False should have had a good night's rest. She should have woken up that morning feeling refreshed and well-rested. Instead, she'd been up all night last night and was rather cranky. Tired as she was, though, False didn't want to sleep at all. She didn't want to miss a thing in her surveillance of Cogsmeade. Because what she saw last night worried her. She'd seen the other False take Jevin to her tavern and only she came out.
Of course, False knew that she could just be paranoid. After all, it had been nighttime and Jevin was supposed to stay the night in the inn. That was what inns were supposed to be used for. And False hadn't heard a single sound from the tavern, so all must have been okay. But she couldn't help herself from worrying that it was because the other False had soundproofed the walls and that Jevin was in really big trouble. False knew what the grand architect of Cogsmeade was capable of and how low she would stoop to achieve her mad ends.
So she'd stayed up all night by the window, constantly watching the Stupor Saloon to see if there was any activity there. There wasn't. But False couldn't bring herself to go to sleep and potentially miss anything, especially with Jevin's life potentially on the line. Eventually she saw the other False leave the Stupor Saloon and return to her house where she promptly asleep. Nothing else happened, but False kept watching.
Eventually it was morning and False was tired, hungry, thirsty, and cranky. And cramped from staying in the same position all night. But she didn't move from her perch by the window. "False!" Came an urgent whisper from behind her, and False, startled, whirled around with her sword in hand. "Woah!" The intruder shouted, and False realized it was Bdubs. She lowered her blade. "Bdubs? What are you doing here?" "All of us are here, actually," Bdubs said, and False saw Doc, Cleo, and Jevin standing behind him.
"Not all of us," Cleo corrected. "Some stayed at Hermitopia and the rest went to look for Gem." "Uh, why are you guys in my tower? And how did you get in?!" False demanded. "I lockpicked the door," Doc said calmly. "You what?" False stared. "You broke in." "We had to," Cleo said. "Jevin lost his stuff." "I don't even know how I died!" Jevin protested. "Uh, what?" False asked, confused.
"Jevin went with the other False to go see her tavern and then he respawned at Hermitopia and didn't remember a thing," Cleo said. False blanched, which was quite a feat because she was already quite pale from staying up all night. "You don't remember anything?" She asked the slime quietly. He shook his blobby head. "This is not good," False muttered, pacing. "Hey, False, can you explain to us what's going on?" Bdubs asked.
"And what do you mean by that?" "You told us to be careful of the other False, and to make sure she doesn't know you're here, but you don't even bother to tell us why," Doc said. "It's complicated!" False snapped. She sighed and closed her eyes, leaning against the wall. "Hey, False, are you okay?" Bdubs asked in concern. "I never could've sneaked up on you before." "You are very pale," Doc observed. "I stayed up all night, okay?" False snapped.
"That's not good for you." Cleo said. "Well, I don't see you sleeping either!" False argued. "I'm a zombie; I don't need to sleep." Cleo pointed out. False rolled her eyes. "Ugh, I can't sleep! I don't have time for that! I need to keep an eye on her!" "How about you ask us for help?" Bdubs asked. "You explain to us what in the world is going on and then we can change shifts. Sometimes you're here watching Cogsmeade, and then someone else does it for you."
False had to admit, Bdubs had a point and a good idea. "Okay, fine," She sighed, rubbing her head. "Take a seat, I'll try to explain." Everyone sat on the floor and looked at her expectantly. False sat down too and started to speak. "You know how I made a lab back home?" Everyone nodded. "I remember getting curious and you shutting me out of it," Doc said grumpily. False laughed unhumorously. "Yeah, sorry about that. But I was in a situation then."
"What kind of situation?" Bdubs asked. Cleo hit him on the head. "Let her finish the story." "So well, I was busy getting into science and enjoying experiments. I found it really fun, messing around with nature and all that stuff. But then I started staying up really late and finding out that I barely had enough time to do everything. My chores were piling up as I started more and more high maintenance projects that didn't have an end in sight. And plus, I wanted to still have time to spend with all of you."
False paused to take a deep breath. "Then one day, I had an idea. I'd been working with biochemistry for a bit, so what if I cloned myself? Made a copy of me to do my chores instead of me, so I could have time to do other stuff? So I made a cloning machine and made the other False." "So that's how she exists," Cleo breathed. "You need to teach me how to do that," Doc said. "No!" False told him, harsher than she intended. She breathed in and out and tried to calm down.
"Messing with things like that doesn't end well. I learned that the hard way." "I agree," Cleo said unexpectedly. The zombie absent-mindedly rubbed her many stitches. "Life shouldn't be taken for granted like that." There was a slight awkward pause in the wake of profound philosophy. "Honestly makes sense with your last name," Bdubs said, breaking the silence. The inventor laughed. "False symmetry indeed. But I didn't notice that at first." "At first?" Doc asked softly; wary of what was coming next.
"At first, she was perfectly fine. I would leave her by herself and she would do all my chores for me, perfectly fine. Don't get me wrong, she wasn't a slave; I would come home several times to find that she decided to make me presents, cook dinner for me even if I never asked. We soon became friends." False said, and she felt a lone tear running down her cheek as she recalled the good times. She brushed it away before anyone saw.
"And what happened after that?" Jevin pressed. "I'm not sure when it started, or if it was always there and I just never noticed. But False was becoming... different, something else. I would find her starting to build odd things, like houses, or statues, that differed from my usual building style. I didn't mind her trying out new hobbies, I just thought it was a little odd. And then she started talking a little differently from me." "Look the same; don't act the same. False symmetry," Jevin said.
"And then I noticed that she was growing taller than me. And faster than I was. That wasn't supposed to happen. She was supposed to be an exact copy of me. I must've done something wrong. So I locked her in my lab and started to run tests on her." False continued, closing her eyes. "It turned out that I'd messed up a couple of genes; she wasn't really a clone of me. I'd just created something more along the lines of a twin. I got curious when I found that out. I wanted to know what had changed and what had stayed the same. If she would react the same as me in different situations. So I kept on running more and more tests."
Cleo and Doc narrowed their eyes. "This isn't going to end well," Jevin predicted. "No, it didn't," False sighed guiltily. "False ended up being locked in my lab for weeks on end, never seeing the sun. I really didn't see her much as a living being; just another experiment for me to check up on. I did some things I wouldn't have done to another person." False lowered her head and hugged her knees to her body. "False started diverging away from my... characteristics. She acted more and more different from me. But that just prompted me to continue the experiments."
"And then?" Bdubs asked. "And then came the day that False snapped. Her mind finally cracked after everything. She broke out of my lab, wrecked the whole place, and escaped. I worried at first about how to track her down, but it turned out that that wasn't a problem." "Why?" Jevin asked cautiously. False smiled grimly. "She was trying to draw attention to herself. She burned down forests, villages. She blew up whole towns and randomly murdered people with no rhyme or reason. All of this just to get to me." "Get to you?" Cleo asked sharply. "She wanted me to chase after her and yet not be able to stop her from doing anything. She wanted me to suffer before she killed me."
"Next time don't clone anything," Doc said angrily. "I've learned my lesson; I won't," False said, looking up. "I eventually caught up to False and locked her away again. She didn't go down without a fight, though; she'd inherited my pvp skills and honed them to be even better than mine. The fact that she was crazy didn't exactly hurt. After locking her up again, I tried to find a way to fix her. I wanted her back to the way she was before I ever tested her. But she escaped again. I needed to stop her before she killed anyone else. So I wiped her memory, with an old invention of mine, and sent her to another dimension, with another old invention of mine."
"So that's how she got here," Doc said. "Yeah. I didn't actually know where she would end up. I just wanted to give her a new life where she could start over. I figured that without her memories and trauma, she would just act the way she used to. And then I went through the rift with you guys and how in the infinitesimally enormous universe did the both of us end up in the same world." False finished, waving her hands like she was mind blown. Jevin whistled. "You're right; this was complicated." "I don't lie, even if my name is 'False'." False said.
"And this is why you're watching her," Doc said. "To make sure she doesn't do anything." "Yeah," False said, rubbing her head. "I mean, at first glance she looks fine, but then stuff keeps popping up. I heard from Sausage that she apparently wears clothes that she got from a dead person and there's been some unknown killings around Cogsmeade recently. I think the hermits being here is making her go evil again."
"Why don't you just kill her?" Cleo asked. False looked alarmed. "I can't do that! She's got a good life here now. I can't take that away from her. And she might not be responsible for all this stuff." "This story is confusing; I can't figure out who's the villain," Bdubs said. Everyone looked at him. "What are you talking about? She's obviously the villain; she's evil!" False said. "Because you basically tortured her and she went mad in the head," Doc pointed out.
"And then wiped her memories and made her all paranoid and unsure of herself with almost no friends," Cleo added. False shuffled her feet awkwardly. "Well, I'm the one who was trying to stop her from murdering people just to have revenge on me!" She protested. "And she might just be going back to being evil again! You guys are here because you think she killed Jevin!" "Well, yeah," Jevin said, "But are we sure you're not the villain of this story?"