Popular Clone (16 page)

CHAPTER 16

Humans always overexaggerate their own mental capacities. Thankfully, I have resolved that problem by being intellectually perfect.

—Dr. X, Notes on Human Weakness

Fisher woke up the next day with FP sleeping on his fore head, breathing pig-breath onto his face, which did nothing to improve his mood. After he'd pushed his pet off him, he lay in bed, staring at the ceiling. So far, the whole time Two had been alive had been nothing but a series of disasters.

He heard a rustling as Two climbed out of bed, keeping his eyes on the floor.

“Morning.”

“Morning,” Fisher said. A few seconds passed.

“Look,” Two said, “I'm not trying to cause trouble. I just want us to be a little more open with each other, okay? I'll make you a deal. You take this one. Nobody can tell us apart, right? You go and meet with Veronica, and I promise I'll stay out of sight here and cause no trouble.”

Fisher mulled on the idea for a bit. He didn't want to live his
whole
life through Two. And sooner or later, he would have to talk to Veronica himself. Otherwise there was no point. He sat up.

“All right,” he said. “I'll do it.” Two nodded.

“Good,” Two said. There was a pause. “You want to play a game?”

Fisher looked up. Was that a touch of guilt he saw in Two's eyes?

Fisher hesitated for just a moment. “Sure,” he finally said.

“
Uncanny Outlaws
?” Two asked.

Fisher grinned. It was his favorite video game. “Only if you're ready to get creamed.”

Fisher and Two settled onto Fisher's bed and lay on their stomachs, controllers cradled lightly in their hands. Fisher got up to turn on the system, then settled down next to his clone, and in moments the two were assaulting the mountain fortress of a demon territory governor, Arizona gunslingers with six-shooters and warlock spells.

“I hate this part,” Fisher said, dodging out of the way of a cannonball. “Right after the part with all the spikes, there's a ghost wall. You have to find the one little spot in it that you can jump through before the cannons blow you to pieces.”

Two's brow furrowed as he leapt and dodged his way up, trying to keep up with Fisher.

“Do the demons keep coming, or can you wipe all of them out with pistol fire?” Two said.

“They keep coming,” Fisher said, turning to pull off a quick shot at an impish minion. For a few minutes, the only sounds in the room came from the explosions on screen, and wails of the pixilated demons as they disinte-grated into computer dust.

“Fisher … ,” Two began finally. Fisher heard Two swallow and take a deep breath. “How can you tell when a girl likes you?” he blurted out.

Fisher was so stunned that his fingers stopped moving on the controls for a second, and a fiery skull plowed into and evaporated him. While he waited to pop back into the game, he turned to his clone.

“You're asking
me
for advice about
girls
?” His avatar reappeared and hastily dodged another projectile that threatened to wipe him out a second time.

“Sure,” Two said, casting a mystical barrier around them to shield them from incoming fire. “You're the one who makes the plans. You seem to know what you're doing, y'know? I figured maybe you'd have more of a sense of this stuff than I do.”

Fisher and Two were in the home stretch. They reached the mansion at the top of the mountain, and Fisher set dynamite in front of the door.

“But you always look so confident,” Fisher said. “You never trip over yourself or blurt out dumb things you don't mean.”

“Well, sure,” Two said, making his avatar dive behind a boulder as the door was blown to splinters. “Life at school can be intimidating: new people, new challenges. You have to meet it head-on. What else
can
you do?”

They stormed the mansion together, guns blazing, spells firing, dispatching the villain's guards quickly.

“As far as girls go, I can't say, honestly,” Fisher admitted. “I'm pretty sure no girl ever has liked me, so I wouldn't know.”

Two chuckled. “I guess we've got more important things going on.”

“Yeah,” Fisher said.
Like the lies I made up so I would
never
have to face school head-on.
An uncomfortable sense of guilt—and shame—began worming away in his stomach.

The final villain loomed on the screen, a huge man standing in a black cloud, a bowie knife in each hand.

“Ready?” Fisher said.

“It was good fightin' with ya, partner,” said Two in an affected southern accent.

Fisher smiled. “Right back at ya,” he said as both of them charged.

Fisher wished life were as simple as a video game: that if it got too hard he could just save, power off, and not think about it for a while before trying again. Or turn down the difficulty setting. Or even pop the disk out and put a different life in to see if he liked it any better.

He'd thought Two was completely sure of himself, that he really knew how to handle things. Apparently, Two had thought the same of him.

Were they both right … or were they both wrong?

Later in the day, Fisher came upstairs from lunch. As the meeting with Veronica approached, he was growing increasingly nervous. His stomach was doing the cancan, and his palms were sweating. Two was napping, and the sound of gentle snoring came from his hidden bunk. FP was also napping, although he had chosen a pile of socks as his place of rest.

“Okay, I'm heading out. Wish me luck,” he said, taking a deep breath and trying to calm himself down. “Listen, make sure you keep FP in line, okay? He has a tendency to run out of the house to try and eat through my mom's vegetables.” Two kept snoring. “Two? You hear me?” No response.

“Hey,” Fisher said, walking over to the old desk, “Two, I asked …”

His voice turned into a tiny squeak as he lifted the covers draped over the mattress and found nothing but a pile of pillows and a tape recorder, playing the sound of Two's snores on a loop.

Fisher felt anger welling inside of him. He should've known that Two's desire to make up had just been part of a larger trick.

He allowed himself a small, satisfied smile. Well, Fisher had tricks up his sleeve as well.

What Two
didn't
know was that while he and Fisher had played their video game earlier in the morning, Fisher had patted Two on the shoulder and stuck a tiny adhesive camera to it. It was a safe bet the camera was still in place.

Fisher bolted across the hall to his parents' bedroom. His parents were busy in their home labs. There was a chance they'd catch him here, but it was a chance he had to take. His mom had disabled the video-streaming capacity on his computer, but by meddling with a few wires, Fisher was able to establish a feed from the camera to the monitor in his parents' shower. Ordinarily, his mom or dad used this monitor to keep track of an experiment while showering. It was like a baby monitor, but the “baby” in this case often involved chemical reactions. More than once, Fisher had heard quick, watery footsteps sloshing down the hall just in time to stop something from exploding.

The screen fuzzed for a moment, then showed a Two's eye view—or rather, Two's-shoulder view—of a street. Fisher squinted and tried to orient himself. The clone was walking up to a small park not too far from their house.

“Hey, Fisher!” The camera view turned quickly. Amanda Cantrell was standing by the curb.

Of course
, Fisher thought. Two had tricked him, yet again, so he could make his meeting with Amanda.

“Hey, Amanda,” Two replied, the cool, swaggering tone coming back into his voice.

“C'mere!” she was calling to Two, beckoning with her hand. “I've been brainstorming the best way to begin the operation.”

“Excellent!” Two called back as he walked toward Amanda. Her smile was so big it looked like it was swallowing her whole face. Fisher tensed up. He didn't know what to do. Would this throw off the study plans with Veronica? Should he still meet her? What if it got back to the girls that Fisher had been in two places at once?

It was still only one o'clock. Maybe he should sit tight. Maybe Two intended to return soon. He
had
to know how important Fisher's meeting with Veronica would be.

“I've been putting together some ideas of my own,” Two was saying. “Why don't we find a comfortable spot to compare notes?”

Fisher whipped out the notebook he had tucked into his pocket and started scribbling down Two's movements, tone, and speech. This was valuable data if he ever wanted to get out a full sentence in Veronica's presence.

“That sounds great!” said Amanda. Her smile still hadn't budged, and Fisher began to feel uneasy. “How's your day so far?”

The camera shifted as Two shrugged. “Hasn't been great, but it's getting better.”

Fisher was too bothered by the look in Amanda's eyes to marvel for too long at his clone's confidence. There was something weird about Amanda today … something scarier about her than usual… .

“How are you?” Two asked.

“I'm good, Fisher,” Amanda was saying. Her face now took up most of the screen. “I'm … gooo
ooooooodddd
… .”

Her voice thinned out into digital static.

Fisher's whole body seized up as Amanda's black eyes glinted at him through the camera.

Amanda Cantrell's eyes weren't black. They were green.

Too late, Fisher realized that Amanda's eyes weren't eyes at all. They were cameras. And this wasn't Amanda. It was an android.

An Amanda-bot.

“Two! Watch out!” Fisher shouted uselessly, just as Two must have also realized that Amanda was an imposter. Two tried to jump back out of reach, but the robot's arms shot out and gripped him around the torso.

The Amanda-bot was even stronger than the
real
Amanda! The camera shook and the view got blurry as Two was pushed down to the ground. “Get up, Two!” Fisher shouted. “Get up! Get up and run!”

His mind was spinning in panic. Whose robot was this? What in the world was going on? Who even
had
this kind of technology?

Amanda-bot had Two in a hold, and Fisher heard tires screeching in the background. A black shape that looked like it might be the side of a van came into the picture. Fisher heard shouting.

“Secure the target!” a gruff male voice said. “Go!”

Black-clad figures jumped out of the van, and Two was pulled inside. Fisher saw the rectangle of light left by the van's open door narrowing as the door slid shut.

Then there was only sound. Two's screaming was muffled when something was shoved into his mouth.

“Target secure,” said a woman's voice.

“Go!” said the man. The van's engine revved up and it sped away.

“Help!” shouted Two, breaking free of his muffle for a moment. “Heeelllllp!” Then his voice was muffled again.