The headline reads 100,000th “Multiple” Power registered. ​

I hadn’t realized I’d let myself get so big.  I might have to pull things in a bit.

***

I always wanted to be a shape-changer. I guess, in a way, I have, even if all I can change into was myself.

It was the Golden Age of Superheros, back then, when the comet hit and many of us turned into something a bit different.

Me? I turned into several of me.  Four, at first.  There’s still a few stories of that first me around, The Quartet.

We sang four-part harmony pretty well.

But then I figured out how to replicate – or not – changes done to my body when I multiplied.  And I figured out how to choose where the damage went.

The Quartet died.  They died kind of old, and rather heroic.

I lived.  Dyed hair and a change of costume.  People don’t look too deeply.

There was Multiple Man – that one was a trick.  Then there was Quantum Lass.

I can get old.  But aging is damage, and there are ten of me in a nursing home, cheerfully playing cribbage with each other.

I wonder who was number 100,000.  What was her name?  Her schtick?

I’ve lost track, you see.  I don’t even think I’m the original anymore.

And if I called them all back into me, I don’t even know what would happen.

But that’s all right.  Because three of me are billionaires, and I can live in comfortable semi-retirement as Plurality, playing chess with myself and

never

ever

alone.

Written to WritingPrompts’s prompt: