Dear Miss Made,

My wife and I have been playing around with magic for as long as we've been together. Tomorrow is our anniversary, so I thought I'd surprise her with something new, but I wanted to practice ahead of time, to make sure I got it right.

Today, while she was at work, I detached my head, like I've done a thousand times, and I tried to grow myself a replacement head. I was trying to make a duplicate of myself, so I could be in two places at the same time. Instead, I lost control of my body as soon as the new head appeared. I managed to grow a new body for myself, but now I had two of me to deal with. The other me still acts like me, and she has all my same memories, but we don't have the same mind.

Which led to the rest of the problem. Since she was a different person from me, her ideas about how to fix the problem were different from mine. I tried my original experiment again, but this time I kept my consciousness in my body and grew a replacement head for myself. I grew the new head just fine, but the original head still became its own person. The second me tried to grow a second head on the same pair of shoulders, without detaching first.

Long story short, there are now four of me, all distinct individuals, but two of us share a body, and all four of us have the same wife, who is coming home soon. We can't agree on which of us gets to act like 'the original,' since we were all the same person when this whole mess started.

So what would you do? Do you know anyone else this has happened to? Any advice on how to break the news to my ... our ... to the wife? Or do I just have to do this to her too?

Sincerely yours,

Overcrowded in Oregon

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Dear Overcrowded,

Not to worry. This sort of thing happens all the time. Self-duplication is one of the trickier effects to achieve, and your problem is very common.

The best thing to do is just explain the situation calmly to your wife when you all next see her. It's always a good idea to make problem-solving a couples activity, so both of you, or in this case all five of you, can arrive at a solution that helps everyone.

Lucky for you, you're catching it early. In cases of accidental twinning like this, the sooner you arrive at an arrangement the better, before the various personas diverge too widely. You still have a chance to make this all work in your favor. A lot of popular professional groups formed from just this sort of thing.

As for what your wife might want, best to wait until she weighs in. All of you should still want the same thing for her, so if she agrees, duplicating her as well may not be necessary. Are the four of you willing to share?

Hope this helps,

Miss Made