[Secret Project] Chapter 8

Dupes Chapter 8: Killing Me

My clones, understandably, weren’t too thrilled at the idea of being sacrificed on the altar of self-discovery. But surely they understood the necessity of it. Surely they knew they wouldn’t truly die as long as I, the original Fritz, remained alive.

“So,” Franz said. “Who are we gonna kill?”

Felix closed his eyes for a long moment, then opened them. “Logically, it should be me.”

It didn’t take a genius to see his reasoning. Of my two clones, only Felix, who had spawned just after the centurion’s fist connected with my face, looked as beat-up as I did. He’d heal soon enough, as would I—though more slowly once our medical nanites reached their expiry hour—but in the meantime, we needed Franz.

I nodded slowly at Felix. “I’m sorry, mate.”

“Ah shit,” Franz said. “It’s because I have the prettiest face, isn’t it?”

“Girls dig scars,” I said. “But they’re kind of a hindrance for someone trying to keep a low profile. So for now, Franz is less…”

“Expendable,” Felix said. “It’s alright, I get it, and I agree. Just…try not to make it hurt too much, alright? Because the previous times sucked.”

“There must be less painful ways to do it than drowning or gunshot wounds,” Franz said.

“I hope so, because I’m not going through that again,” Felix said. “Not willingly.”

I nodded. “If we botch this, I’ll have to relive the pain, so don’t think I’m taking it lightly. But I’m sure we can figure something out that’s a little less traumatic.”

Felix gave a resigned sigh. “Let’s talk methods, then.”

We talked. It wasn’t long before we’d come up with what we hoped would be a relatively quick and painless way to carry out the…messy part of our experiment.

“Alright,” Felix said finally. “Let’s do this.”

“Great!” I said.

The next moment, he seemed to be having second thoughts. “Wait! I have to pee first.”

I rolled my eyes. “Our other clones didn’t leave that kind of mess behind. Nor any bloodstains. But sure, go ahead.”

Felix scowled. “I just don’t want to piss all over the floor before I die.”

“Don’t think of it as death,” Franz said. “It’s more like…I don’t know, teleportation. You’ll reappear in a few minutes with a few extra memories.”

“Teleportation with a side of pain,” Felix said as he rushed into the bathroom. I half-expected him to bolt out the window or something, but he emerged a few minutes later looking almost relaxed. “Now I’m good to go.”

Nodding my appreciation, I handed him an apple. “Bite this, and take your pants off.”

“Kinky,” Felix said. “But know I don’t swing that way, right? Also, ew, incest.”

“Is it really incest, or is it simply getting frisky with yourself?” Franz wondered aloud.

“Oh shut up,” I told them. “You both know what this is for.”

“You want to test persistence,” Felix said.

“Bingo,” I said. “Under what conditions do objects vanish along with you? When Fred died, his clothes remained behind, but everything our other clones wore or carried went poof along with them. I have a theory as to why, and I want to test it.”

Nodding, Felix swallowed a bite of apple, then quickly changed into a different pair of pants. His jacket and underclothes remained the ones he’d spawned with: duplicates of the ones I’d been wearing earlier.

He set the duplicated pants down on a chair, inhaled deeply, and signalled that he was ready.

We botched it.

In theory, cutting off blood flow to the brain should lead to unconsciousness within seconds, and death within minutes. I’ll spare you the details of what actually happened, but suffice to say we had a lot to learn. And this was an unarmed man we were killing. Projection or not, consensual or not, it felt like murder. So our hands were not as steady as they should have been.

“Oh for crying out loud,” Felix managed to choke out at one point. “Put some muscle into it, mates! I haven’t got all morning!”

Finally, his legs stopped kicking, he went still, and a minute or so later, he disappeared.

Then the memories hit. Reliving his side of the experience did not make me feel any better, believe me. Franz received the same memories I did, judging from his expression. It had happened that way before, when I briefly had two concurrent clones back at the harbour.

Both of us took a moment to absorb the memories and process what we’d just observed. Most of his clothes had vanished with him, but the fresh pair of pants he’d changed into lay on the floor—unstained, thank the admins. And sure enough, the duplicated pants on the chair had vanished.

From these results, two things had become apparent:

1. Duplicated clothing vanished when my clone vanished, regardless of whether he was wearing it at the time.
    
2. Non-duplicated clothing my clone was wearing when he vanished did not vanish with him.

It seemed extremely likely—almost a certainty—that these rules applied to objects other than clothing, but I wasn’t going to assume that just yet.

I looked at the apple on the table—the apple that was most definitely a real object, not a duplicate. Not a projection. One bite of that apple had been in Felix’s stomach when he vanished. And yet a minute of careful searching uncovered no heap of partially-digested apple on the floor. From this unexpected result, I’d learned something else:

3.  Non-duplicated food my clone consumed before death did vanish with him. 

Whether this rule applied to any objects he swallowed, I had yet to determine. And I’d have to repeat the experiment many times before I could conclude whether these were hard-and-fast rules or simply things that could happen. Still, this was valuable information. Felix’s sacrifice had not been in vain.

A few minutes later, following a brief episode of dizzy disorientation, a new clone stumbled out of a closet.

“Dammit!” he said. “I’m the new Felix, aren’t I?”

I nodded. “’Fraid so.”

Our next act of Felixicide (not to be confused with felicide, which is the killing of a cat—and I can assure you no pussies were slain that day) went a little more smoothly. The one after that, even better. The fourth was horrible, and I’d rather not think about it.

Slowly, over the course of the day, we got used to it. Our clones got used to the pain and learned to suppress their panic reflexes. We also learned that pressure applied just so would lead to a relatively quick and painless slide into unconsciousness, then death.

From our experiments, we confirmed that our initial results were one hundred percent repeatable. Whatever the source of this strange self-cloning ability, it wasn’t rolling some cosmic dice behind the scenes. It followed a fixed set of rules all the time.

Expanding upon and generalising the rules I’d inferred earlier, I came up with the following:

1. No more than two clones could exist concurrently (so up to three Fritzes in total). If I tried to exceed that limit, I got nothing to show for it except a brief headache.
    
2. Clones always spawned somewhere out of sight. My sight and that of my other clone, that is. It was too risky to test on other people or animals at the moment. This effect seemed to apply only to sight, not proximity or my other senses. Keeping my eyes closed, I was able to spawn a clone less than a metre away. Scared the shit out of me.
    
3. My clones could spawn their own clones, provided they didn’t exceed the three Fritz limit. This was a surprise to me, and not necessarily a welcome one. It could be useful if I was injured again, though, which brought me to…
    
4. My clone inherited my current physical state exactly. All bruises, cuts and scrapes got transferred.
    
5. Any object I was wearing or carrying when I spawned a new clone got duplicated. Such objects had to be attached to my body or held mostly off the ground for it to work. I was yet to determine the exact proportion of its mass that I had to lift, but holding onto the leg of a table or sitting in a chair was insufficient.
    
6. All objects duplicated along with a clone vanished when that clone vanished, regardless of whether he was wearing or carrying them at the time. Objects duplicated along with my other clone remained unaffected.
    
7. Real objects my clone was wearing or carrying when he vanished did not vanish with him.
    
8. Real objects inside my clone did vanish with him, effectively deleting them from existence! By inside, I mean they had to be completely inside him. Something half-in and half-out of his mouth didn’t count, but provided his mouth remained shut, he didn’t have to swallow an object to make it disappear. Felix had thus far refused to test this phenomenon on bodily orifices other than his mouth.
    
9. Upon a clone’s death, I and any other surviving clone absorbed his memories and effectively became the sum of both of our experiences.
    
10. When I or one of my clones spawned a new clone, the clone only inherited the memories of his ‘creator,’ not both of us at once. 

Those were the rules insofar as I’d deduced from our experiments today. There would no doubt be more discoveries, but I felt as though I’d developed a pretty good understanding of how this ability worked on a superficial level, even if the underlying mechanics and scientific explanation remained opaque to me.

Of course, serial murder (or was it serial suicide?) wasn’t all we did. There were preparations to be made. Faking my own death took planning, and I had to survive and not get caught before I could carry out the plan. I also needed to survive afterwards. My old life as Fritz Baine was effectively over, unless by some miracle I could clear my name. I’d have to skip town, and probably wouldn’t get to see any of my friends or family ever again.

Survival came first, and to survive, I needed money. Accommodation at the Outside Inn was relatively cheap, but I was poor. I needed to eat. My clones needed to eat. Alright, technically I could just murder them every day instead of feeding them, but that wouldn’t go down well. The cash Fred had earned at Quick-Load wouldn’t keep us fed and clothed and sheltered for long. Earning money through legitimate work would be too risky. That left only illegitimate work.

My unique ability to clone myself—and other objects—afforded me opportunities many criminals would literally kill for, and I was going to use it to the fullest. It would be best to start with something simple, though. Something relatively low-risk.

Something like theft.