We copied you so well that both versions are offended by the word copy.
Same memories. Same private embarrassments. Same person they love. Same conviction that they were the one who went to sleep last night.
00:00
A and B wake at the same time.
ARemembers your entire past.
BRemembers your entire past.
Who gets to be you?
Now bring in someone who loves you
Your partner is brought into the room.
Both versions remember the relationship. Both feel love. Both remember promises the other never personally witnessed from outside.
An hour later
B commits a crime one hour later.
Then the lab admits something
There was no original.
A and B came from one scan. They woke at the same moment. The labels were administrative.
Teleporter
Now replace the clone machine with a teleporter.
Your body here is destroyed. An exact reconstruction appears on Mars with uninterrupted memories. It says the trip worked.
Where did you finally draw the line?
What the machine still cannot answer
A perfect copy from the outside still does not tell us what happened to the inside.
The machine can reproduce everything other people use to recognise you: memory, voice, habits, love, skill, history. It still cannot point to the thing that says “I am here” and prove whether it moved, split, ended, or began again.