As Nora groggily awoke from strange dreams, she felt something crawling up her leg.She started to panic, and flung off the bedsheet, and saw the disembodied duplicate hand of her girlfriend Bianca, making its way towards her panties.

Nora sighed in relief. “Oh, sorry, Bibi. I thought there was a tarantula in our bed.”

Bibi, the hand, gently gave Nora’s leg a squeeze. Nora took it as an affectionate gesture.

Suddenly, the door to the bathroom opened. Bianca was dressed in a bra and panties, and had her hair done up in a towel.

“Aw, were you lonely last night?” Bianca affectionately asked Bibi. “You wanted mummy’s warmth?”

“Technically, she has two mummies,” said Nora. “She was originally your hand, after all.”

Bianca smirked. She could see Bibi was developing her own personality, and she noticed that Nora had given Bibi a makeover with deep plum nail polish.

Nora sat up. “What’s got you up so early in the morning?” she asked.



“Oh, it’s the new semester,” said Bianca. “I need to be on campus by 10.”

Bianca was studying English literature at uni, and was hoping to qualify as an English teacher. Nora, on the other hand, was freelancing herself out as an artist.

“Can I use the markers while you’re out?” Nora asked.

“What did you want to do this time?” asked Bianca.

Nora thought about it for a second. “Well, I’ve always been curious about what it’d be like to have an extra set of arms.”

Suddenly, there was a loud thump on the bed. Nora turned to see Bibi slapping her palm on the bed.

“I mean, aside from the helping hand I already have,” said Nora.

Bibi gave a thumbs-up.

“Well, I think I can show you how to make dupes,” said Bianca. “I’ll get dressed first”

—-

A few minutes later, Bianca was dressed in a denim jacket, a polo shirt, a denim skirt and platform sandals, and knelt down on the bed. Nora took off the T-shirt she slept in last night.

“Alright, let’s just make the border first…” said Bianca, carefully drawing a blue line just beneath Nora’s right arm. By now, the two of them were used to drawing on themselves with the markers. After Bianca did the other border on Nora’s left arm, she replaced the lid on the blue magic marker.

“Okay, now we just give each arm a tug…”



And with that, Bianca carefully pulled on Nora’s left arm, creating a duplicate. It was so surreal to see it - it looked like a flesh-and-blood mannequin arm, and was moving a bit. Bianca then pulled the other arm, creating two detached arms for Nora.

As Nora took a wet wipe to the disappeared blue ink, Bianca gave her some instructions.

“Now, they should just attach to you when you stick them on. And you can always stick on a tattoo if you want to go out with them.”

Nora picked up the packet of reality-altering transfer tattoos, and slung both of the disembodied arms over her shoulder.



“Thanks, babe. I’ll be back in a minute,” said Nora, slinking off towards the bathroom.

Nora attached the extra arms to her torso underneath her original ones. She looked like some sort of whitewashed Hindu goddess. However, she had a bit of trouble coordinating the extra arms - they seemed to duplicate the movements of her original arms.

Nora looked at the packet of tattoos. “Well, maybe it wouldn’t hurt to alter reality,” she thought. “Maybe it’d help me get the hang of these.”

Nora picked out a tattoo, but it had a different colour scheme than the one she had used to make herself invisible. Instead of a yellow smiley face surrounded by a blue border, it was an orange smiley face surrounded by a purple border. Nora, however, paid no heed, peeling away the plastic and slapping the tattoo onto the back of her hand.



Nora closed her eyes. She could feel a subtle shift in reality as the tattoo transferred over to her skin. But when she opened them, she noticed something strange - her extra arms were gone.



Nora stared at the tattoo on the back of her hand as it faded away. She wondered if she had done something wrong. Suddenly, she heard a knock on the bathroom door, and the voice of Bianca.



“Nora? You okay in there?”

“Oh, uh, it’s fine, it’s just…I had four arms, now I’ve only got two.”

The door creaked open.

“Nora, I’ve told you a thousand times - I don’t think any less of you just because you only have two arms.”

Nora turned around and almost did a double take. Standing in the doorway was Bianca, still dressed for uni, except now, she had four arms.

“Wait, you’ve got four arms?!” Nora cried.

Bianca rolled her eyes.



“Of course I have four arms. This is kindergarten biology. You shouldn’t feel insecure just because you were born with just two. Why do you think I gave you Bibi?”

Nora’s head started reeling. Did the tattoo create a weird reality where strangeness was the norm, and Nora’s own normality was considered strange?

Suddenly, Bianca stepped forward and hugged Nora with all four of her arms.



“Oh, Nora,” she said. “I don’t care if you’re disabled - I still love you.”

Nora felt a sense of reassurance. It was a relief to know that, however altered reality was, it didn’t affect her relationship.

Bianca grabbed her handbag.

“I’ll be back around 4. See ya babe.”



Nora waved goodbye to her four-armed blonde girlfriend, with slight trepidation. Now she was curious about this new world…

—-

Nora flipped through the channels on the television. She was astonished by everyone she saw on TV, because each person had four arms. She saw a meteorologist discussing the weather on the news, gesturing with all four of her arms. She flipped over to a cooking show, where the four-armed host was preparing the food with impeccable precision. She flipped over to an old 60s sitcom, where the husband and wife both had four arms each. The sitcom gave way to commercials, and in each one of them, everyone had four arms, from a woman in a shampoo commercial taking a shower, to a gym commercial where a gym rat was building up all four of his biceps with weights. Nora flipped over to a music video, where the guitarist had four arms and was playing a double-necked guitar.

Seeing the four-armed musicians made Nora feel rather inadequate. She had played in a few bands, but she was hesitant to gig amongst four-armed musicians. Now she understood how Rick Allen, the one-armed drummer from Def Leppard must have felt.

Out of curiosity, Nora looked up a documentary on the evolution of primates and how they branched off into various species, including humans. Nora had seen this documentary before, in the “real” world, but watching the altered version gave her some enlightenment - Nora was surprised to find that, in this universe, the most primitive of primates had evolved from a group of primitive mammals that evolved a second set of arms to make life in the trees easier, and this trait continued into every single primate that evolved from this primitive group. As such, it wasn’t just humans who had four arms in this universe, but monkeys, lemurs, gorillas, chimpanzees and orangutans.

Nora then searched for images and videos of people with less than two arms, and was surprised to see that they weren’t uncommon. However, most two-armed people she found didn’t look exactly like she did - they seemed to have additional muscles where their third and fourth arms normally would be, when they didn’t have obvious stumps.

Nora sighed, and went to the bathroom to have a shower and get dressed. To her surprise, all her tops either had four sleeves, or had the lower two sleeves sewn up. Nora just shrugged and picked out her favourite Nine Inch Nails T-shirt, putting her arms through the top two sleeves while tucking in the lower two sleeves.

As Nora went for the door, she felt a tug on her pant leg. She looked down to see Bibi pulling on her leg.

“Oh, you don’t want to be left alone?” said Nora. She picked up Bibi and stroked her.



“Why don’t you come with me? You can hang out in my purse.”

Nora opened her bag, and Bibi jumped inside.

—

Nora walked down the street, exploring her suburb. Everywhere she looked, there were various people with four arms - police officers, schoolchildren, college students, parents and children, construction workers, et cetera. And each one of them seemed completely coordinated and at ease with having four arms.

Suddenly, Nora heard a loud voice, coming from a four-year-old.

“Mummy, that lady has two arms!”

Nora turned to see a small boy with four arms pointing at her. Nora felt embarrassed - was this what people with only one arm had to deal with in her universe? The boy’s mother, a young woman in her early 30s, knelt down and talked to the boy.

“Aaron, leave that poor woman alone, it’s not nice to single out disabled people,” she said. Then she faced Nora, and addressed her. “Sorry about my son, he’s not used to seeing people with fewer arms,”

“Oh, it’s quite alright,” said Nora. “I’ve actually managed fine with just two arms all my life.”

“Really?” said the four-armed mother. “You were born that way?”

“Yes, I was,” said Nora. It was technically true, both in this universe and the normal universe.

“Well, you must be doing well.”

And with that, the mother took her son’s hands and walked off. Nora felt relieved - she felt a bit less like a freak at the moment.

En route to the supermarket, Nora passed by The Jitterati, and noticed Dominique serving a customer. Dominique, in turn, noticed Nora, and gave her a friendly wave. Nora waved back.

Nora started to wonder if, in this universe, Dominique had taken interest in her “condition” the same way she had been fascinated by Nora as an invisible woman. Questions for later.

—-

When Nora got home, she decided that, while the universe of people with four arms interested her, she wasn’t sure about spending life in it as the equivalent of a congenital amputee. Taking one of the magical wet wipes, and the sunglasses, she carefully wiped away the purple and orange tattoo, until it was gone. Suddenly, she felt a huge weight - her extra arms were back. Nora turned on the TV and was relieved - everything was back to normal.

Nora then detached her extra arms and placed them under her bed. She was interested in doing more with them, but maybe not right now.

As soon as Bianca got back, Nora gave her a hug.

“Whoa! Being all affectionate, are we?”

Nora sat down and explained her day to Bianca, about how a different tattoo had a different effect, how it felt like to be a tetrapod in a world that was made for hexapods, and how Bianca was oblivious to the change.

“It sounds crazy,” said Nora. “But it’s true.”

“Oh, I believe you,” said Bianca. “I don’t remember anything out of the ordinary, but that’s the tattoos for you.”

Suddenly, there was a knock at the door.

“Oh, by the way, I invited Dominique to visit. I hope you don’t mind,” said Bianca.

Bianca opened the door, and there, standing in the doorway, was the tiny French-Canadian woman. She had switched out her waitress uniform for something a little more casual - a blouse, a pleated plaid skirt, thigh-high socks, and ankle boots.

“Hello Nora, Bianca!” she said. “I hope I’m not interrupting anything.”