Bob Klemp was making microwave popcorn when the tractor beam got him. One moment he was standing in his kitchen in Akron, Ohio, watching the bag inflate like a tiny silver lung, and the next he was floating through the hull of what appeared to be a spacecraft designed by someone who’d never seen geometry but had strong opinions about it anyway.
The aliens—and Bob supposed they were aliens, though they looked more like ambulatory question marks wrapped in tinfoil—prodded him with instruments that hummed Beatles melodies backwards. Their leader, if leaders could be identified by the number of unnecessary appendages they possessed, spoke in a voice like gravel being sorted by a depressed librarian.
“Designation: Human Male, Standard Model. We require your corporeal template for replication purposes.”
“Look,” Bob said, trying not to yawn, “I’m really flattered and all, but I’ve got this condition—”
But they weren’t listening. They never listen, do they? Bob thought, as consciousness began its familiar retreat. The narcolepsy was kicking in right on schedule, triggered by stress and the mild electrical hum of alien technology. His last coherent thought before sliding into sleep was wondering if the popcorn would burn.
Three weeks later, the invasion began.
General Zarflox—though his actual name was an untranslatable symphony of scraping sounds that roughly meant “He Who Makes Others Regret Their Life Choices”—stood before his army of ten thousand perfectly replicated Bob Klemps. Each one stood at attention in regulation human clothing (the aliens had somehow procured ten thousand identical polo shirts from a factory outlet in Bangladesh), ready to infiltrate Earth’s major population centers and begin the systematic conquest of humanity.
“Soldiers of the Hegemony!” Zarflox declared, his voice echoing through the mothership’s deployment bay. “You have been crafted in the image of the enemy! You carry within you the genetic perfection of the human species! You are—”
The first Bob fell over.
Then the second.
Within thirty seconds, the entire invasion force was snoring in perfect harmony, a sound like ten thousand distant lawnmowers drowning in honey.
Dr. Elena Vasquez, monitoring unusual electromagnetic signatures from her post at SETI, was the first to spot the mothership as it hung motionless above downtown Detroit. For six hours, nothing happened. The ship just… hovered there, like a massive metallic question mark against the sky.
“Maybe they’re waiting for something,” suggested her colleague, Dr. Park. “A signal? A response?”
Elena adjusted her headphones, listening to the strange rhythmic pulses emanating from the craft. “No,” she said slowly, a smile spreading across her face. “I think they’re snoring.”
The real Bob woke up in what appeared to be an alien medical bay, strapped to a table that seemed to have been designed by someone who’d heard about the concept of lying down but wasn’t entirely clear on the execution. Above him, three aliens huddled around a holographic display showing thousands of identical versions of himself scattered across the floor of what looked like a very large room.
“The replication was perfect,” one alien was saying in that gravel-sorting voice. “Every cell, every neural pathway, every genetic marker precisely duplicated.”
“Including,” said another, “the malfunctioning sleep regulation mechanisms.”
The third alien made a sound like a deflating accordion. “Our entire invasion force has been incapacitated by a disorder that affects less than 0.05% of the human population. The probability of selecting a subject with this particular neurological anomaly was—”
“Catastrophically low,” Bob interrupted, finally understanding. “But here’s the thing about probability—it doesn’t care what you think is likely.”
The aliens turned to him with what Bob assumed was surprise, though it was hard to tell since their faces looked like abstract art painted by someone having an anxiety attack.
“You have doomed our conquest,” the first alien said.
Bob shrugged as much as the restraints would allow. “Look on the bright side. Your army’s getting really good sleep. That’s important for mental health.”
Six months later, Bob was back in Akron, somewhat richer thanks to the book deal and the movie rights. The aliens had departed in what could only be described as a galactic huff, taking their narcoleptic army with them. Earth was safe, though Bob sometimes wondered what became of his ten thousand sleeping doppelgängers.
He still made microwave popcorn, but now he did it with the satisfaction of a man who had single-handedly saved humanity by being precisely himself—flawed, sleepy, and utterly human.
The popcorn never burned anymore, though. Somehow, after everything, he’d learned to time it just right.
In space, General Zarflox filed his report with the Hegemony’s Department of Conquest and Subjugation:
“Invasion of Sol-3 postponed indefinitely. Recommend targeting species with more predictable neurological profiles. Suggest starting with dolphins—preliminary scans indicate they possess significantly fewer sleep disorders per capita.”
The report was filed under “Lessons Learned” and forgotten, which was probably for the best.
My Other Car is a Robot 
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