. Alternate universes. They could differ in some miniscule way that’s entirely undetectable to us here on Earth—like a single electron a squillion light years away dropped to a lower energy level, emitting a higher energy photon. But there might also be something glaringly different between our two dimensions. Like your Earth is inhabited by lizard people or something.”

“No bipedal lizards on my Earth,” he said. “Who’s the current ruler of Zealandia on your world?”

“Queen Elanora,” I said.

He nodded. “That’s a match.”

“Capital of the Vespica Confederation?” I asked.

“Delphia,” he answered.

“Correct.”

“Your parents?”

“Glen and Ivy Baine,” I said carefully. “But they aren’t my biological parents.”

The other Fritz nodded slowly. His expression looked slightly pained, mirroring my own feelings.

The Baines were the only family I’d known. I didn’t remember the ones who had provided my genes, but I was reasonably certain they hadn’t been Zealandians like the Baines. All I remembered from those early years was running away from…him, hiding in a dark place—a cargo ship container, I’d later surmised—and finding myself on these distant shores. I shivered. Even now, I had nightmares.

We continued to quiz each other on geography, popular culture, science, and our own person history. Every single one of his answers matched mine, and he assured me the reverse was true as well.

“Alright, enough,” I said finally. “If we are from alternate dimensions, they’re very similar. How about we retrace our steps tonight. There clearly was a difference there, because you stepped in from outside the lab.”

A slightly perplexed expression crossed his face. “You start.”

I gave him a suspicious look. “Alright. I woke up at 9 pm in my apartment on Wilber Street. Caught the metrocable to the Academy…” I recounted my actions to the best of my recollection. “…and just before you got here, I managed to set up Walker on the treadmill, there.” I glanced at the robot hanging loosely in its harness, suspended from the overhead gantry.

He shook his head. “My memories are identical right up to that last bit. I was trying to figure out how to lift this heavy bugger, and then…” He paused, scratching his head.

“And then?” I prompted.

“It’s kind of hazy. Somehow I ended up in a broom closet.” His face had gone pale. Sweat prickled his forehead. “Oh bugger.”

“A broom closet,” I repeated.

“Yep, just down the corridor.”

I raised my eyebrows. “And you didn’t think to point out that fact earlier? It would have saved us a lot of time. I don’t make a habit of venturing into broom closets.”

“I said it was hazy!” he said. “It’s like I was in a daydream for the last few minutes before I re-entered the lab.”

“Well it’s pretty clear to me.” I pointed at him. “If one of us is an interdimensional traveller—or a clone, or whatever—it’s you.”

He seemed to wilt before me. “I think I’m gonna be sick. I’m not from this world? Or maybe not even really me? I feel like me.”

“Look, I’m not too comfortable with this either,” I said. “For all I know, you’re an alien body snatcher sent to replace me. You might not even know it yourself. A switch could flip in your head, and suddenly you go all Murder-Fritz.”

He held up his hands. “No-one’s killing anyone, alright? If I’m an alien, I’m a good alien. And I’m not saying it’s aliens…”

“…but it’s aliens,” I finished for him. “Look, let’s just calm down and think about this rationally. We need to figure out how this happened, and more importantly, what we’re going to do about it.”

“Who says we need to do anything?” he said. “This could be a temporary hiccup in the fabric of reality. When it sorts itself out, I might just disappear.”

“We can only hope,” I muttered.

“Speak for yourself. If I go back to my home dimension, it’s all good. But if I’m some kind of alien clone, and just vanish into a puff of clone dust…”

“Would that be so bad?” I asked. “If that happened, you’d still technically be alive. As me.”

“Believe me, you wouldn’t be thinking that if you were in my shoes.”

Raising my eyebrows, I pointed at our identical footwear.

He scowled. “You know what I mean.”

I shifted uncomfortably in my seat. “Let’s go back to my—to our—apartment. Here, someone could walk in on us. I mean, it’s unlikely at this time of night, but you never know. I don’t feel like trying to explain this to anyone else right now. Do you?”

“Hells no,” he said. “But we can’t leave at the same time, obviously. I’ll go first. Meet me back at our apartment in a couple of hours.”

I nodded, then gave a little laugh. “Nice meeting you, Fritz.”

“Straight back at ya, Fritz.”

He hurried away. I sat there in silence for some time after he left, trying to quell my racing thoughts. I’d completely forgotten about that disorienting feeling that had swept over me shortly before he showed up. But now I remembered. It had been as though I’d seen out of two sets of eyes at the same time. And one pair of eyes had been looking at a dark, cramped enclosure. A space that might very well have been a broom closet…

It wasn’t long before I began once again to doubt the reality of what I’d experienced. Had I hallucinated the whole thing? Frankly, that was the most plausible explanation. Nothing inexplicable had happened. I was just crazy.

As I turned back to Walker the robot and initiated the suite of tests I’d prepared for the prosthetic legs hanging from his torso, my mind kept wandering. The other Fritz had seemed so real. Had someone spiked my coffee? Maybe it was a brain tumour. I should book an appointment. Two appointments. First get an omniscan, then see a shrink. Yeah, I’d do that, just as soon as I got home. I’d walk in the door and find my apartment empty, then I’d know he was just a figment of my imagination.

After an hour of going through the motions at the lab, I’d had enough. I had to get home. Striding through the campus, I paid very little attention to my surroundings, and almost tripped over Pod on my way out. The little poodle yipped and slobbered all over my leg—her favourite chew-toy. I stepped into the vacant metrocable gondola and shot down into the Rochamble CBD. Thank the admins this system was automated and ran 24 hours a day.

My apartment was on the thirtieth floor of a dingy old high-rise in the slummiest part of town. The walls were covered in graffiti, garbage littered the street outside, and I always caught a whiff of leaking sewage when I walked past a certain spot on the south side. But it was cheap, and it was a roof over my head, and that was what mattered most at the moment.

Arriving at my door, I sucked in a breath. The lights were on inside. With trembling hand, I opened the door—and came face to face with myself.

“Bugger,” I muttered, hastily pulling the door closed behind me.

“Let me guess,” my doppelgänger said. “You convinced yourself that this was all a delusion.”

“Yep,” I admitted. “I mean, you still might be a delusion. Just a recurring delusion.”

He reached for my shoulder.

“Who can shove pretty hard,” I added hastily.

He raised his hands in the air. “Let’s forget about questioning the reality of it for now, and talk about what we’re gonna do about it.”

“Fine,” I said, as we sat on the couch. “Although if you’re really my exact duplicate, with the same memories, then you already know anything I’d say.”

“Maybe,” he said. “Maybe not. Our experience has diverged over the past couple of hours. I’ve had to consider the possibility that either this isn’t my world, or I’m not the real Fritz. That’s got to affect my thought processes. We might arrive at different conclusions. And there’s something to be said for the clarity of voicing our thoughts aloud.”

“I knew you were going to say that. But alright. Let’s start with the big-arse elephant in the room. Assuming you don’t suddenly go back whence you came, there’s a bit of a problem. I can’t afford to feed us both.”

The stipend I got from my scholarship was pitifully small, so I’d had to supplement it with low-paid part-time work. I’d already racked up a huge student loan in my undergrad years, and I didn’t want to add to it.

“There’s an obvious solution,” he said. “If I’m stuck here, I’m not just gonna sit around twiddling my thumbs. I can get a proper job. Two of us means twice the money-making potential, remember?”

I blinked at him. “I hadn’t thought of that. Maybe we have diverged a bit already. Our options for employment are limited, given our wacky sleep schedule, but shift work often pays pretty well.”

“This is gonna take some getting used to, but it’s not all bad,” he said. “I mean, how often have you felt like there wasn’t enough time to do everything you wanted to do? Well now there are two of us. Two brains and two bodies we can apply to any problem that comes our way. Divide and conquer.”

I nodded. “Now we’re talking.”

A devilish grin spread across his face. “Also, think of the pranks we can pull off with this.”

I grinned back. “Jaheem and Lucie won’t know what hit ’em.”