“Did she say when she’d be home?”

Parker shrugged and poured himself a glass of milk to wash down the eight or nine cookies he had snagged from a cabinet. “I don’t know,” he said. “Hey, if we get a new car can we get a convertible?”

There wasn’t a hint of suspicion in Parker’s face. In fact, Jeremiah was stunned at how readily Parker had taken the clone for him. His every reaction and expression, every gesture, was exactly what Jeremiah would have expected. His son interacted with it in exactly the same way he would have done with Jeremiah. As impressive as it was, it hurt. Dr. Young’s words echoed in his mind: “You are literally being replaced, Jeremiah.” That thought hit home watching the clone talking to Parker.

“We’ll see,” the clone said. “Where have you been? Did you miss the bus or something?”

“Nah. I stayed after school with some friends.”

“What friends?”

“You don’t know them. Kids from school.”

“What were you doing?”

“Nothing much, just hanging out.”

Parker turned to head upstairs, eager, no doubt, to begin his usual hour of gaming before dinner. But the clone stopped him.

“Hey, do me a favor and take Louie out for a walk. He’s acting strange. I hope he’s not sick or something.”

At that moment, the cameras stopped and the monitor on the wall blinked off just as abruptly as it had switched on four hours before.

Brent stood up from his place on the couch with a slow stretch. Jeremiah was still staring at the blank wall in front of him.

“That was,” he began, shaking his head to find the right word, “absolutely bizarre.”

“I bet,” Brent said. “It certainly looks like an exact copy. So, down to my questions and then we can kick back for a while, have some dinner.” He didn’t seem genuinely fazed by what they’d just seen.

“Yeah, sure. Go ahead.”

Brent sat back down and pulled his laptop closer. When he spoke, his voice had assumed a more solemn, businesslike manner.

“During the viewing did you note any actions of the clone to be unexpected, atypical or otherwise out of the ordinary?”

“The whole thing was a bit out of the ordinary from where I’m standing,” he said. “But no. I suppose he acted just the way I would have under the same circumstances.”

Brent typed and then looked up at Jeremiah.

“At any point during the viewing did you note an instance where you would have acted in a manner different from the clone?”

Jeremiah honestly tried to settle on something he might have done differently. But the clone had done everything exactly as he would have done—from the things he’d said to Parker to the way he’d fluffed the pillows behind himself, stacking them at an angle to support his shoulders and upper back. It was almost spooky.

“No,” he said at last.

“Finally, did the people interacting with the clone display any indication that they recognized the clone as an imposter?”