Earth-349: Tales of the Unexpected
By Anton Psychopoulos, Ph.D.
Disclaimer 1: This story is inspired (albeit distantly) by a story in Superman #349, but is not limited by that story or any other.
Disclaimer 2: This story is inspired rather directly by William Tenn’s classic story “Child’s Play”, and in the unlikely event he should see it, I hope he has a good sense of humor about it.
Disclaimer 3: This story is not recommended for persons under 18 years of age, or those who are not comfortable with themes such as transgender, doppelgangbanging, child abandonment and corporeal disassembly.
Disclaimer 4: This story is set on Earth-349, a hypothetical world within
the pre-Crisis DC universe, but the author declines to specify whether it
depicts actual events taking place there, or is merely a story from an issue
of the Earth-349 comic book Tales of the Unexpected.
Sam Weber looked down at the sleeping form of Sam Weber. It had been an amazing night, surely one to remember, a fittingly spectacular end to an incredible week. But now it was morning, and high time for real life to resume.
The package had been sitting in the front room of his little apartment when he’d arrived home on Monday afternoon. It had been addressed to someone named Eobard Knodar at Apartment 3, 344 Clinton Street, Metropolis, New Troy 01244-3422-960: the wrong name, but the right address, except for that funny string of numerals at the end. The biggest mistake somebody had made, though, was indicated by the postmark: it had been shipped from Midway City, Huron, on May 14th, 2338.
Once he’d figured out how to get the box to unfold itself, using the Bild-A-Man Kit had been fairly easy. The manual, written for a 24th Century ten-year-old, had led him through a series of easy steps to complete increasingly sophisticated exercises in the mysteries of life.
He had built organs and muscles and attached them to his body to prove that they worked. He had stopped short of actually replacing any part of him permanently with his handiwork, although he was sorely tempted in one particular case.
He had crafted a baby girl, but had not had the heart to use the kit’s Disassembly Tool on her. Instead, early Wednesday morning he’d left her on the doorstep of a kindly childless couple upstairs. He was sure the Troys would take good care of her.
He had approached Lucy, the unapproachable flight attendant across the hall, and taken readings from her that allowed him to create a duplicate of her. On the pretense of offering her a free sample of a new automated dressmaking scheme his employers were trying out, he had taken “measurements” from her with the Biometric Scanner. He’d created a perfect physical duplicate of her, but with only enough mind to obey direct orders. It had been the best Friday night date he’d had in months.
Saturday morning had been less enjoyable. Using the Disassembly Tool had been painless and bloodless, but messy. And Sam had found the process quite upsetting.
Still, the whole business had been so intoxicating that Sam couldn’t quite throw out the kit without carrying out the ultimate exercise: the duplication of himself.
The manual had offered him options such as an exact duplicate and a younger version (it suggested that the child user might make a duplicate of a parent at the same age), but Sam had known from his first read-through what he would want: a female version of himself.
Call it narcissism, call it onanism, but the idea of Sam Weber enjoying the feminine charms of Sam Weber was what had brought him so far into the forbidden territory of playing with life itself. He’d spent all day Sunday on the task, pouring the last bottles of Undifferentiated Protoplasm into the Animaux Tubes, generating each organ with loving care as though it had to last a lifetime, not merely a night. At last he had awakened her, and they had fallen into one another’s arms, with but a single thought in their two heads: tail.
The manual had warned him that the duplicate’s mind would be “irregular and unbalanced, incapable of living in modern society,” but he’d guessed that 24th Century society was less tolerant of eccentricity than his own, and she’d seemed all right.
It had been an incredible night. One to make the angels envious. They’d done things he’d never been able to get another girl to do. They’d even found an interesting use for those hideously garish silk scarves his late aunt had given him.
But now it was Monday morning. Sam would have to be at work in two hours, and before that, he would have to disassemble Miss Sam Weber, deposit the entire Bild-A-Man kit in one of the garbage bins behind the apartment building, and take a shower.
He went into the front room, where the various parts of the kit lay spread across the couch and the card table.
But the long, curving gray Disassembly Tool wasn’t there. It wasn’t under the manual.. It wasn’t under the Standard Liver Template. It wasn’t under the Large Canopic Stasis Jar, and the Small one was too small to conceal it. He was about to start searching the rest of the apartment when he turned around and saw his female duplicate standing in the doorway, as naked as himself, holding the Disassembly Tool.
Sam stepped towards her, smiling nervously.
“Now, honey, you just give me that –“
“Why?” she demanded, “so you can murder me with it?” She held the tool in her fist like a weapon. Sam wondered for a creepy moment if it could be used as a weapon, and imagined his arm falling to the floor, neatly amputated without blood, pain or shock.
“Well, sweetie, murder seems like kind of a harsh word to use. I mean, you know everything I know, so you must be able to see that there can’t be two Sam Webers in the world –“
“Besides,” said a high clear voice from behind him, “I have to have something to use to refill at least some of the protoplasm bottles.”
Sam turned and saw a small neatly-dressed man standing by the couch, with the spread-out kit. His brown suit, black tie and highly-polished shoes appeared to be all one molded garment. It made Sam acutely aware of his own nakedness, and he covered himself with one hand.
“Um, excuse me – hey, what are you doing in my apartment?” Sam shook a finger in the man’s face, then remembered that he’d been using that hand to cover himself. He switched his left hand to that function, and raised his right hand in a fist. “You’d better –“
The female Sam stepped past him, showing no sign of distress at her state, and handed the Disassembly Tool to the small man.
“You’re here to collect the kit, I suppose?” she said coolly.
“Yes, Ma’am, thank you. Now, which of you is Sam Weber?”
“I am,” they said in unison.
The man sighed.
“Very well, be that way. I can just pick one of you at random—“
“But I’m the real Sam Weber!” Sam protested. “Sam Weber is a man! Look at my ID!”
He snatched his wallet from the nightstand and pulled out his State of New Troy driver’s license.
“See? It’s the latest thing, has my photograph right on it!”
The small man looked dubiously at the tiny black and white photo, then at the two Sams. He studied one Sam’s sandy crewcut and the other’s dirty-blonde curls.
“Really, this could be anyone,” the man said unhappily. “It doesn’t even say whether your name is Samuel or Samantha.”
“It isn’t,” the woman said, “just Sam. It’s that way on my birth certificate.”
“Um, right,” Sam said. “I know that. Hey! My birth certificate says what sex I am!”
“Yes,” she said with infuriating confidence. “Now, where is my birth certificate?” She started running a finger along a shelf of books.
“I don’t have time for this,” the man snapped, and stepped towards Sam, raising the Disassembly Tool.
“Wait!” Sam cried, raising both hands imploringly, disregarding his modesty. “You can tell the duplicate by her unstable mind!” He dashed past the little man and grabbed up the Cephalic Indexer.
The man waved the tool aside.
“I don’t need that toy – I have proper equipment. But the idea is sound. One of you will be less mentally sound and socially functional. All I need do is scan you both.”
He made some odd gestures over his necktie and lapels, then nodded and smiled and went to work with the Disassembly Tool.
Sam Weber turned away from the unpleasant sight of the little man disassembling Sam Weber and began getting dressed.
“Will this be the end of the business between us?” Sam asked over the outraged cries of the partially disassembled Sam Weber, while tucking in one of a dozen dull, oatmeal-colored shirts that hung in the closet.
“Oh, yes. There will be no criminal charges, I’m only concerned with the retrieval of the kit.”
“Glad to hear it,” Sam said, tying a brightly-colored silk scarf around her neck.
Note: More Earth-349 stories are posted at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/earth349
Contact Dr. Psycho at doctor_p99@hotmail.com