13. ONE PLUS ONE EQUALS ONE

The Professor's plans don't really add up.

Sergeant Stone was so deep in thought that he barely noticed the newcomer, even though his Inspector leapt to his feet, astounded.

“Just a minute,” Stone said to the Professor, “you said you were to all intents and purposes identical to what you refer to as your shadow, yet you’ve also had yourself sterilised? That’s not identical! It’s nothing like being identical!”

The clone of the man standing in the doorway might have answered, but he didn’t have a chance.

“Goo-goo, daddio!” interrupted the voice of Ruby.

“I’m sorry, but I thought it best to bring him and confront whatever might be here.” That was the brisk sound of Professor Dingle in whose care the man they called Ruby had been left.

Then Ruby moved further into the room and noticed Dolly Styx sitting down, confusion on her face when she realised that he was there. From the expression on her face it was clear she knew him well.

“Mamma!” he almost screeched, then “Dolly. My Dolly...”

And with no more ado he pulled himself forwards until he was standing right above her and looked down with what could only be described as a tender expression on his face. He was still dressed in the police issue overalls, but it was obvious that he had become instantly aroused by his proximity to her.

“Reuben,” she whispered.

The professor who was still holding the small pistol waved it in the direction of Ruby.

“That isn’t Reuben. I am!” he snarled, “he was drained of everything that made him Reeben Styx! I wiped his memories, his thoughts, his sexual desires, everything! He’s a husk, an empty shell, and only alive because I’m too soft to neutralise him like I should have!”

“So it’s you who dabbled with the man’s mind?” asked Professor Dingle, “I’m afraid minds are too complex to be left in the hands of rank amateurs, and that, sir, is what my opinion of you suggests you must be!”

“I wiped it! I know that I wiped it! I used my own technique and he ceased to be me! He was left with nothing, no memories, no thoughts, nothing!” gabbled Styx.

“Gun...” pronounced Ruby, and he reached out towards who was tantamount to being his doppelganger. The gun waved as his hands almost touched it, and sweat formed on Styx’s brow. He seemed to be fighting with something so deep within himself, and that was the question of pulling the trigger. Should he shoot the figure whose body had been his own until not so many months ago, or should he give in, surrender to himself. Because that’s what it seemed like. An armed conflict against himself.

And somewhere in the maelstrom of thoughts that whirled around in his head, causing almost painful confusion, was the memory that for many years he had looked in the mirror and seen the face in front of him looking back. He knew every detail, a tiny scar from a childhood game of fencing with real foils, another when he had cut himself badly when shaving years ago.

In the end, unable to cope with conflicting emotions he dropped the weapon. It clattered onto the floor and lay still until Inspector Wasp’s foot landed on it and trapped it.

“Not even the brightest men on the planet should play with toys like this,” he said quietly.

But the much younger Professor Styx was weeping and oblivious to anything being said to him. His wife (or sister’s clone) stood up and put one arm around him, gently muzzling her head against his cheek.

“Now then, darling,” she whispered, “it had to come to this sooner or later. You’re clever, yes, a genius, maybe, but there are more clever men and women in the world than you could count on the dreams you have at night, and you do have them, I know it, nightmares that make you scream and gnash your teeth and wail. I hear you. The time must have come.”

“They will go. I must adapt, that’s all,”

“And if they don’t? An eternity of nocturnal torment? Is that what you want for yourself?”

“Get to your chores, women!” snapped the man she was trying to comfort, “see if I care about night devils! I am going to become the people’s god, and if I can’t be that I might as well be nothing at all!”

“The police sergeant got it right,” she whispered, though they could all hear her, “when he suggested that the future might see you as a Neanderthal in a world of bright young things with talents and skills we can only dream of...”

“But I will grow!” he insisted, “I will learn! The future must be mine!”

“A Cro-Magnon man might have said that back in the stone age,” she whispered, “and if he appeared today he would still be that Cro-Magnon man and in no way like the deity you see yourself as being when a similar number of centuries have rolled along. Times and people move on but you’re trapped into being a clone of your first self.”

“I can grow too,” he sniffed, “I know I can. I have it all planned in my mind.”

“You might have done,” she said a little unkindly, “but you altered the blueprint when you became sexually sterile, and you can never change it back. It’s why you gave our shadows scarlet underwear!”

“Red for danger. Red for keep out. Red for ...nothing,” he sighed.

“Red for sterile.”

“It must be so! How could I continue in a world occupied in part by my offspring even if they have been conceived from clones? Think of it, woman! In a thousand years the whole population would consist of the offspring of my offspring’s offspring! So I had to stop that. I had to be unique.”

“This is all very interesting,” cut in Inspector Wasp, “and I’m sure you’ll have plenty of time over the years to come in order to calculate anything you want to calculate, but for now I need the answers to a few questions.”

“I’ve done nothing wrong. Nothing against the law,” said Styx stubbornly.

“Maybe you haven’t,” sighed the Inspector, “but at the moment we have two of you on our hands and I don’t know which one to arrest!”

“We … the same ….” The voice from the original Professor Styx, though older, suddenly contained meaning, sense.

“What would you do?” the Inspector ask Dingle.

“It’s your call, and I’m glad I’m not you,” confessed the other.

“Then I’m going to arrest you, Mr Styx, for waving a gun at a police officer and threatening to kill him,” said Wasp decisively. “That was something you shouldn’t have done. Very foolish and unworthy of a wannabe deity, if you want my opinion. Caution him, Stone, and we’ll cart him off to the station and see what he’s got to say for himself there.”

But Ruby had other ideas.

“No, no, no, not dadda,” he wailed. “Goo-goo-goo!” as he leapt towards Wasp, eyes glinting and alive with something more than the vacuum he had seemed to be.

And, thought Stone as he stuck one leg out to trip him, he was quite athletic for an older man with little sense.

© Peter Rogerson 23.09.19