I was a hairy man.

  At the ripe age of sixteen, a thick black beard covered my chin.

  Poofy hair, long, but not too long, swirled above my head. It had a mild amount of product, just enough to tame the mane.

  My shoulders were square and boxy, broad enough to be a minor point of pride. I wasn’t short either, five foot ten, or eleven. I hadn’t measured in a while so I wasn’t sure. I had some muscle on me, but a fair amount of fat too.

  Overall I was happy with my stocky, well groomed, and masculine look. The thick arm hair made me think of Hugh Jackman, which made me more than happy. Though I was happy with my appearance, something was a little off. I stroked my short thick beard as I thought.

  “Ah that’s it”

  I reached a hand out and lovingly patted the chin of the other man, “wrong dimension buddy”

  Then with a satisfied smile, I ambled over to my basement bathroom.

  I liked to take care of my hygiene in the morning, woke me up for the day and also let me stay up late at night. I splashed a refreshing handful of water into my face. Leaning up and back, through the open bathroom door I spoke louder than I usually would.

  “So you need help getting home, or are you just visiting?”

  A slightly shell shocked version of me greeted me by the bathroom door. He gained his bearings quickly however, “you know,” he started “we really are such a performative jerk”

  as he said this, he repeated my motion from earlier, condescendingly patting the right-bottom side of my chin. Three pats.

  A great many emotions shot through me, but two dominated, joy and competitiveness. While I had a handful of inklings as to what was going on, I had something to do first. “Like your one to talk, i would never make such a scruffy looking version of us.” I patted his chin. Thrice. “I would never be such a jerk, as to go to the bathroom when I had company.” Three pats. “Oh really? Well I would never intrude on someone’s sleep like you did. I’m up a whole three minutes before I would usually be.” Three pats.

  We spent a couple more minutes throwing barbs back and forth and patting each other, without any real malicious intent. Eventually, probably fifteen minutes later, we sat down on the basement couch to actually figure this out.

  “So you know you're a clone?” That made things immensely easier. I didn’t plan on treating him as less than me or anything, but we’d both have no reason to be insecure. He knew he was a clone, I knew I was the original. It didn’t change much, but there was security in knowledge. “Yeah, it’s like… well it’s like this innate sense in me. Like I just know it. little hard to explain.” “So is this like… super powers? Like I have superpowers? Or we have super powers?” I asked while tilting my head towards the ceiling.

  “I guess, I know about as much as you do.”

  We sat in silence for a little bit longer. When we heard our mothers footsteps lazily taking the stairs, panic snuck in. It was too late however.

  My mother walked in, and the only thing we had time to do was stand up, and turn our backs to each other. She saw us posed like that, arms crossed and and stoic facade.

  “Well crap.”

  “Well crap indeed mother” I nodded at the same time.

  “Quite unfortunate, I do concur” my twin chimed in.

  Mom is a heavy woman, not fat, but thick. She was stocky and strong, though that didn’t detract from her femininity. She had long silky black hair, and a round face. She stood five foot six, and was wearing a grey robe over white pajamas.

  One key fact about my mother was that she was a theatre geek. Her highschool years she’d tried out for every major play. She’d saved up for months to go see broadway shows. She’s read books from famous actors, and did research on the lives of those who made it.

  In her college years she’d fallen in with an improv group. In her eyes those were some of her favorite, and most joy filled years. Little wonder then that she’d tried her hardest to instill that same love in her son.

  So it was that with a theatrical flair, she looked them both up and down. Then with putapon look and sigh, she said” you boys better come to the table for breakfast” and made her way back upstairs as if nothing had happened.

  While both me and my mother have a lackadaisical attitude towards life, it did not extend so far. In fact we were both quite shell shocked.

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  Even the oh so recently cloned version of myself was struggling. However we prided ourselves on our ability to be composed, ready with an appropriately dramatic line in tense situations.

  After she swaggered up the stairs, me and Two gave each other a ‘guess we should go upstairs’ look. Then following our own advice, we raced after mom.

  The ground floor of our home was spacious. Large open living room, dining room and kitchen. A small hallway led to a bedroom and bath, and another door next to the kitchen led to the master. Green paint, with various beach decorations dotting the walls.

  My father sat at the dining room table. He was a balding muscular man, about my height. He had on a pair of round rimmed glasses that hung off the edge of his nose as he read the paper. He had a loose tie, a pinstriped shirt, and a pair of khakis on. His face was contorted into a resting grimace, though he was actually quite a jolly man.

  My mother sauntered over to my fathers shoulder, while me and my clone waited patiently on the other side of the oval table. “Honey, you might want to see this,” she said lightly tapping him.

  “What’s up,” he gruffed out. He took a long hard look at me. Examined me from head to toe. Stared deeply into my eyes. Then he did the same to the version of me standing to my left. “Well, crap,” he said, slapping his newspaper down and standing with a grin. I’m not sure I’d ever seen my father so happy, nor so proud. “My boy! Or,” he started with a playful smirk “I should say my boys!” A slightly booming guffaw escaped his mouth as he rushed over to our side. “So what’s the situation,” he lightly took my chin in between his two fingers, examining my face. “Which, if either of ya, is the real one?”

  This stumped us for a moment. “I think… we both are. Though I am the one who created him, in case you were wondering.”

  Breakfast that morning was interesting. My father was a college professor, specifically Adept Studies. This scenario was his bread and butter, his favorite thing to talk about already. And so we sat there listening as he laid out a laundry list of the possibilities my ability could have.

  It all depended. There wasn’t much we figured out over that breakfast conversation. No, we didn't have a telepathic link. Two also confirmed that he didn’t have any powers. Apparently it was the same innate knowledge that made him sure he was the clone. That made dad exhale a little sigh of relief, which was confusing. “Wouldn’t that be better? I mean if my clones could make clones too?”

  We were assuming that’s what i could do, but the evidence seemed to add up so far.

  “You would think, and yes, there’d certainly be some benefits. But have you ever heard that old thought experiment about doubling the penny? It goes like this: if you doubled a penny every day for 20 days, you’d have 2 pennies the first day, 4 the second and so on right?”

  We nodded along, though we were both pretty sure we got his point already.

  “Well in 20 days you’d have 10,000 dollars. That equates to about a million of you. So say, you and your clones all make a clone…” he raised his head in the air, thinking for a moment.

  “Thirty three times, and there’d be about 8 billion of you. That's classified as a class S threat, and either puts you under government thumb, or kills you.”

  Me and two had followed the math, but were stunned by the Class S threat mention. “Good thing I guess” I chuckled nervously.

  “They’d use precogs and Thinkers to find you too, there’d be no escape” he finished before taking a swig of his coffee.

  Me and two gulped simultaneously.

  Mom and dad had called sick to their prospective works, and my school. Right now I sat in the room alone, mom dad and Two were outside. Presumably waiting with baited breath, as I tried to ‘reach inside’ to find out what I could do.

  Honestly I thought it sounded like dumbassery, but I’d defer to my fathers expertise. And so, I settled back, and let my mind drift.

  My eyes were closed, and I sat on a soft, comfortable bed. I was in lotus position, or at least a bad imitation of one. I sat thinking, trying to reach a state of blankness, and intermittently succeeding.

  I'd reach it, for a couple seconds, or even a minute, then some noise would hit me, and I'd get drawn back into the real world. Regardless, that didn't really seem to be working, so I tried ‘throwing’ my mind around various places.

  This mostly was just me concentrating really hard on the sensations coming from one part of my body. Didn't work. I tried imagining some invisible energy, or thinking about another version of me popping up.

  Not a lot of success there.

  Finally, i tried doing the same sort of focusing, but on my mind instead of my body. A rush of information, and sensation flooded me.

  It was weird.

  Instinctively, new reactions and information came to me. I reached my hand out.

  Several other hands reached out at the same time. five of them.

  Each was in a slightly different shade than my own. They all pinwheeled in the air for a moment, before merging back into my hand.

  The oddest part is that they didn't dissipate. Instead they all continued to exist, overlapping over each other. They had formed just above the elbow, and weighed a large amount, pulling on my bicep.

  “Woah”

  I murmured under my breath. I let them go, and an invisible drain I hadn't noticed stopped. There was more up there, more my power could do. But there was one another part of that new brain space screaming at me.

  So I focused. I thought about myself, my memories, my choices, my personality, my family, my friends, my hobbies, and the million other little things that made me who i am. Then i pushed, for lack of a better word. I grew a little hazy. Then a smaller versions of me, similar to light after shining through a prison, were projected in front of me. Slowly, the grew more distinct, denser, bigger, and closer together.

  After a long time, the had merged, and were whole and hearty. Then i could finally let go.

  I sagged back into my bed, sweaty and heaving.

  “Yeah, that looks exhausting, I'll leave you there for a second.” Three said.

  And he did, after a minute or so, he walked over and extended me a hand up. Time to tell the family. Dad was pacing slowly across the living room, head in the air and being lightly rubbed by his hand. He was deep in contemplation, probably thinking through the ramifications of the future.

  Mom was reading some nonfiction guide to life, that in conjunction with the thousands of other similar books would supposedly lead to a happy life and healthy body.

  And finally, Two was sitting in a chair, pointed towards the stairwell, watching as we came up. He stood with, and hurried over, proclaiming “Well about damn time!”

  “Yeah, yeah, settle down.” I patted him affectionately on the shoulder as I said this “The juries in folks” I was addressing my parents who had made their way over, “Long term and short term projections” I said this part with a large smile.

  My father, before sending me in there, had laid out a dozen large ways in which my power might work.

  These weren't all encompassing, nor were they perfectly accurate. They did however communicate the idea in broad strokes. Essentially we’d narrowed down the type of clones, and a good idea on how I made them.

  “And theres a heck of a lot more to it than that too.”

  The grin on all versions of me was enormous. The possibilities, the glory, and the thrill raced through our minds. We were theatrical by nature, and we'd just been given an invitation to the biggest baddest stage to ever exist.

  My father was giving me a ponderous and contemplative look, with that familiar scowl neither he nor I could control. Mom however was practically jumping in joy.

  “So what's next?” She asked, jubilant.

  All the versions of me in the room turned to give each other looks. Then I replied “Well, first, we go have some fun.”