My girlfriend Samantha was visiting me at work for the first time. I wanted to show her around. I had big plans for us, but she needed to understand what I did for a living. We'd made it through the guarded gate and were driving to the parking lot of my lab when my carefully planned exposition started to go awry. We were stuck behind a garbage truck.

"Hey honey!" she said, "Look at that guy on the back of the garbage truck! It looks like Donald Trump!"

"It isn't."

"It really looks like him. I mean, I know The Donald isn't a garbage man, but maybe he's doing one of those reality shows or something."

"No," I said as I parked the car.

"How do you know?"

She had a fixation on reality shows. She downed them by the handful, like an Oxycodone addict with Percocets. They seemed to give her the same temporary euphoria, too. It was a minor flaw, and she had compensating qualities. And some rather exquisite...talents. Talents that I had hoped to continue to benefit from. So I tried to be patient.

"Tom, how do you know?" she said again.

"Donald Trump isn't a garbage man. He's not doing a reality show. And he doesn't come here, at least not anymore."

"He used to come here? Donald Trump? You saw him?"

"Yes." I drew a breath. "Samantha, you'll see lots of people who look like Donald Trump here today. Dozens. None of them are Donald Trump. You may also see some other famous rich people you recognize, but they won't be who you think they are, either. They're all clones."

"Clones?"

"Yes, indeed." We passed a gardener who looked exactly like Donald Trump. Samantha noticed.

"Is he a clone? Why would there be so many clones of Donald Trump? And why here? And can I meet one of them anyway? And who are the other clones of? Why haven't I read about this in the Enquirer? Or the Globe?" She also had a fixation on tabloids. My plans for the morning were unraveling. I had to get back on script.

"Samantha, did you ever hear about Dolly the sheep?"

"Oh...yeah! The sheep that was a clone! Sure! Is that what these Donalds are?"

"Yes. Trump paid this company--the company I work for--to clone himself."

"Why?"

"He used to say, 'there's no such thing as overexposure of my brand'," I said.

I thought that he was really, really, wrong about that, but since Samantha was a fan, I kept that opinion to myself. "He wanted to have more copies of himself to stand in at golf tournaments, shopping center openings, presidential debates--that sort of thing.

"He had the money to hire the best reproductive experts out there," I continued. "But cloning is, or was, very inefficient--Dolly was the only successful clone in a few hundred tries--so Trump funded some research to figure out how to make it more efficient. He also didn't want to wait 75 years to ensure that his work was successful, so he funded the research that led to the breakthroughs that allowed adults to be cloned whole cloth."

"Whole cloth?"

"Yup. From cell to human in a week and a half."

"Is that even legal?"

"Well, it isn't illegal. But it doesn't work very well. It turns out you can clone an adult with the exact same brain as the donor, and those clones have many of the memories and some of the cognitive ability, of the donors, but they're not the same. They have none of the personality of their donors. They're a bit dumb. And mindless. The human personality needs more than its physical brain, and we haven't figured out how to fix that yet. Unfortunately, we didn't find that out until there were more than 400 surviving Donald Trump clones, and dozens of clones of other early adopters--Gates, Buffet, both Koch brothers...."

"Four Hundred?" She was still stuck on Trump. "They all lived?"

"Yes. They're all humans, Samantha. We can't get rid of them. Once started, we have to let nature take its course."

We walked into my building. Another Donald Trump clone sat at the guard desk. When he saw Samantha, he stared at her--not that there wasn't a lot to stare at.

"Badges please," he said, in a rather flat voice.

I showed him my badge. "Donald," I said. "Stop staring. This is Samantha. We're going up to my lab."

"OK, Tom," he said in the same flat voice. He didn't stop staring.

"Why was he staring at me?" asked Samantha, once we were in the elevator.

"Everyone stares at you, honey," I replied. "He's just more obvious about it. He can't help it."

"I don't mind, really," said Samantha. "He's kind of hot for an old man." As I expected, she couldn't help projecting her feelings for the real Donald onto the clones, even if the clones were simple-minded.

The elevator doors opened onto another lobby, and another Donald sat at the reception desk. "Badges please," he said, staring at Samantha.

I showed him my badge. We walked down the hall, past a faux Bill Gates pushing a broom, and into my lab.

"So this is where you work, huh?" asked Samantha. "What do you do here, exactly?"

"I'm on Project Double X," I said, a little smugly.

"Great. What's that?" she asked.

"Well," I said, looking into her eyes, "all of the clones we've done so far have been male. We're just beginning to develop the market for cloning rich women, and we, um, need a volunteer so we can test the process."

"But what's the Double X stand for?" she asked.

I sighed. "Remember from science class? X and Y chromosomes for males, double X for females?"

"Oh, right," she said. Then her brain caught up to her ears. "Oooooh. You want to clone me!"

She looked piqued. I was worried that I'd blown it. But then she smiled. "On one condition?"

"What's that, honey?"

"I'm not sharing you with any of the others of me."

She knew me too well.

"Of course not," I said. "This is for science, honey, not for fun!"

I was lying, of course. I just didn't know how badly. I collected some of her cheek cells that very day, and now, two weeks later, there are hundreds of Samanthas wandering the grounds. Most of them have already hooked up with the Donald Trumps and the other clones, and they seem to be doing well. They may even be monogamous, although I don't know how we could ever know for sure without putting barcodes on their foreheads.

There are just two issues.

First, I can't find the real Samantha. The new Samanthas are just too much like her, or maybe she's too much like them, I don't know. I think she might have wandered off and found a Donald for herself. That's OK, though, there are plenty of Samanthas left for me.

But I'm really, really tired.

Session Notes: December 9, 2011

Patient "Brian" is 24 years old and lives in Manville. He was referred to me by Dr. Morris at Family Therapy Associates. Our first session and introductory interview took place in my office at seven in the evening.

Brian arrived on time and sat on the far end of the couch. I can always tell a lot about a patient by how they sit on the couch, by the place they select. Occasionally a patient will sit at the near end, and they will lean in close to me. They will listen from time to time but mostly they will wait for their turn to speak. Quite often, they aren't interested in receiving therapy; not really. They just want someone to talk to, someone who will listen.

I typically recommend to these patients that they adopt a pet.

Brian sat on the far end, suggesting that he would be guarded and withdrawn. I wasn't surprised. John Morris likes to send me his tougher cases. Brian was tall and pale, and he carried a thick binder, which he placed on the coffee table.

I got right to the point: "What brings you here today?"

"I never should have been born," Brian replied. How's that for an opening line?

I nodded. "What makes you say that?"

"I never should have been born," he repeated, "and I wish I hadn't been. I wish I had died in the womb, like my father wanted. I wish I had been aborted. I wish we had both died, my mother and me together."

I nodded again, making a mental note to give John Morris a call. Maybe to thank him for sending some new business in my direction. Maybe.

"Are you suicidal?" I asked. It's a question that I ask often, and very directly. You'd be surprised by how many lives I've saved simply by asking this straightforward question. There was a woman a few years ago who planned to give herself the carbon monoxide treatment in the garage that very evening. Told me I was the first person who ever really made her feel like someone was listening. Told me I spared her from a certain death.

"I used to feel like I was," he answered. "It was the only thing that got me to sleep at night, the knowledge that I could take the exit whenever I wanted, just drive over to the Manville Bridge and do a gainer straight into the river. But I don't know, I guess I don't have the guts. I went to Catholic school, and I remember Sister Regina telling me that people who kill themselves go straight to you-know-where."

"Why do you wish you had never been born?" I asked.

"I'm not supposed to be here," he said. He took a deep, measured breath, and paused for a long time before continuing.

"There was a boy," he began.

Brian gave the boy's name, and the first and last names were the same as his. "The boy died in an accident. His mother was destroyed, just utterly destroyed. Her world was completely shattered. She went mad from the pain. I mean, the pain and heartbreak literally drove her out of her mind."

"I've done bereavement counseling," I said. "Losing a child is devastating."

"The boy's mother was a scientist ... she is a scientist," Brian said. "A geneticist, and she had stored some samples of her son's DNA and her husband's reproductive cells. And in her grief, in the insanity of her grief, she impregnated herself with a replica of her dead son. Can you believe that? It wasn't enough for this woman to have another child. She needed an exact duplicate of Brian."

I nodded along, jotting notes.

"When my father found out, he went ballistic. He tried to stop her, but there was nothing he could do. He finally left her. He moved across the country. I never knew him."

"You ... uh," I said, my Waterman pen poised above my legal pad. "You are saying that this was your mother? That you were, uh, the new child she created?"

I wasn't exactly sure how I wanted to approach this one. I could have just come right out and challenged him, told him he's living in a science fiction story. Psychology is my livelihood, but genetics is my passion. I'm fascinated by the science of genes and heredity, and I've read dozens of books on the topic: Crick and Watson, Mendel, Miescher, Watson, Pauling, Huxley, I've devoured them all. If Brian wanted someone to swallow this story, he picked the wrong shrink ... possibly the only one in the state who happens to be an expert on the subject.

But I'm also an expert at spotting liars, and Brian was telling the truth. That is to say, he believed he was.

"Imagine what it was like," Brian said. "I'm a carbon copy of my dead brother. A reproduction. She even named me after him, named me Brian. But I wasn't really a copy, was I? I had my own personality. She expected me to be, you know, her son reincarnated, but I was different, and she hated me for it. Imagine you're five years old, and your mommy hates you because you don't like pancakes and they're supposed to be your favorite food. Your mommy hates you because you want to be a magician for Halloween, and she wants you to be Spider-Man. Your existence is pointless. You're a living reminder that no one can measure up to the child that was. Do you understand?"

I just listened and nodded some more. Victims of child abuse often retreat into fantasy worlds, and this one was in a class all its own.

"Don't take my word for it," Brian said, picking up the thick binder and handing it to me.

"What is this?"

"I stole my mother's journal," he explained. "The one she used to document every aspect of the project. It's all in there, every detail, every experiment. I wasn't the first, you see? There was another, a first attempt. He was ... deformed. She killed him. Discarded him like a writer throwing away a crumpled sheet of paper, and tried again, and here I am."

Brian shifted to the near end of the couch and leaned in close. His pale face was austere, stoic. His brown eyes glittered.

"First, you get to see it," he whispered. "Then the news media. Then the authorities. I want her to pay for what she did to me. For what she did to us."

Brian and I are scheduled to meet again next week. Same time, same place. I want to hear more. I need to hear more.

I've been reading the journal. I've been reading about the accident, and about Brian, and Brian 1.5, and Brian 2.0, who I met this evening. I've been reading about bioethics, and somatic cells, and telomeres, and mitochondria.

I've been reading the fevered ravings of a mad and brilliant woman, determined to capture what can never be captured, to recreate something that can only exist once. It's a portrait of a mother's love. And of obsession. And of rage.

My entire body is trembling as I dictate this. With each scribbled formula and complex diagram, with every turn of the page, I come closer to the realization that Brian's story is true.

And the implications are profoundly disturbing.

When I was told, 'Welcome to Hell, puny human, eternal torments await you,' I expected it to be said in a much more sinister, malevolent, and intimidating way.

“Excuse me,” I asked, still rather disoriented from dying.

“I said, 'Welcome to Hell, puny human, eternal torments await you,'” replied Satan, still without any passion.

“Ah…” I said. This wasn’t helping reorient me.

“Patrick Krakczsinski,” asked the prince of darkness, looking down at a ledger on his desk through a pair of reading glasses that would not have looked amiss on my grandmother.

“Er, yes,” I said. It wasn’t even an imposing desk. My insurance agent, who was likely trying to jip my family out of my life insurance at this very moment, had a more imposing desk. No claw feet or polished mahogany, not even a sleek modern business desk; it looked like he had found one that the nearby elementary school was throwing away. “I think you’re the first person to ever actually get my last name right,” I remarked.

“I get a lot of Poles through here,” Beelzebub replied, ticking my name.

“Hm… I always thought we seemed like a pretty decent people,” I said, trying to stick up for my kind.

“Nothing against Poles, Pat, can I call you Pat, I just get a lot of everybody. Like, ninety-nine point nine nine nine nine something percent of all people come through here.”

I shrugged off the shortening of my name. “So who was right then?”

“Hell if I know, I don’t see a pattern,” said Lucifer, opening the top of his desk (proving my suspicions that it probably had actually come from an old elementary school) to pull out a pencil sharpener. “I don’t get much news down here.”

It suddenly occurred to me to ask, “You are… Satan, right?”

“The one and only,” he said, focusing very intently on sharpening his pencil.

“Ah…” I repeated. “You’re not…”

“What you expected,” Lucifer said, finishing my sentence. “You try doing this job for a couple millennia, tell me how you feel.”

“Aren’t you supposed to be, you know… tempting mankind, buying souls… that sort of thing?”

“Nope, been here.” He finished sharpening his pencil and put the sharpener back into the desk. He looked at me in that way that only bureaucrats could pull off; a mix of intense desire to get rid of me and a complete lack of will to do the work this required. “Hell ain’t just for you guys, you know, originally here just to torment me.” He gestured around him. “Good job of it too.”

“Ah…” I said, once again.

Satan sighed and stood up. He put on a rain coat and picked up an umbrella, the see-through dome shaped kind you see on infomercials. “Come with me,” he said, and walked out the door behind the desk.

I hesitated inside. It was raining outside, heavily. So heavily, I couldn’t see more than a few feet in any direction. Lucifer was waiting with that same sort of bureaucratic patience.

“Could I get one of those umbrellas,” I yelled over the din of the rain.

“Dude, its Hell.”

I saw the logic in this, stepped out into the rain, and was immediately cold and drenched.

“Alright,” started the fallen angel, speaking loudly to be heard over the rain, “here’s the rules; suffer.” He paused, thinking. “That's actually about it.”

“Really?” I tried to ask this seriously, but since I had to raise my voice over the rain, it came out sounding a little sarcastic.

“Yeah, really. Wait, no, you can get out of here if you can get along with your room mate.”

“That seems like a kinda important thing to forget.”

“It doesn’t happen very often so I forget about it. Anyway, here you are. Ain't no room service here, but you'll have all you need inside.”

We had come to another door in a wall. The wall appeared to be stone, but there was no telling how tall or wide it was because of the downpour. It didn’t really matter, because I planned to walk into that door and start charming whoever was inside. I was a pro at this; my job in life had been mostly about brown nosing.

I walked in, leaving Lucifer in the rain. The room actually looked nice. There was a big cozy chair in front of the fire with a well worn ottoman sitting in front of it, an acoustic guitar in its case over in the corner, a soft looking double size bed at the far end, and a kitchenette in the other far corner. My new roommate was there, and heard me walk in.

“Hey,” he said, turning around and proffering his hand to shake, “I just put some more coffee on and…”

We both stopped mid-step. It was me.

We stared dumbfounded at each other.

Nothing happened, so we continued to stare dumbfounded at each other.

“I’m Pat,” I said, knowing this sounded stupid, but I wasn’t sure what to say to myself.

“Ah…” he said, leaving me hanging. I still didn’t know what to say.

“Er, I… sit, I’ll get us some coffee,” he finally said.

“Two sugars,” I told him.

“Yeah, I know,” the other I replied. He said it nicely enough, but for some reason I felt like there was a hint of disdain there. It was a stupid thing to tell myself, but it came out naturally and I wasn’t really used to talking to an actual copy of myself.

I took a seat in the big cozy chair and put my feet up on the ottoman. It was by far the most comfortable chair I had ever sat in. I sunk in further and reveled in the warmth of the fire. Heaven could wait, I thought.

I felt a tap on my shoulder. “Er…”

“Ah, coffee, thanks.” I reached out for it, but he stubbornly kept it in his hands.

“Actually,” he said, drawing out the first syllable, “I was kinda sitting there first.”

“I didn’t see you sitting here.”

He motioned to the little chair-side table, upon which stood a half full cup of coffee. “I was before you came.”

“Ah…” I said, trying to find a reason not to give him back the chair. I waited for him to say something, but nothing was forthcoming. “Look, isn’t there somewhere else to sit?”

“No, only my chair.”

“What about one of those chairs from the kitchen, pull up one of those,” I said, resenting his possessive pronoun.

“Those aren’t as nice, and besides, I was here first.”

I needed to be charming, but the chair was addling my wits. “Here, you can sit on the ottoman,” I finally declared, feeling very generous.

He looked at it with a hidden sneer. “Fine,” the other me said, likely realizing that he needed to get along with me as well. He handed me my coffee, then pried the ottoman away from my feet.

Suddenly the chair lost all of its splendor. It was still divinely comfortable… but it was just a little too tall, I couldn’t rest my feet anywhere and they were getting uncomfortable quick. I tried pulling them up to sit cross legged, but the chair was just a little too narrow. I tried sitting part cross legged and part dangling but this was just the worst of both worlds. I stewed. He looked comfortable on his ottoman. Sitting there sipping his coffee like nothing was wrong.

I came up with a plan. “Hey, I’m sorry, really, you can have the chair, I’ll take the ottoman.” Not only would I endear myself to myself, I’d get the ottoman.

“No, don’t worry about it, you keep the chair.” Now I knew it, he really was comfortable on the ottoman. I had to have it.

“I insist, really, it was unfair of me to take it from you.”

“No harm done, really.”

I got up and gestured for him to take the chair, “Please, take it, it’s my pleasure to give it back to you.”

“Nah, no, don’t… well, alright,” the other me finally agreed. He stood up and sat down in the chair. I took my coffee and sat victoriously on the ottoman.

I folded up my legs and looked for somewhere to put my coffee, but there was no little table. I just had to sit there holding it by the tiny little handle, which was starting to weigh on my fingers. And I had nothing to lean back on. The little weasel had tricked me!

“Well,” he said, hopping down from the chair after a short interval, “I’ve been here a while and am feeling pretty tired. I think I’m just going to hit the hay.” He started inching towards the bed. The bed that would only fit one person comfortably. The soft, cozy, inviting, wonderful bed that would only fit one person comfortably.

I leapt up, yelling, “No you don’t!” We both bolted for the bed.

My parents were missionaries working in China twenty years ago. They strayed over the border into North Korea while proselytizing along the Yalu, and were held there by the Communist authorities. Or perhaps they were abducted by North Korean agents; the border crosses the Yalu, back and forth, around Linjiang, their base of operations and the spot where they disappeared. My parents were detained, incommunicado, for two months. My mother was six-months pregnant at the time. During their captivity, technicians took tissue samples from my unborn brother. Nine months later, with my parents back in China and none the wiser, I was born.

The facts of my creation were meant to be kept from me, but during my twenty years in a special compound near Kanggye, I developed a relationship with one of my caregivers, Jun Ji Hyun, and then with the loving Lee Young Ae, and finally, as a strapping teenager, with the beautiful Kim Hee Sun. From these three women, I learned how I came to exist and the identity of my mom and dad. Being a handsome young man, I learned other things from them as well.

At the age of twenty I was dispatched to America, to burrow into the country's corrupt society and wait for the signal to "burn down the evil anthill in a hellish sea of fire." I understood in advance that there were no North-Korean agents in America, and probably never would be. Nevertheless, my masters had boundless faith in the future of their glorious regime. Thus operated the minds of North Korea's masters.

I wasn't trained in anthill- or country-burning, or in much else, during my stay in the compound, although I was taught English and Mandarin. I presumed then that when the big moment arrived in America, someone somehow would come to me and explain what to do and where and how to do it.

With some tears on my part and the part of, circumspectly, Kim Hee Sun, I was escorted from the compound. Guards transported me to the coast. From there, a gunboat took me out into the Sea of Japan, where we intercepted a Chinese freighter with several hundred "immigrants" huddled in its hold. We crossed the Pacific and went ashore in the dead of night south of San Pedro, California. According to the crew, we were not entering an anthill, but a country where everyone defecated into water you could drink (which was represented as a luxurious act, although I found the water splashing up onto my bottom a mild shock).

We were taken north in vans, to disappear into Compton and Watts before the sun came up.

Settling down in the U.S., I worked on my English. My new neighborhood consisted mostly of U. S. citizens with very dark skins. Fortunately for me, most of the grocers in the area were Korean. They warned me of a multitude of dangers surrounding me, but compared to Kanggye, the town seemed quite advanced, civilized, and friendly. Everyone was armed, but that just seemed like common sense in today's world. None of the occasional executions that occurred on my block were carried out by the police or the Army, a good thing. Most importantly, everyone had more than enough to eat, and ate it, and then some.

Once I had settled in and had obtained a job at Kwon Sang Woo's grocery and a room with a bed and a window with glass in it, I researched my family's situation. My parents were still in China, but my brother, if such he was, currently studied at a university just to the north. His name was David. The grocer's niece helped me learn this. Bae Yong Joon, a lovely creature. Her Korean was as bad as my English, but she knew about computers. We became attracted to each other.

I didn't want to startle this brother David too badly, so I called him before going to seek him out in person. He thought that I was a fellow student, pranking him, as they call it. Perhaps my accent did not sound brotherly. The best that I could do to prepare him was to give him a warning.

"Listen, Brother," I said to him over the phone. "One day soon, you will be walking on your campus and you will see a person coming toward you. He will look just like you, I believe. Remember my words when this happens, for that person will be me. Then you will know that you are not being pranked, except, perhaps, by God. Then we will talk."

He laughed, a strange and bitter laugh, and hung up.

I saved my money. Bought a bus ticket. I traveled to my brother's university. I visited the administration building and discovered his schedule there. My good looks and pleasant disposition, and perhaps my accent, helped in this, I believe. I found a bench on the quad and sat down to wait for David to emerge from the building in front of me. I was half an hour early.

Students passed, to and fro. A young woman glanced at me, looked again, stopped. Approached my bench.

"David?" she said.

Something in her voice kept me still. She was beautiful.

"Oh my God. David? What have you done?"

She sat down beside me. Reached out to touch my face. I pulled back.

"It's unbelievable. So real. So perfect. At last you've replaced your nose."

She found me quite handsome, as women do.

"You probably think that I've been avoiding you," she said, "but it was like looking into a big wall socket, you know."

We walked to her dormitory, to her room, and had relations. She wanted my nose, in particular. I have experienced love in many varieties, but this woman's noseplay was extraordinary.

I spoke little, which seemed fine with her. She laughed at my accent, as if I were joking.

When we had finished, I took the bus home. I could not subject my brother to the sight of my excellent nose. I will go back when he gets a new one of his own.