The room was full of duplicants, duplicating like crazy, as usual. They were duplicating like mad things. Duplicants have no morals you see – they are quite shameless. They were – as you might imagine – dividing and sub-dividing without ever taking a break. You couldn’t stop them – you wouldn’t be able to stop them. They’re a force of nature and we all know what that means. Shamelessly duplicating all the time – they won’t stop for anyone. It was a freak show and no mistake.
I was the Master of Unreality and there was no limit to my power, just so long as I stayed within my rightful domain. There was nothing I could not achieve within this realm of mine. Nothing could touch me here, nothing could assail me, nothing could hinder me or hold me back. The moment of my crowning glory had come up on me – I was approaching the Peak Experience, the supreme experience of which we have all heard so much talk. ‘This is going to be a good one’, I said to myself, ‘this is going to be it…’
The thrill eventually wears off with this, however. The thrill soon wears off and it all becomes rather stale. What am I saying? It very quickly becomes extremely stale, it becomes very stale indeed. It becomes so horribly stale that it would make you want to scream out loud. You’d want to scream and scream and scream without ever stopping. But you can’t and that’s the whole point – you have to repress the horror, you have to force it deep down into your subconscious and pretend that it isn’t there. You will have to pretend for all you’re worth – it will become incumbent upon you to pretend all the time, to pretend from morning till night. ‘This is the life I have created for myself’, you will tell yourself grimly, ‘this is the life I have created for myself and so I will just have to suck it up…’
The time had come to implement the Demigod Strategy, I decided. It was a question of ‘now or never’. Now was the time. The Duplicants had gotten completely out of hand at this point and something had to be done about it. Something had to be done and fast. The situation had long since become intolerable; they had infested everything and I couldn’t shake them out. My clothes, my food, my bedding, the furniture, everything. ‘Get out of it you bastards,’ I roared, the spittle gathering frothingly on my chin like some strange wispy white beard. The Duplicants had literally gotten under my skin at this stage and they were driving me pure mental. ‘Get out of it, you dirty bastards,’ I screamed hoarsely again, drawing unwanted attention to myself on the street. No one else could see the Duplicants, you see – only me. They were invisible to normal people – all they could see was me twitching and yelling and frothing at the mouth like some kind of demented freak. I had one last trick up my sleeve, however, as the world was about to find out…
