Thursday, March 26, 2009

Pointless Question #50

You've just bumped into your evil twin who's been impersonating you for the first half of the episode. After a bit of switcheroo in the melee, your allies can't tell which of you is which. Unfortunately, he has just beaten you to the punch in telling them to shoot you both, convincing them to shoot you and let him escape.

How can we prevent this from happening again?

10 comments:

King of Ferrets said...

Get a tattoo on your butt without your evil twin knowing about it.

Tom Foss said...

By pointing out to your colleagues that now you have a huge bullet scar to tell the two of you apart.

Lab Boy said...

Shave my goatee. Gotta shave that damn goatee.

MWchase said...

I think we should swipe from the conspiracy: implanted RFID, and maybe some microchips because YAY MICROCHIPS. (Then you can reenact Spock's Brain!)

Fortunately for everybody, I'm being trained in the use of technology with entirely different creative misuses.

("You're going to need specialized equipment to prepare ice cream like that." "I know.")

Joshua said...

Establish a protocol in advance. Like: "I will never, under any circumstance, ask you to shoot me." Or: "If I need you to kill me for some reason, I'll say [secret password]." Mention the protocol once, then never again. Don't write it down.

Unless your evil clone had your memories as well, they won't know the protocol. Thus, when they say "Shoot us both!", your squaddies will know they're the bad one.

Of course, it's possible that your evil clone was generated in a way that grants them your memories as well. This is much trickier to handle, since obviously they'll know in advance about any protocol you set up. Even something that you don't tell anyone about, e.g. if you intended to suddenly act extremely out of character as a sort of Xanatos Gambit where you hope your team will reason that, since the clone would be trying to impersonate you, it will do its best to stay in character, thus the one acting out of character, paradoxically, must be the original.

So I think if your clone has your memories, then MWchase's plan is probably the best bet. Although I also like Tom Foss' encounter protocol. "In case of twins, use bullets to create distinguishing marks."

Tom Foss said...

Establish a protocol in advance. Like: "I will never, under any circumstance, ask you to shoot me."

The problem with that, Joshua, is that it's just asking for an entirely different trope.

Don said...

I think the simplest solution would be to just shoot all lazy, uncreative, cliche-spewing writers. Then the problem never comes up in the first place.

"You know what's a great idea for a totally suspenseful story? Clones."

*bang*

Anonymous said...

Akusai wins.

I liked the resolution in the Red Dwarf episode "Psirens" - they ask both Listers to play the guitar, and shoot the one that actually can.

Clint Bourgeois said...

Feh, isn't it obvious? Be the evil twin and get them to shoot the good one.

Dark Jaguar said...

Well, don't go to the hospital after they shoot you. I can promise it won't happen again, and if the evil twin tries to pretend to be you again, it's yet another win (depending on how fully the twin commits to the role).