Kitty Wittgenstein and the Sinister Society of Southpaws (4.4)

4.4 Ponder-osa

(note: to go to the beginning of the story, go here, to see all Chapter Four posts, go here and to see all Sinister Society of Southpaws posts, go here)


I retired to my dressing room. Time for some serious pondering. What was going on here?

I watched a replay of my bronco-riding exploits on the monitor. That was me all right. But I’d seen video footage of myself fighting off Kate, too. And that had been me as well.

My consciousness hadn’t shifted back and forth between me and somebody else. It had shifted between two different versions of me. Which was slightly more plausible. Still totally freaking insane, of course. But less totally freaking insane than swapping minds with somebody else. This wasn’t Freaky Friday.

Clones.

Clones made sense.

Again, not a lot of sense. But more than the alternative explanations.

I’d seen that the Good Stuff people had clones of me running around. Somehow my consciousness must have shifted over to a clone and then shifted back when the clone died.

Or… or maybe this rodeo version of me was a clone. And the consciousness of the real version of me had shifted into this clone version when I died from the bomb blast.

But how did that work? There was nothing special about a clone. Just because my counterpart and myself had the same DNA, that didn’t mean we had any other connection. A clone is just an identical twin. When identical twins die, their consciousness doesn’t zoom into the other one.

At least, not as far as I was aware.

And I’m sure if that was happening, I’d have heard about it by now.

I sighed. I didn’t seem to be getting far. I watched yet another replay of myself falling off the horse. Nice view of your butt there, Kit. No doubt why they were replaying it a dozen times. The Wittgenstein derriere has long been renowned as ratings gold.

I snapped back to focus.

Okay. There had been two versions of me running about. One had died, and her memories of the past few days had switched to the other one. I could live with that for now. It was certainly better than the alternative of being blown to bits. Explanations could be sorted out later.

There were still a couple of questions to sort out.

Firstly, were there any more of ‘me’ out there? If this version of me died, would my memories zoom to another body? Or would I just die? I’d prefer the former. It would certainly allow for some crazy-brave action heroine antics.

But probably not something worth risking. I’d feel like a right fool if I died and didn’t come back to life in a spare body.

Secondly, and more importantly, where was Orlando really being kept? Bruce had led me into the bomb trap on the pretence of it being an Orlando rescue. But if he wasn’t being kept at Good Stuff headquarters, where was he being kept?

Only one way to find out. I had to contact sinister1 again.

(to be continued)