Replication

by Kevin Hardman

  Obviously, being my quarters, it was left to me to select the items that would fill that particular void and give the place character. Not trusting my judgment in that arena, Electra had volunteered to help me decorate, but thus far we hadn’t been able to find the time.

  Looking around the place now, it occurred to me that I probably had some things at home that could be used to enhance the aesthetics. In fact, I probably had suitable items in a couple of the places I called home. Now that I thought about it, there were at least three locations – other than my quarters at HQ – where I could lay my head at night: the Caelesian Embassy (where my family currently lived), my father’s mansion, and my condo unit. (That last, however, was probably out, as I hadn’t truly felt comfortable in the condo since the murder that took place on the premises.)

  Still, having even two choices seemed like an embarrassment of riches, and I was still contemplating what I should bring to liven the place up when Mouse called me back.

  “Where are you?” I asked without preamble after tapping the “Talk” button on my phone.

  “Well, hello to you, too,” Mouse said nonchalantly.

  “Sorry,” I muttered apologetically, “but I’ve got a situation and could really use your help. Are you back at HQ yet?”

  “Just got here. I had to gather up the weather rods from Alpha Prime’s mansion.”

  The weather rods! I’d forgotten all about them. Of course, there had been no explicit agreement that I’d assist in taking them down, but since I’d help put them up…

  I began apologizing to Mouse for the oversight, but he cut me off.

  “Don’t worry about it,” he assured me. “You did enough just helping us get them in place. Plus I’m sure you had a late night and were planning to sleep in.”

  “Well, the sleep-in didn’t happen,” I stated, then gave a quick overview of the morning’s events.

  “Alright,” Mouse said when I finished. “Meet me in my lab in five minutes.”

  I hung up and teleported to the lab immediately, too impatient to wait any longer.

  Chapter 33

  “That’s not you,” Mouse said, the first words he’d spoken after watching the footage from the flash drive three times in total silence.

  “Really?” I droned mockingly, then wiped imaginary sweat from my brow with the back of my hand. “Whew! That’s a relief. I was worried there for a minute.”

  My mentor gave me a sideways look as he tapped a button, pausing the clip. “I was trying to be supportive.”

  “Sorry,” I muttered. “Thanks.”

  We were in Mouse’s lab, standing at a worktable and watching the video of my doppelganger on a laptop. I had expected all along that Mouse would discount what the footage seemed to imply, but it still felt great to hear him say it.

  “So what makes you say it isn’t me?” I asked, blatantly curious.

  Mouse shrugged. “Aside from almost killing Incendia – which would be out of character for you – the guy in the video just seems to exhibit a sort of callousness that isn’t part of your personality. He’s got cold eyes.”

  “Thanks, but I don’t think the fact that I’ve got a more bubbly nature is going to mean anything to the people investigating this.”

  “Well, let’s give them something they can sink their teeth into.”

  Noticing an odd gleam in Mouse’s eye, I asked, “What are you thinking?”

  “For starters,” he said, “I’m going to tear into this footage and make sure it’s a hundred percent legit.”

  “Sounds great. Let’s do it.”

  Mouse seemed to contemplate for a moment. “It’s going to take a little while.”

  “How long?”

  “A couple of hours to do everything I’m thinking,” he stated. “If you want to take off, it’s fine. I can call you when I’m done.”

  “I’ve got nowhere to be,” I said firmly, then immediately realized that it wasn’t exactly a true statement. I had an outing scheduled with Vestibule.

  “Suit yourself,” Mouse said, then went to work.

  *****

  As Mouse predicted, it took several hours for him to fully examine the footage. From what I could tell, his analysis included – among other things – applying some advanced algorithms to the video and feeding the clip into a specialized program that broke the images down frame by frame.

  Initially, I attempted to help, but quickly realized I was out of my depth. I then settled for asking questions about what he was doing, which Mouse willingly answered. (Far be it from my mentor to pass up a teaching moment when it came to me.) A good portion of that was also over my head, so ultimately I decided to just sit quietly to the side and let him work.

  About the only thing I personally accomplished during that time was sending a text message to Vestibule telling her she’d have to take a rain check on our outing, but without going into detail. Her response was an emoji involving an animated waffle that couldn’t decide if it preferred syrup or jam. I rolled my eyes at the image. I’m sure from her perspective it did look like I was waffling, but my current situation obviously took precedence over her petty wants.

  After that, I turned my attention back to Mouse, attempting to wait patiently while he finished up. From my perspective it seemed to take forever, but eventually he looked up from his computer tablet (on which he appeared to have done most of the work) and I – sensing a certain decisiveness in him – realized that he was finished.

  “Okay,” he said. “All done.”

  “So what’s the verdict?” I asked eagerly, hoping Mouse would immediately declare the video a flat-out fake.

  “Well first, let me explain a little about what I did,” he replied. “That way you’ll hopefully have confidence in my conclusion.”

  “Okay,” I responded, slightly surprised. Mouse knew I trusted him implicitly; he didn’t have to explain his rationale to me. However, the fact that he’d decided to do so did not bode well.

  “I had to engage in some image and video forensics,” he began. “Without going into excessive detail, I examined the footage in various ways to try to determine the authenticity of the images.”

  “And?”

  “I didn’t see any of the usual telltale signs that the video had been edited or photoshopped. No blurring, no warping, no distortions. No unusual displacement of light. No misalignment of objects and their shadows. Optically, the footage was consistent from start to finish.”

  “In other words, it wasn’t doctored or altered,” I concluded, feeling downcast.

  “No, it wasn’t,” Mouse agreed. “But I didn’t stop there. I also looked at the video’s metadata.”

  “The metadata?” I echoed in surprise.

  “Yeah, the metadata,” Mouse stated. “You do know what metadata is, right?”

  I nodded. “It’s data about data – at least, that’s how my computer science teacher described it. So I can look at the metadata of, say, a book report I’ve written, and it’ll show me data about the doc, like who created it, when they created it, when it was last modified, and so on.”

  “That’s good,” Mouse said, sounding impressed. “From the look on your face a moment ago, I would have sworn you’d never heard of metadata.”

  “Oh no,” I countered. “I’ve definitely heard of it. I just didn’t realize that videos also had it.”

  “Well, they do. In this instance, it shows – among other things – the time and date the video was made.”

  “Let me guess,” I said. “The date and time of the footage coincides with last night’s party.”

  Mouse nodded. “Correct. Even more, it doesn’t look like the metadata has been tampered with.”

  I groaned slightly in frustration. “For anyone else, that would be an alibi, but not for a teleporter.”

  “Well, would it help you if the time and date had been altered or was actually different from the time of the party?”

  My brow crinkled as I focused on his question.

&nb
sp; “Not really,” I said after a moment. “I’m still a teleporter, so regardless of when the attack occurred there’s no alibi to be had, according to Dreiser.”

  “Exactly,” Mouse said.

  I was nonplussed. “So why even bother looking at that?”

  “Because if it was altered in any way – for example, if the metadata time was changed by a single second – the whole video is tainted and shouldn’t be used as evidence against you.”

  “Well, that doesn’t appear to be the case. Based on everything you’ve said, the footage appears to be authentic, so we’re back at square one.”

  “Not square one, per se,” Mouse corrected. “You’re forgetting about the guy.”

  “Huh?” I mumbled in confusion. “What guy?”

  “Your long-lost twin in the video.”

  I shook my head, not comprehending. “I’m sorry. I don’t follow you.”

  “I also checked him out to see if he was fake.”

  I frowned. “I thought we just agreed that the entire video was authentic.”

  “We agreed that the images are authentic in that they haven’t been edited. With respect to our friend, however, I also looked to see if his physiognomy is credible.”

  Mentally, I chewed on this for a moment, trying to pick up on what was obviously an extremely subtle nuance. After a few moments, I thought I had it.

  “So,” I began, “you’re saying that his presence in the footage is legitimate, but how he looks in the video may not be.”

  “Good job,” Mouse declared, smiling. “In essence, he looks like you, but is that really his face?”

  “Okay, I follow you. So what’s the process for showing he’s faking my face?”

  “Well,” Mouse began, slipping into teaching mode, “I first enlarged and examined every image of his visage from all angles. From what I could see, there was no unnatural smoothness or excessive bunching that you’d expect if he was wearing one of those face-masks that you see in the movies.”

  I nodded. “I know what you mean – like a spy movie where the main character is also a master of disguise.”

  “Right,” Mouse stated in agreement. “And from what I could see of things like his pores, hydration, and pigmentation, there’s nothing anomalous or aberrant about his skin.”

  “I get it – that’s his actual appearance and not some kind of disguise,” I concluded. “So could this be the result of something like a face transplant?”

  “A face transplant,” Mouse droned, somewhat mockingly. “So did you wake up yesterday with your face missing? Did you walk around all day with bones, nerves, and blood vessels exposed – maybe without eyelids or lips?”

  “Okay – enough with the imagery,” I said firmly, my face wrinkled in disapproval.

  Mouse chuckled. “Since when did you get squeamish?”

  “I’m not,” I insisted. “I just don’t like visualizing myself with my face ripped off.”

  Mouse laughed again. “But you see my point?”

  “Yes. Aside from the fact that I’ve seen too many movies, you’re saying that the only place to get a copy of my face is me, so the odds of a facial transplant are nil.”

  “Actually, a transplant of that nature would go beyond simply getting a copy of your face and slapping it on someone else. The facial contours would also have to match.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked, intrigued.

  Mouse seemed to reflect for a moment. “Imagine you’ve got a couch that’s covered with a sheet. You can’t see the couch underneath, but the sheet gives the outline of it.”

  “Okay,” I said, understanding but still not sure where he was going with this.

  “Now imagine you take that same sheet, remove it from the couch, and then cover up another piece of furniture with it – say, a table. Is the sheet still going to have the shape of a couch?”

  I shook my head. “No. It’s going to take on the shape of the table.”

  “Exactly, and the same is true of your face.”

  “So just putting my face on another person isn’t going to necessarily make them look like me.”

  “Correct. The underlying features of their face will have to match as well.”

  “What would that entail?” I asked.

  “A good bit of surgery,” Mouse replied. “We’re talking about altering tissue, cartilage, bone structure and more. But I don’t see evidence of surgery of any sort, let alone what we’re discussing. For instance, there are no scars, nothing to indicate a surgical incision of any type.”

  “But what if he had a really good plastic surgeon?”

  Mouse let out a sigh. “Apparently I’m not explaining this very well, so I’ll try again. All surgery leaves a scar. So if a woman gets a facelift, she’s going to have scars. A good plastic surgeon is just adept at hiding them – like around the ear, in the hairline, or in natural folds of the skin. Scars can also fade and become less noticeable, but they don’t disappear entirely.”

  “What about you?” I asked.

  A baffled expression came across Mouse’s face. “What about me?”

  “You once told me you had an arm chopped off,” I explained. “But I’ve seen your bare arms, and you don’t have any scars.”

  Mouse seemed to reflect for a moment. My statement referred to a time when a group of aliens had taken him prisoner. It was before the two of us ever met and I’d never gotten the full details, but I’d never known Mouse to have anything less than a full complement of limbs, so something must have happened for him to get his arm back after the aliens hacked it off.

  “Okay,” he said a few seconds later. “I’ll revise my earlier statement and say that surgery almost always leaves a scar. However, there are some pieces of sophisticated, avant-garde medical tech out there that can leave skin completely unmarred after surgery. But that type of gear is uncommon, and rarer still is the person with the knowledge and skill to operate it.”

  “Give me a head count.”

  “There’s maybe five people on the planet with the resources and know-how to do what you’re suggesting,” Mouse said. “But I know their handiwork, and I’m not seeing any sign of it here.”

  “Well, if that’s the case,” I concluded, “you’re saying that this guy really is a dead ringer for me.”

  “What I’m saying is that his face isn’t a graft or the result of surgical modification. Assuming he’s not naturally your doppelganger, the most likely conclusion is that he’s a shapeshifter.”

  “There is another option,” I chimed in. “Magic.”

  As I mentioned it, I thought back to when I’d first met Gossamer and Kane. To help fool some bad guys, Kane had cast a glamour over me back then which made me look like someone else.

  “It’s a good thought, but I’ve already looked into it and don’t think that’s the case here.”

  I raised an eyebrow in surprise. “You were able to assess and discard the possibility of magic just by looking at the video?”

  “What I did was examine your twin’s fingerprints using an advanced form of photogrammetry,” Mouse clarified.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, shaking my head in confusion. “Photo-what?”

  “Photogrammetry,” he repeated. “It’s an area of science focused on taking measurements from images. It’s used a lot in the field of mapmaking, as it allows you to survey and measure land using things like aerial photographs.”

  “Okay, so how does that apply to the current situation?”

  “The guy in the video doesn’t do anything to hide from the camera, so there’s adequate footage of his hands,” Mouse stated, at the same time tapping on his computer tablet. “Using some cutting-edge photogrammetric algorithms, I created a 3-D model of his fingers – more specifically, his prints.”

  As he finished speaking, Mouse gestured towards the laptop where the video of my lookalike had been playing. The footage was gone now, replaced by a three-dimensional image of a hand. (Obviously my mentor was controlling the laptop remotely
.)

  Mouse, continuing to fiddle with his tablet, went on, saying, “I then enlarged the image, which allowed me to see all kinds of ridge detail on his fingerprints – loops, whorls, arches.”

  As he spoke, the image of the hand on the laptop vanished except for the fingertips, which lined up in a row before growing large enough in size to go from one side of the screen to the other. Leaning in for a better look, I noticed the patterns Mouse had mentioned.

  “Alright, I can see different shapes on these prints,” I acknowledged.

  “Good,” Mouse said. “I then compared those prints to yours.”

  In conjunction with Mouse speaking, the prints on the laptop shrank in size and shifted to the left side of the screen. On the right side appeared another set of prints, which I intuitively understood to be mine. I frowned for a moment, wondering where and when Mouse had lifted my prints – then almost laughed at my own mental lapse. I was in Mouse’s lab all the time; he could get a copy of my prints practically without effort. (Not to mention the fact that he had cameras in his lab, and could have used photogrammetry to create a model of my prints within the last few minutes.)

  I turned my attention back to the two images on the screen. “They’re about half the size they were a moment ago, but I can still identify features on the first set of prints, as well as the second.”

  “And?” Mouse asked expectantly.

  “I’m not an expert, but I can make out enough differences between them to say that they’re not a match.”

  “Expert or not, you’re right on that point,” Mouse declared. “Now, back to the issue of magic being involved. Typically with a spell that’s intended to mimic another person’s appearance, you need to infuse the enchantment with something that embodies their physical characteristics.”

  “DNA,” I said in summary.

  “Right,” Mouse agreed. “Something as simple as a strand of hair will serve, and if done right, you can create a spell that will seemingly replicate a person right down to the cellular level.”