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.

[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]

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

Does anyone have any advice?

[ewx.livejournal.com]

Commence phase 2.

[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.

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 :(

[sushidog.livejournal.com]

There was a case of a woman in the US who couldn't get anyone to believe that her parents really had been replaced by robots, so she cut off their heads with an axe, so everyone could see the wires and so on. I wouldn't suggest any such extreme measures to you though.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Yes, I'll cut off my head with an axe, that'll show them... oh, wait :)

I'm curious: once she'd cut off their heads, could she see the wires?

[sushidog.livejournal.com]

I have often wondered the same thing; and if not, why proceed to the second parent?

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

[venta.livejournal.com]

OK, now I'm impressed ;)

[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!

[nalsa.livejournal.com]

Oh, ok.

[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.

[vicarage.livejournal.com]

smashes a courgette with a hammer.

[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?

[lnr]

*laugh*

Though it looks more like fish than curry to me.

[zotz]

Because to a large extent the robot bit is a rationalisation rather than the root cause?

[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]

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!