Jo awoke to a soft tapping beside her on the bed, like a gentle drummer absently patting at the skin of his snare drum. Weak winter sunlight squirmed in through the window and danced groggily on Lucas's silver computer and bare chest. She shifted to get a better look. Her movement startled him, and he shut the laptop with a clap.

"Oh! Sorry. Good morning!" he said.

Jo yawned. "Morning! Are you writing your review already?" she asked.

"Yes, and it's a glowing one. I just posted it. Ahem." He opened the computer and read, "Loyal readers, you'll be happy to know that I'm giving my date last night five out of five happy emojis, and yes—" He looked at Jo emphatically. "—I did get laid. I'm happy to report all the details and, as always, please share your opinions in the comments below. First, the foreplay—"

Jo grabbed the edge of the computer and spun it around on his lap—of course, it showed only his home screen.

"Oh my god, I would never," he said, laughing.

"Five out of five? Let's see, your date got messed up at her own show, passed out within twenty minutes of walking in your door and, I'm just noticing, hijacked your entire bed... How did you even sleep?"

"You were messed up? I wondered if I detected a bit of a slur. Shit, is it bad that we did this? Consent-wise?"

"I can make surprisingly good judgement calls while inebriated," said Jo. “Years of experience.”

"Ok, cool?"

"If I was nineteen or, say, a young twenty-seven, it might've been a bad call. Just be careful with people, ok?"

"I understand. But, so, since you're sober now and you're obviously an old twenty-seven..."

"Yeah, about that… I hope your happy emoji system goes up to at least a six..." But just then Jo's phone began a persistent buzzing from the floor of the room. It had slid from the pocket of her coat, which lay in a heap by the bed, and she might have ignored it except that the screen was lit up with Rex's name, and she couldn't imagine why her young friend would be calling her at all, never mind on a Saturday morning, except that Jaymie had scheduled an emergency band practice for RIGHT NOW, or something terrible had happened. Neither option seemed unlikely.

A minute later Jo was hurriedly dressing and kissing a disappointed Lucas goodbye, her tentative happiness extinguished in the time it had taken Rex to ask if she'd seen Aaron. She walked back to the coffee shop, having promised to drive over and help the Brzezinskis with their search, only to find that her car wouldn't start.

Jo decided to take the river trail instead, though she first sought help from someone walking to their own vehicle with a fresh coffee from the shop. They were snowsuited and scarved against the cold and moving quickly to get back to the warmth of their car, but they stopped and squinted their blue eyes concernedly when she explained her situation.

She asked for a boost, received another kindly squint in response, and waited shivering while the generous stranger pulled their car up and attached the cables. It was to no avail; over the course of the night the engine had forgotten the distant promise of springtime, given up all hope of warmth and joy, and expired. Jo’s good Samaritan shrugged apologetically and murmured something through their scarf, and she thanked them and waved them off.

She was relocking the car when she realised her helper had set their coffee on the trunk and forgotten to collect it again. They’d already driven away and Jo felt too restless to wait and see if they came back—and she certainly wasn’t one to turn down free coffee on a hangover day—so she took it with her, choosing to view her decision less as taking advantage of a nice stranger and more as a gift from the universe to a struggling musician who’d gone too long unpaid for her art.

When she reached the Osborne Bridge, she left the sidewalk and picked her way downhill to the river, swearing as the fresh snow crept over the tops of her boots to chill her ankles and soak her feet. She was delayed again only briefly by a very young businesswoman promoting her product.

“Twi?” growled the small voice from under the bridge.

“Pardon me?” asked Jo, recovering from the unexpected greeting and looking around. “Hello, are you alright?”

“TwiLite,” said the little bridge troll, annoyed that Jo hadn’t caught on immediately. She glared at Jo, who peered into the darkness to locate her.

“Oh…Like, that new drug?” Jo was taken aback for a moment.

“No, the kids’ book,” drawled the girl. She stepped into the light of the cold morning, most of her face covered by a black toque and neck warmer.

“I’m looking at you now, and it doesn’t seem that unreasonable you’d be talking about the book,” said Jo, looming over the child.

“If you don’t want it just say so!” she snapped.

“Hmm, what does it… Is it any good?” asked Jo.

“I don’t know, I’m thirteen! My customers keep coming back, though.”

“I’m not sure I… Oh my god, what am I doing? My drummer is—I have to go find my friend!”

“Only takes a second. I do etransfer, too.” The girl crossed her arms, as though daring Jo to be brave enough to etransfer her fifteen dollars for drugs.

Jo narrowed her eyes. “Hey, don’t you work at the library sometimes? Lizzy…Izzy…?”

“It’s Iz—I mean it’s… Jessica. Jones! Fuck—I have to go,” Izzy sputtered, and disappeared back into the shadows under the bridge, needlessly hissing, “Pussy,” over her shoulder.

“Where’s your mom!” Jo yelled half-heartedly after her.

“I know you get stoned at work!” the shrill voice retorted, and then she was gone.

“What the fuck…” said Jo, and continued on her way. Mention of work reminded her she had a shift in less than an hour. She pushed it from her mind.

And so, she was walking briskly along the river path to meet Jaymie and Rex, sipping coffee from a paper cup, when she discovered Aaron's jacket. She might not even have noticed it had she not been anxiously thinking of him.

It had snowed heavily again in the early morning. The fur of his hood poked wispily out of the bank like winter wheat trying to grope its way out of the ground four months premature, and she spent a minute frantically pawing around in the snowdrift for the rest of him, visions of poor Alexandre fresh in her mind, before getting herself under control.

She shook the coat out, took a deep breath, wished fervently that she'd brought her one-hitter with her, and called Jaymie. Then, while he and Rex went to the nearest police station, she continued on foot and then by bus to their house and waited for them in the front porch, curled up on the couch in her winter gear, blanketed by the lost jacket, nursing the coffee that had gone cold within two minutes of getting onto the river.

***

Aaron woke up in a world that looked like a cross between a hospital waiting room and the children's play area in a fast food restaurant. He pushed himself into a sitting position and found he'd been lying on a gym mat in a corner of the large, well-lit room. He had a queasy knot in his stomach—a combination of fear at his predicament and indignation at having been so unceremoniously chloroformed. Memories of the previous night returned to him and he felt the stirrings of terror.

Fortunately, exhaustion won out over panic, and he got to his feet and went to look around for an escape route and/or a snack.

A handful of people were engaged in relaxed conversation at a brightly coloured picnic table nearby. Further away, two children—twins—played on a rug with some stuffed animals and plastic food items. Several people napped or read magazines in semi-comfortable-looking armchairs in an alcove on one side of the room.

Not sure what to do, he wandered over to the table where the strangers conversed. They turned their attention to him as he approached.

"Another new one," commented a middle-aged man. His neat beard and silver hair gave him a distinguished look, and Aaron got the impression he was something like a university professor or a business consultant.

"The Collectors have been busy this week," said another man, rumpled and tired-looking, as he adjusted a pair of cracked glasses and squinted at Aaron.

"They sent notices out again recently," the first man said. "That means another set of deadlines has come up." He addressed Aaron. "Yours wouldn't pay his fees either, then?"

Aaron stared back, baffled. "My what? Who didn't pay? What fees?"

"Your Original… Oh, he doesn't know," the man said softly, and Aaron could hear mockery in his tone.

"Another one of those," said the disheveled man, glancing pityingly at Aaron for a moment before lowering his gaze once more to his hands, which fidgeted nervously on the table.

"He probably only exists for his organs, poor thing," said a woman in a powder-blue suit sitting further down the bench. “Like you, Five-O.”

"Certainly not," the first man corrected her. "He looks twenty-two. Millennials never think that far in advance. Unless his Original is much older and grew him from scratch, like those ones." He jerked his head toward the children on the rug.

"Well, I always wonder," began the woman to her comrades, all seemingly unconcerned by the growing confusion of the young man before them, "I always wonder how some of them—the Originals, or whoever does it for them—can pull off the procedure without the Duplicate knowing. I myself wasn't told what I was, but of course I realized it right away. See, I found myself thinking, 'Wouldn't it be excellent if there was another one of me? I could literally be in two places at once. One of me getting the kids from daycare, and another answering clients and going to the gym and maybe out for wine with the girls...’"

The others at the table listened to her with the patient indifference of people who have heard this story at least once already but have absolutely nothing else to do with their time.

"Well, as soon as I had that thought, I remembered that there was a way to do it, if you had the money, and just last week I’d been looking into the company that offered it! Then I thought, ‘But why didn't I go through with it?’ And I had!"

The others chuckled politely. She'd grown quite animated.

"And in fact, as I realized it, I also realized I was, at that moment, locked up in my own garden shed! Cassie, my Original, had gone overboard and had more copies made than she could maintain, and I was... extraneous." Her expression turned distant and dejected. "And here we are," she sadly informed the increasingly bewildered Aaron.

"Mine wanted a companion," the ruffled man told them unhappily. "We were never good at making friends, never clicked with other people. Together we could apply ourselves doubly to our creative and scientific endeavours! Imagine having someone close to you who thought the same way as you, and who'd be there for you indefinitely, unconditionally, who could always be relied upon. Because they had a mind identical to yours!"

Aaron felt an odd twinge in his chest that was somehow distinct from the many other anxious, uncomfortable and confused feelings he was experiencing.

"Why did he get rid of you, then?" asked the woman bluntly.

"The fees!" moaned the man. "We were bankrupted by a grant that never came through. It was entirely unrelated to the project that resulted in my creation, of course."

"A failed grant—is that the excuse he gave you?" the first man scoffed. "So reliable. A beautiful, eternal bond spoiled by a failed grant. Unconditional love—"

"I'll be out of here as soon as he sorts out the details!" snapped the disheveled man.

"They imagine the perfect BFF. Matching brains. But it's never what they expect it to be," continued the other cruelly. "Tell me, Derek, did he give up his house first? His car? Or you?"

"Eric will get me home by the time your kidneys are being harvested!" the provoked man spat.

"And you, 50117?" the woman nodded at the silver-haired man. "Tell him your story."

"Organs," he told Aaron brusquely, with a tone that suggested this was the only logical reason for a person to have a clone—for that is what these three beings most certainly were.

They looked at Aaron expectantly.

"Well, alright," said the man made for his organs. "He’s a young one, relatively speaking. Your Original is either a whiz kid who did it himself and couldn't afford the upkeep, or he's an heir who had you made for a lark and found out, as most of them do—" He glanced callously at Derek. "—That it wasn't as much fun as he thought, and he couldn't be bothered with you. Am I close?"

"He could be the Duplicate of a young autistic genius!" suggested Cassie’s clone excitedly. "Are you verbal, sweetheart?"

"N—no, there's been a misunderstanding," Aaron stuttered. "My brother wouldn't—I'm a twin and my—he's—"

"Oh, of course!" She winked conspiratorially. "We're all a twin! If anyone asks, that is."

"I'm, like, a regular person... no offense." He looked at them nervously. They didn't appear offended in the slightest. "And I have a social insurance number, and I've been alive for almost twenty-six years... and I remember most of it, more or less..."

"Oh, you can keep their memories," she explained. "It depends on the process, but many of us have them—50117 doesn’t have his Original’s, but I have all of Cassie’s, and Derek has Eric’s."

"But they're my memo—"

"A SIN number!" interjected Derek excitedly. "I mean, I've got one too. It's just at home, of course!" He spoke quickly and ecstatically. "But, just out of curiosity, how did you get yours?" He stood and put an arm around Aaron, who cringed involuntarily. "I heard you can send away to China for one... you young people know all about that stuff, perhaps you could give me your contact...?"

"My brother will get me out," Aaron whispered to no one in particular.

The silver-haired man let out a harsh, barking laugh. "Brother? That's sweet. Mine only gave me a serial number. He didn’t actually have fifty thousand copies, mind you; he just already had a system for barcodes. Businessman. I hate to break it to you, but your 'brother'"—he made sure his air quotes were dramatic enough that even a perplexed and possibly quite dull young clone couldn't miss their significance—"probably had a lovely dream for the both of you and then didn't have the work ethic to cover the costs and ended up moving to the coast to follow his bliss or whatever you people call it now."

Aaron cleared his throat. “Lack of work ethic is not something Jaymie suffers from,” he said firmly. “And he has always followed his bliss.”

“Ok, Jaymie Two-Point-O, I hope for your sake that your presence is a necessary component of either Jaymie’s bliss or the continued functioning of his renal system, because otherwise you’re in for a pretty grim future,” said 50117.

“For fuck’s sake, I’m not a clone!” Aaron insisted angrily.

"Not to upset you, sweetheart, but let’s just think for a moment: is your brother the type who might desire a copy of himself for any purpose? And not necessarily a nefarious purpose!" the woman said, looking sternly at the organ-source clone. "But even, perhaps, just on a whim?"

Aaron sat down at the table beside them and put his head in his hands. His brother was exactly the type.