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.”
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 f
or 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.
Replication: A Kid Sensation Novel (Kid Sensation #6) Page 19