Late that night Aaron woke to a quiet rapping on the door of his room. The anxiety that had exhausted him enough to put him to sleep also made it easy to shake off his drowsiness, though he was certain he hadn’t slept long; he could see only a square of darkness through the tiny window above him.

The room he’d been given was just large enough to fit a single bed and a small night table. The window was too small and the glass too thick for any hope of escape. A large, framed photograph on the wall showed a view of an island paradise so hideously far removed from the frozen reality outside his window as to be abhorrent.

After an evening of playing Mortal Kombat in the common area, he had more or less resigned himself to spending a few days with the clones. He regretted having to miss the tribute show, which they’d thoroughly rehearsed for, and his family gathering (though, if he was being honest, he preferred his family members one at a time, rather than all at once around a dinner table). On the other hand, he was relieved to have the opportunity not to be involved in either event, especially since it was through no fault of his own; if Jaymie had wanted a clone of himself so badly then Jaymie could face the consequences.

This part of the situation was still somewhat baffling to him, and he’d come up with a number of theories to explain it, including a scenario in which there really had been an Aaron, who had died somehow—maybe whilst in the clutches of that cult—and it was him that Jaymie had cloned, with all his memories, and the government hadn’t realized the difference. Or maybe he really was a Duplicate of Jaymie, but something had gone wrong and the genes of a frightened cat had gotten mixed in, and it was he (the cat), who had grown up with a beloved brother who was a separate being from himself, hence his (Aaron’s) confusion about not having Jaymie’s memories…he was still working on this one.

Alternatively, everyone in the world was a clone of Jaymie Brzezinski, and Aaron and all of humanity were living in pods somewhere in the future, experiencing a short, computer-simulated time loop of false reality, living an illusion that they were independent people; the luckiest would be given a choice of variously-coloured pills so they could be freed from the cycle and assume their true form as Jaymie Brzezinski again.

Janey meowed from where she’d been sitting on the bedside table. She’d spent the evening licking and preening herself, making it clear that, as his therapist, she was still entitled significant break time for self-care. The knock came again.

He didn’t say “Come in,” because he didn’t want whoever was knocking to come in, but he was too polite to say “Go away,” so he said nothing, and the door opened anyway.

He held his breath as a soft silhouette appeared in the doorway.

“Jaymie Two-Point-O?” said a tentative voice. He released his breath and reached to turn on the desk lamp.

“It’s Aaron,” he said. “Cassie, right?”

“Cassie… Nobody’s ever called me that before,” said the clone woman wistfully.

“Well, Cassie The First isn’t here, and neither are Cassies Two-Point-Zero-through-Two, so I’m not exactly going to get confused, am I?”

“No, you’re not,” she smiled. “In fact, I worked—I mean, Cassie works—as a lawyer. We’re good at making things as un-confusing as possible, when it suits us.”

"That's refreshing, considering everyone else I've met in the last day or two..." Aaron suddenly imagined the weeks Cassie 2.3 had spent in this strange place with only the company of the cynical 50117 and the downtrodden scientist Derek. He felt a strong stirring of pity for her. He pushed aside his blankets and shuffled to the edge of the bed, glad that he hadn't felt like undressing before turning in.

“I hope I didn’t disturb you,” she said, sitting down beside him and smoothing her suit over her knees. “Those are very nice jeans.”

“Oh. Thank you.”

“I haven’t felt denim yet, in real life.” She experimentally rubbed one of his belt loops between her fingers to feel the texture of the fabric, and continued, “I didn’t realise you were a sleeper. I’ve been playing cards with Derek—he doesn’t sleep either. He’s a nice man, but he gets a little exhausting…” She gave a soft grimace. Cassie 2.3 looked to be in her early thirties. The corners of her eyes showed pretty creases of tiredness, which she had no doubt inherited from her Original.

“Yeah, I can imagine,” said Aaron. “So, you’re one of the… non-sleepers?”

“The design is more efficient that way,” she explained. “They could’ve added sleep into my programming, but it would’ve been an extra step, and what would be the point?”

“Mercy, maybe?” Aaron joked weakly, and immediately felt guilty. “Sorry, I just happen to enjoy sleeping, as long as I’m not having bad dreams—but lots of people don’t! Like my brother, for instance, he isn’t really interested in it. A lot of people would love not to have to sleep!”

“I suspect I wouldn’t like having to sleep either, based on the habits of my Original. I wish I could try it out, though,” she said.

“I’m sorry,” said Aaron, and he meant it.

“Still, there are other sleep-related activities I’m capable of…”

Aaron stared at her blankly.

“You know, I might not have been alive long, but I do have all the memories and experiences from Cassie’s life. I know how to do things.”

“Oh, that’s nice,” said Aaron, nonplussed.

“And it might be nice to do things one more time, in case I never make it out of here. Do you catch my drift?”

“Oh, um, things,” said Aaron, catching her drift. She shifted so their thighs touched and released his belt-loop to take his hand. He tensed. “Ah, hmm, Cassie, you’re very nice. And you’re very pretty.” He wondered if she could feel his palm starting to sweat.

“My Original had a very effective skin-care regime,” she said, pleased.

“It’s just, I might not be the best choice for—the thing is—”

“I’m made out of plastic and I’m technically a virgin, so pregnancy and STIs are not a concern,” she assured him.

“No, it’s—God, I wasn’t even thinking about those risks—it’s just that sometimes, and especially if I’ve already been more nervous than usual, it’s difficult to get comfortable with people I haven’t spent time getting to know well...” He could feel his face heating up under her hopeful gaze, and drew on all the communication skills in his arsenal. “See, I get nervous in bad situations, like when I’m out alone late at night, but sometimes also in good situations, like when I’m playing a show, or I’m with woman I just recently met—I might feel like it would be nice to be intimate, but then I’ll start to worry she’ll be disappointed, or that she’s secretly a murderer, or I’ll sometimes panic for no reason… I’m just nervous in general.”

She thought for a moment, gazing at the heinous coastal utopia on the wall and squeezing his hand absently. He wondered if she felt offended by the soft-rejection, and whether she was about to become upset. He continued, “Maybe, if we spent some time getting to know each other…”

“That does sound perfectly reasonable,” she said. “But I think I can give you a good reason not to be nervous.”

“Oh?”

“If we don’t get sponsored right away—which, let’s be realistic, we probably won’t— we’ll be dismantled. The Collectors brought in another two this evening after you went to bed, so they’re out of space. I doubt we have long. It could be tomorrow, if you’ve already had your notices mailed out.”

“Dismantled? Wait—mailed out? Uh oh…”

“For me, dismantling equates to being shut down. Put on standby, indefinitely. For you, probably more like going to sleep forever. So, it’s a good thing you like sleeping.” She smirked, but not unkindly.

“Sleeping…” Aaron stared straight ahead. “And this is a reason not to be nervous…”

“Unless you just have an Off switch somewhere—do you?” She lifted the back of his t-shirt to investigate and he felt a couple of her long braids brush against his spine. “No, you’re real, alright. Nice soft skin.”

“Thanks. It’s from… being a human,” Aaron said dazedly.

“I’m fascinated by the clones that are real humans,” said Cassie 2.3, letting his shirt fall again. “Five-O is one too, but he’s insufferable. …Should I not have touched your clothes? I remember, from Cassie’s life, that some humans don’t like it.”

“I think you’re nice, so I don’t really mind, although if our roles were reversed, we might be in some sketchy territory,” said Aaron, still feeling a bit muddled.

“Anyway, if it’s all going to be over soon, Jaymie Two-Point-O, what have you got to lose? Worst case scenario, one of us doesn’t like it and we stop. Isn’t it nice that that’s allowed nowadays?”

She’d begun undoing the buttons on her blouse using the hand that wasn’t holding his. She had long, glossy nails painted the same powder blue as her suit.

“I’m not Jaymie Two-Point…” he began, and then whispered to himself, “What Would Jaymie…?”

“Yes, fascinating,” she murmured, closely examining the freckles on his neck.

Aaron pulled himself together. “What a rollercoaster,” he mumbled. He turned to face her and she gave him a plasticky but soft kiss on the mouth, which pleasantly aroused his curiosity. He allowed her to pull his shirt over his head, and then he allowed himself, to his own surprise, to slip his hands into the front of her open blouse and feel her smooth polyurethane, which he was impressed to find was very convincingly like the real thing.

He slid further back onto the bed, lightly tugging her hand. She saw that she was about to succeed in her venture, gave a frolicsome grin, and finished shedding her upper garments. He was careful not to stare, realizing this had the potential to be a very positive final experience to have before his dismembering, or whatever it was.

He’d always accepted that there was no length of dry spell that could push him to have intimate relations with a partner made of plastic. He and Jaymie been educated by their mother not to view women as objects, and had acquired a set of loosely feminist values mostly as a result of trying to be good examples to a younger sibling whom both of them sought to help feel comfortable and safe in the world. Also, no judgement if that was your thing, but he found sex dolls a little bit creepy.

Yet he had never imagined a plastic partner with lovely smooth braids who could talk and feel and express in as many words that they wouldn’t be offended if you had a panic attack in the middle of making out with them.

He didn’t wonder about it any further, because by then the clone woman had undone his belt, unzipped his jeans, and leaned in close to his waist. A cascade of braids pattered down onto his stomach, and by the time it fully registered in Aaron’s mind that this was actually happening, he found he was too distracted to panic.

***

The following evening Jaymie showed up too late for the tribute show. Everyone had already left. The room was dark except for the stage lights, which emitted a deep red ambience that drew him toward the stage even as his gut warned him that everything was wrong. The microphone had come loose from its clip and now dangled by its cord from the mic stand, swaying in a non-existent breeze.

He hoisted himself onto the stage, his body seeming to move according to a will not his own. He stepped over a monitor, grasped the mic and tapped it. At his touch, a thunderous heartbeat resounded from the many monitors on the stage.

He croaked, “Check, one two—” and his voice blared back at him, all reverb and echoes and none of the genuine timbre of the dry signal. The mic was mixed too hot and improperly grounded; an electric shock snapped through his lips and a shriek of feedback assaulted him from the surrounding monitors. He cringed and realized the whole stage was monitors—just a jumble of unnecessary speakers with loops and coils of cords sliding around everywhere, like a huge nest of garter snakes writhing through a pit of rocks. Or were they the angry, empty vines from a stripped pumpkin plant?

He began singing a song where all the words were backwards and none of it made any sense, and with each line he sang, he learned more of what had happened to his friends. The murderer had torn through his band, driving Jo away and forcing Rex to flee to a frozen tundra desertscape devoid of hiding spots, hunted… He choked and stopped singing. The feedback was a constant dull ache on high C.

He ignored the voice of warning in his head and carefully threaded his way between the monitors toward the back of the stage—don’t do it—wanting to turn around with every step through the living, seething cables, and he didn’t want to look but there was a red spill leaking from under the bass drum, and behind the hi hat—no don’t look—a pale long-fingered hand reached forevermore toward a stray drumstick—

Jaymie woke up gasping in the darkness of his room. He tried to curl into a ball but was prevented by a weight pressing into chest, too heavy to be one of the cats. In the dark he could just make out a wide brown eye peeking out at him from under a veil of floppy hair, inches from his face.

“Jesus Christ Aar, what the fuck!” Jaymie shouted. “Where have you—you scared the shit out of me!” He planted his palm on the forehead in front of him and pushed it away. “Where the hell have you been! I’ve been going crazy here! We were looking for you—are you trying to teach me a lesson for going off with Daffodile? I get it. I’m sorry, ok? Jesus. Motherfucker! I thought you got murdered!”

Something wasn’t right.

“We’ve been looking, fucking, everywhere… I dreamed you died… Why did you leave me? Put the light on, for Christ’s sake,” Jaymie panted, losing steam. A freezing draught was blowing into the room from the window, which was wide open. The winter wind blew the curtain aside, and in the moonlight a sliver of his brother’s face was visible, his eyebrow raised sardonically. Snowflakes dusted his hair.

“I had to go talk to the cops… Did you come in through the window? Why are you… What’s wrong with you?” Jaymie suddenly had the feeling he was about to wake up a second time, alone. He suspected he was stuck in a loop where you keep waking up from a nightmare into another nightmare, indefinitely.

The man cocked his head. His freckles flashed in the light. But Aaron had always had that little pattern that looked like Ursa Minor above his right eye, and now he didn’t. His face was a little fuller, his chest had broadened almost imperceptibly—only someone who knew him very well could have noticed. Jaymie’s stomach dropped. This man was more like… him.

“I heard you’d been looking for me,” grinned the creature.