Random stories

“Ugh, you’re insufferable! I’ll fucking show you it works!”

We’ve known each other for two decades now, but I am still amused by how a giant like Jake gets annoyed by the smallest things. Of course, I knew the cloning device worked; I tested it last night on a rat, but I still wanted to see him use it. And I wanted to avoid losing the draw and being the first human experiment…

“Alright, boot it up!” he said, strapped in the cloning pod. After the loud whirring and green light show, the other pod had one more Jake. As they both emerged, I had a brilliant idea.

“It worked!” said both Jakes, smiling at each other.

“Wait, who’s the clone?” I asked, somehow preventing myself from laughing.

“Me!” they both said, before the realization hit them. They stared at each other like deers in a headlight. I could still till which was which, but because of the symmetry of the room, there wasn’t anything they could do to tell.

“Good thing we installed that tracker in the terminal, eh?” said the clone.

“Yea…” replied the original.

They both stumbled out of the pods and approached the control terminal. The original was closer, but he was slowing down and getting more tense the closer he got to the terminal.

“Fuck, I can’t take this!” he yelled, kicking the terminal, destroying it.

“What are you doing?” I said, along with the clone.

“S—Sorry, I got scared. I didn’t want to be vaporized,” said the original.

“So you are the clone!” said the clone, pointing his finger.

Even by my standards, this prank was getting out of hand. “No, he’s not, you are! But we’re not gonna—” I said. The clone tackled me before I could explain that we weren’t planning on vaporizing human clones.

“Get off of him!” yelled the original, tackling the clone while my eyes were closed. When I looked to my left, they were grappling, and I’d lost sight of which was which.

I tried breaking up the fight, but I was no match for either Jake. One of them swatted me to the side, then stabbed the other with scissors that were laying on the table nearby. He fell to the ground, bleeding, and passed out.

“J—Jake?” I asked the survivor.

“Oh, you’re looking for him,” he said, pointing to the ground then laughing maniacally. “I always knew I was the clone, because you were looking at the other pod when we came out”

Fear gripped me as I ran over to Jake’s body to examine his pulse. Tearing up, I picked up his arm and noticed that… there was very much still a pulse. It wasn’t even faint.

“Ha, gotcha this time, you bastard!” said the supposed dead body, almost scaring me into fainting.

“What the fuck, Jake!” Him and the clone continued to laugh. After a few seconds, the stabber explained, “We cloned last night to prank you. Serves you right for all the tricks you played on me over the years you little shit.”

“Hey, I never took it this far!”

“Remember the best man's speech?” said the Jake on the ground.

I took a few seconds to consider.

“Ok, you know what? Fair enough.”

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Submitted by JustAGuyWriting4Fun on Sat, Apr 15, 2023 to /r/WritingPrompts/

The prompt

your friend built a cloning machine and decided to show you how it works. You watch them step inside and see both them and their clone step out. You decide to be a troublemaker and ask who is the clone.