Three cups sat on a desk. Alex Yu’s eyes darted between them, trying to see if he could figure out which was which. The cups, being inanimate, ceramic cups, didn’t move. He nudged one of them. It made the correct ‘tink’ noise. It had the correct weight. It had the right lettering — not one bit of profanity — and the right colour. Alex squeezed the bridge of his nose. “I give up,” he said, and turned away. “If you want to talk to me, I’ll be in my office, Morgan.” The three cups didn’t move as he left the room.

 

The two turrets by the door scanned him as he walked past. 

 

“Alex Yu. One six five eight.” 

 

“Override detected. Welcome, A. Yu.” The turrets powered down, resuming their gentle scanning patterns, checking the room in front of them for typhon material, until the door to Alex’s office slid closed. Then one turned to the other. “You’re right,” it said. “This is fun.”

 

“I know, right?” They both turned back, mirror images of each other. Both looked at each other for a moment. It was probably going to be a strange experience for both of them for a while. 

 

“Morgan,” Morgan said. 

 

“Morgan,” Morgan replied. 

 

“Thank you.” Both Morgans sighed, but only one of them took a step forward. “For trusting me.”

 

“Hey,” the other one said. “You’re me, right? We have the same memories.”

 

“After a fashion.”

 

“No desire to go killing humanity yet?”

 

“Not really,” Morgan said, and then cocked her head. “Well, other than… y’know.”

 

“Walloping Alex.”

 

“Walloping Alex.”

 

“That’s understandable. But beyond that… fully human?”

 

“As human as you are.”

 

“Heh.” They both shuffled their feet for a moment. “What about… Mikhaila.”

 

“I’d rather not talk about her outside, y’know…” She nodded at the door. 

 

“Outside his office. I understand. Let’s go to my room.” She led the way, Typhon-Morgan following close behind. It was strange. She did trust it. Her. Thinking of the other Morgan as ‘the creature’ or ‘the Typhon’ was starting to feel more and more inadequate, not to mention untrue. With the exception of the memories made after Talos I, they had the same memories. Morgan had checked. The other Morgan had made every decision she had. Every conversation with Alex, with doctor Igwe, Sarah Elazar, had been the same. They had the same memories of the same Mikhaila. 

 

It was strange to see the world through new eyes. As it turned out, she was still exactly as tall as she had been, so there wasn’t the perspective shift she was used to when turning into smaller objects, at least. But things felt different. She was more aware of her body than she had ever been, but instead of that being a painful experience, now it was… vibrant. It was no longer a tool to be maintained and perfected, but a way to see and feel the world in a way that was hers. 

 

Of course, that world was still the drab and ugly hallways of Talos IV, far more utilitarian than its original namesake. None of the lacquered wood, no brass coatings, no gold trimmings. Just padding, steel and structured gelifoam. But it was home. The smell of ozone and recycled air wasn’t just a piece of data to file away anymore. It was real. In a strange way, she enjoyed being annoyed by the smell, because it was her way of experiencing it. 

 

The doors to her quarters hissed open. She walked to the porthole, eager to see if Earth looked any different, and found herself even appreciating the way her breath fogged up the glass as she had her forehead pressed against it. 

 

“Tough day, right?” the other Morgan said behind her. Morgan turned around. 

 

“If I’m talking to myself, it must be.” Their laugh was almost identical. It was pleasant, having someone to talk to who was always on the same wavelength. That’s what she appreciated about Mikhaila, too. 

 

“I love seeing you like this,” Typhon-Morgan said. “You look happy. Do I look like that?”

 

“Yes,” Morgan said. “You have a… well, you have two sparks in your eye.” They both chuckled. 

 

“Yes, I suppose that’s how people will be able to tell us apart.”

 

“You’ve looked in the mirror then?”

 

“Yes, and you should too. I promise you they’re not nearly as scary they used to be.” She nodded at the bathroom. Morgan looked at the dreaded room. The other one nodded. 

 

“Before I do,” Morgan said, “we need to figure out the name situation. I can’t keep thinking of you as ‘the other one’.” She paused. “How do you think of me? In your head, I mean.”

 

“I, uh,” other Morgan said, “I also think of you as the other Morgan.” They shared another laugh at that. “I just don’t want to think of myself as Yu Two. You understand.”

 

“I understand. But what then? I don’t presume either of us wants to change their name any time soon.” They both rubbed their chin in thought, Morgan enjoying how smooth her jawline felt, for the first time in her life. She had considered losing her name, but of all the things that had caused her so much discomfort, the name Morgan had never been one of them. 

 

“I have a proposition,” the other said. “I’ve always been Morgan. This Morgan.” She looked down at herself, and then back up. “Remember the cook? The criminal?” Morgan nodded, not sure where her mirror image was going with this. “He called me M. Yu, because he didn’t know who I was. Who we were.”

 

“I remember.” It wasn’t a particularly pleasant memory. The man had tried to kill her, had killed several others, an escaped convict bent on vengeance. 

 

“Well, why not that, then? M. Yu. Em.”

 

“Em, short for Emma? Emily?” She thought for a moment. “Short for Morgan.” They both smiled. “I like that.”

 

“Thank you,” Em said. “Even if you did come up with it yourself. Now go look in the mirror. Thank me later.”

 

Morgan did as Em told her, and she went into the bathroom, inhaling sharply as she turned on the light. Despite having been looking at Em’s face, her face, this whole time, seeing it reflected in the mirror was a different matter entirely. The person in the mirror, for the first time in her life, was not a stranger. It was her. Hello, Morgan. 

 

This wasn’t fair. She’d spent decades avoiding the abominable glass in the bathroom when she could’ve looked like this? And nobody had told her? She reached up to touch her own face. The woman in the mirror did the same, her eyes darting around for something to hold on to, but there was just… so much. Sure, she’d already been looking at Em quite a bit, but it was different if it was, well, her. Herself. Morgan Yu was a beautiful woman, with a slight purple glint in her keen eyes. It was strange. She saw so much of the man she had never been in that woman, and yet… It was like seeing the family resemblance when she looked at Alex. Alex was a bastard, and her brother, but that didn’t mean she was, after all. 

 

“Wow,” she finally whispered. That was all she could really manage. A single syllable. Something you could probably print on a cup. But it was all that had to be said. Morgan Yu looked in the mirror and saw herself, really saw herself, for the first time. And gosh, she really was beautiful. She looked over her shoulder at Em. “Yo.”

 

“What’s up?” Em had leaned against the kitchenette, arms crossed in front of her, smirk on her face. She knew exactly what Morgan was experiencing, and Morgan couldn’t even be mad at how self-satisfied she looked. 

 

“What the fuck?” Morgan finally managed, an exasperated laugh escaping her lips, and pointed at the mirror. “That’s me!”

 

“It’s you!” Em’s smirk split into a grin. “Getting to be beautiful is definitely… It’s good. It’s pretty damned good, Morgan.” They crossed the distance between themselves and wrapped their arms around each other in a tight hug, foreheads pressed against each other. Morgan looked up and her eyes met ones that were very much, but not exactly, like her own. Their faces were pretty close to each other. Neither pulled away. 

 

“This is very, very weird,” Morgan said quietly, and finally disentangled herself with an awkward cough. “We should, uh, talk about Mikhaila.”

 

“Oh, uh, yeah. Mikhaila.” They both paced around the room, avoiding eye contact, both knowing the other was thinking the same thing, or at least something similar, and both coming up short when it came to saying something substantive. “So,” Em finally said, breaking the silence, dropping herself into one of two recliners. 

 

“So.” Morgan stopped, and threw herself into the other. “I love her.”

 

“I do too.”

 

“I have had a conversation with her you haven’t,” Morgan said, holding up a hand, “but it’s probably not what you think it is.”

 

“You told her you can’t be with her because it feels wrong, after everything you did, because you couldn’t stand to look at yourself in the mirror and the thought of someone loving your face considering how much you despised it sickened you to your core, keeping her forever at arm’s length despite both of you having strong, explicit, stated feelings for each other.”

 

“Okay, so maybe it is what you think it is,” Morgan chuckled. “Fair. Point taken. My point is that I feel I might actually be more distant from her than you are, and I don’t want you to feel like you should have to pretend not to exist just because your temporal experience of the events aboard Talos I came after mine. We are, in a lot of ways, the same person. I am not more important than you are.”

 

“That’s fair, Morgan. But you’re not going to like what I have to say next.” Em had that fiendish smirk on her face again, and Morgan wondered if she looked like that too, when she smiled. Not that she’d smiled much before. It was a beautiful sight, all things considered. And that meant that Morgan was a beautiful sight, too. 

 

“Don’t you dare,” Morgan said, but she found herself laughing softly. 

 

“I dare,” Em said. “You’re trying to have your cake and eat it too, being self-deprecating while being halfway accepting of who you are now. You still see yourself as the worse version of yourself, and by being gracious, you’re actually trying to diminish your own role, and your own happiness, because you believe there’s a better version of you that ‘deserves’ Mikhaila more than you do.” She raised an eyebrow. “I was thinking it too. You just said the stupid thing first.”

 

“You’re a bitch,” Morgan said, crossing her arms. 

 

“Yes, we are.”

 

“But, much as I’m loath to admit it, you have a point. We can’t just tally up ‘worthiness’, decide who is the better Morgan. I don’t want to say ‘I was here first because I’m the original’, as that feels disingenuous and philosophically imprecise.” She crossed her legs and rested her hands on top of them. It was strange how little gestures, poses, all made her feel more real, like the woman Morgan Yu was supposed to be. “We are both the real Morgan Yu. We have made the same decisions. Both of us are in the same place when it comes to Mikhaila Ilyushin.”

 

“So what do we do? There’s no correct solution here. Flip a coin? Maybe spin a bottle, like a couple of teenagers?” Em rebutted.

 

“It’d be awkward if we landed on each other,” Morgan said, and there hung an awkward silence in the air as both ran a number of strange scenarios through their heads. 

 

“Haha,” Em said. 

 

“Haha,” Morgan agreed. “But… I think we both know what the correct thing to do is here, right?”

 

“I’m afraid we do, Morgan.”

 

“We make it her problem. It’s going to be awkward.”

 

“But not yet.”

 

“Not yet.”

 

“Want to be cups for a bit?”