Leafstorm
06-22-2008, 04:28 PM
It was not the polite rapping of some annoying salesperson, but a loud banging, as if the door would be smashed in if I didn’t answer it promptly. <?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" /><o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
I was house-sitting on Püégâ Zčd for my Aunt Dot, who was away on vacation – a galactic core cruise for seniors. She had talked me into traveling via the latest technology – repliportation – in order to arrive before her departure. I consented with some trepidation, as I had never repliported before. But I couldn’t refuse my dear aunt, and traveling by the conventional modes would not have gotten me there in time. So I repliported. <o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
I’d been on the planet only a few hours. I knew no one and had made no contact with anyone but my aunt, who was heading out the door and handing me the key as I arrived. The banging on the door, then, not only made me fly up out of my aunt’s worn but comfortable recliner, but also sent anxious chills up and down my spine. <o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
Despite her wealth my aunt lived frugally in a sparsely furnished house on the outskirts of a small Püégâ Zčdian town. My aunt was a bit of a recluse and had never installed a visitor viewer at her front door. Back on earth I had a VV with an X-ray weapons scanner – a necessity in the neighborhood where I lived. <o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
There was an antique peephole in the door, but in the twilight I couldn’t see the face of my darkly clad door whacker, who was turned sideways with his shoulders hunched. <o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
I opened the door, the visitor turned, and the shock of recognition hit me like a cold wind on the planet Rhigos. It was me!<o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
“You!” I squeaked, for the shock had altered my voice. <o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
“Yes, me!” he shouted. “Lemal Laplace, the true and soon to be the only Lemal Laplace!” <o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
He slammed the door shut, dragged me into the living room, pushed me into the recliner and anchored me there with some rope he’d brought with him. He then dragged over a rocking chair, sat directly in front of me, pulled from out of his pant leg a sawed-off, double-beamed laser blaster and pointed it at my nose. <o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
“Surprised to see me?” he asked with a derisive sneer that, I’m ashamed to admit, I recognized as my own. <o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
“But,” I stammered, “If you repliported here, then the original Lemal – ”<o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
“Don’t worry your little head with the details,” he interrupted. “The point is this universe needs only one of us, don’t you agree?” <o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
“. . . is still on earth,” I completed my thought, “and you’re not the original.” <o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
He ignored me and grinned cruelly at my discomfort. For a moment I thought I was gazing into a mirror, and my hand moved involuntarily to my mouth to remove a bit of food lodged between his two front teeth. <o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
“Hey! What are you doing with that?” he said as he snatched up the spoon from an empty bowl on the table beside me. <o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
“Take your filthy hands off my panda bear spoon, you imposter!” I demanded. The scoundrel was holding my favorite spoon, the one with the panda on the handle. <o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
“Your panda bear spoon! Ha!” He peered at the spoon and then glared at me. “I’ll have to get this disinfected now. No telling what kind of diseases – ”<o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
“I’m perfectly healthy, and you know it,” I told him. <o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
“Yeah, well I’m more perfectly healthy.” <o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
“You can’t be more perfectly anything.” <o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
“Oh shut up, you pedantic old goat!” <o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
In his eyes there gleamed the satisfaction of having said something he’d wanted to say for a long time. I struggled furiously in my bonds, and if I could have freed an arm I would have punched the lout. <o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
He picked up the bowl and with a finger tasted the melted ice cream that remained. <o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
“You’ve been eating my favorite flavor, you nilbit!” <o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
There was no point in denying that he knew what the flavor was. My captor was me, and so his favorite flavor was Pemmican Ripple, #11 in the Däaganhäaz Native Terran series. He took another finger lick. <o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
“Bet there’s more in the freezer, eh?” He flattened my nose with the laser blaster. “There'd better be.” <o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
He sauntered off to the kitchen and I listened to him rummage through the freezer and then the refrigerator. <o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
“Getting a little low on <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" /><st1:City><st1:place>Dijon</st1:place></st1:City>, aren’t I?” He laughed a moronic sounding laugh that I’d always tried to suppress in public. “Don’t mind if I make a sandwich, do you?” <o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
“There’s an unopened jar of mustard in the cupboard,” I told him, only because I can’t stand a sandwich without it. <o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
“Ah, yes. I see it. Thank you.”<o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
“You’re welcome.” <o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
As the ersatz Lemal made his sandwich I began to curse myself more than him – for agreeing to travel by an obviously unperfected technology. I had stupidly assumed that by now all the bugs had been worked out. The theory certainly seemed sound enough: scan a person’s body, identify and map each and every molecule and atom, transmit the data to a distant location, and, using atoms available at the destination, (atoms being nonindividualized and identical at all locations in the universe), build an exact replica of the traveler – body, mind, and memory. <o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
Sure, there were glitches in the early trials: three legs repliported rather than two, an eye peering out of a navel, a tongue hanging embarrassingly from an armpit. And there was the incident of the man who, upon arrival at his destination, discovered himself to be a she. That, perhaps, should be considered an unplanned innovation rather than a snafu, in light of the now not infrequent demand for “gender trips”. <o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
But these are all minor mishaps compared to the situation I found myself in. They are all no more than program errors, correctable and not always unwanted. My dilemma was the result of the type of error which plagues even the best technology: operator error. <o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
What the repliporter operator is supposed to do is terminate the traveler – the original, the person who came into the repliporter station and bought a ticket for Mmoorthe, Q'uing Runa, or Püégâ Zčd. Thus an inconvenience and a philosophical conundrum are both eliminated: namely, if an exact replica is made, who is the real Lemal – the original Lemal at the point of departure, or the new Lemal at the point of arrival?<o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
No one quibbled with the ethics of the solution, because, given the option, no one, no matter how wonderful they thought themselves, wanted a second “I” – not mentally, and definitely not corporeally. <o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
It seems that in my case the pimply-faced teenager that repliported me not only failed to terminate the original, but also repliported him a second time, sending a second Lemal copy straight into my living room, where the brute was now eating my ice cream with my panda bear spoon, with a look of surly impudence on his face. <o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
I was about to accuse the slob, (ice cream was dripping from the corner of his idiotic grin), of lying – of not being the original Lemal but a mere facsimile, like me. His arrival only a few hours after mine proved that – if the true original Lemal had traveled by spaceship it would have taken him several months to get here. <o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
My accusation was pre-empted by a second intruder, who stupidly ignored the open front door and smashed the living room window. He climbed through and presented to two shocked Lemals a third Lemal. (He actually made four, as the original was obviously still alive back on earth.)<o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
The new arrival wasted no time: with his mazer-particalizer he stunned my captor, tied him to the rocking chair, and declared that he was the true and soon to be the only Lemal. But instead of killing us then and there, Lemal Three went to the kitchen. <o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
“Hey! You scumbags didn’t eat all the ice cream, did you?” he said. <o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
“In the freezer on the left,” I told him, because, despite my rancor, I couldn’t help but be hospitable to myself. <o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
“Under the frozen prune bagels,” added Lemal Two, no doubt feeling the same odd mixture of solicitude and desire to commit suihomicide. <o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
“This means that Lemal, the original, was still alive after I left,” remarked Two, as Three noisily ransacked the kitchen. <o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
“Well duh!” I said to Two. <o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
“No need to be rude,” he replied. <o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
We both jumped at the sound of a bedroom window shattering. <o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
“And still alive, if I’m not mistaken,” I said gravely. I wasn’t mistaken: from out of the bedroom bounded Lemal Four, brandishing a supercharged meganegator in one hand and a coil of rope in the other. <o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
Seeing himself outgunned, Three dropped his weapon on the kitchen floor and surrendered the last serving of Pemmican Ripple. He was then tied prone and ignominiously to the cat scratching post. <o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
“Ouch! Take it easy!” protested Three. <o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
“Hey, let the guy breathe!” said Two. <o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
“Lighten up, buddy!” I added. <o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
Lemal Four just snarled at us and tightened the knot. He was about to take his first bite of ice cream when Lemal Five appeared at the front door, pointing a pearl-handled quantum fragmentizer. <o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
Four laid down his weapon and at the same instant a familiar voice – mine – shouted “Drop it!” It was Lemal Six with a snub-nosed chaosizer aimed at Five’s head. <o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
“Don’t move!” barked Lemal Seven, as he leveled his portable black hole launcher at Six. <o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
“Freeze!” screamed Lemal Eight, as he pushed his way into the crowded living room and waved a semi-automatic planet atomizer. <o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
Over the next few minutes Lemals entered the house in various ways and, briefly, took command. The air was filled with the shouts and curses of Lemals – Lemals wielding menacing weapons and coils of rope, getting the drop on other Lemals. The house quickly became exponentially crammed with loud-mouthed Lemals – me’s, that is. <o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
The bowl of melting ice cream was grabbed and snatched this way and that. The cacophony grew louder and we were quickly becoming like marinated Mmoorthe lepuids packed in a tin. Lemals were being stepped on, elbowed in the ribs, kneed in the crotches, and squashed against the walls; all of which pained me tremendously, as I was unable to suppress the acute empathy I was feeling for my counterfeit selves. <o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
Just when I thought I was about to be suffocated to death – I was now the bottom Lemal in a pile of a dozen or so – I heard a new, unfamiliar voice, shouting from outdoors through a megaphone. <o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
“All right you Lemals! The house is surrounded! Come out quietly with your hands high!” <o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
I’d never imagined I could feel so much relief at being arrested, or at hearing a voice other than my own. For several minutes Lemals filed out of the house and into waiting police vans. A few stragglers had to be flushed out: two from the chimney, one from the refrigerator, and one from the liquor cabinet. The oaf had imbibed all of my favorite port – he was shamefully soused when they dragged him away. <o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
Finally, the police got around to freeing the ones of us that were tied up, and then I and all the other Lemals were trundled off to jail, where we were stuck six in a cell. <o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
I spent an agonizing night listening to myselves snore, whimper, cry, bicker, threaten each other, attempt to bribe a guard, demand lawyers, plan a breakout, and even pray for divine intervention. All the while I feared that the authorities would not be able to identify me from the copies. Neither fingerprinting nor DNA analysis, after all, would do any good. <o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
Later, after my true identity had been established and I’d been freed, it was explained to me what had happened. <o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
“It seems,” said the police captain, “that Brunklelissche, the repliporter operator, felt that you had offended him. That, plus the fact that he was probably a few kilograms of enriched uranium short of a critical pile, caused him to seek revenge on you, Mr. Laplace.”<o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
“I offended him!” I said. “The kid was picking his nose and singing puerile songs while he scanned me – scanned the original Lemal, that is. I merely quoted literature to him – Swift: ‘I cannot but believe the bulk of your natives to be the most pernicious race of little odious vermin that nature ever suffered to crawl upon the surface of the earth.’ Clearly the idiot was too stupid to catch the self-deprecating nature of the quote, as we are both members of the same species.” <o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
The officer shrugged. “Self-defecating or not, it apparently rubbed him the wrong way. Like I said, the kid was a few galaxies shy of a cluster from the start. <o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
“Anyway,” the officer continued, “he kept the original Lemal alive and comatose, and sent an army of repliportants after you, all of them claiming to be the real Lemal Laplace.” <o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
“I don’t mean to look a gift horse in the mouth – and that’s self-deprecating, by the way – but how were you able to identify me from all the others?” <o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
“Simple,” he replied. “They got wind of the crime back on earth – an elderly man waiting to go to Paradise Sigma saw Brunklelissche churning out Lemals. So they nabbed the kid, they wasted – er, excuse me, terminated the original Lemal – and they alerted us here on Püégâ Zčd. <o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
“To identify you we told each Lemal in private, as you recall, that he was the real Lemal and that all the others would be terminated. We then told each Lemal to pick up his weapon on the way out. Since you were the only one to not claim a weapon we knew you were you, so to speak.”<o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
“And the others?” I asked. <o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
“Well, a Püégâ Zčdian manufacturer heard about all of you and wanted to start a second plant staffed by all the Lemals. But, you’ll be glad to hear that they were all exterm- I mean, terminated.”<o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
On the way back to my aunt’s house I stopped at a store and picked up a half gallon of Pemmican Ripple, and as an extra treat for my troubles, a Pemmican Swirl cheesecake. <o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
When I arrived at the house I went into the bathroom and stared at my visage in the mirror longer than I normally can. I became convinced that the few gray hairs amongst all the dark ones, and the lines at the corners of my eyes, had not been there the day before. <o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
Yesterday, perhaps I was Lemal One. Today . . .
<o:p></o:p>
I was house-sitting on Püégâ Zčd for my Aunt Dot, who was away on vacation – a galactic core cruise for seniors. She had talked me into traveling via the latest technology – repliportation – in order to arrive before her departure. I consented with some trepidation, as I had never repliported before. But I couldn’t refuse my dear aunt, and traveling by the conventional modes would not have gotten me there in time. So I repliported. <o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
I’d been on the planet only a few hours. I knew no one and had made no contact with anyone but my aunt, who was heading out the door and handing me the key as I arrived. The banging on the door, then, not only made me fly up out of my aunt’s worn but comfortable recliner, but also sent anxious chills up and down my spine. <o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
Despite her wealth my aunt lived frugally in a sparsely furnished house on the outskirts of a small Püégâ Zčdian town. My aunt was a bit of a recluse and had never installed a visitor viewer at her front door. Back on earth I had a VV with an X-ray weapons scanner – a necessity in the neighborhood where I lived. <o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
There was an antique peephole in the door, but in the twilight I couldn’t see the face of my darkly clad door whacker, who was turned sideways with his shoulders hunched. <o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
I opened the door, the visitor turned, and the shock of recognition hit me like a cold wind on the planet Rhigos. It was me!<o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
“You!” I squeaked, for the shock had altered my voice. <o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
“Yes, me!” he shouted. “Lemal Laplace, the true and soon to be the only Lemal Laplace!” <o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
He slammed the door shut, dragged me into the living room, pushed me into the recliner and anchored me there with some rope he’d brought with him. He then dragged over a rocking chair, sat directly in front of me, pulled from out of his pant leg a sawed-off, double-beamed laser blaster and pointed it at my nose. <o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
“Surprised to see me?” he asked with a derisive sneer that, I’m ashamed to admit, I recognized as my own. <o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
“But,” I stammered, “If you repliported here, then the original Lemal – ”<o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
“Don’t worry your little head with the details,” he interrupted. “The point is this universe needs only one of us, don’t you agree?” <o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
“. . . is still on earth,” I completed my thought, “and you’re not the original.” <o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
He ignored me and grinned cruelly at my discomfort. For a moment I thought I was gazing into a mirror, and my hand moved involuntarily to my mouth to remove a bit of food lodged between his two front teeth. <o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
“Hey! What are you doing with that?” he said as he snatched up the spoon from an empty bowl on the table beside me. <o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
“Take your filthy hands off my panda bear spoon, you imposter!” I demanded. The scoundrel was holding my favorite spoon, the one with the panda on the handle. <o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
“Your panda bear spoon! Ha!” He peered at the spoon and then glared at me. “I’ll have to get this disinfected now. No telling what kind of diseases – ”<o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
“I’m perfectly healthy, and you know it,” I told him. <o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
“Yeah, well I’m more perfectly healthy.” <o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
“You can’t be more perfectly anything.” <o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
“Oh shut up, you pedantic old goat!” <o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
In his eyes there gleamed the satisfaction of having said something he’d wanted to say for a long time. I struggled furiously in my bonds, and if I could have freed an arm I would have punched the lout. <o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
He picked up the bowl and with a finger tasted the melted ice cream that remained. <o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
“You’ve been eating my favorite flavor, you nilbit!” <o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
There was no point in denying that he knew what the flavor was. My captor was me, and so his favorite flavor was Pemmican Ripple, #11 in the Däaganhäaz Native Terran series. He took another finger lick. <o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
“Bet there’s more in the freezer, eh?” He flattened my nose with the laser blaster. “There'd better be.” <o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
He sauntered off to the kitchen and I listened to him rummage through the freezer and then the refrigerator. <o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
“Getting a little low on <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" /><st1:City><st1:place>Dijon</st1:place></st1:City>, aren’t I?” He laughed a moronic sounding laugh that I’d always tried to suppress in public. “Don’t mind if I make a sandwich, do you?” <o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
“There’s an unopened jar of mustard in the cupboard,” I told him, only because I can’t stand a sandwich without it. <o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
“Ah, yes. I see it. Thank you.”<o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
“You’re welcome.” <o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
As the ersatz Lemal made his sandwich I began to curse myself more than him – for agreeing to travel by an obviously unperfected technology. I had stupidly assumed that by now all the bugs had been worked out. The theory certainly seemed sound enough: scan a person’s body, identify and map each and every molecule and atom, transmit the data to a distant location, and, using atoms available at the destination, (atoms being nonindividualized and identical at all locations in the universe), build an exact replica of the traveler – body, mind, and memory. <o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
Sure, there were glitches in the early trials: three legs repliported rather than two, an eye peering out of a navel, a tongue hanging embarrassingly from an armpit. And there was the incident of the man who, upon arrival at his destination, discovered himself to be a she. That, perhaps, should be considered an unplanned innovation rather than a snafu, in light of the now not infrequent demand for “gender trips”. <o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
But these are all minor mishaps compared to the situation I found myself in. They are all no more than program errors, correctable and not always unwanted. My dilemma was the result of the type of error which plagues even the best technology: operator error. <o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
What the repliporter operator is supposed to do is terminate the traveler – the original, the person who came into the repliporter station and bought a ticket for Mmoorthe, Q'uing Runa, or Püégâ Zčd. Thus an inconvenience and a philosophical conundrum are both eliminated: namely, if an exact replica is made, who is the real Lemal – the original Lemal at the point of departure, or the new Lemal at the point of arrival?<o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
No one quibbled with the ethics of the solution, because, given the option, no one, no matter how wonderful they thought themselves, wanted a second “I” – not mentally, and definitely not corporeally. <o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
It seems that in my case the pimply-faced teenager that repliported me not only failed to terminate the original, but also repliported him a second time, sending a second Lemal copy straight into my living room, where the brute was now eating my ice cream with my panda bear spoon, with a look of surly impudence on his face. <o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
I was about to accuse the slob, (ice cream was dripping from the corner of his idiotic grin), of lying – of not being the original Lemal but a mere facsimile, like me. His arrival only a few hours after mine proved that – if the true original Lemal had traveled by spaceship it would have taken him several months to get here. <o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
My accusation was pre-empted by a second intruder, who stupidly ignored the open front door and smashed the living room window. He climbed through and presented to two shocked Lemals a third Lemal. (He actually made four, as the original was obviously still alive back on earth.)<o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
The new arrival wasted no time: with his mazer-particalizer he stunned my captor, tied him to the rocking chair, and declared that he was the true and soon to be the only Lemal. But instead of killing us then and there, Lemal Three went to the kitchen. <o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
“Hey! You scumbags didn’t eat all the ice cream, did you?” he said. <o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
“In the freezer on the left,” I told him, because, despite my rancor, I couldn’t help but be hospitable to myself. <o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
“Under the frozen prune bagels,” added Lemal Two, no doubt feeling the same odd mixture of solicitude and desire to commit suihomicide. <o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
“This means that Lemal, the original, was still alive after I left,” remarked Two, as Three noisily ransacked the kitchen. <o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
“Well duh!” I said to Two. <o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
“No need to be rude,” he replied. <o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
We both jumped at the sound of a bedroom window shattering. <o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
“And still alive, if I’m not mistaken,” I said gravely. I wasn’t mistaken: from out of the bedroom bounded Lemal Four, brandishing a supercharged meganegator in one hand and a coil of rope in the other. <o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
Seeing himself outgunned, Three dropped his weapon on the kitchen floor and surrendered the last serving of Pemmican Ripple. He was then tied prone and ignominiously to the cat scratching post. <o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
“Ouch! Take it easy!” protested Three. <o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
“Hey, let the guy breathe!” said Two. <o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
“Lighten up, buddy!” I added. <o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
Lemal Four just snarled at us and tightened the knot. He was about to take his first bite of ice cream when Lemal Five appeared at the front door, pointing a pearl-handled quantum fragmentizer. <o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
Four laid down his weapon and at the same instant a familiar voice – mine – shouted “Drop it!” It was Lemal Six with a snub-nosed chaosizer aimed at Five’s head. <o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
“Don’t move!” barked Lemal Seven, as he leveled his portable black hole launcher at Six. <o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
“Freeze!” screamed Lemal Eight, as he pushed his way into the crowded living room and waved a semi-automatic planet atomizer. <o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
Over the next few minutes Lemals entered the house in various ways and, briefly, took command. The air was filled with the shouts and curses of Lemals – Lemals wielding menacing weapons and coils of rope, getting the drop on other Lemals. The house quickly became exponentially crammed with loud-mouthed Lemals – me’s, that is. <o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
The bowl of melting ice cream was grabbed and snatched this way and that. The cacophony grew louder and we were quickly becoming like marinated Mmoorthe lepuids packed in a tin. Lemals were being stepped on, elbowed in the ribs, kneed in the crotches, and squashed against the walls; all of which pained me tremendously, as I was unable to suppress the acute empathy I was feeling for my counterfeit selves. <o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
Just when I thought I was about to be suffocated to death – I was now the bottom Lemal in a pile of a dozen or so – I heard a new, unfamiliar voice, shouting from outdoors through a megaphone. <o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
“All right you Lemals! The house is surrounded! Come out quietly with your hands high!” <o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
I’d never imagined I could feel so much relief at being arrested, or at hearing a voice other than my own. For several minutes Lemals filed out of the house and into waiting police vans. A few stragglers had to be flushed out: two from the chimney, one from the refrigerator, and one from the liquor cabinet. The oaf had imbibed all of my favorite port – he was shamefully soused when they dragged him away. <o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
Finally, the police got around to freeing the ones of us that were tied up, and then I and all the other Lemals were trundled off to jail, where we were stuck six in a cell. <o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
I spent an agonizing night listening to myselves snore, whimper, cry, bicker, threaten each other, attempt to bribe a guard, demand lawyers, plan a breakout, and even pray for divine intervention. All the while I feared that the authorities would not be able to identify me from the copies. Neither fingerprinting nor DNA analysis, after all, would do any good. <o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
Later, after my true identity had been established and I’d been freed, it was explained to me what had happened. <o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
“It seems,” said the police captain, “that Brunklelissche, the repliporter operator, felt that you had offended him. That, plus the fact that he was probably a few kilograms of enriched uranium short of a critical pile, caused him to seek revenge on you, Mr. Laplace.”<o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
“I offended him!” I said. “The kid was picking his nose and singing puerile songs while he scanned me – scanned the original Lemal, that is. I merely quoted literature to him – Swift: ‘I cannot but believe the bulk of your natives to be the most pernicious race of little odious vermin that nature ever suffered to crawl upon the surface of the earth.’ Clearly the idiot was too stupid to catch the self-deprecating nature of the quote, as we are both members of the same species.” <o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
The officer shrugged. “Self-defecating or not, it apparently rubbed him the wrong way. Like I said, the kid was a few galaxies shy of a cluster from the start. <o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
“Anyway,” the officer continued, “he kept the original Lemal alive and comatose, and sent an army of repliportants after you, all of them claiming to be the real Lemal Laplace.” <o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
“I don’t mean to look a gift horse in the mouth – and that’s self-deprecating, by the way – but how were you able to identify me from all the others?” <o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
“Simple,” he replied. “They got wind of the crime back on earth – an elderly man waiting to go to Paradise Sigma saw Brunklelissche churning out Lemals. So they nabbed the kid, they wasted – er, excuse me, terminated the original Lemal – and they alerted us here on Püégâ Zčd. <o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
“To identify you we told each Lemal in private, as you recall, that he was the real Lemal and that all the others would be terminated. We then told each Lemal to pick up his weapon on the way out. Since you were the only one to not claim a weapon we knew you were you, so to speak.”<o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
“And the others?” I asked. <o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
“Well, a Püégâ Zčdian manufacturer heard about all of you and wanted to start a second plant staffed by all the Lemals. But, you’ll be glad to hear that they were all exterm- I mean, terminated.”<o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
On the way back to my aunt’s house I stopped at a store and picked up a half gallon of Pemmican Ripple, and as an extra treat for my troubles, a Pemmican Swirl cheesecake. <o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
When I arrived at the house I went into the bathroom and stared at my visage in the mirror longer than I normally can. I became convinced that the few gray hairs amongst all the dark ones, and the lines at the corners of my eyes, had not been there the day before. <o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
Yesterday, perhaps I was Lemal One. Today . . .