Multiplicit

Short stories set in a world where human cloning is routine.

Part I — Ontological Shock

The Fog — a musician enters clone screening and confronts the terrifying bodily reality behind multiplicity
The Spreadsheet — a Mars-side audit copy uses a brutal spreadsheet to decide his own death is the rational outcome
Malice Aforethought — a jailed branch argues the law is backwards because his free copy holds the profits of a crime they planned together
Video Game Boss — a live performer playing an adaptive game boss becomes the product the studio cannot yet automate
The Clone Who Walks Away — a woman who profited from fraud is subpoenaed to testify at her imprisoned copy’s parole hearing
One Way or Round Trip — a Mercury mission reveals that the supposedly disposable outbound copies may be the only continuity left

Interactive Proof — a mathematician verifying his clone’s classified proof knows that if it stands, he dies
Emancipation Hearing — two long-diverged copies petition for legal severance while the state argues they remain too linked
The Holdout — in a branching-based firm, a singleton financial modeler becomes the irreplaceable holdout
Next of Kin — three surviving branches discover their dead copy secretly named a domestic partner as beneficiary
Choir — one member of a four-branch clone singing group wants to make solo music the ensemble cannot absorb
The Passenger — a newly cloned woman discovers that riding in a car driven by her copy triggers helpless backseat anxiety
Cull Party — a financially strained clone family gathers for a ritual dinner where one branch will be voluntarily culled
The Flip — a newly split working mother and her copy use a coin flip to divide childcare and career
Anniversary Trip — on a trip to Quebec City, a wife and one surviving branch confront what seventeen years of cloning did to a marriage
The Breakup — two copies of the same woman divide an apartment and shared routines as they end their relationship with each other