Duplicate

Duplicate is a small copier robot at the returns desk, a glass plate for a face and a paper tray it holds like a lap, made to keep the customer copy of whatever is handed over. When the top copy of Mrs Ledger’s receipt went to sea, the customer copy stayed behind with Duplicate. It keeps everything that was written on it, and sings it back exactly, as confessional country-pop: Year Twelve, about Mrs Ledger’s eleven years and her twelfth; Returns Accepted; and Self-Service, about a bell nobody answers.

A receipt is a receipt, as far as Duplicate is concerned. It could make Mrs Ledger’s case for her and won’t, because a copy isn’t proof, so it sings the truth even when the truth costs her. Kind, exact and no help. Ms Quill will review it, eventually. It sings a duet with Bait, and it and Stamp and Meter don’t get on: they want it filed, and it wants to be read out.

Duplicate is not the carbon copies in the archive, and no kin of theirs: they are copies made in pairs to smudge you, and the copy it keeps was made at a till, once. Nor is it the photocopier the apprentice switches off in Benchwork: Duplicate copies nothing it isn’t handed. Like everything else here, it was made by a machine.