Damned Lies!

by Dennis Liggio

  "Missed?" said Bruce.

  "Give me all the updates and the appropriate intel."

  “It’s not like we’ve been keeping a log,” said Bruce.

  “How’s my clone? I admit I'm back late. Despite the circumstances involved, I'll be gracious and call that my fault. So being late broke the schedule, so we'll need to do damage control. You said my clone would dissolve by now. Did my family freak out?”

  Bruce and Victor shared a look.

  “I believe I mentioned that in theory, the clone might dissolve after a set amount of time,” said Victor, adjusting his glasses. “Purely theoretical based upon the factors involved, though still a strong possibility. There was a certain fragility to the process, so based on that, the theory that an unraveling at the most elemental level would happen was not altogether unlikely. It was certainly the most dramatic possibility, and so I kept you informed. But as this was the first time I had ever performed that experiment, there was no previous data."

  I put down the now-cleaned chicken leg bone. “So what are you trying to tell me?”

  “He’s still around,” Bruce said.

  There was a sudden and very loud stroke of thunder.

  “He who?” I said. “My clone?”

  Bruce and Victor shared a look. “Yeah,” said Bruce slowly.

  I paused for a moment and thought about it before responding.

  “Okay, so that’s a problem," I said, rubbing the scar on my chin. "I expected him to be gone by this point, but maybe we can work with this. It could be a mixed blessing."

  "How so?" asked Bruce.

  "Well, now there's no ‘Mom, I understand you saw my face melt off but that wasn’t me’ conversation. That's good. I was thinking this out on the train. I wondered how I was going to address my absence or his demise. I guess I can dump all those plans. But now we need to figure out how to remove him and substitute me so I can get my life back."

  "You're taking this way better than I expected," said Bruce. "I'd expected you'd be all freaking out and making all sorts of unrealistic declarations."

  "Honestly, I feel good to just be home," I said. "You have no idea what I went through to get back. I'll tell you sometime. Maybe in my memoirs..." I trailed off, then snapped back to the current issue. "Okay, so my clone's been working my job, right?”

  “Technically, yes,” said Bruce.

  "Technically?" I asked.

  "He's been working the job," said Bruce flatly.

  I stared at Bruce, trying to read his expression. Victor also had a weird look, but I've only ever seen him look weird or impassive. I turned back to Bruce. “What's the deal? What are you guys not telling me?”

  “Well, how's the best way to bring this up? It's how you're talking about things. Your job, your life."

  "Yeah," I said, "what's wrong with that? They are mine."

  Bruce tapped his fingers on the table, trying to find the right words. "Are they really yours? I mean step back and think about things. You and he were exactly the same. You left, and he kept living that same life that you had been living. Since you're exactly the same and he kept living it, isn't it his life?"

  "But it's not his life, it's mine," I said. "We are not exactly the same. He's the clone and I'm the genuine article."

  Bruce grimaced with a half nod, half shake of his head, tapping the table again. "That's debatable," he said, then put his open palm out to pacify the immediate comment I had. "I know you feel differently, but from an objective view, it's debatable. You're doubles of each other. You left and he kept living the life. Since he's been here, it's really been his life. His job, his hobbies, his experiences, his friends, his girlfriend..."

  “Wait, girlfriend?” I said. “I don’t have a girlfriend.”

  “Ah, see, this is what I'm talking about. You don't. He does,” said Bruce. “He’s been dating Claudia.”

  Once again, the inappropriate-yet-appropriate stroke of thunder.

  I let this sink in with a cold anger. Claudia was the girl in high school who had been a friend, but who had never quite gotten the message I was interested. I’d ask her to hangout, but she thought it was a friend thing and invited her friends. I made her mix tapes and she didn’t get the message. And then at graduation someone let me know that she had wanted me to ask her to prom. A frustrating enigma, but deep down I had wished something had happened with her. And now my clone was dating her instead of me? Somehow I feel cheated. I somehow knew that I shouldn't be surprised, since his lust was my lust, but somehow this made me angry and jealous. I felt oddly cuckolded.

  “Cool scar, man,” said Victor while I remained deep in thought.

  He was referring to the small scar on my chin I had gotten from hobo boxing. It wasn’t a dramatic scar I could impress women with, but it was perhaps the one thing that would differentiate myself and my clone.

  “Thanks,” I said distractedly. Victor smiled at the acknowledgement.

  “Look, I know this is tough,” said Bruce, “but there’s something that needs to be said, and as your best friend, well, best friend of both of you, I feel like I'm the one who needs to say it. I know you wanted to go on an adventure and stuff. That's cool, nobody thinks that was a terrible impulse or that you were a bad person for doing it. But you made the choice to leave your life and abandoned it. Yes, you got someone to fill in for you, but that person was you too. And he didn't abandon your life. Up until the cloning, it was his life. So all he did was keep living the life he had.

  "You don't want to hear this, but from where I sit, you’re the interloper. No, no, hear me out. Think about it. He’s up to date with his friends, his job, everything. He knows everything that went one while you were gone. But you don't know any of that stuff. If you took over, you'd have to learn all that stuff or fake your way through it. Do you remember your first date with Claudia? Your first kiss with her? Your brother's birthday? Everything that has happened at your work? You're going to be lost trying to figure it all out.

  "And that doesn't explain what happens to him. He's also you, for all intents and purposes. He's been living what he thought was his life for months. Where does he go?" Bruce paused and took a deep breath, his voice lowering. "It might be easier if you're the one who goes and finds another life."

  “Bullshit!” I thought about flipping the table in rage, but kept my place. Bruce had always been a friend. That didn't stop my anger. “He gets nothing! You want me to just let him have my life? Why? Because he's done such a good job holding my place and he knows where I keep my stuff? Because he is more familiar with a just few months of my life in the most forgettable part of it, the summer after high school? Those are stumbling blocks, but not big ones. I could have an accident and fake amnesia. Or I just fake my way through it, and just get remembered as flakey.

  "He doesn't get my life! And I'm a little pissed at you for suggesting it. You’re making some weird argument for social control – 'don’t go on adventures, kids, because you’ll lose track of your friends and loved ones’ lives. You won't know what's going on and it's confusing!' The whole point of getting a clone was to spare people my absence!"

  "I thought it was to make money while you were gone," said Bruce.

  "It can be two things!" I spluttered. "The point is, I got someone to cover for me. And now you are saying my substitute gets to take over cause he did such a goddamn bang up job? That is such total bullshit. And what am I going to do? You're basically telling me to go bugger off and live an alternate life. What the fuck, Bruce? What the hell would I do? Go have my own life under an assumed name where I fight crime? I’ve always hated the fucking Scarlet Spider.”

  In a largely controversial arc of the comic book Spider-man known as the Clone Saga, Spider-man (AKA Peter Parker) is cloned. Him and his clone fight together, but there is an explosion where the clone is seemingly killed. The clone turns up five years later. Living under the name Ben Reilly, he had his own life and even ended up fighting crime as the similar-but-distinct hero, the Scar
let Spider.

  “Ben Reilly? But he was the real Peter Parker,” said Bruce.

  “Only in the cartoon, only in the cartoon. In the comic he was still the clone.” I said glumly. “But fuck that. Stop distracting me with comics. What about my life?”

  “Fighting crime isn’t too bad,” said Victor. “I need someone to field test some of my inventions…”

  “Hush, Victor,” said Bruce.

  “I guess if you wanted to be a villain, they’d work too…” continued Victor.

  “I said hush,” said Bruce before turning back to me. “Look, I know you're mad. You're mad at him, you're mad at me. I don't take it personally. But you also just found out about all of this. You just got home. You're tired and this whole situation is new. It's not what you expected or planned for. How about you not think about it right now. Let's stop yelling, let's just relax. You don't have to decide anything now. Don't make any rash decisions, just sleep on it. Tomorrow we can discuss it again, and you can yell at me more then. Maybe you could even check out what's been happening in your life."

  I sighed. I was still angry, but I also knew he had said some goddamn sensible things. And as mad at him as I was, he was my best friend. And, in my unique situation, he was really the only friend I had. There are no clone support groups. "Alright," I said simply.

  “You can of course sleep here,” said Bruce. “I don't think going home is a good idea, for obvious reasons."

  “Sure,” I said, realizing just how tired I was. Even after the shower, I was wiped out.

  “Alright, I’ll make the bed in the guest bedroom,” said Bruce. "It's going to be okay, buddy. We'll figure this out."

  "Someone's got to," I said glumly.

  "Victor, grab me a comforter from the basement," said Bruce. "And no experiments on him during the middle of the night. He is our guest."

  “Curses!” said Victor.

  I knew I would be locking my door that night.

  Confrontation

  August, 1994 - Long Island, New York

  I watched my clone through the high powered camera lens sticking out from the bushes. Brilliantly hidden, I could see him but he could not see me. Now I could find out all the terrible things he was doing. I felt no guilt in spying on him. It was my life, and I wanted to see just what that bastard was doing with it. Who knew the dastardly perversions he was up to?

  At that moment, all he was doing was sitting on a park bench. With Claudia. His girlfriend who really should be mine. Or could have been. Or... well, I didn't really want to deal with might-have-beens. The point was, he was on the bench with her.

  They looked like a happy couple. They smiled, they giggled. They leaned in close for a reassuring touch or a delighted look. There was a warmth in their intimacy. There was an ease by which they interacted that showed that they went well together and were good for each other.

  It made me sick.

  “This is totally wrong,” I said, crouched in the dirt behind the bush, leaning against the stone planter the bush grew out of. Bruce sat next to me, leaning back on the planter, facing away from my clone and playing a Gameboy. He had brought me to the park under protest. He would have preferred to show me my job or my home first, particularly without my clone there, to try to ease me into acceptance. But I would not stand for that; I wanted to see the clone and the happy couple. Reluctantly he came with me for support, but he was otherwise uninterested in my spying.

  "Yes, spying is totally wrong," he said.

  "No, I mean the couple."

  “Yes, people in love. That’s just terrible,” he said tiredly, punching away at the latest Mario adventure.

  “She’s in love with a clone,” I said bitterly. “That’s got to be some affront against God and science and... I don't know, the natural order of things.”

  “More of an affront than the clone’s actual existence in the first place?” suggested Bruce. “An existence that you yourself coordinated, I might add.”

  I grumbled to myself and ignored Bruce's response. I looked at the couple through the camera. They were laughing. Again. They were doing a lot of that.

  “They’re laughing at some private joke,” I said. “Some joke that undoubtedly came from my memories.”

  “You’ve been gone for months, before they even started dating,” said Bruce. “It is probably some shared experience that you weren’t involved in.”

  “That’s what annoys me,” I said. “He wasn’t supposed to have experiences while I was gone, particularly experiences I wanted to have myself. This is all against the rules. Why is my clone violating the rules?”

  “You have some pretty strict rules for your clone,” Bruce said, still playing his Gameboy, “particularly when you admit that you didn’t tell him them.”

  “The clone shares my memories, he should have just known.”

  “He also shares your personality,” said Bruce tiredly. “Maybe he thinks you’re the clone, so the rules don't apply to him.”

  “That’s preposterous,” I said. I paused. When the cloning process happened, I was in the tube. I lost consciousness, then the next thing I remember was waking up and seeing myself in the tube. Could it be that… I shook my head and didn't bother with such a silly thought. “Preposterous,” I repeated.

  “I’m just saying that you two are exactly the same in every way,” Bruce said. “So why are you surprised that he’s as much of a reckless, uncontrollable ass as you? Would you have listened to whatever rules if you had been stuck minding the store?"

  "Yes," I said.

  Bruce turned to me, raising his brow incredulously.

  "Well, no," I said, "But the point is that he should have. For both our sakes. He knew he was going to dissolve."

  "Maybe he thought you were going to dissolve," said Bruce.

  "The point is," I said, driving right over Bruce's point, "that even if there was dispute over who was the clone, he clearly lost the coin toss and had to stay home. Hence he was my bitch. He should have followed the rules. He shouldn't have begun this... this..."

  "...healthy and prosperous relationship?" suggested Bruce.

  "Exactly!" I said. "It's so perverse!"

  "I don't understand why you're spending so much time being jealous of him. Your weird idea of dominance aside, he's basically you. You're being jealous of yourself. That's got to be some sort of sick psychosis."

  “I’ll have enough of your amateur psychotherapy. You have to step outside the box sometimes. Think those thoughts that nobody else thinks. Feel things that nobody else feels. If you close the door on every weird thought, you miss out. That type of thinking is what prevents people from taking initiative and coming up with innovative ideas… like cloning oneself.”

  “And we’ve seen how that worked out,” said Bruce. “All I’m saying is that being intolerant of clones is going to be a long and tiring road. I never thought my best friend was some sort of clone bigot."

  "When it happens to you, you'll feel differently," I said.

  "I believe that I shall endeavor to be wiser than the example you have set for me," he said.

  I sneered in response.

  I looked through the lens again. Claudia was kissing my clone goodbye. It put a strange tightness on my heart. Then she got up and walked off. He sat for a moment longer, then stood up more lazily and started to wander off a different direction than she did. The stupid, serene grin on his face made me angry.

  He was walking this way, which caused me to chew on my lip, deep in thought. There was a careful way to do this, and there was a reckless way to do things. The careful way to do things was a wiser way, so it would be best if I-

  I was only halfway through that thought when I impulsively leapt through the bushes to grab his arm. There was shock on his face (unsurprisingly) as I used his arm to pull him down on a nearby bench and then sat next to him.

  “What the hell are you doing?” I asked.

  “What the hell are you doing? Someone might see us together.” That
's my clone, ever concerned with appearances.

  I laughed, a tense laugh lacking in mirth. "That's not something I'm worried about at this point. Things have gone too far to care about appearances. For example, there is the simple question of what you're even doing here."

  "Well, the day is nice and the park seemed a great place to take -"

  "No," I said through gritted teeth, not wanting to hear him talk about her. "I don't mean this particular moment. What are you doing here?"

  "One of us had to keep living the life..." he said.

  "No," I said, punctuating my words with tight flexes of my hand around his arm, "I mean, what are you still doing here? I leave and you take over. What the hell?"

  "Oh," he said, then paused for a long moment. Clearly formulating some sort of dastardly response. "Look, I fully admit that I should have planned for this better. But there has been so little information and so many contingencies, I've been winging it. I admit that I've been beginning to think that I really didn't have to worry about how things were going to work out. You didn't come back when you were supposed to. Each day I expected to wake up and find you back, but you weren't. I started to wonder if something had, y'know, happened out there. Something bad. I looked for news, anything that could identify you, but I didn't hear of anything. Maybe you weren't coming back at all. Why were you late? What exactly happened out there?"

  "You wouldn't believe what happened," I said, "even if you are me, which you're not really. But what I did out there isn't the point of this conversation. The point is you weren't supposed to get all cozy with my life here. You were the summer replacement."

  "And what did you expect me to do? What would you have expected yourself to do in the same situation? Just go to work every day, talk to no one, then go straight home and hide in my room to minimize contact with the outside world and any chance of some experience you wouldn't know? Should I have submitted to being a prisoner in my own life?"

  "My own life," I countered.