Order and Chaos

Worry is the enemy. We can't be busy worrying when we should be busy chasing.

"Don't get worried," said Milton, reading my thoughts. "Stay calm and focused on the task at hand," we cruised at about 60, following the suspect through the dozens of twists and turns and forks in this alley that narrowed until it was smaller around than our car, knocking over trashcans and scaring cats who weren't in the car. I wasn't sure I'd be able to find my way back out of here.

"Don't worry, Mac, I know this city like the back of my hand!" I cry to my passenger as I drift, throwing out the front end (we were still in reverse.) Quietly I focused on the back of my hand gripping the steering wheel, on which I had drawn a map of the city. It was no help driving at night with all the headlights off, though.

"Instead of watching your watch, watch where you're going," Professor Plok II coughs. With an obliging nod, I defer to the cab on matters of cabbery. (Cabaret?) I turn on the headlights and look straight ahead out the front windshield. You Won't Believe What I Saw Next!

400 angry ninjas.

400 ninjas had been lying in the darkness, and now that I had flicked on my low-beams, attracting them like cats to a flame, they slithered on their bellies towards us from all angles like the vermin they were, out of dumpsters and the crevasses between bricks. "Just like I expected," said the Professor. "Stay calm — remember that their only weakness is salt in the eyes."

This was bad news. I had eaten the kilogram of salt I typically kept in my glove compartment for dinner two nights ago. And what made it worse?

If you're really unlucky you might find yourselves---or the friends you made along the way

"There! They went down that tunnel!" I surmise, inaccurately. Quickly, I unscrew the parking brake handle and jam in my police-issue baton in for extra leverage, drifting into the alleyhole while flooring it. About three seconds later, I crash. I wasn't wearing my seat belt, so I fly straight ahead through the front windshield, into the opposite car through its front windshield, and then my cop diving training kicked in, so I gracefully swept into their front seat utterly unharmed, with my face where feet normally go and vice versa.

"God damn it!" I hear the woman whose car we had just run front-to-front into curse. Now she was over in my car, in the same position I am in.

"No I don't," Felus mutters to himself, to nobody's notice.

I slip out of the flaming totaled wreckage of an automobile, after popping open the glove compartment, reaching past the salt lick, and gnabbing the singed insurance information. I trip on my way out and fall face-first on the ground. I can hear her walking towards me. I roll over onto my front to look at my victim as they cock their gun, discharging a perfectly good bullet.

I was coming face-to-face with my own face. They looked exactly like me! Not a superposition, not a long-lost twin or clone or time-displaced version of myself, not a bodysnatcher who serves as a satanic figure representing entropy; a duplicate. You'll Never Look At The Concept Of Self The Same Way Again After You See This — But You Won't Be Able To Stop Smiling, Either. Until You Watch What Happens Next!

"Hands on your head!" she cries. "Knees on the ground!"

I comply as she handcuffs me. Milton, for some reason, was smiling. Fuck Milton.

"What the fuck," she barks, "are you doing with my face?"

"I —"

"Don't you know impersonating a police officer is a crime? What were you doing hauling 60 down a dark alley with your headlights off? Who are you?! Answer the question!"

This was bad. They were armed, scared, convinced I was their clone, and not gonna give me a word in edgewise. And what made it worse?