This Flash Fiction piece isn’t at all wish fulfillment for the hectic evening I’m having. Nope. Not at all.
Jennie yawned and adjusted the popcorn bowl in her lap as the next episode began playing on the screen. Gosh, going splitsies always made her feel so drained. Today was no different. Still, she felt sure she’d made the right choice. Her to-do list this weekend was just unbelievable, and this way she could get everything out of the way today and then spend tomorrow just resting and recuperating. Even with that, it would probably be weeks until she could do it again. She’s realized recently, though, that she couldn’t keep saving her power for some impossible emergency that might never come. All that energy that built up inside her over time as her powers went unused wasn’t good for her mental health, so the best thing to do was to, once in a while, use it on getting herself a day when she could focus on relaxing and get a bunch of stuff done all at once.
This time, she’d had the energy for six duplicates. Quite impressive, for being her. One was downstairs, sorting out the perpetually messy basement, and one was on a food-prep spree in the kitchen. The third, she’d sent to the library to study for her exam next week. Once she reabsorbed them all tonight, she’d get all the knowledge her other self acquired. Number four was cleaning, and five ran errands all over town while six was hard at work on that translation job she’d gotten the other day. She’d been a bit hesitant about that last one. Errands seemed like an advanced task for a duplicate, which were generally very narrowly focused in terms of skills and abilities. But after speaking to her briefly before sending her off, she’d come to the conclusion that crossing roads safely and navigating the subway system seemed to be included as a subset of the skill “run errands”, so it should be all right. As long as she didn’t run into anyone Jennie knew – the duplicate seemed not to have retained any of her knowledge except what errands to run and how to run them well. Still, it should be all right. Worst case, she’d have to joke around about having a doppleganger and hope that did the trick.
In the kitchen, a blender jumped to life. “Close the door, please!” Jennie called, and reached for the remote to turn up the volume a bit. Number two closed the door, though not before a smell of lasagna wafted into the living room. Jennie smiled. Yeah… this had definitely been a good decision.