I didn’t really believe in Seconds — at least not as a viable option for finding the person you’re going to spend the rest of your life with — until I was at a party in the West End and I met Brian’s new fiancee, Stephanie.

Not just gorgeous, you have to understand; this was the type of woman who you see standing outside of magazine pages maybe once or twice in a lifetime. I shook her hand, and when I managed to get my motor systems firing again I asked how they met.

“It’s a funny story,” said Brian. “My Second was out on a date that was going really badly, and Stephanie was their waitress.”

“It went so terribly,” said Stephanie. She put on a serious look and said, “I saw it firsthand, it was like watching a car crash.”

“I’m glad I wasn’t there,” said Brian, and grinned at her. Her serious frown broke and she leaned into him, almost spilling his drink. Her dress shifted and I saw, for a second, another perfect inch of perfect collarbone.

“This woman left Brian2 halfway through the dinner,” she said. “When I brought the bill, he asked if I ‘might be able’ to bring back my number with his change. I was so flattered.”

“I was pretty proud of that one,” admitted Brian.

“You probably wouldn’t have had the guts to ask me out!”

“My Second has the same guts as me!” he said, laughing. He gave me a look like, Are you hearing this? “The exact same guts.”

#

He arrived in a giant crate, my Second. I didn’t think Seconds could come by post, but they made me sign for it, so I guess there are some security safeguards. Even with the internet and everything I don’t order a lot of things that come in seven foot crates, so I knew exactly what was inside, and as soon as the postman was gone I went at it with a crowbar.

You know how you look at a picture of yourself and think, “Is that really what I look like?” It was like that, times a thousand. When I wiped away the packing peanuts I was looking at another me: David2, as naked as the day is long, big dopey eyes and thinning brown hair. I touched the top of my head, certain they’d gotten my hairline wrong, and David2 blinked.

“Hello,” he said.

“Hi,” I replied. It felt wrong, somehow. Not morally or ethically or anything, but if I was lying naked in a box of packing peanuts, there’s no way I’d be that nonchalant about introductions.

David2 said it would take a few moments to get himself calibrated, since he’d gone from zero to 30 years in just a matter of seconds, so I put on a pot of coffee and got him some of my clothes.

We sat there, at the island in the middle of my kitchen, and looked at each other. Some people talk to themselves all the time. I had a little trouble getting started.

“I’m, ah,” I started. “I’m not exactly sure how this is supposed to work. And if I don’t know, how are you supposed to know?”

“I’m not sure what you mean,” he said. He scratched the back of his neck. A nervous tic of mine, I realized. “I have all of our — your — memories, but I also had some knowledge embedded at the Facility. Kind of a Frequently Asked Questions, I guess.”

“They embedded knowledge?” I said. “They can do that?”

He nodded, then shrugged. “I guess so,” he said.

Stupid, I thought. They made a second me in a week, of course they could do all kinds of freaky stuff. I wondered, for a moment, if i could get them to embed Citizen Kane in my head — if that was even possible. I’d been meaning to see it but never had the time.

“What would you like to know?” he asked.

“What do you do?” I said

“Well,” he started, “mostly we go out on first dates. That’s what Seconds do, I mean. That’s kind of what we were designed for.” He put up his hands, preemptively. “Now, I know you don’t get that, but hear me out.”

I hadn’t even realized I’d started to say something, but there it was, stuck to the back of my throat. I swallowed my objection and listened.

“Nobody has the time to go out on a bunch of first dates with people,” he said, “only to find out there’s no connection or they were disingenuous in their Facebook photos or they have eight cats or whatever. We’re a screening process. I go out on the first date, and if things go well…”

“…I step in for date number two,” I finished.

“Exactly!” he said. “And since I’m you, I’ll know if there’s a connection or not. You get to skip all the awkward first date questions where it feels like you’re filling out a survey and move right into already knowing each other.”

“And that’s,” I started, then stopped, searching for the right word. “That’s fulfilling for you?”

He shrugged again. “I’m five minutes old,” he said. “Right now pumping my own blood is fulfilling for me.”

I spun the handle of my coffee mug back and forth, staring over the rim at myself. I’d had my share of awkward first dates. False starts, crossed wires, wasted nights. They really could be terrible — the prototype phase of a relationship, like all those whirligigs and bikes with flapping wings that crashed spectacularly before the Wright Brothers came along and refined things. Why not enter a relationship that’s already working, instead of the beta version?

We took sips of our coffee simultaneously, then he stared at me, like he expected me to say something profound.

“What if you get laid on the first date?” I asked.

He sighed. “That happened one time,” he said.

#

A friend of a friend liked a video I posted on my profile, then she liked a few old photos of me (which, come on, is totally a sign), and after a few flirtatious messages we made plans to meet up for a drink. I really did want to go myself, but the QA guys found a few bugs in the update we were getting ready to launch and there was no way for me to get out of the office, so I asked David2 to go instead.

It was after midnight when the bug was finally smoothed out and the launch was underway. When I got home the windows were all dark, the door was still locked, and David2 was nowhere to be found, which I guessed was a good sign for me/him.

I fixed myself a drink and settled onto the couch, waiting. Even before the booze kicked in I had this strange, almost euphoric feeling. Two places at once. This was the best of both worlds — I only had so many hours in my day, and this way I didn’t have to disappoint Sara or my boss. In just the past 10 hours I’d outsourced compiling the code (to my computer); making my dinner (to the cafe next to the office); brewing a cup of coffee (to the machine in the break room); and transportation (to the bus). Why not add a date to the list?

When I heard David2 at the door, butterflies started multiplying in my stomach. I placed my drink on the table and stood up, for some reason, like I was meeting somebody’s parents for the first time. Something to do besides stare at the door, I guess. He wasn’t whistling when he came in, but he might as well have been, with a big goofy grin on his face. He was wearing my go-to first date outfit, which I thought was a nice choice — but then again, of course he was, and of course I did.

“How’d it go?” I asked, but his smile had already told me most of the story.

David2 assured me that it was the type of date I had dreamed about. Definite connection. She laughed at his jokes and he laughed at hers. They had three rounds of drinks, and on the third, she did that thing where your date finds an excuse to touch your forearm — leaning in conspiratorially, eye contact, peak forearm. It was enough to make me wish I’d been there.

“Friday night, seven o’clock,” he said. “She’s really excited to see you again.”

“And you’re… okay with that?” I asked.

“What do you mean?” he said. He screwed up his face with a look that I knew, immediately, was the one that made my boss roll his eyes and start re-explaining something.

“Never mind,” I said. “Did you have a good time?”

“A great time!” he said. He fell onto the couch next to me with a bounce. “And you’re going to have a great time on Friday, too. I guarantee it.”

I took a sip of my cocktail and nodded. “Great,” I said. I spun the ice in my glass and looked at him. “Goodnight kiss?”

He smiled. “She kissed you,” he said.

Pronouns dancing in my head, I finished the rest of my drink, trying to imagine the taste of our first kiss. All I got was bourbon.

#

At first I thought I was just being nervous, or paranoid — you know, first (or second?) date jitters — but by the time the main course arrived I knew something was wrong.

“That sounds tough,” said Sara, and touched my hand around a half-empty wine glass.

We had reached the point of intimacy immediately. I kissed her when I picked her up, no hesitation, since the ground had already been laid; we held hands on the way to the restaurant, a noodle bar near the square that David2 said she’d mentioned; and now we were talking about my job, in detail, since she’d already heard the broad strokes.

We’d skipped over all the awkward stuff, immediately comfortable with each other. But for whatever reason, it was incredibly uncomfortable.

“There are always going to be bugs,” I said, shrugging. I took a sip of wine. “At least I can get rid of a bug. If you tried to do that with one of your kids, you’d probably get a call from the parents.”

She laughed. “Probably,” she said. “‘For whom the bell tolls,’” she added, with a wink.

I smiled back, trying to push the confusion off of my face. For whom the bell tolls? Was that an inside joke? Was she referencing something from our first date? David2 had given me a pretty thorough debrief — topics covered, personal trivia revealed, favorite film and favorite color — but this hadn’t come up.

My smile didn’t do the trick because she said, “Remember?”

“Oh yeah!” I said, too quickly. “‘For whom the bell tolls!’ Totally.”

I looked at my miso soup. There were no answers there.

When I looked back, she was wearing a pained expression — one I recognized as very similar to my own. Like she’d made a mistake. Like she’d said something wrong.

We sat like that, two uncomfortable people staring at each other — a scene you rarely see in the great love stories. Two people who knew something was amiss, and trying to figure out what it was.

“It wasn’t you last time,” I said, “was it?”

Her smile did that thing fake smiles do when you’re trying to keep them up. The corners wiggled. Her chin quivered. Her eyes looked like they belonged to somebody else, somebody who wasn’t smiling, somebody who wasn’t happy about what was happening at all.

“Oh my god,” she said as it dropped, “I am so sorry.” She put her elbows on the table, one on each side of her noodles, and buried her head in her hands. “I thought I could do this.” She looked through her fingers. “It’s not you. Really. I really wanted to come last week, but I forgot I had parent-teacher conferences…”

“Sara,” I said.

“…and by the time I remembered,” she continued, “it was too late to cancel…”

“Sara,” I said again.

“…but I figured if I sent my Second it would be fine, she’d tell me everything, and she said we had this joke, and…”

“I sent my Second, too,” I said.

She stopped. Her fingers slid down her face. The steam from her noodles had made her hands moist. “You did?”

“Yeah,” I said. “It was another bug, I had to stay late at work.” I picked up my spoon, idly stirred my soup. “I have no idea what ‘for whom the bell tolls’ means either.”

This time the laugh was a real laugh. “I know I’ve heard the expression,” she said. “But who uses it?”

“Right?” I said, and I laughed too. I held out my hand. “David,” I said.

“Sara,” she said. Her hand left warm, noodle-scented water on my fingers. “Nice to meet you.”

“So,” I said, unfolding my napkin on my lap, “we’re just two people on a first date?”

“I guess so,” she said. She took a sip of wine and watched me over the glass.

“That sucks,” I said, and she laughed so hard wine came out of her nose.

#

“What if I want to send you back?”

I realized, immediately, how indelicate that was. David2 and I were in the middle of breakfast; well, I was in the middle of breakfast, and he was in the middle of watching me eat. I don’t think he needed to eat, or sleep, or sweat, or any of that stuff that the rest of us with natural biological systems did. But if he had feelings, real or virtual, they seemed hurt.

“You want to send me back?” he said.

“That’s not what I said,” I replied, hiding behind a forkful of eggs. “Not exactly.”

He watched me chew, then shook his head — trying to shake the wounded expression off, like a dog shaking off water. “Of course not,” he said. “If you tell the Facility, they’ll send packaging. Slap a few stamps on and you’re done.”

“And what happens to you?”

He paused. “I’m deactivated,” he said. “And processed.”

My appetite disappeared. I pushed the plate away from me.

“It’s fine,” he said. “It’s what happens to all of us.”

“Don’t do that,” I said, squeezing the spot on my nose between my eyes, trying to think. All I could hear was: Deactivated. Processed. Deactivated. Processed.

“Do what?” he said.

“That thing I do,” I said, exasperated, “where I say ‘it’s fine’ when it’s not, and then play dumb.”

He looked off and scratched the back of his neck. “That doesn’t work, huh?” he said.

For a long time I couldn’t catch his eye, but when I did, I didn’t know what to say. What would I be thinking, if somebody had told me I was going to be processed? What a terrible thing to say to yourself.

“I guess not,” I replied.

“Was it something I did?” he said.

“No,” I said. “Something I didn’t.”

#

You never saw Seconds and their originals in the same place. It was sort of by design — the only place your Second ever went was some place you couldn’t, or didn’t want to. I’d heard of people who went through entire relationships — years, sometimes — without even knowing that their first date, or some anniversary, had been spent with their partner’s Second. That their partner even had a second. Like an outgoing voicemail message that fooled you into thinking the person had actually picked up, but every single time. The perfect ruse — the one that’s never figured out.

So when David2 and I showed up in the park to meet Sara and Sara2, we got some looks. People started trying to pick out other pairs lounging on the grass, maybe assuming that there was some kind of twin convention going on. But no, nothing like that — just two pairs, and we weren’t dressed the same or anything. Because that would have been weird.

I knew immediately which one was Sara2, simply because of the look of surprise on her face. When Sara and I made this plan, we agreed we wouldn’t tell our Seconds what we were doing. It was nice, an actual, authentic piece of intimacy. Our first secret.

David2 got the same look as we crossed onto the stone bridge in the middle of the park. While we were still out of earshot he turned to me and said, “What’s going on?” I didn’t look at him; I was watching Sara2 do the exact same thing to Sara.

We met in the middle of the bridge, which was kind of poetic, albeit unplanned. We stood there, mirror images of ourselves, with identical stones and streetlights on either side. David2 and Sara2, despite having had a lovely date, seemed out of their elements. They kept looking at us, waiting for us to explain what was going on.

“So,” I said, “this is nice, isn’t it?”

“This isn’t how this is supposed to work,” said Sara2, crossing her arms. For whatever reason I expected her to sound at least slightly different from Sara, in some miniscule way, but it was exactly the same. It made me blink.

“Sorry,” said Sara, “I can be like that.” Her Second frowned at her.

“I know how this is supposed to work,” I said, “and it didn’t.” Sara raised her eyebrows. “Well, it kind of did, but…” I trailed off.

“Sorry,” said David2. “When we went out, I didn’t know –”

“The way this is supposed to work isn’t fair,” I said. “You guys aren’t Cliff’s Notes that we can skim and skip over. You’re not virtual assistants in some… some call center overseas. You’re doing the work. You’re the book.”

Sara and Sara2 got identical confused looks on their faces. I turned to David2 and he shrugged. At least he knew what I meant. I mean, of course he did. But it’s still nice to be understood.

“Listen,” I said, “did you two have a good time when you went out?”

Sara2 and David2 both looked at each other, and identical smiles, followed by identical nods, played across both their chins. Mirror images of mirror images.

“Yeah,” said David2.

“That’s how we knew you would, too,” said Sara2.

I raised my eyebrows at Sara, urging her to take the lead. She took a breath and said, “So you should go out again.”

Now, in case he had felt left out, David2 jumped on a really good chance to look confused himself. He shook his head. “That’s not how this works,” he said.

“Screw that,” I said. “You two,” I motioned to our Seconds, “aren’t how this,” I motioned to Sara and I, “works. We went out, we had a good time, we’re going to go out again.” I paused. “Right?”

Sara nodded. “Right,” she said.

“You two went out and you had a good time,” I said. “So you go out again.”

“But –” started David2.

“Don’t be a wuss,” I said. “Not buts.”

We stared at each other for a second. “What I was going to say,” he said, in my let me explain this to you, dummy, voice, “is that you do realize we’re both kind of, like… really sophisticated, blood-pumping, week-old… robots, right?”

I rolled my eyes. I had known this was going to come up, because if somebody had told me the same thing, I’d have looked for any excuse to avoid dealing with it too, to just do exactly what I was supposed to do. I was kind of like a robot, in that way. Input, result. Problem, solution. That’s how all this started, when I saw Brian and his own personal solution at that party.

“Nobody’s perfect,” I said. “And that’s worth finding out yourself.”

Sara smiled at me, which was kind of strange, since I realized I may have just paid her some kind of backhanded compliment, or forehanded insult, or something. But Sara2 and David2 smiled at each other, too.

“She liked you,” Sara told David2, “when she thought you weren’t a robot.”

“And he liked you,” I said to Sara2, “when, you know… ditto. So what’s the difference?”

They looked at each other for a long moment before my Second broke away and asked, “But what if I mess this up?”

I smiled. “Don’t worry about it,” I said. “You’re identical to me. I can almost guarantee that’s going to happen.”

The horror that flickered across his face only lasted a second. He started to laugh, then the Saras did too. Finally, I joined in, and for just a second, we were all just one big, happy thing.

I was glad it was me there, and not somebody else.