Replication

by Kevin Hardman

  I nodded, already aware of this information. When Kane had cast the glamour on me before, it so effectively duplicated the other person’s appearance that I was able to pass a retinal scan (which was why we had resorted to magic instead of my shapeshifting ability).

  “So the gist of all this is that if magic were involved you would expect the fingerprints to match,” I concluded.

  “And the face as well,” Mouse added. I gave him an odd look, causing him to expound. “As with his hands, I did the same photogrammetry on our mystery man’s face, and it doesn’t square up with yours. However, we’re talking minutiae – things that are essentially negligible, like eyes that are a billionth of a millimeter farther apart than yours. It’s nothing you can tell with the naked eye, but it’s another indication that this isn’t you.”

  “Maybe,” I mumbled, unconvinced. “But I’m not certain that any of this is enough to sway anyone who sees that footage. The simple truth of the matter is that I’m a shapeshifter, so the fact that my eyes aren’t as far apart, or my cheekbones aren’t as high, or I have loops instead of arches in my fingerprints isn’t going to carry the day. Plus, I’m just having trouble making sense of all this.”

  Mouse frowned. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean that on the surface, it looks like a frame job – like someone’s setting me up. But why go through the trouble of mimicking my face if you’re not going to change the fingerprints to match? Any shapeshifter worth his salt can do that. The fact that this person didn’t just confuses me – it’s like a shapeshifting amateur hour. All it does is create doubt about who’s in that video, and doubt about who you are is something shapeshifters try to avoid.”

  Mouse seemed to chew on that for a moment. “Maybe it’s someone who only recently developed that ability.”

  “Then I wouldn’t expect him to be that good at replicating faces. I’d expect…”

  I trailed off as my mentor’s statement took my thoughts in a new direction.

  “Do you think the SuperStore could be open again?” I asked after a few seconds.

  A look of grave concern crossed Mouse’s face, and empathically I could sense that my question had jarred him a little.

  “I suppose,” he replied a moment later, “but who would be crazy or desperate enough to transact with them?”

  I nodded, conceding his point. The SuperStore wasn’t an actual store or a physical location, but a black market where super powers were bought and sold. Sounds cool – until you realize that it’s not a regulated area of commerce, none of the merchandise is warrantied, and it comes with a fair degree of risk. Case in point: some wealthy hedge fund manager thought it would be awesome to have the power of atmokinesis – that is, the ability to affect the weather. (Apparently he dealt with weather derivatives in the financial markets, and thought atmokinesis would give him a leg up on the competition.) It’s unclear what process he underwent to obtain his purported powers, but the end result was not to his liking: every time it rained, he would get struck by lightning.

  There were lots of similar stories – some comical, some horrifying – about the experiences of shoppers at the SuperStore. Ultimately, an international task force shut them down, but there were rumors that the marketplace was simply driven further underground – not out of business.

  Bearing all the facts in mind, I would wager that Mouse was right, and I admitted as much.

  “So, assuming it’s not the SuperStore,” I said, “where does that leave us?”

  “Back to where we were before,” Mouse replied. “Trying to get a lead on this guy who not only looks like you, but mimics your powers.”

  “Sounds good,” I said. “I was so focused on his appearance that I practically forgot that he has powers similar to mine, like telekinesis and teleportation.”

  Without warning, Mouse suddenly got an odd glint in his eye. Recognizing the look, I knew that something new had occurred to him. He then spent a few seconds hastily tapping on his tablet.

  A moment later, Mouse glanced at the laptop, which was now frozen on the image of the fake me, then gave me an intense look. “Jim, could you have done this?”

  “What?!” I exclaimed, aghast that he could even ask that question.

  “I don’t mean whether it’s possible that this is you,” he clarified, pointing to the screen. “I mean, physically, could you have done this? Could you have teleported back and forth between the party and this…facility?”

  “I suppose it’s possible I could have done that, but there were people with me all night. I was always in the presence of someone.”

  “Well, can you go back and forth between two locations such that it seems like you’re in two places at once?”

  “You mean go back and forth fast enough that no one can tell?”

  “Yeah,” Mouse answered.

  I thought about it for a second, then shook my head. “I don’t think so. I still need a moment to visualize where I’m teleporting to. Trying to go back and forth like you’re suggesting would probably just result in me flickering in and out like an old light bulb about to go dark.”

  “What if you did it at super speed?” Mouse asked.

  I rubbed my chin in thought for a moment, letting Mouse’s question roll around in my brain. I didn’t often teleport while at super speed – didn’t have to. Teleporting took me wherever I needed to go instantaneously. Thus, there was rarely (if ever) a need to be at super speed when I used that particular ability.

  That said, when I’m in speedster mode, everything about my body operates at an accelerated pace, including my thought processes. Therefore, at super speed, I could conceivably visualize the place I’d like to teleport to a lot faster than I could normally. That being the case, I felt that I had the answer to my mentor’s question.

  “Theoretically,” I began, “I think I could do it if I was at super speed – that is, teleport so quickly that I appeared to be in two places at once. But practically speaking, I don’t think I could pull it off.”

  “Why not?” Mouse asked.

  “Think about it. Suppose I were to try it by having a conversation here with you, while at the same time meeting Electra in the lounge.”

  “Okay, what would happen?”

  “Well, let’s say I’m about to use the word ‘little’ during our conversation, but I’m greeting Electra with a ‘Hello.’ With you, I start pronouncing the ‘L’ in ‘little,’ then teleport to Electra where I begin enunciating the ‘H’ in ‘hello.’ Then I teleport back to you to pronounce some more of the ‘L’ before going back to her to continue verbalizing the letter ‘H.’ And that back-and-forth continues nonstop until I’ve spoken both words.”

  “It does sound rather complicated – even more so when you add movement to the mix.”

  “Huh?” I said, not really following his train of thought.

  “While you’re speaking, you’d also have to maintain consistency with your physical actions,” Mouse explained. “For example, if you’re in the process of raising your hand while speaking to me but you’re reaching out to hold her hand while talking to Electra, you’ve got to keep those motions respectively congruent.”

  “So, using your example, every time I teleport back to you, I’ve got to raise my hand fractionally higher, while each time I go to Electra, I’ve got to extend my hand a little farther toward hers. And it all has to be seamless, without either of you able to tell that I’m actually teleporting from one place to the other.”

  Mouse nodded. “Yep – virtually a real-life version of stop-motion animation. But it’s even more problematic than that.”

  I stared at him in disbelief. “I can’t imagine how.”

  “Well, you’d actually be doing all this stuff – speaking and moving – at super speed, but from your perspective you’d have to carry out those actions at a decelerated pace so that it appears normal to me and Electra.”

  “No way,” I muttered, shaking my head. “Taken altogether, it’s too much. I take back
my claim about it being theoretically possible.”

  Mouse laughed. “No, it’s just not probable, but it’s still possible.”

  I shrugged. “Maybe, but you’re talking about multi-tasking to the nth degree.”

  “True, but if anyone could accomplish it, I’d bank on you.”

  “Thanks for the vote of confidence. Now, what’s our next move?”

  “Well, I’m going to think about this footage some more and see if there’s anything else we can glean from it.”

  As he spoke, he bent down and appeared to reach for something under the worktable. When he stood back up, he was holding a mid-sized box in his hands.

  “You, on the other hand,” Mouse continued, “are going to study.”

  “Study?” I repeated as Mouse placed the box next to the laptop on the worktable. “Study what?”

  “Physics,” Mouse answered as he opened up the box and took out what appeared to be a textbook. He then removed a second book from the box. “Calculus.” He took out a third text. “World History.”

  “What is all this?” I asked.

  “In case it escaped your notice, when you took off for Caeles, you basically dropped out of school. Now that you’re back, we can’t have you truant, so I talked to your Mom and grandparents, and we decided that homeschooling for the rest of the year was probably the best option.”

  I nodded, as this was a conversation I’d already had with my family, but a new issue immediately rose up in my brain.

  “So who’s going to teach me?” I asked, then explained about how – if all went as scheduled – the rest of my family would probably be leaving the planet soon.

  Mouse smiled. “Lucky for you, there’s a local guy who’s experienced with most of the subject matter. He’s agreed to step up in this instance and be your instructor.”

  “Who –” I began, then noticed the smirk on my mentor’s face. “You, Mouse? Really?”

  “For classroom purposes, you can refer to me as Professor Mouse.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Okay, so why wait so long to get this started? I’ve been back for weeks.”

  Mouse suddenly looked pensive. “Honestly, I didn’t like any of the textbooks on the market or their treatment of the relative subject matter, so I had my own books made up.”

  “What?” I muttered, somewhat stunned. I grabbed one of the texts and looked at the author’s name. Sure enough, it read Professor Mouse, PhD.

  I would have laughed if the situation wasn’t so disheartening. It’s one thing to be taught by a guy who’s probably the smartest man who ever lived. It’s something else to be taught by him out of textbooks that he authored. I groaned in frustration at the thought of it.

  “Stop being a baby,” Mouse said. “It’s not that bad. Smokey’s not complaining.”

  I raised in eyebrow in surprise. “Smokey?”

  “Yeah – he missed some time in school, too. Not as much as you, but enough so that you two get to go through my class together.”

  “Probably less of a class and more like a crucible,” I said, at the same time wondering what exactly Smokey had been up to lately. A new girl, missing school… I guess he and I really did need to catch up.

  “Class or crucible,” Mouse droned. “Sounds like a good topic for your first English essay. I’ll expect a draft in a week.”

  I groaned again, making Mouse laugh heartily.

  Chapter 34

  After confirming with Mouse that his comment about the English essay was a joke (and that any homeschooling could wait until the current situation was resolved), I spent a little time chatting with him about next steps. Specifically, I asked what I could do with respect to solving the mystery of my evil twin, because the idea of just waiting around until my mentor came up with a solution didn’t appeal to me.

  Mouse’s suggestion was that I make a detailed list of everyone I’d spoken to at the party, along with the relevant times. It wouldn’t be an ironclad alibi (especially since I was a teleporter), but it would lend support to my argument that the guy in the video wasn’t me. With those marching orders, I teleported home, taking the textbooks with me at Mouse’s insistence.

  I popped up in my room. Almost immediately, I felt a mental bombardment as my mother and grandparents telepathically barraged me with questions. (Obviously Gramps had brought Mom and Indigo up to speed during my absence.) Tossing the textbooks on my dresser, I quickly gave them an overview of my conversation with Mouse and what I’d found out.

  With their appetite for information sated, my family finally left me alone. I took advantage of the opportunity to grab a notepad and start jotting down everything I could remember about the people I’d interacted with the night before, starting with those in the receiving line. I went at it for about an hour, at which point Gramps sent me a telepathic message to come down for dinner. Thinking that I could do with a break, I washed up and went downstairs to eat.

  On this occasion, the meal was light on conversation. It went without saying that I had a lot on my mind, and everyone seemed to eat mostly in silence in deference to me. Even Myshtal, who was typically effervescent, had little to say. I didn’t know whether my family had told her what happened or if she simply knew how to read the room, but I was grateful to her for leaving me to my thoughts.

  After dinner, I raced back to my room to finish working on my witness list (for lack of a better term). Forty-five minutes later, I thought it was pretty much complete and was looking it over for the third time when my cell phone rang. It was Electra.

  I felt a sudden degree of shame as I realized that I hadn’t really thought about my girlfriend all day. Given the circumstances, it could probably be forgiven, but I still felt that I’d been neglectful.

  Embarrassed by my oversight, I quickly answered with a perfunctory, “Hello?”

  “Did I misread the situation?” she asked without any kind of preface.

  “Huh?” I mumbled in confusion.

  “Well, I thought we ended the night in a positive place,” she said. “But then a whole day goes by without me hearing from you.”

  “Sorry, babe,” I said, now recognizing that she was speaking tongue-in-cheek. “Something came up, and I’ve been dealing with it all day.”

  Her tone immediately became more somber. “Is it serious?”

  “Serious enough.”

  “You want to talk about it?”

  “Yeah, but not over the phone. How about tomorrow?”

  “Oh, um, okay,” she said, my response catching her a little off guard. It was clear that she had expected me to teleport to her asap so that we could talk, which is what I normally would have done. The fact that I had suggested waiting until tomorrow was a bit out of character for me and had thrown her off.

  In truth, however, I was mentally exhausted. I had been dealing with the issue of my apparent double all day, and it had taken its toll.

  “Tomorrow’s fine,” Electra continued, bringing my thoughts back to the present.

  “Thanks,” I said, then hurriedly wished her goodnight and hung up.

  Chapter 35

  The next morning, for the second day in a row, I was awakened by the ringing of my cell phone. Still a little groggy, I started to sit up and noticed that there was a notepad on the bed next to me, and suddenly everything came back.

  After getting off the phone with Electra the night before, I had taken a quick shower with the intent of going over my witness list again afterwards. However, the info wasn’t particularly stimulating and I had already scrutinized it a number of times at that point. Long story short, I fell asleep in the middle of reviewing everything for the umpteenth time.

  Remembering what the info on the notepad represented jolted me wide awake. Grabbing my phone, I noted that the caller was Sarah – Smokey’s girlfriend. (Or rather, previous girlfriend.)

  I answered the phone, but didn’t get a chance to say a greeting before Sarah blurted out, “Did you talk to him?”

  “Excuse me?” I said, n
ot sure what she was talking about.

  “Smokey,” she stressed. “You said you’d talk to him for me.”

  I was completely confused now. “I’m sorry but when did I say that?”

  “Friday, when we spoke.”

  “Friday?” I repeated, completely befuddled by this conversation. “You and I didn’t–”

  The words froze in my throat as I happened to glance at my witness list and got a terrible feeling in the pit of my stomach.

  “Where are you?” I asked, trying to keep my voice on an even keel.

  “At home,” she replied. “About to leave to catch the bus to school.”

  “Meet me outside in one minute,” I practically ordered, then hung up.

  *****

  It took me even less time to get through my morning routine than the day before, with the only difference being that on this occasion I ripped a page from the back of the notepad and hastily scrawled a message saying that I was going out, then left it on the kitchen table. I then teleported to the embassy’s garage, which housed – among other things – a ten-year-old clunker that served as my car. I jumped behind the wheel, phased myself and the vehicle, then teleported.

  The car and I popped up on a street in a well-kept, middle-class neighborhood. Making myself and the jalopy solid again, I turned the key in the ignition and began driving down the road.

  I didn’t know Sarah’s address, but she and Smokey had been on numerous double-dates with me and Electra, and – having dropped her off after a few of those – I knew where her house was located and what it looked like. Thus, almost exactly when I said I would, I pulled up in front of a two-story house with a mixed stucco-and-stone exterior and waited. A few seconds later, the front door opened and Sarah came out.

  She was wearing jeans, a sweatshirt, and a jacket. In addition, she was sporting a backpack, and also had a small purse in her hand. Her dark hair hung loose, framing a remarkably beautiful face with Asian features. The only thing that seemingly marred her appearance were her eyes, which were red and puffy – a sure indication that she had been crying.