The dormitory buildings stood several floors tall, several decades old, and completely unfamiliar. The first order of business was to go and find the correct office to go get keys. Karyn, Jon, and Jonnie waited in line as the lone staff member, an upperclassman boy named Mark, looked through the paperwork to get them into their rooms.
Spying Jon and Jonnie, he gave them a quick glance. "Hey, are you guys related?" he asked.
"Uh, sort of," replied Jon. "You see, she's my clone."
Mark looked puzzled, as if thinking something wasn't quite right but he couldn't figure it out. But only for a moment. Then he said "Oh. I never met anyone with a clone before," and passed out their key cards.
"I was a little worried there...." said Karyn as they headed off to the car.
"It's no problem," said Jonnie. "It's working just like it did before. Nothing we do with the cloning machine is strange. So nobody can say 'How did he make a clone? That's impossible!' They just... don't notice it. Everyone's got a mental block."
They each took a box and went inside again; there didn't seem to be any cats around to make the job easier. Jon went to one floor, while Karyn and Jonnie went to another. Back and forth, back and forth... Finally everything was done and it was time for the unpacking. Which meant Jon in his room (his roommate didn't seem to have arrived yet) and Karyn and Jonnie in theirs.
"I miss home already," said Jonnie. "And I'm sure Jon does. But you know, it's easier to ignore that when we have a magic stone anyway. It makes it feel like we always have something to fall back on, even if we don't use it much. And you know, I'm afraid of using it for trivial things. It can't be the only magic in the world and I don't want us to get into some real life World of Warcraft fight and find out that we can't live our life because we forgot how to do things without the stone."
Karyn tore open a cardboard flap, ripping the tape. Inside was a pile of panties and bras, two blouses, and a plastic bag full of various items. "It's been months," she said. "You haven't run into any other magic even once. Are you sure you're not just nervous about being in a dorm? Especially without Jon?"
"I'm sure," she said. "It's something that's always bugged us. It's not new." She glanced over at the box. "I'd leer at your underwear except first of all we're both adults, and second, I'm too used to wearing the same kind of things." She took three steps over to one of her own boxes, reached down, and tore the top off of it. The underwear was not that different from Karyn's, really. "We just need to decide how to split the space. Why don't I take, um, every other drawer of the dresser starting from the top?"
"Sure," replied Karyn.
Jonnie opened it and began unpacking.
"That was easy," she said when she finished. "Now, the hard part." She opened another box, revealing various papers, school supplies, a stack of CDs, and some other items, including several carefully draped posters wrapped around a sweater to prevent sharp creases. "Half the stuff that was on our room at home. I hope you like sci-fi...."
"I hope you like My Little Pony."
"Seriously?"
"Of course not. I'm a little old for that. But I do confess to posters from Twilight... and you know that, since you've been in my room!"
"True. I wonder how Jon'll be doing. His roommate isn't someone he already knows."
Meanwhile, Jon was unpacking in his own dorm room, wondering when his roommate would arrive. He was almost finished, at which point there was the sound of a key in the lock. A boy about his own height, dark brown hair, entered. "Hi," he said. "I'm Paul, your roommate. If you're Jon, anyway."
"That's me," replied Jon.
"Well, we'd..." Then he noticed the large cloning machine in the corner which, featuring a control panel and a water tank, looked utterly out of place. "What in the world is that?"
