It was a warm, hazy summer afternoon in Onett. Ness and his friends were hanging around in his room, bored out of their minds.
"So what do you wanna do?" Paula said without much energy.
"We could go down to the arcade," Ness suggested.
"Not the arcade! We’ve already been there a million times this summer," complained Poo. "I mean, don’t get me wrong, that new Earthbound game they have is great, but you can only play it so many times!"
Ness sighed. "I know. It was just a suggestion. Anyone else?"
"We could help my mom at the preschool," Paula said. "The kids love it when we drop in."
"We drop in almost every day!" whined Ness in protest.
"I know! We could meditate!" exclaimed Poo suddenly, excitement present in his voice.
Ness and Paula looked first at Poo and then at each other in disbelief.
"What?" said Poo, surprised. "It’s fun...oh, who am I kidding? You can only take so much of that Mu Training!"
"Jeff? What are you doing?" Paula asked suddenly.
Jeff sat at the foot of Ness’s bed, fiddling with some sort of contraption. It was a small metal object, about the size of a calculator, that had been painted blue and gold. A large gold button graced the front of it. Mounted on top of the gadget were two coils of wire. A panel on the back of the machine was open, and Jeff was anxiously picking at the wires inside, pulling things apart and connecting others. He seemed completely lost in his work and didn’t respond to Paula’s question.
"Jeff? Hello? Earth to Jeff!" Paula repeated, waving one hand in front of his face. Jeff’s glasses slipped forward, and he pushed them back onto the bridge of his nose and kept working. He paid no attention to Paula.
"Jeff!" Paula grabbed Jeff’s shoulder, finally breaking him from his trance.
"What?" Jeff responded. He sounded annoyed, and looked it too.
"What are you doing?" Paula, Ness, and Poo asked all at once.
"Oh, this?" he said, holding up the contraption for all to see. "It’s my latest invention. I call it the Twinning Ray," Jeff said proudly. "This is the prototype." He beamed as the other three examined the gadget curiously.
"What does it do?" asked Ness as he ran his fingers over the wire coils, intrigued.
"Well, there’s still a few bugs to work out, but when it’s finished, it will be able to instantly clone someone. You’ll just have to point the coils at someone and press this." He indicated the shiny gold button on the front of the Twinning Ray. "Presto! Instant twin!"
Ness looked puzzled. "Uh, Jeff, no offense, but why would you want to make a clone of someone?"
"It’s quite simple really," answered Jeff matter-of-factly. "It will revolutionize law enforcement!"
"How?" Ness asked.
"Let me think of an example...um, you told us once about the Sharks, that gang that used to terrorize Onett, right Ness?" Ness nodded, and Jeff continued. "Well, the reason they got so out of hand was because there weren’t enough police officers to keep them under control."
"Yeah," Ness said, following what Jeff was saying.
"Well, just think! With this machine, good people like cops can be cloned and there’ll be no more violence in our towns! We can clone other people too. Just imagine if we cloned the people who work in factories to produce the goods we need every day. Production could double! And if we cloned scientists, we could develop so much new technology, it would bring us right into the space age!" Jeff’s green eyes were lit up with excitement, although the thick lenses on his glasses made it tough for the others to see.
Paula rolled her eyes. "Oh, come on! Jeff, do you really think that it’s a good idea to go around cloning people?"
"Yeah. Suppose this Twinning Ray fell into the wrong hands," Poo added. "What if Pokey somehow acquired the thing and began to clone himself. What if an army of evil Pokeys descended upon the world? We’d be in some real trouble then." Paula and Ness nodded their heads in agreement.
"That wouldn’t happen. You guys are just jealous because you didn’t think of it first." Jeff went back to playing with the wires in the back of his machine.
After an awkward moment of silence, Ness spoke up. "Hey Jeff," he said, "do you think that thing is ready yet? I’d like to be the first to give it a try."
"Ness, are you crazy? That thing is dangerous!" exclaimed Paula.
Jeff made a face at Paula and turned his head. "There’s only one way to find out, Ness," he said with a smile. "Let’s go outside and test it!"
"Okay," said Ness as stood up and pushed in the chair in front of his desk. He and Jeff headed for the door as Paula and Poo looked at each other in disbelief. Seconds later, they shrugged and went to follow their friends.
When they got outside, Paula and Poo found Jeff tinkering with the gadget again. "Back up, Ness," he said, gesturing with his left hand. Ness stepped away obediently.
Paula went over to Ness. "What do you think you’re doing? Have you lost it or what?"
Ness smiled. "No. I’m just open to new ideas. Don't be so old-fashioned, Paula."
Paula rolled her eyes. "Think what you want, Ness. But trust me, you’re gonna be sorry you went and tried this without thinking it through first!" She stomped off angrily and went over to where Poo was standing.
Poo looked at Paula. "This oughta be rich," he said, chuckling. "I bet this thing blows up in Jeff’s face, just like his last three inventions."
Paula laughed. "At least someone here is thinking rationally," she said.
"Okay, are you ready Ness?" they suddenly heard Jeff say. Paula and Poo looked up to see Jeff aiming his invention in Ness’s direction, one finger poised over the button that would activate the Twinning Ray.
"Ready as I’ll ever be!" called Ness from about five yards away. "Shoot!"
"Okay, here goes nothing!" Jeff pressed the button, then squeezed his eyes shut as if he couldn’t bear to watch. A brilliant beam of light shot out of each wire coil on the Twinning Ray, heading straight for Ness. It was so bright that Paula, Poo, and even Ness had to cover their eyes. They all heard a loud "zap!" and when they opened their eyes, a huge cloud of smoke spread across Ness’s front yard.
"Jeff, what did you do?" yelled Paula as she choked on the smoke.
"Yeah, we can’t see a thing!" Poo added, holding his arms out in front of him in hopes of finding something familiar. What he found was Paula’s hand, and the two of them ran back to Ness’s house in a flash. Both were worried about what had happened to Ness and Jeff.
After what seemed like forever, the smoke finally began to clear. Jeff was still standing in the same spot where he had been when he’d fired the Twinning Ray. At the other side of the yard stood Ness. And a few feet away from Ness, Paula and Poo could make out the figure of someone else.