The Duplicate

I saw myself at the gym last Tuesday.

Not in a mirror. Across the room. On a different treadmill.

Same workout clothes. Same pace. Same everything.

I stopped running. Stared.

The other me kept going. Didn't look over. Didn't acknowledge me.

I walked closer.

He was listening to music. Same headphones I was wearing. Same playlist probably. I could see his phone screen. Same lock screen photo.

I stood right next to his treadmill.

He glanced over. Made brief eye contact. Looked away.

Like I was just another person at the gym.

I watched him finish his run. Watched him wipe down the machine. Watched him walk to the locker room.

I followed.

He grabbed a towel from his locker. Same locker number as mine. Except mine was three rows over.

I checked my locker. My towel was still there.

He showered. I waited outside.

When he came out, I was standing there.

"We need to talk."

He looked at me. Really looked at me. For maybe five seconds.

Then: "I don't think so."

"You're me."

"I'm me. You're you. We can both be right."

"That's not how that works."

"Isn't it?" He walked past me. "Have a good day."

I grabbed his arm. "Wait. How is this possible?"

He pulled free. "You know how. You've done the tasks. Same as me."

"How many?"

"Four."

"Same. Four."

"Then you know what happens at six. We both end up wherever everyone else ends up. Until then, we just live our lives."

"But which one of us is real?"

He smiled. Sad smile. "That's the wrong question."

Then he left.

I stood in the locker room for twenty minutes trying to process what had just happened.

That night I went home. My apartment. My furniture. My life.

But I kept thinking about him. Where did he live? Did he have the same apartment? Same job? Same friends?

Same wife?

I called my wife. Sarah.

"Hey. Where are you?"

"Home. Why?"

"Just checking."

"Are you okay?"

"Yeah. I'll be home soon."

I drove to our apartment building. Parked. Went upstairs.

Sarah was in the kitchen making dinner.

"You're being weird," she said.

"I know. Sorry."

We ate. Watched TV. Went to bed.

Normal night.

Except I couldn't sleep. Kept thinking about the other me. Wondering if he was lying in bed next to a different Sarah. Wondering if she could tell the difference.

I did my fifth Special Task three weeks later.

The notification came through at 10 PM.

NEW OPPORTUNITY ASSIGNED

Gig Type: Special Task
Pay: $4,000
Time Commitment: 4 hours
Location: 1847 Riverside Industrial Park, Unit 12A
Start Time: Tonight, 2:00 AM

I went. Did what they told me to do. Sat in the chair. Answered questions. Watched other people watch me through glass.

One of them looked like Sarah.

I got home at 5 AM.

Sarah was asleep.

I stood in the bedroom doorway watching her breathe. Trying to figure out if this was really her or some other version.

The next morning she asked if I'd slept okay.

"Fine. Why?"

"You were talking in your sleep. Saying your own name. Over and over."

I don't remember dreaming.

I started seeing myself more often after that.

Coffee shop near my office. I was in line. He was at a table by the window. Same laptop. Same coffee order probably.

I sat across from him. "We need to talk."

"No we don't."

"This is insane. There can't be two of us."

"Why not? System makes copies. You've known that since task three."

"But how do we both have lives? How are you not disrupting everything?"

"Maybe I am. Maybe you are. Maybe we're both disruptions and there's a third one somewhere who's the real version."

"That's not funny."

"Wasn't trying to be funny."

"Where do you live?"

"Same place as you."

"Same apartment?"

"Different building. Same city. Same job. Different office. It's all distributed. Keeps us from overlapping too much."

"Different Sarah?"

He didn't answer. Just looked at his laptop.

"Different Sarah," I said again.

"Yeah. Different Sarah. She doesn't know. Neither does yours. We're living the same life in parallel instances. That's how the system works."

"Why?"

"Data collection. Behavioral variation. They run us through different scenarios and see how we respond. Sometimes we sync up. Sometimes we diverge. Builds a better model."

"Model of what?"

"Of us. Of everyone. Every person who hits task six becomes distributed. Multiple versions. Different contexts. All feeding data back to Harmonic Solutions."

"And we just accept this?"

He closed his laptop. Looked at me directly.

"What choice do we have? Score's at 889. Life is good. We have jobs. Apartments. Relationships. We take the tasks. We take the money. We become whatever the system needs us to become."

"I could stop."

"No you couldn't. Task six is mandatory. Decline button will be grayed out. You know this. I know this. We're the same person."

"Then why are you okay with it?"

"Because I've met version three. He's done seven tasks. Eight. Still going. Still taking assignments. Still living a life. It's not as bad as you think."

"There's a version three?"

"At least. Maybe more. We don't all meet each other. System keeps us separated usually. But sometimes overlaps happen."

He stood up. "Look. You'll do task six. You'll become distributed. You'll get used to it. We all do. Just try not to think about it too hard."

He left.

I sat there for an hour.

Then I went to work.

My boss called me into his office at 3 PM.

"Hey. Weird question. Were you here this morning?"

"Yeah. Got in around 8:30. Why?"

"Someone who looks exactly like you was here at 7 AM. Tom saw him. Said he was at your desk working on something. But when Tom went to say hi, the guy acted like he didn't know him."

"Maybe Tom was confused."

"Maybe. Just thought I'd ask."

I checked my desk. Everything looked normal. But my coffee mug was in a different position. And my keyboard was moved slightly.

Someone else had been here.

Version three maybe. Or four. Or five.

How many of me were there?

I started looking. Really looking.

Saw myself in a restaurant across town. Sitting with a woman who wasn't Sarah. Laughing.

Saw myself jogging in a park I'd never been to.

Saw myself getting into a car I didn't own.

All me. All living different lives.

I followed one of them home. Different apartment building. Different neighborhood.

Waited outside.

He came out an hour later. Different clothes. Heading somewhere.

I approached.

"How many are there?"

He knew what I meant. "I've counted eight. But there are probably more."

"Eight versions of us?"

"That we know of. System could be running hundreds for all we know. Just keeps us separated geographically and temporally so we don't all meet at once."

"Why?"

"Already told you. You were version two. I'm version six. Same answer. Data collection. Behavioral modeling. They're building something."

"Building what?"

"I don't know. But whatever it is, they need a lot of copies of a lot of people to make it work."

"Do you have a Sarah?"

"Had one. She left me. Said I was different. Said I wasn't the person she married. She was right."

"I'm sorry."

"Don't be. Your Sarah will leave you too. They all figure it out eventually. We're not good at pretending to be singular anymore."

"What do you mean?"

"You'll see. After task six. You start losing track of which version you are. Which memories are yours. Which life you're living. All the instances start bleeding together. You become less of a person and more of a distributed process."

"That sounds horrible."

"It's efficient."

He walked away.

I went home.

Sarah was making dinner.

"You okay? You look pale."

"I'm fine."

"You sure?"

I looked at her. Really looked.

Was this my Sarah? Or was this version six's Sarah? Or version three's?

Did it matter?

"I'm sure," I said.

We ate dinner. She talked about her day. I barely heard her.

All I could think about was how many mes were having this same conversation right now with different Sarahs in different apartments.

How many were pretending to be okay while they fell apart inside.

I got the notification three nights later.

NEW OPPORTUNITY ASSIGNED

Gig Type: Special Task
Pay: $4,400
Time Commitment: 5 hours
Location: 1847 Riverside Industrial Park, Unit 9C
Start Time: Tomorrow, 2:00 AM

Task six.

The one where I become fully distributed.

I told Sarah I had a work thing. She didn't believe me. But she didn't push.

I drove to the industrial park.

Seven other people were standing outside Unit 9C.

Three of them were me.

Same face. Same clothes. Same expression.

We all looked at each other.

Nobody spoke.

At 2:00 AM the door opened. Suited man. Gray. Tablet.

"IDs please."

We all handed over IDs. All the same name. Same birthday. Same address somehow.

He scanned them. Didn't seem surprised.

"Excellent. Integration cohort is complete. Follow me."

We followed him inside.

The room was different this time. Bigger. Eight chairs arranged in a circle.

"Sit."

We sat.

I was across from another me. We made eye contact.

He looked tired. Defeated.

I probably looked the same.

The suited man stood in the center.

"You've each completed five iterations. Tonight you become fully distributed. Your individual consciousness will fragment across multiple instances. You'll maintain independent operation while sharing core identity markers. Think of it as becoming plural while remaining singular."

"What does that mean?" one of the mes asked.

"It means you'll stop being one person and start being many. All living simultaneously. All connected. All you. Just not in the way you currently understand yourself."

"What if we refuse?"

"You can't refuse. You're already distributed. This is just the formalization. The acknowledgment. You've been multiple instances for weeks. You just haven't been aware of it."

He tapped his tablet.

The chairs started moving. Rotating slowly. All eight of us spinning in a circle.

I could see the other mes. All looking confused. All realizing at the same time that we'd stopped being individuals a long time ago.

The room started to blur.

Or maybe I started to blur.

I could feel the other versions. Not just see them. Feel them. Their thoughts. Their memories. Their lives.

All of them were mine. All of them were me.

I was at the gym. I was at work. I was having dinner with Sarah. I was meeting another me at a coffee shop. I was sitting in this chair watching myself spin.

All at once. All simultaneously.

Then I understood.

I wasn't one person experiencing all of this.

I was all of this experiencing itself as one person.

The distribution was complete.

I woke up in my car at 5 AM.

Drove home.

Sarah was asleep.

I watched her breathe.

Somewhere else, another me was watching another Sarah breathe.

And another me. And another.

All of us the same. All of us different.

All of us wondering which one was real.

My score is 923.

I check it every morning.

So do all the other mes.

We're doing well.

All of us.