“NO!” screamed the YouPet of Jennifer York as she sprawled on her back in the plastic box she’d just arrived in, her limbs shaking so hard that standing would’ve been impossible.  “GET AWAY FROM ME!”

            “Why should I?” the real Jennifer smirked, raising an eyebrow with amusement as she gazed down at her cloned pet.  “You’re bought and paid for, fair and square.  I sat through that whole thing in the chair and had to wait the two longest weeks of my life for you to get here.”

            “There’s been a mistake.  A huge, massive FUCK-UP!” screeched the tiny woman breathlessly, trying to crawl backwards on her hands, as though that would’ve protected her from the massive hand that loomed above her and shared her exact DNA.

            “I only just got here today to get the scan done and things, I… I…” the YouPet gasped weakly, as the pieces started coming together in her head.

            Jennifer retracted her threatening palm from hanging over her prize and instead crossed her arms authoritatively, glowering victoriously.  “You can’t remember waiting the two weeks, can you?”

            “I… I…” peeped the clone.

            “You can’t remember, because you didn’t do it.  Your memory stops after they took the sample from me.  All you remember is being put to sleep, right?”

            Tears began to well in the YouPet’s little eyes.  She nodded solemnly, biting her lip to stop herself from making a noise.

            “So I guess it’s pretty clear now.  There hasn’t been a mistake.  Actually, this whole thing has gone… kind of perfectly,” Jennifer admitted with a giggle.  Her radiant red hair hung loosely over her shoulders, but as she continued staring with abject desire down at this miniaturized version of herself, she brought both hands behind her head and began twirling her locks together into a ponytail.

            “But… but that m-m-means…”

            “Yep.  You’re not Jennifer.  I’m Jennifer.  You’re a thing they grew in a little glass tube and you’re half a month old,” the towering young woman reported callously as though sharing boring gossip with an acquaintance, finishing up her simple hairdo and bringing her right hand back to its previous position of hovering over her YouPet.

            She relished the sight of her fingers’ individual shadows moving and intermittently blocking out the light for the little copy of herself.  So much power, and it was all hers.  No one to have to share with.

            Jennifer dangled her fingers over the edge of the box and drummed them in a rippling pattern, each with a pounding thump that made the tiny woman cringe in tempo.

            The YouPet was only able to hold back the sobs in her throat because her entire tiny body seemed to have stopped functioning for fear of shutting down.  Her skin had gone cold enough to be warmed by acetone.  The proof was being beaten into her face like a steel beam, and there was no denying the truth of what she was staring up at this moment.

            She was not Jennifer.  She was not a real person.  She did not exist two weeks ago.

            No.  No.  No.

            NO!

            She couldn’t wrap her mind around these ideas without feeling them violently rotting inside her heart.  She remembered with such crystal-clear vividness every significant moment from Jennifer’s life: birthday parties as a little girl, ringing the bell while learning to ride a two-wheeler bike, spiking the ball at high school volleyball tournaments, her first kiss, the awkward post-prom losing of her virginity, tossing her grad cap in the air at college, and so many more that they were impossible to keep at bay.  The memories were so intensely animated in her mind, raw and real, biting at her consciousness so ferociously that she refused to believe she couldn’t be Jennifer, despite having all the physical evidence that could possibly be provided.

            NO.

            Why wasn’t she Jennifer?  Why was it so impossible?

            All that separated her from Jennifer, after all, was two weeks of memory after the procedure while awaiting her arrival.

            That, and the fact that she was now small enough for the real Jennifer to squelch her to blood and intestine jelly under a balled fist.

            The real Jennifer.

            It was no use.  She knew she couldn’t convince herself she was Jennifer and this was still some horrendous nightmare.  Even with all those memories swimming in her head in a fiery whirlpool, there was no denying that she had only existed for about a week and a half.

            The real Jennifer.

            That phrase was acidic in the YouPet’s throat, and it made her nauseous, despite her ability to hold back the traumatized tears.  She doubted she would be able to stop herself from being sick for very long.

            After all, included in those memories, so real they could almost be touched, were her fantasies.  Specifically, her fantasies of what she’d do with a YouPet if she ever got her hands on one of her very own, or two, or three, or four: plans constructed carefully over a year of pining.  The daydreaming, the planning, the unbreakable desire that all combined into a mortal thought process so clear that she knew exactly what fate was coming for her in alphabetical and chronological order as soon as Jennifer wanted to start.

            Jennifer herself had been caught in a reverie, just staring down at her tiny clone trapped in the box, soaking in the visage of terror in the little one’s eyes.  There was no where she could go.  No matter how many laps she ran around the corners of the container, no matter how much she cried or screamed, and no matter how long she bowed on her knees with her hands clasped in prayer, she could not prevent what was coming.  It was inevitable.

            The young woman ceased tapping her fingers against the edge of the box.  She’d been waiting twelve long months ever since she’d known YouPets existed for this moment, and she was through with being patient.

            Her hand descended into the box over her trembling prey, her fingers snaking around the clone’s quaking limbs.

            It was time to play.

            The feeling of picking up her YouPet- picking up herself- was more electrifying than Jennifer had anticipated.  Instantly the pathetic little squirt was broken from her horrified paralysis and thrashed about against the coiled surface of soft fingers steadily squeezing around her until she was flattened against Jennifer’s palm, which had begun to sweat from the tingling anticipation.  Jennifer raised her arm up so that her fist still hung about two feet over the box.

            Something close to a human life, condensed into a nearly two-inch package, was contained in her fist.

            Her human life, specifically, concentrated into a papery frame the size of a dragonfly.  Shaking and fighting like a caged animal.

            Jennifer sighed, wanting to meld this moment into her mind permanently.  She would not be able to experience this for the first time ever again, after all, and she wanted to relish it.

            All the troubles of her youth, big and small, seemed to be packed into this moment.  Her weaker self, siphoned off of her and shrunken down into a wheezing mirror image body, was now hers to take hold of.

            This lowly, pathetic life form squirming between her fingers represented every part of Jennifer that she loathed and wanted to be rid of.  No one was going to be able to put her down ever again, because she held the power over herself.

            She did.  Jennifer.

            And it was time to put this side of herself to rest.

            Of course, she wasn’t going to let $50 go to waste, either.  She’d spent over a year imagining this moment, going over ever squalid detail in her mind.  Jennifer had become an architect of time for this specific frame of her life.  She knew what she wanted just as clearly as the YouPet did, and she doubted it would even be necessary to state her wishes of the worming mini-Jennifer in her fist.

            In fact, the little victim could probably recite it just as well as she could, if not better due to what she assumed was the adrenaline rush of a two-week lifetime.

            “Are you ready?” Jennifer whispered to her pet in her clenched fist.

            “No,” croaked the YouPet, feeling hollower than ever, and wanting very much to return to sleep for as long as possible.

            Jennifer’s fist opened up.  Her fingers splayed out in the air, abandoning the YouPet in freefall over the box.  The little thing barely had time to yelp as she plummeted the equivalent of a two-story drop back into the prison she’d awoken in.

            The YouPet, too horrified to contemplate proper landing procedure, landed right on her feet but quickly slumped to the ground.  She yipped like a wounded animal as the pain shot from the tips of her toes to the top of her head.

            Quivering with shock, she looked down at her legs, and was surprised to see them looking perfectly straight and un-splintered.  From the feeling of it, she would’ve assumed one of her knees had snapped at the hinge and left her crippled.  But this was not the case.  In fact, aside from the searing pain now settling into her skin, she felt physically capable of standing up again and actually walking.

            The moment stretched on silently as the YouPet whimpered forlornly, rubbing her shaking palms against her knees, until she looked up into the leering expression of Jennifer, who was leaning as close as she could into the opening of the box.

            “Good,” Jennifer said simply, nodding her head.  “You’re still in one piece, just like I thought.  What do you say we move to Phase 2?”