Chapter 23: Me, Myself and I, How Do You Do?

Something odd happened once I had made it to the bottom of the stairwell. When I reached for the door, I completely blacked out despite sleeping moments earlier. I wondered if maybe I was sick when I opened my eyes, but I was inside the room past the door already. Weirder yet, I saw the door begin to open.

"Now that's just not right." I could hear myself say from behind me. I could see another me already standing in the room looking confused and another copy of me walking in through the door. Once it closes behind him… me, it locks.

"You're telling me." I laughed as I surveyed the rest of the room. It seemed like it was only us three in here. The room itself was small, and the exit door was on the opposite side of the room from where the other me stepped through.

I went for the exit door, only to find it locked. There was no indication of what was needed to open the door, but as I looked back at the two other copies of me, we knew that something had to be done about the fact there are three of us, and not just one.

"Alright everyone, drop everything." The copy who had come through the door dropped his bag on the ground with a heavy thud. His weapon was still on the back. I dropped my bag and so did the other copy. This was an interesting situation, we all seemed agreeable, but who knows how stable I was compared to these copies.

"Two of us are doppelgangers, and one is the real one. The point of this floor is most likely to try and figure out who is who." I say as I sit on the ground in a comfortable position. If these were all exact copies, we wouldn't harm each other without learning the situation first.

"I'd have to agree. It seems like if we all asked, we'll think we're the real one." In response to the copy that came through the door, me and the other copy nodded our heads. I felt like I was real, I had memories from every floor of this place.

We all just sat there for a while, staring at each other, trying to find some sort of defect in the appearance of one another. I wasn't able to spot anything wrong with either of them, even after almost fifteen minutes of staring.

"We can try and sort through our memories, see if there are any inconsistencies." The copy that had already been in the room with me suggests. I didn't think it was a bad idea, but there were a few things that could go wrong with that.

"Knowing us, we're bound to forget a fact here and there on anything major, and we'd end up more confused than when we started. I can't trust memories older than a few months anyways." The copy who walked through the door reasoned, and it was sound reasoning.

"There has to be some trick to figuring it out, something that a normal person would never even think of, but something we could easily pick out." I tried to suggest to my copies. They nodded their heads, when an idea came to my mind, so I can only assume the others thought of it too.

"Blood color check?" The copy that came through the door suggested what was on all of our minds. It was an outlandish idea that no one would think of, nor should anyone normally. It was an interesting way to check for a doppelganger, but we couldn't judge the results if it worked.

With no hesitation, we all reached for our weapons and cut a small section on the side of our arms. The blood that came out of mine was red, and it appears that it was the same for the other two. That test was a failure. We all held the tiny wound shut until it stopped bleeding.

Unsure of how to continue, we decided to have a short eat and drink break. We all chose the same food despite not communicating it beforehand. Figuring out who the doppelgangers were was going to be a lot of trouble, more than it normally should be.

"Either of you have any ideas on what to do next?" The copy that was already in the room with me spoke up. We all shook our heads and fell back into an awkward silence. This complex situation was seemingly impossible to solve.

The copy that came through the door and then pulled out the map that showed The Hub. he was going to get us to pinpoint the place where we set up our base camp. We were all exactly the same, so we all knew what each was trying to do.

"Where did we set up base camp? You to the right, look away and I'll tell you when it is your turn to look." I did as I was told and looked away while he made the copy point to the map. He then made me do the same. I pointed exactly on the map where we had set up base camp.

We all just collectively sigh knowing that the test accomplished nothing as we all knew our memories perfectly matched each other's. The copy that had entered through the door crossed his arms, struggling to think of a solution. The other copy and I then also started to think of a solution to this problem.

The problem was, whoever the doppelgangers were, they were perfect copies. Everything from hair to detailed memories. There had to be something that was different between us that we could figure out without randomly guessing or resorting to violence.

This place was unfair, and always wanted me to die, but it wasn't impossible. Every floor had an easy or straightforward way to solve it, we just had to find it. I go through my bag, looking for something, anything that might be off. I had no way to tell if I was the doppelganger any more than the other two in the room.

If I was the doppelganger, then I guess that's it. The real me would figure it out and move on. Was I scared of dying if I was the doppelganger, sure I was? The fear of death was only natural, especially when it felt so hopeless, so it has to be though, as long as the death is painless.

"Alright, let's do a full gear check, see if maybe one of us has some sort of wrong item. I know it's a jump, but if we have something we aren't supposed to, we can tell that person is a doppelganger." The copy that had walked through the door had already started dumping the contents of his bag in a corner of the room, so as not to get them mixed up with any of ours.

Me and the other copy did the same. After emptying and organizing, we saw no differences in gear or items. The solution was becoming more and more obscure with each passing attempt. We were quickly exhausting all of our options to figure out who was real.

"Strip down to nothing. There has to be some kind of indication that we're missing. There isn't anything to be ashamed of here either, it'll be like looking in a mirror." The copy who had been in the room with me suggested and we all seemed to agree with the idea.

Once all clothing was off, we did an inspection and everyone seemed to be the exact same, right down to every ingrown hair and sore spot from the heavy load of equipment from the previous floor. We all put our clothes back on and think of another solution to the problem.

Solutions inside the box are no longer working, we were going to have to get creative to even get anywhere. I had thought that some of our solutions already were getting creative, but it appears that we've all misjudged the situation at hand.

Suddenly, the copy that had come in through the door jumps at me and punches me square in the nose, surprising both me and the cop who had started in the room with me. Why did he suddenly punch me? Was he out of his mind?

I readied myself to fight back when I realized he was reaching down to help me up off the ground that he had put me on. I was confused, it didn't seem to make sense. Was he one of the doppelgangers, beginning to act erratically in frustration that nothing was happening yet?

"I think I get it now. Sorry, man, I had to test something. Let me help you up." I clutched my now bleeding nose and grabbed his offered hand with the free hand I still had. I trusted what he said, if he said he was testing something outside of the box, then so be it.

Something feels off though, why was he able to think of something so abstract while me and the other me had just been confused by his actions. That was a point in his favor for being the original, and a point against us for being doppelgangers.

"Now, I don't want us jumping to conclusions because we missed something important, but I think we're all on the right track now. I seem to have been able to think of something that I would never do and act upon it before you guys could even think about it. Before we go killing each other, I say we go on a three-strike system."

"I agree. Acting too quickly, would only make a fool out of all of us if we killed the real one and not the doppelgangers." I agreed verbally with the copy who had walked through the door, which is most likely the original.

"No more violence though, that was uncalled for and a brutish method that we all can agree was going too far." With the words from the copy that was in here with me already, we all nodded.

For a while, no one did anything, we just sat around trying to think of things, when suddenly the copy that went through the door, who might be the real one, poured half a bottle of water on the ground in the center of the room. What on earth was he doing?

This accomplished nothing other than just acting randomly, and that wasn't the right way to go about this. I wasn't just going to start urinating in a corner to prove my innocence, so this seemed so incredibly out of place. Just when I was about to start questioning him, he spoke.

"Don't mind me, just testing something. The carpet here looked a little dry, so I was wondering if watering it was going to help." The words were absurd and made absolutely no sense even to someone who was thinking erratically.

I held my head in both hands, trying to figure out the motive of that copy, but he was unpredictable right now. It felt so out of place for him to be acting like this, it wasn't like me at all to do things like this. Wasting resources and then giving absolutely insane answers without a single question asked towards him.

"I have a new idea." the crazy copy suddenly said as he put the rest of the water away. "Let's all close our eyes and wander around the room to see if we can scramble ourselves. I want to know what happens when we all move somewhere else."

With nothing to lose, we did as he suggested and closed our eyes. We started wandering around the room aimlessly to try and scramble ourselves. After a while of scrambling one of us calls out stop.

Opening our eyes, I noticed that none of us had left our original positions in the room. I was sure I had moved quite far from my original position, so it seems odd that this would happen. Me and the copy that had started in the room with me just looked confused, and I could even tell that it was him.

"As I suspected. Weird, but it seems that not only can we not scramble with our eyes closed without not actually moving, but we also instinctively know who is who." The copy who had come through the door, which is most likely the original, seems to have thought of something again almost immediately.

"Final test here, you're both on two strikes." He gravely speaks to me, and the other suspected copy and we brace ourselves. At this point, it was fair to say that he and I were not the original, and now, the original was just doing whatever he wanted.

"What did the demon on floor eighteen look like?" A simple question with an easy answer. However, I couldn't quite remember what 'she' looked like. That was alarming, because I had memories of seeing her appearance, but I couldn't describe it.

A feeling of wrongness washed through me, and I could tell the other doppelganger could feel it too. We weren't the original and don't have the same mental fortitude as him. We didn't know the appearance of the demon, because we never even saw it in the first place.

The original grabs his weapon from the bag. We knew what time it was, but we were still scared. I knew I sure was. The original stares down the other doppelganger as he gets closer with the ax that was going to end our lives. My own death was in front of me, but I resisted the urge to fight back.

I was outwitted and knew I wasn't the original anymore. I had to die so I could progress through the floors. I was terrified of dying, but I wasn't real. The existential realization of my own existence threatened to drive me mad, but I let it go. There was nothing to do other than accept my fate.

"It was a demon with horns and wings!" The other doppelganger blurted out randomly as the original was about to behead him. The original never hesitated and lobbed off the head of something that looked identical to him with a face as cold and unmoving as stone. There was no anger or fear, just knowledge of a task that must be completed.

The doppelganger loudly crumpled to the ground. Oddly though, there wasn't any blood. It started to morph back into something I remembered seeing on floor twenty. It was a mimic. The final stage of the mimic that I never let it get to was this, me. I was one of the creatures that had caused the original, or me so much mental anguish. The original hesitated as he walked towards me.

"So that's what you guys are. I knew something was off from the beginning, but I figured I would try the smart answer, to practice some simple problem solving, instead of just acting on instinct all the time. Will you try and save yourself like the previous one?"

He asked me so calmly, but I could only feel fear from my executioner standing directly in front of me. I contemplated just staying silent as he killed me. Even though I knew what I really was, and that I was going to die, I just had one last thing I wanted to ask.

"I know what I am and that my fate is sealed, but I do want to know one last thing. Why didn't the mental fortitude get copied too, you're way more composed than me, even forgiving panic at the fear of death."

"Your guess is as good as mine. My bets are on the way you copied me. You can copy memories and everything about me physically, but you never experienced it. I did, I lived through all of that terror, pain and sadness."

"Please make it painless, if you can. You of all people should know how scared I am of death."

"Yeah." He said wistfully and swung his ax. Everything went black as my body felt weightless.

…

I let out a sigh of relief as I cleaned my ax. The black goo from the mimics really stuck to everything like a slime. All of their resources had turned back into that black goo that smelled horrendous. I was kind of hoping for a bit of a boost, but I still had plenty of my own resources, and I wasn't too worried.

I suddenly heard the door had unlocked on both sides of the room. The way back up and the way down had unlocked, the floor was completed, and it was time to leave. I enjoyed this floor. It took a little thinking outside the box if you wanted to solve it without brute force. They shared the same everything as me, but they didn't experience it, so it isn't quite the same.

Either way, I opened the normal looking door and entered the stairwell, ready to head to the next floor. I was going through these floors with ease. We'll see how long that lasts, but I'm pretty confident.