silph_co | Video

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Hey there, kiddos!

So...

I'm guessing by this point you've all seen the dude that looks and sounds just like a really roughed up version of me.

That's Jack Number Two.

[He figures it's about time he addresses this situation, since it could end up being a sort of liability.]

Long ass story short, he's my doppelganger, he took an insanely high paying job to basically be a secondary me. And he was really good at it for a while, but then I guess some shit happened and I haven't seen him in years and he's all pissed off about things that happened when I wasn't even around.

[Like it's Jack's own fault that he ended up getting his ass kicked by terrorists and the casino went into lock down with Other Jack in it. The dude has Jack's DNA, he could have gotten out. Probably. Anyway the point was it wasn't anything that had been Jack's fault.]

He doesn't know I'm a high ranking member of this stupid organization. Don't mess with him or anything, cuz for one he's basically me and messing with me is a bad idea in general - I at least like most of you people. He doesn't.

And plus I'm trying to work shit out with him, so just leave him alone.

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... Dirk. Are you sure you want to shoot him? Not only would it get those weird clone cops after you, but if we can't die here, it wouldn't even do anything but piss the body double off even more.

[Steven. Honey. Shouldn't you also add something like 'murder is wrong' to that?]

Nobody's shooting Tim, I want Tim alive!

But I gotta say, I love all the interest being taken here, I'm feeling really heard right now.

I mean. Of course we're taking interest.

I can understand why Tim could very much regret taking the job for you, because having to literally be someone else for an extended length of time is pretty much a recipe to give someone a lot of issues and I'd even get why he'd displace the blame for whatever happened when he was body-doubling onto you, at least if it happened because people thought he was you... but you're our colleague, Jack. Not Tim.

[Tim's just some guy that looks like you.]

If he's got regrets, that's his problem. He knew what he was getting into. Plus he was so well compensated... he got to live my life. He was paid insane amounts of money to go to exclusive clubs and eat fancy dinners and take out beautiful rich people and wear designer clothes and be pampered. Pretty fair trade for any minor issues he might have picked up - I took really great care of that dude.

But yeah, he's looking for somebody to blame and here I am. Which hurts, I'm not gonna lie, we used to be pretty close.

But I also want to make it clear I don't want anybody giving the guy shit.

I mean, did he really get it even if he thought he knew? If he's an actor, even a method actor... roles usually have a time limit.

Like, your life sounds great. Getting to live like you did and be paid for it, it sounds so great on the surface. If it were just that... but always having to be someone else, react as if you were them, hear their name in your ear instead of your own... it's got to wear on a guy, eventually. No matter who they're being.

I mean, you know I respect you more than pretty much anyone else in the damn world, Jack, and I couldn't be a knock-off you long term without cracking in the end. No matter how great a guy you are--and you know I think you're a great guy. You're the best guy in this goddamn region, Jack. But I couldn't do what he did long term. I'd have-- god, I'd have totally lost it in the end. Hearing your name in my ears instead of mine, seeing your face instead of mine in the mirror... God, eventually I wouldn't be sure if I'd ever really existed as Steven Durante at all. I'd have completely lost myself. I'd have completely lost it.

That said, it's absolutely bullshit that he's taking it out on you. It's absolutely not fair to you at all. He shouldn't be such a little prick about things and he should have maybe taken the time to think about what he was getting into before he signed that contract with you. But he didn't. And now we have this mess to deal with.

That's what all the extensive psychological testing was for! And I'm not gonna get into all the details of the doppelganger program because we'd be here all day and most of it is crazy science shit anyway...but it's not like there weren't precautions and stuff for all that.

[Such as re-sequencing Tim's DNA so it was Jack's, and therefor rewriting his cells and the way he thinks.]

[At least Steven already knows exactly how to talk to Jack, so he doesn't see this as an argument or an attempt to question his own decisions.]

And anyway...it's been like half a decade since he was even on the job, I guess, so it's not like he hasn't had time to deal with his shit. And he's not even pissed off about that.

No, he's pissed off because some shit went down and he got stuck in our casino? Which I had nothing to do with!

But it's not even really a mess it's just...a thing I have to deal with? It's not like he's coming after me or anything, or he's gonna make trouble or some shit, we just had a fight last time we talked. The worst he's ever done is he ran off with one of my Pokemon once.

He's...he's not a threat.

Well. Okay. But if he ever becomes one... you know I've got your back, Jack. I don't want him to hurt you.

I know ya do, and I appreciate the hell out of it. But no, no, he's not gonna hurt me. He's not an enemy, he's not even that good at insulting me.

I just want to make sure there's no identity confusion - I wouldn't put it passed him to turn me in if he found out I'm in the cute animal mafia.

Jesus Christ. Yeah, no, I'm glad you told me. I would have hated to screw this up for you, even by accident.

....

Putting aside for a moment the complete absence of anything that might be meaningfully referred to as a 'firearm,' let alone a 'projectile weapon,' and the rather bold assumption that the Officers Jenny would have the first damn clue that I'm the perp--

And also putting aside the fact that guns really ain't my weapon of choice--

I mean, it's not a permanent solution, but speaking from experience,

[I see-saw my arms up and down, weighing invisible loads, elbows bent--I've been talking with my hands because I have nothing else to do with them, but the thing about voice calls is I feel like I'm half-assing two things instead of whole-assing one.

The general use of body language or (lack of, I know) facial expression is totally lost, so he can't see my hands in motion, which is his loss, but I'm deprived of whatever editorial process I might apply to text.]

It takes him out of the equation for a little while, gives me time to solve for X before he comes out whatever Pokecentre hopping mad at a man he has no idea knows the die he was cast from.

I'm not seeing a problem here. Even continuing this little hypothetical, Jack the OG could spin it in his favour, play the sympathy card or offer up protection or retribution, whatever you want.

[You were the one who literally mentioned shooting him, Dirk.

Unseen, Steven pinches the bridge of his nose.]

Yeah, okay, but there's just one problem still. Jack doesn't want you to do it. And it's his knock-off, so he gets to make this decision.

[My deadpan is legend across the four kingdoms of Earth C, so it's both very easy and not easy at all to increase it. Easy for me, the master.]

Damn. And here I was looking forward to independently inventing the sport of paintball. On account of that being my only option.

This being a game where attempting to relocate anything sharper than a plastic butterknife to your pocket becomes mysteriously impossible.

[Okay. I got that out of my system. Damn, though, he's really in Jack's pocket already. Must be damn good dick.]

Also, and less absurdly hyperbolically, if people depended on my input every time there was a problem with literally any of my numberless selves and their derivatives, nothing would get done.

[It's not only the good dick, Dirk. It's that they've connected on a deep and almost spiritual level. Not that Steven would actually say that, mind you, but. It's basically true.

Anyway. This gets a resigned sigh from him. Somewhere he's pinching the bridge of his nose.]

Dirk...

[It's a tone that is similar, but much less fond, to the one he says 'Jack--' in.]

[Oh, that's a tone I know really well. It's the sound of 'you're being too difficult' or 'you've taken it too far' or whatever else it is I'm 'too much' at right that second.

Of course, I disagree. But I still acknowledge that I heard it.]

What.

You're being an ass.

[He sighs.]

Look. Maybe you don't care if other people make the decision about what to do with your useless knock-offs, but I'd sure as hell want to make the decision for mine.

Yeah, happens sometimes when I'm right.

I've ridden this rodeo before, I know what I'm talking about. That other you is his own independent being and he's out there making decisions of his own. What if those decisions fucking suck?

I don't care what happens to my splinters any more because I can afford to stop giving a fuck. My point was more along the line of troubleshooting, say, this Tim guy growing a wild hair and deciding to really put that doppelganger opportunity he's got to use.

That's not a hypothetical to me, Dirk. What do you think is happening with the fake me back home?

I didn't get to make that decision. And I regret that every damn day.

What do I think is happening?

[....]

I think you're a shaky baby newborn taking his first wobbly footsteps into this topic and thinking you're ready to run Preakness. Then you ran into your first fence and now you think you've been robbed.

I get that. Really, I sympathise.

I'd cook up some substanceless thing like 'we've all been there' or some similarly tepid pablum to spoon into your edentulate oral cavity, but there is no 'we,' let alone an 'all.' You barely have.

So I'm gonna serve it hard and cold, and the hard, cold facts are that both the life 'you' are living and the life 'he' is living were, up to the point where I guess you entered this game, both equally 'real.'

Real, as a value, is so subjective as to be nearly meaningless. At least for you. We're talking first person here, and that's your whole problem. Your perspective is just too first-person.

Put another way: your personal perspective on the story isn't actually the fucking story. Assuming there even is one.

You're just not that special. If I'm right about this, the odds are marginally better than the zero average that you're any kind of special at all, but even then, how arrogant do you have to be to assume your narrative window is the defining factor of reality?

Wow. The mind boggles, it really does.

And here I thought I was the bad guy.

But now you're going to feel insulted and stop listening to anything I'm telling you, so this is where I'm going to make a cursory attempt to prevent that.

Because I'm really not saying this to be the bad guy, let alone your specific bad guy.

Even though I am, specifically, the bad guy. That's very much a thing.

But about this double of yours... whether or not he's the 'real' you... and that's making a lot of suppositions about the idea of being 'real,' not to mention the vastly more ontologically questionable supposition of 'you'... that ain't 'your' life he's living. He's living his life. Piggybacking on the investments you'd made into yours, I'm guessing, but you didn't lose those investments. I know because I know you don't have amnesia. You wouldn't be bitching so much if you did.

But you didn't get to control those circumstances--or possess the illusion of that control, if we're being really honest about how this works--and now you're worked up regretting what someone else does when you should be up doing something yourself.

Like... anything, really. Fuckin' anything that isn't arguing with me about someone else's duplicate?

You are such a little shit, Dirk.

One, I literally lost my investments to the goddamn fake me. My apartment, my bank account, my career, my legal identity, every goddamn asset I had.

Two, he is literally made of a pile of junk that an asshole in a gold mask brought to life and covered with an illusion to make everyone think he's me, so that said gold asshole could kidnap me.

Three, this is not about the control I didn't get in his creation. This is about how when I finally made it back home, I was stupid enough to listen to the people who took me in when they told me to let the Goddamn fake have my old life and make a new one, instead of taking my life back.

Edited 2020-03-03 02:46 (UTC)

Most of that had fuck-all to do with nothing, but whatever.

And how much of that matters now?

It informs my opinions on inferior doubles.

Whatever. You're going to be an ass and I need to get my ass to the race.

[Dictating when a conversation ends by hanging up on people is my schtick.

So I beat him to it.

Bye, Steven.]

[YOU ARE SUCH A LITTLE SHIT.]

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[Voice] Slightly NSFW I'm SO sORRY

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This is one of those "secretly dark" tags

I mean, same (though not nearly as much as Dirk's probs)

UH, WELL,

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