"I wish," said Jon, "that I knew where Joey is."
Jonnie snickered. "You know that isn't going to work."
"No, of course not. And you know that I know, and I know that... I just wish I had the stone right now. We have to go look for Joey now."
"We could clone up some kind of bloodhound?" offered Jonnie. "No? How about cloning another Joey. We could ask her where she last remembers being. That would tell us where Joey is. Then, uh, merge them when we're done."
"Hmm," said Jon. "You know, that's an idea. Except we'd have to wait until we get the stone before we could merge them. Let's look first. If we can't find her, then we can try the sci-fi stuff."
"Sure," said Jonnie. "Where would I go if I was a female clone?"
After trying Sarah's house--and not finding Joey--they went to the mall. After all, Jonnie had explained, maybe there was some truth to all those Internet stories about waking up as a girl and immediately getting a makeover and wardrobe.
"This'll never work," said Jonnie. "We tried everywhere. Even if she's here, there are so many people who come to a mall... we'd probably never run across her even if she was shopping. We could try calling her family, if she is going shopping, they'd probably be taking her."
"I think we should have stayed at home," said Jon. "We're her friends. Or Joseph's, anyway. If she wanted to come to someone, she'd come to us. Just our luck she'll be there, but she'll have left as soon as we get back, and we'll miss her."
"That's easy to fix," said Jonnie. She reached into her pocketbook--her concession to getting something feminine, but which really did come in handy at times--and brought out her cell phone. The stone had only started its trip around the world, but the phone should have worked anyway--she had just bought it the other day and it was on a pay-as-you-go plan.
Jonnie dialed up her sister Zoe. "Hello? Yeah, it's me. Yes, I know. Well, I just wanted to know if Joey showed up. Oh, that's right, I never explained it. She's one of the clones we made at the festival. She's, well, on the run. Really? Good... can you keep her busy? Yeah, I know she sounds weird! She's not like me! Sure, bye."
When they got home, Joey was sitting on the living room sofa. She had long blonde hair and blue eyes, big breasts, cat ears, was completely dressed like a normal girl, and a collar with a broken chain was lying on the end table. Her eyes were red and she was still sobbing a bit.
Jon and Jonnie looked back at each other; then Jon nodded to his clone. "You talk to her. It might work better."
"Joey?" asked Jonnie.
"I didn't mean it!" she sobbed. "It's all my fault!"
"How can anything be your fault?" asked Jonnie.
"I asked you to make a clone and you did and now I am the clone! I have to do whatever he says, the real me. We even had sex. It seemed like such a fun idea when I was him..."
"But you're supposed to be bisexual."
"But that doesn't mean I want to have sex with everyone in the world! I just did it because I had to please him."
"Look," said Jonnie, lowering her voice and not wanting to upset the hysterical girl, "you don't have to do anything."
"I can't help myself! Whatever he asks me to do, I can't resist him. It's like I'm just a maid."
"Suddenly I'm glad we didn't clone any maids," said Jon.
"Can I tell you to do things?" asked Jonnie.
"I don't know! I don't know what you can do, I don't know how any of this works. I just know that I used to be me until he became me and I became a slave..."
"You're not a slave," said Jonnie. "I know, the collar, but that's just a toy. I think he means well. You were him, don't you remember?"
"I'm not him!" yelled Joey. "I can't be him. I just think I'm him. I'm not even a real person..."
"Everyone's a real person," said Jonnie. "I should know. Look, I'm sorry about the whole cloning thing. I should never have made a clone submissive..." She knew that she hadn't. She knew that she had let the stone do it and it was a big mistake. But there was no way she could explain that.
