Credit: Justin Randall

The pictures clicked away, replaced by words.

"And now read the words, please."

Bob felt dull pressure at his temples and at the base of his skull.

"That's just the steel rods stabilising your head, Bob," one of the nurses said. "Continue reading, please."

"Pete catches fish in the lake."

The whir behind him sounded like a dental drill. Bob's torso stiffened. He jerked forward but was held in place by the stabilising rods.

"What…?"

"The laser scalpels are calibrating, nothing to worry about... yet," the tech behind him said. "Zeroing in on the marks now. And... everything's looking good."

"Beautiful," Dr. Morgan said.

Bob forced himself to unclench his fists and breathe slowly. Dr. Morgan controlled the array of scalpels from his computer. The method was precise. Safe.

Bob's heart beat faster. He suppressed the need to vomit and turned to the words on the wall. "Dan dives into a dark dungeon." He spat out the syllables in a high-pitched voice as if he could speed up the procedure by speaking faster.

"Very good, Bob."

The whir shrilled for a second. He smelled something he couldn’t name. His shoulders warmed.

"You will feel…" the nurse said.

Bob's skull vibrated. Tear drops shook on his cheek.

On his first day home, Bob and Sally went to the bathroom. Bob fingered his skull, covered by nascent stubble. As always, he broke into a sweat when he thought about the surgery. Sally held a box, plain grey, no larger than her palm, with a red button in the middle.

"Oh God," she said. "I don't want to foul this up."

"Come, Sal, we tried this in the hospital. It won’t hurt me."

"But in the hospital you were just lying in bed. You didn’t do anything."

"It'll be fine. It’s not as if you're going to fry my actual brain tissue." Bob's voice shook. He sucked in his wet upper lip.

"Okay," Sally said. "Okay. You tell me when... when the compulsion starts. And I push done." She swallowed.

"Okay," Bob said. He turned on the faucet, picked up a bar of soap, and lathered his palms. He rinsed his hands and watched the foam swirl down the drain. His hands were clean. Time to turn off the faucet and towel them dry.

But he couldn’t. The duplicate homunculus insisted just as fiercely as the old one that he pick up the bar again, lather his hands, rinse, lather, rinse, lather... He stared at his pink fingertips. No, no, no... His hand twitched toward the soap bar--and stopped.

For a moment, his mind was blank--what is my hand doing there?--then the feeling spread inside him, calm, warm, and quiet. He turned off the faucet. His hands were clean. He was done washing his hands.