The Labors of Juliet (short story)

From Jenny Everywhere Wiki

The Labors of Juliet was a Crew of the Copper-Colored Cupids short story written and illustrated by Aristide Twain.

Contents

Plot

Juliet, of the Crew of the Copper-Colored Cupids' Department of Problem-Solving, has been temporarily banished from the Cupid Homeworld to an inhospitable desert in a Prime-adjacent universe, where she must romanticise a hundred living targets before her Fog Ship will allow her back to the Homeworld. She has been at it for most of a day and is making little progress.

Frustrated, she temporarily buries herself in sand to think, and reflects on the events which brought her here. Back in the Homeworld, she tried to skimp on her work to go see a movie by creating a duplicate of herself to do the work instead. This was illegal in itself — but the duplicate, being such an accurate copy, likewise didn't want to do the work, and creating a further duplicate, onward and onward until over a thousand Juliets were crowding the Cupid Intelligence Institute's offices.

This gives the exiled Juliet a flash of inspiration as she takes apart her Fog Ship, harvesting its non-essential components to create a further duplicate to help her fulfill her assignment. She and “Juliet-II” successfully complete the assignment. Upon returning to the Homeworld, however, the two Juliets find “their” home overrun with hundreds more copies of themselves stepping out of Fog Ships. The real Juliet-178 presses a button to return missing memories to all the Juliets in the room in the form of positronic radiation as they finally remember that they are in fact the duplicates. Each of them was made to think herself the original, and to carry out a fraction of the actual punitive assignment given to the prime Juliet.

Now that all is clear, the Sisters of Juliet are left to wonder what numbering scheme to use to keep themselves straight — and also where all of them but the prime Juliet are going to sleep, given that there's only one, small bed in the house.

Worldbuilding

Universes

Other

Continuity

Behind the scenes

Read online

The story can be read on the Crew of the Copper-Colored Cupids website.