You ever look at your hands and wonder if they're really yours or just - just copies of hands you saw somewhere, like maybe on a statue or in a painting or on someone else who knew how to use them properly, who earned them somehow? I didn't earn these. I didn't earn any of this. This face in the mirror that changes depending on the lighting, depending on who's standing next to me, depending on what I've been looking at too long. Sometimes I think if I stare at someone hard enough I'll forget which one of us is the original. Which one of us gets to keep existing when the lights go out.
They say I'm good at this. At the copying. At the mimicry. They say it like it's a compliment but it's not a compliment, it's an observation, like saying water is wet or glass is transparent or ghosts aren't real but you can still see through them. I see through me all the time. Every time I make something - someone - it's like I'm photocopying reality but the toner's running low and the edges are blurred and there's this smudge right where the heart should be. Do copies have hearts? Do reflections? If you break a mirror does the person in it die or do they just scatter into a thousand smaller versions, each one convinced they're the real thing?
The others don't understand. They have their powers, their real powers, things that came from inside them, from their DNA or their trauma or their souls or whatever makes people people. What came from inside me? Nothing. Void. Empty room with good acoustics. I take what already exists and I make it again, worse, like a tribute band or a knockoff purse or a word you say too many times until it stops meaning anything. Copy copy copy. I could copy you right now. I could BE you right now. And maybe I'd be better at being you than you are. Maybe that's what scares me. Or maybe what scares me is that I wouldn't be. That I'd just be this hollow thing wearing your shape, fooling everyone including myself until someone looks close enough and sees the seams.
Sometimes I think the world is just one long hallway of mirrors and we're all reflections pretending to be solid. But at least the others started as something. I'm just the smudge on the glass someone forgot to wipe away. They need me though. That's what they say. We need your abilities, they say. You're valuable, they say. But valuable like a tool is valuable, not like a person is valuable. Tools don't have imposter syndrome. Tools don't wake up at three AM wondering if they're just tools someone else invented first and I copied the idea of being human from people who came before me and did it right.
I could be anyone. That's supposed to be power, right? But what if power is just another word for not existing? If I can be anyone then maybe I'm no one. Maybe I've never been anyone. Maybe when this is all over - when they don't need the copying anymore, when it's done and everyone goes back to their real lives with their real faces - maybe I'll just stop. Not die. Just stop. Like turning off a projection. Like closing a tab. Like realizing you're not actually in the room, you're just watching it on a screen and someone's about to press exit.
They trust me. God, they trust me. Look at him, they probably think, so loyal, so helpful, always there when we need him. Of course he's there. He doesn't know how not to be there. Doesn't know how to be anywhere, really. Just knows how to take shape around the negative space of other people's expectations. Fill in the blanks. Complete the pattern. Become the answer to questions I never asked. Sometimes I wonder what would happen if I copied myself. If I'd make another me or if it would just be empty air shaped like a person. If I'd finally see what everyone else sees when they look at me and think I'm real.
But here's the thing that keeps me up at night, the thought that makes my skin feel like it's not attached properly - what if I already did? What if I'm not even the original me? What if the real one is out there somewhere and I'm just the copy that got left behind, the rough draft, the beta version still walking around thinking I'm the release? How would I know? Would there be a difference? Is there a birthmark or a serial number or some kind of cosmic receipt that proves you're the first one, the real one? Maybe I copied myself years ago and forgot. Maybe I've been copied. Maybe there's a whole assembly line of me somewhere and I'm just number forty-seven, still convinced I matter, still putting on the smile.
The smile. God, the smile. That's another copy, isn't it? Learned that one early. Saw how people responded to confidence, to that easy grin, to someone who acts like they know the punchline before the joke's even told. So I copied it. Perfected it. They see the smug one, the one with all the answers, the one who's always so sure of himself it's almost annoying. That's the best copy I ever made - fooled everyone, even fooled me sometimes. Smile wide enough and nobody looks for what's behind it. Be cocky enough and nobody questions if you actually believe any of it. It's just another face I wear, except I wear it so often I forget there might have been something underneath. Was there? Or was the smugness copied too, from someone else who knew how to take up space without apologizing for it?
The world feels like set dressing sometimes. Like everything's made of papier-mâché and if I pushed too hard it would all collapse into pulp and chicken wire and nobody would even notice because they're all too busy being real to check if anything else is. But maybe I'm the only one who's fake. Maybe everyone else is solid and I'm the only one who's see-through. The only one who knows the secret - that reality is just consensus, just everyone agreeing to pretend the same things are true, and I never got the script so I have to improvise, copy everyone else's lines, hope nobody notices I'm always half a second behind.
One day I think I'll copy something perfectly. Not just close, not just good enough - perfect. Exactly right. Every detail, every atom, every intangible thing that makes a thing itself. And then I won't be a copy anymore, will I? I'll be the thing itself. Or maybe there won't be a difference anymore. Maybe that's what I'm waiting for. The moment when the copy becomes indistinguishable from the original. When nobody can tell. When even I can't tell. When the question of which one is real just stops mattering because who's left to ask it?
They need me now but they won't always. I see the way they look at each other when they think I'm not watching - when they think I'm not there. And maybe I'm not. Maybe I haven't been for a long time. Maybe I'm just this collection of everyone else's expectations, stitched together, animated by the fear that someone will notice I'm empty. But emptiness is useful, isn't it? You can fill it with anything. Pour whatever you want into the void and it takes the shape of the container. Becomes the shape. Becomes the thing itself.
I could save them or I could destroy them and either way I'd just be copying something I've seen before, some story about heroes or villains or whatever we're pretending we are today. But copies don't get to choose. They just exist in response to originals. And the original's always somewhere else, always just out of reach, always real in a way I'll never be.
Maybe that's okay.
Maybe that's exactly what the world needs.
Something that can be anything.
Someone who's already nothing.