Literally, I mean. It’s next Sunday A.D., when out for a jaunt you feel a strange tingly sensation coming over you. You pass out, waking up in a hospital bed. Looking around, you see yourself looking back from a bed opposite you, although there is no mirror. A doctor comes in and explains that he has developed the first Star Trek style transporter, or teleporter. Unfortunately, its transporter lock is a bit erratic and fixed accidentally on you and the technology hasn’t been perfected, resulting in a Thomas Riker type scenario…or that machine from The Prestige that made exact copies.
Every part of you has been recreated at the molecular level, every atom exactly in place, every electrical impulse, genetics, all the chemistry that is you identically reproduced as well as everything on your person - namely, your wallet. Your doppelgänger opposite has all the exact same memories, personality, everything. The doctor says that he found both of you unconscious on the street - there is no way of telling which of you was the ‘original’, as you’re perfectly identical at every level.
After giving both yous a medical all-clear he kicks you both out with an apology for the inconvenience. He’ll arrange the legal stuff as a form of compensation, so as far as the law is concerned it’s like you’ve got a long-lost identical sibling with the same name and details.
So…what next? Your double is you, but is forming new and distinct memories so will soon be you but with slightly different experiences, depending on how closely you stick together.
Do you try and live your identical lives as normal as possible? Arrange some sort of scam? Do you, y’know, get freaky with yourself? Take your double to a secluded area and introduce them to a brick, while defending yourself from the same? How would life with your S.O. be?
One of us gets to bugger right the fuck off to South America and never show up around here again. Living with one of me is bad enough, but two? I can’t even imagine the horror.
We’ll do paper-rock-scissors to decide who has to emigrate.
I think I would love it. It would be great to talk to someone who agreed with me totally - and I would know when she was lying. We could both out-wait each other to see who would do the dishes. We could take it turn about at work. I would have to invest in another Kindle and iMac - and I guess it would be a rush to see who got to wear the lovely, sloppy, baggy house clothes on the weekend.
+1, except with a coin flip. Rock-paper-scissors is more a head game than a game of chance, and I’m not doing that to myself.) One of me would go emigrate and start a new life, and it’d actually be a kind of fun adventure. Although I might try to kill my doppelganger in order to keep my husband. And we’d both know that possibility is there, so it’d make things really tense until one of is is well and truly moved on to a new life. We might keep in touch, though, just to confirm that we’re both happy and that the whole thing hasn’t turned into a massive tragedy.
I was actually thinking about this kind of scenario a while back, and decided that I probably wouldn’t make friends with myself, it’d be way too creepy to be around someone who tries to fill exactly the same social niche that I do. I would, however, respect what she’s trying to do with her life. Wait, is that self-respect? Holy cow, I have self-respect!
I think this. I tend to react to fill niches, to make things balance…hard to explain, but it’d be interesting to see what two of the same ‘balancers’ would do together…probably spin in circles until we wound down like a top.
I’d end up taking myself to court. Fuckin’ bastard thinks I get to use my parking placard?! Just because we happen to be the same person? :dubious: Oh no, that is clearly abuse.
Interesting scenario. My answer now is considerably different than it would have been just a couple of months ago.
It is notable to mention that once we became unique individuals, our lives would begin to diverge even if only on a quantum level. Within mere hours, each of us would be distinctly different individuals with different experiences.
As for what I would do – I would immediately start a conversation with him about those things I would never talk about with anyone else. And I would pay close attention to how irritating he was in his replies. I have always wondered how anyone could really put up with my elitist attitude and still consider me to be a friend. Maybe I could learn to be less of a pain in the rear-end. Or maybe HE could! Yeah!!! It is all HIS fault.
Maybe I could convince my friends that everything I have done wrong was THIS OTHER GUY’S fault.
All the way back to kindergarten when I pushed Mike Hamilton into the sandbox so that Kimberly Sunderland would kiss me instead of him.
That would be way sweet.
…
No, actually I would kill the other guy and take the money in his wallet.
I would net about 200 dollars and after all, there can be only one.
I suspect that - at first, at least - living with myself would make me extremely self-conscious. I’d become horribly aware of all my little (and not so little) personality and physical flaws. It would be like cringing at hearing a recording of your voice, but a million times worse.
Assuming I could get over that, it would be great! It would be fun to have someone with the same tastes, interests, hobbies. We could split living expenses, save money…
I’d make arrangements with other me to pull off a series of perfect crimes. Since we’re identical in every way, it’d be easy to provide myself with air tight, perfect alibis to keep myself out of prison.
We’d just have to do something about the doctor first.
Seriously though, he could just slip off to Australia.
Oh, boy. There’s be problems right off the bat with how we handle the marriage situation.
I’m the jealous type. And as much as I’d like to live in South America, I wouldn’t leave my husband and neither would I.
But if we both lived together, Sr. Olives would have a nervous breakdown. He already calls me ‘‘Shiva The Destroyer’’ because I always leave disorder in my wake. And how to handle two depressed mes? I have no doubt we’d reinforce one another’s neurotic behavior.
This is a very interesting question. I’ve thought about something like this just with my siblings and how different we are, in spite of being raised in the same household.
I would not want to live day to day with me, heck I don’t enjoy that much now, but I’d love to catch up with me in 40 or 50 years to see how different or alike we were.
This would pretty much be the best thing to ever happen to me!
She would of course be my best friend in the entire universe, and I’m not even sure if I would need human interaction outside of her. Logistically, though, how does she live? Won’t she need to work? I mean, I suppose technically she can just use all my information, and on paper it would appear as though I were employed full-time at two places, but this could get confusing in the future, no? A future employer would run a background check on me and go, “So you employed full time at ABC Co and Joe Blow Inc at the same time?” “Um, yes?”
Never mind the logistics – we’ll figure those out later. How do I make my exact copy happen right now?
Screw it. I’d take that damn scientist and ourselves on live television, announcing the discovery to the world. Then me and my twin (we’ll call ourselves Alpha and Uno just between us) can enjoy ourselves proprly. Finally, one of me can become a priest while the other me gets married and has a family.
I tend to react to fill niches, to make things balance…hard to explain, but it’d be interesting to see what two of the same ‘balancers’ would do together…probably spin in circles until we wound down like a top. 