Iterations

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“I’m going to have to kill you,” I said to myself, matter-of-factly.

The face looking back at me across the desktop was my own, of course, but not the way I was used to seeing it; it wasn’t flopped left-to-right like it is in a mirror. The other me reacted with an appropriate mixture of surprise and disbelief. The shaggy eyebrows went up—God, why don’t I trim those things?—the brown eyes widened, and the mouth opened to utter a protest.

“You can’t kill me,” he—I—said. “I’m you.”

I frowned, disappointed that he didn’t understand. “You’re a me that never should have existed.”

He spread his arms a bit. “Who’s to say which of us should have existed?”

One of the interesting things about working in the publishing industry in Canada is this: it’s full of Americans who came here during Vietnam. And, even if they didn’t want to go to war, some of themdo know how to get guns. “Who’s to say which of us should have existed?” I repeated. I took the Glock 9 mm that Jack Spalding had procured for me out of my pocket and pulled the trigger. “I am.”

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