Jymmy liked everything about being alive. He liked eating and drinking and making music and all the other grand Dionysian pursuits that made him come alive—something he understood to be different than just being ‘alive’ in the literal sense; he liked poetry and sex and conversations with people who knew more about the world than he did, which was everyone; he even liked sleeping, though he preferred not to do it at regular hours or for very long—but then occasionally all day for hours and hours at a time!

He also liked the internet and, like anyone exploring the early stages of adulthood without having had the advantage of a lengthy teenage-hood to mull it over, he’d become curious about his place in the world. He decided to put that miraculous omniscient God-phantasm to work researching the big questions. He Googled everything he could find on clones. The results were alarming.

He learned of the recent demonstrations by human rights activists calling for clones to be recognized not only as human and protected by the Canadian Charter, but as a vulnerable sector of the population, since many had no access to lawful income, or even memories, and were liable to end up in Original-Duplicate relationships that were at worst exploitative and abusive and at best uncomfortable examples of skewed power dynamics, not unlike the circumstances of newly-invented robot women in sci fi romances, or the naïve female love interests in mermaid-turned-human movies. Jymmy had no intention of being Jaymie’s mermaid.

Still, during the months he’d spent on his own, he’d become increasingly curious about his Original. When his co-worker told him Jaymie was looking for him, he decided the time had come to meet his maker.

He’d found his way to the house on Pandora street where, six months earlier, he’d spent half an hour trying without success or enthusiasm—or any idea where he was or what was going on or what elbows were for or what the weird bad feeling in his brain was from (prescription-grade amphetamine withdrawal)—to learn the drums. He’d quickly found that he had no desire to be used by his Original; he wanted to make his own songs and start his own band and be the frontman of it, just as soon as he’d figured out who he was and whether the universe continued beyond the top of the basement stairs.

Jymmy stood on the sidewalk and beheld the house where he’d made those early, bitter-sweet memories. He knew from past encounters with front doors at nighttime that the home would be locked and that humans with regular sleep cycles were scheduled to be in bed. Proud of this experiential knowledge, yet undeterred by it, he used Jaymie’s second floor bedroom window to gain access. It was a lengthier process than he first estimated but, once begun, proved a delightful challenge.

The method involved breaking into the garden shed for a ladder, propping it against the house, taking a fantastic tumble back to earth, ladder and all, using it to instead climb the maple tree in the yard, shimmying along a mid-level branch to the low porch roof—which was terribly icy and resulted in another comical spill back to the snow-padded lawn—making a second, more cautious vault to the porch roof, and traversing it to the pine trees at the other end, which couldn’t be climbed from the ground because their lowest branches had been shorn.

The next stunt was to scale the pines, jump (a maneuver which was more difficult than it looked and took two tries and one more exhilarating plunge to the ground [briefly interrupted by the porch roof]) and grab onto the window, which was not only unlocked but open the tiniest crack at the bottom—careless humans! He slid it up without difficulty, somewhat disappointed at the anti-climactic finale to his caper.

Once inside, he explored Original Jaymie’s bedroom and found surprisingly little of interest, except for an excellent pair of pants slung over the back of a chair—he immediately tried them on—and Jaymie’s wallet, which he relieved of its thirty-four dollars and lovingly returned to the bedside table. He didn’t even steal the driver’s license (Big Niki would never ID him) or debit card (a mysterious item that people tapped on the thingy when they didn’t have money for their drinks; any time he tried to ask, in a casual roundabout way, what the penalty was for tapping the card too many times, they seemed to think he was just being charming. Anyway, Big Niki never charged him for drinks).

He began a curious and careful examination of his Original, which culminated in Jaymie waking up with Jymmy sitting on his ribs.

***

“You know, I think I’d help you out even if you weren’t letting me keep these pants. I’ve been sort of bored lately. I keep meaning to make a band but then I get distracted by things that aren’t even interesting and I don’t really care about—they’re just, I don’t know, they’re colourful and the words hook me in a certain way. And then my brain feels kind of weird after, like I’m agitated and I want to do stuff, but I forget what I was about to do. Do you ever get that?”

“It’s totally normal,” Jaymie assured him distractedly. “I don’t have time to explain how everyone online is preying on your attention span, but it’s probably good you don’t have a phone…” He scanned the row of unassuming offices on Gary street, looking for the address from his letters. The street was quiet; it was still early morning. It had taken the two Jaymies very little time to negotiate an exchange of pants in return for backup at the Clone Office.

“These are amazing—they show just enough of my socks at the bottom! Like, do you have a girlfriend who buys your pants for you?”

“That’s sexist.”

“Really? I thought ‘sexist’ was when you tell a girl she should smile, but she doesn’t feel like it, and you just wanted her to be happier and to start a conversation that might lead to her sleeping with you, but she tells you it’s sexist and she doesn’t like it, and then sometimes she sleeps with you anyway, and she wants you to say things that are much worse than telling her to smile, which seems bizarre after she was so offended, but what are you going to do, complain?”

“You’re not wrong,” said Jaymie, who suspected that not even Rex was equipped with the rhetoric skills necessary to tackle this particular doozy. “…And you know, I happen to be pretty good at finding clothes that are cheap and fit me right.”

The sickly winter sun clawed its way over the prairie horizon and smeared anemic light directly onto the number they were looking for. Jaymie let out a relieved puff of frost, glad the place existed, and tried the door, which was locked.

The two men finished their cigarettes, mentally preparing for the next step. Jaymie had known his chances of finding a real person at the office on a Sunday morning were slim, and had decided his best hope was to break in and see if he could find out where the ‘confiscated clones’ were being kept.

A shadow moved on the other side of the door. Jaymie peered in and knocked on the glass. A man turned the bolt, said with some uncertainty, “Are you here about clones?” and let them in.

“I’m new here,” he quickly told them. “I’m starting the weekend shift, which only exists as of today—it’s for people who can’t pay their fees on regular office hours.” He looked more closely at them as they pulled away hoods and scarves. “Oh, it’s you! I’m glad. Oh my god, how many clones did you make?”

Jaymie, who had never met the man before, felt a rush of hope at having been recognized. “Just this one,” he said, motioning toward his One True Clone. “I want to register him and get my brother back. Like, today.”

“Hang on, ‘register?’” said Jymmy.

“Ok, it takes a couple of business days to process—” said the man.

“Today,” Jaymie reiterated. The man looked uncomfortable and Jaymie uneasily wondered whether he had security on hand.

“I’m Jymmy!” said Jymmy, eagerly offering his hand.

“Oh, uh, Spencer,” said the man. Jaymie wondered if Spencer found Jymmy as subtly unnerving as he did. If he did, he didn’t let on.

“Spence, that’s a great tie—it really compliments your shirt,” said Jymmy.

“Thank you!” said Spencer.

“Did you pick them out yourself?”

“I did, actually!” Spencer replied avidly. “I’m sort of into men’s fashion, although I told my colleague that the other day, and she laughed at me and implied that I might also be into men themselves—which there’s nothing wrong with, and I maybe am, although I haven’t felt like exploring it yet, but it just seemed unfair to make the assumption like it was a joke…”

“I might have done that once, just like her! See, I get all my sexual politics from sitcoms and the internet. But now I’ve been re-educated about sexism!” Jymmy gestured affectionately at Jaymie, who was dumbstruck with horror that his clone was being a better Jaymie than himself. “Would you like to be friends with me?” asked the clone, grinning wolfishly.

“What? Oh—sure! Uh, maybe once you’re registered, we can hang out and watch a game sometime,” suggested Spencer, clearly taken aback at the forthright offer of male friendship.

“Like what people watch on the TV at the bar!” said Jymmy, keen to demonstrate his Game expertise. “The thing is, Spencer, I kind of like being off the map. I’m not sure I’m ready to think about registration just yet.”

“Well, they might come Collect you,” said Spencer regretfully.

“That doesn’t sound ideal…” said Jymmy.

“Perhaps we can work something out.” He turned to Jaymie. “What did you say about your other clone? —And I feel really bad about having to collect him the other night. I assure you I did not relish the experience.”

“That’s my brother,” said Jaymie, and explained his theory that Aaron had been taken as a substitute debt-repayment in Jymmy’s place.

Spencer gave a startled laugh. “You’re not going to believe this,” he confessed, “but we thought he was the clone! See, we knew you’d had one made…”

“They’re nothing alike!” Jaymie exclaimed.

“And here was this guy who looks like you but showing signs like he’s near expiration…”

“Expiration? We’re twenty-five!”

“What a hilarious misunderstanding!” said Jymmy, and the two new friends chortled to each other while Jaymie fumed at the error that had caused him such grief over the past twenty-four hours.

“Oh my god, that’s too funny—I’m texting my co-worker right now, she’s going to feel so stupid…Can’t believe one of them really was a twin! As if. Seriously, I’m really sorry about all this…” Spencer tapped at his phone, still chuckling.

“So, you’ll let him out now?” Jaymie demanded. “Because we have a show tonight and family dinner, and I’m guessing he’s not a happy camper at the moment.”

“I’ll go over there and see what we can do about Jymmy’s registration situation. Things are a little up in the air because of the policy changes coming. And yes—your brother. We’ll get it all worked out.”

“Great—we’ll come with you.” said Jaymie.

“Not me!” said Jymmy. “Don’t want to get Collected, lol!”

Jaymie began to retort, but Spencer was already explaining that Originals were not permitted at the holding facility. He promised to go there immediately and be in touch, exchanging contact info with Jymmy and then, at Jaymie’s insistence, with him as well.

“You didn’t tell me about registration,” Jymmy lightly admonished him. “No way I’m going to get taken, like—what’s his name? Alan. No…”

Powerless to do anything more, they went home, where Jymmy noticed that the front door was unlocked—and had been since Friday, Jaymie explained, in case Aaron had lost his key. Jaymie called Rex to fill them in while Jymmy put the ladder back in the shed, shaking with amusement at his own miscalculation.

***

Jo couldn’t decide whether to practice guitar. She sat on her bed staring at the instrument. The tribute show was twelve hours away, which meant that normally she’d be sleeping late in preparation for a long night, making herself a leisurely breakfast, and settling in to run warm-ups and go over any songs that had taken her longer to memorize.

Instead she’d woken before dawn and been unable to fall back asleep. She had no appetite and a headache. She’d called Big Brother Coffee to check when it opened, gotten dressed, and gone to collect her gear, trying not to think about her missing bandmate.

She downloaded an app so a stranger could drive her home with her guitar, amp and pedalboard. Her car was a lost cause for the time being; she’d get it towed tomorrow. She’d no-showed at work the day before and was probably fired and unable to afford a vehicle anyway.

When she got back the ache had eased but there was an awful, anxious knot somewhere deep in her chest, like when she’d thought she and her friends were going to get killed by that malevolent cult, but long and drawn out and with nothing around she could punch.

She knew she wouldn’t be able to focus on technical exercises.

She checked her email as a diversion and saw that a surf-rock cover band had contacted her to ask if she was comfortable enough with the genre to sub at their next show; their usual lead guitarist had been murdered in early November. A surge of rage punched through the fog of her wake-and-bake habit. She thought again of Alexandre—she’d known him!—poor drummer Alexandre who’d done nothing wrong and ended up headless.

Suddenly she was seventeen and playing her first Ballet Llama show and she was in an ecstatic fury because of the government and rich people and corruption etc., and she was ready to “fuck shit up,” as she would’ve crowed to the rioting audience back then, before she’d grown up and realized that no matter how good she got at the guitar, nobody was going to pay her enough to afford even her little basement apartment, and somehow that had become more disappointing than all the social injustices in the world.

She looked around the tiny, cardboard box-littered apartment—was it getting tinier? My life is shrinking, she thought.

Anyway, now it didn’t matter that she was broke because she’d lost a much more important drummer—no offense, Alexandre—and music was over.

I don’t have enough friends that I can afford some getting murdered.

She found a sharpie and a late rent warning from her landlord, and attached the paper blank-side-out to the fridge with a kitschy SG magnet her sister had bought for her birthday, having forgotten she preferred Fender.

She wrote down “house show” and “BL show,” and beneath the former she wrote “Lo Wave promoter couple” and “eyeliner girl” and “Colin” and “Sasha” and beneath the latter she wrote “Michaud” and “Jake and Oli” and “Sasha” and “drunk teenagers” and a few more people she knew, and then she realized how pointless this was, and how few names she actually knew compared to the number of people at each show, and that she didn’t actually suspect any of these people of murder anyway, and she threw her marker at the wall in abject misery.

Fortunately, her phone buzzed; Rex was texting to say that their brother was “a shitbag who I guess got high and cloned himself,” (poomoji) and they were furious at him and it was very hard to explain, but they were likely going to have Aaron back by suppertime—and then a “Fingers crossed!” GIF of Lindsay Lohan as twins in the Parent Trap—and would Jo mind, considering the circumstances, setting up and line checking while they had dinner with their family? Rex assured her she wouldn’t need to haul drums or amps, since backline was provided, and that they’d make sure Jaymie bought her beer in return, “or w/e your BEER is,” and then there were some emojis of a whiskey bottle and a weed leaf and an eggplant as suggestions.

Jo felt as though a thin guitar string had been slowly tightening around her throat and Rex had clipped it free. She told them she’d pick up their instruments later in the day.

She took up her Jaguar. She glanced once more at her murder list. Then she wondered if any of the people on it had also been at the last Shadowventures show, and whether the members of that band might be able to add a few names. She returned to the email and wrote that she’d been tremolo picking since before she could walk and would be happy to take the gig.