With my feet in the air and my head on the ground

[venta]

So. ChrisC and I both recognise that modern relationships are fraught with potential difficulties. A whole gamut of things can go wrong (at least if you read supermarket magazines): arguing, infidelity, financial wrangles, or just drifting apart. Or one person being stolen away by aliens and replaced with an indistinguishable replica.

OK, maybe not aliens. Maybe some supernatural force. Or plain old technology (you've seen Face/Off, right?)

Accordingly, any sensible couple has sorted out A Question. You know, the one to which only the other person will know the answer. Just in case you're fearing that you're dealing with an evil doppelganger, a creature from beyond Alpha Centauri wearing a body suit, or your arch-enemy with a really, really good mask.

Of course, the main worry is that you won't be fearing it. The doppelganger/Alpha Centauran/arch-enemy is sitting next to you tucking in to his (or her) cornflakes of a morning, and you're carrying on, blissfully oblivious, without a care in the world.

It is, therefore, clearly sensible to spring this question at random intervals. Just to be on the safe side, you understand.

On some spurious pretext, I announced my intention yesterday evening of verifying ChrisC's identity when disaster struck: I realised I'd actually forgotten The Question. ChrisC cautiously moved his chair a few inches away from me and announced his intention of checking my identity forthwith.

Second disaster of the evening: once he'd asked, I recognised The Question. But I'd totally forgotten The Answer. It's a good question, by the way. One to which (I'd hazard) it's nigh-impossible to guess the answer if you don't know it.

As I discovered, when my highly-plausible answer was denied. ChrisC shifted his chair further away, and looked a bit concerned.

Fortunately, he's quite a nice chap and rather than staking me through the heart or attempting to tear my face off, he took me out for a curry. On reflection, maybe I should have ordered a known favourite rather than branching out and choosing something I'd never eaten before (vegetable dhansak, since you ask). He even told me The Answer (surely a grave mistake in the circumstances, suggesting he doesn't mind life with a golem so long as it continues to provide cake at approximately the same rate).

Anyway, I seem to have got away with it. But I'm facing a very real problem: it seems, to me, highly likely that I've been stolen and replaced with a near-indistinguishable alien replica. I'm pretty sure this happened to elethiomel a few years ago, too.

Does anyone have any advice?

Comments

[ar-boblad.livejournal.com]

Is this a problem? Are you a happy near-indistinguishable alien replica? I mean to be a replica you've probably invested a lot of time and effort into getting the illusion just right. Now you've succeeded so well done, enjoy the rewards.

[venta.livejournal.com]

I admit I hadn't thought of it like that. As I understand it, to be a good replica you need to believe you're authentic, though, so I'm already a failure.

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

Actually you're both replicants.

I've made a little origami model of the curry you ate, which you'll find on your doorstep when you return from work. Erm... or something like that.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Origami curry? Please do, that's something I'd really like to see :)

[sushidog.livejournal.com]

This is an unusual (although apparently not unprecedented) presentation of Capgras syndrome. Maybe.

Also, that's "Where is my mind" by the Pixies. :-)

[venta.livejournal.com]

Dammit, psychologist types always say that. They never consider the possibility that it's not a delusion!

You can have a kudo anyway, though.

Does anyone have any advice?

[ewx.livejournal.com]

Commence phase 2.

Re: Does anyone have any advice?

[venta.livejournal.com]

I'm pretty sure phase 3 was profit, but I'm not sure we ever filled in the fine details :(

[nalsa.livejournal.com]

Run. Do it now. Don't look back. And remember they may have implanted a tracking device.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Now?

But I've just made a cup of tea!

[ulfilias.livejournal.com]

If there are clones of you....Can i have one, i have very little cake at home !

P.s. Pixies cloned you....or thats what the heading would imply !

[vicarage.livejournal.com]

Do you have the urge to raise strange plants in your greenhouse? If not you're still one of them us.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Logical phallacies get in the way of replicant detection.

I have no greenhouse, so am unable to answer the question meaningfully.

[lnr]

What if you have already got married before you sort out a Question? By this point it is already probable that one or both of us is an alien already. Is it still worth doing, or shall we just assume that as long as we can't tell it doesn't matter?

[venta.livejournal.com]

I'm not aware of marriage as a prophylactic against alien abduction (in fact, as a newlywed I think for dramatic reasons you're more at risk). So it's definitely worth sorting something out now, just in case one or other of you fears later on that the other's been replaced.

If you can't tell and the replacement is plotting your destruction, it certainly does matter!

[zotz]

If Ed was right, I'm some kind of replicant. Mind you, he seems to have stopped believing that, so maybe I got better. Or perhaps, given the supply of yoghurt and ginger beer, he's similarly stopped minding.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Presumably if you haven't brought about the destruction of mankind by now you're not going to, so it's safe to tolerate your replicant self.

[fractalgeek.livejournal.com]

Does this explain your obsession for covers when listening to music?

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

One to which (I'd hazard) it's nigh-impossible to guess the answer if you don't know it.

Sounds like it's nigh-impossible to guess the answer even if you do know it. In which case, maybe it's a bit too good a question…

[drdoug.livejournal.com]

Probably worth checking to see if you have any super-human powers, or ways of contacting your alien mothership. Cos that would be cool.

A really prepared individual will have made arrangements for verifying their own identity to themselves, otherwise how would you be able to prove to your past self that you really were a time-travelling future self and not just an older person with some shiny gadgets and weird ideas? I know I have. If you haven't made physical preparations that way, not to worry - in this situation simply trying to verify your older memories with physical proof would help.

Wouldn't prove that you really are venta but might expose a cheap and careless forgery.

[erming.livejournal.com]

I'm also not sure you are the real Venta.

There has been a distinct lack of talking about rapper dancing recently!

[venta.livejournal.com]

There's been a distinct lack of dancing recently!

Going to be dancing in Brighton at the weekend, though, so will attempt a plausible write-up when I return :)

(I was away with a rapper team last weekend, but all we did was eat lots, drink lots, and practice in a high-ceilinged barn where a moosehead was wearing lipstick. Barely worth mentioning.)

[secretrebel.livejournal.com]

I don't think there's anything you *can* do.

Well , you could read Permutation City by Greg Egan which covers a similar existential angst problem.

There, that's my suggestion. May I have my kudo, please?

[venta.livejournal.com]

Hmm. Well, normally I only distribute kudos for spotting the lyrics in my subject lines.

However, since you're attempting to look after my mental wellbeing by suggesting useful background reading, I shall gratefully award you a small kudo.

[killalla]

Just tell your partner to be on the lookout for manifestations of sleeper programming (I'm thinking of the vegetable chopping scene in The Long Kiss Goodnight).

[venta.livejournal.com]

Film references don't really work on me (I'm not much of a film buff). ChrisC is better, though, so I'll warn him and maybe it'll help :)

[ebee.livejournal.com]

LOL....Im smilng reading this so, 8ft shape shifter though you may be, you bring joy...

Also, if you're having curry hereby COMMAND YOU to explore Zayka on the South Ealing Road (on the big bend by the church) which is the best delivery and most superb restaurant ever. Asim says its better than his mum, contentious, but true.

[hirez.livejournal.com]

Remember not to leave your dwelling-unit with engorged pseudopods. The earthlets find it disturbing.

[hjalfi.livejournal.com]

Look, if you're going to pretend not to be a replicant, you could at least cover up the neck joint in your LJ icon. It is a bit of a giveaway.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Shows you don't read fashion magazines. Frankenstein chic is all the rage this season.

[motodraconis.livejournal.com]

My advice is that You Is Crazy Fool for ordering a vegetable curry. Meaty curries are much better, the animal fats and proteins help carry the flavour of the spices better.

Unless of course you're vegetation, in which case you are a weird alien doppelganger and there's no hope for you.

[venta.livejournal.com]

I'm not vegetarian, no, but I do quite like vegetably curries.

As it was we had one lamb curry and one vegetable curry between us and shared them. So only half weird :)

The replicant-in-the-middle hack

[metame.livejournal.com]

Great thread...

I reckon Chris telling you the question has totally compromised the security btw, even without the answer.

The secret masters could just get their replicant Chris to ask the real, abducted Venta the question. Which she'll answer.

Then this replicant you can say you've remembered and put him at ease...

Re: The replicant-in-the-middle hack

[venta.livejournal.com]

... surely not. Since the real Venta knows that she has been abducted (I assume?) she'll know to give a plausible, but incorrect answer which my replicant self will then repeat... er... rather like I did.

Really, I think what we can deduce from this is that ChrisC's behaviour, in the face of danger, is appallingly risky.

[thegreenman.livejournal.com]

My advice is don't worry since it's already widely known that the universe is actually a hologram composed of planck unit sized pixels and anyway it's just the software speaking...