Which Doctor

“But I am the real Dr Marcus Derringer”, said Dr Derringer, a white coated particle physicist sitting down at a chair of a desk in his laboratory.

“How do you know you’re the real Dr Derringer?” asked Dr Derringer, sitting opposite him, “The particle replication experiment caused us both short term memory loss. For all you know, you might be the copy and I might be the real Dr Derringer”.

“Oh, no”, said Dr Derringer entering the laboratory, carrying a cup of coffee that he had gotten from the hallway vending machine and sitting down, “You’re both wrong. It’s me. I know it is. I remember everything about my life. My birth; my childhood…”.

“But so do I”, Dr Derringer replied and then, pointing at the Dr Derringer sitting opposite added, “And so does he”.

“Well there has to be some way of deciding who is the real Dr Derringer”, said the man sipping coffee.

“Oh yes, I’m sure there is”,  said one of the other Dr Derringers, “After all we have a combined I.Q. of 894. Surely, we should be able to figure it out”.

The three Dr Derringers scratched their balding heads simultaneously.

“Aha!”, said the Dr Derringer drinking coffee, sticking a forefinger in the air, “No doubt, being the genius that I am, I left some marker upon myself or perhaps a note in one of my lab coat pockets identifying myself as the real Dr Derringer”.

“Ah, but”, said the Dr Derringer sitting to his left, “You forget that the particle replicator replicates everything, even our clothes and the contents of our pockets. If you or I or he had left a mark upon your or his or my labcoat or a note in one of our pockets then we would all have it; we would all have copies exact down to the last detail”.

The coffee drinking Derringer sighed, “You’re right”, he agreed.

The three Dr Derringers stroked upon their white goatee beards in thought.

Just then, however, the Dr Derringer sitting on the right side of the table had a thought; his eyes lighting up.

“Wait”, he said, “Our watches”.

“Of course”, said the Dr Derringer opposite, “Why didn’t I think of that. Our wrist watches should all tell slightly different times because the real Dr Derringer would have emerged from the replicator first and his copies at least a few seconds afterwards”.

The three Dr Derringers undid their brown leather strapped wristwatches and put them down on the table together. The wrist watch of the Dr Derringer on the left side of the table was undeniably a  few seconds ahead of the other two.

“Aha!”, said all three, with an identical smile.

“Thank goodness that problem has been resolved”, said the real Dr Derringer chuckling to himself, “Otherwise I would have had to share my Nobel Prize with two other versions of myself”.

But the smiles upon the faces of his two copies soon became frowns and they drummed their fingers in perfect unison.

“But if we are not the real Dr Derringers, Dr Derringer”, said the one with the coffee cup, “What am I or my replicated friend supposed to do with our lives”.

“Well, I had hoped we could work together”, said the real Dr Derringer, “After all. They say that two heads are better than one so just think what our three heads could accomplish”.

Just then, however, all three men felt an identical pain tearing at the inside of their chests as their identically weak hearts, due to an identical health condition, ruptured and then, one after the other, their heads thudded upon the desk in front of them.

The door of the office opened and a large cloud of dark smoke drifted slowly in, slowly transforming into the cowelled and caped, scythe wielding figure of the grim reaper.

“Uhh?”, it said in a bewildered voice, as it looked at the three identical souls of Dr Derringer standing beside three identical dead bodies, "Dr Derringer?".