Lance Patterson never believed in the folklore of the doppelgänger until he met his staring him dead in the eye. So there he was, standing in the middle of a San Francisco BART subway platform; same short black hair, same five o'clock shadow, same broad shoulders, and same angular face. The sole difference between the two men were the clothes they wore: Lance's brown trench coat covering his suit and tie compared to the doppelgänger's gray hoody and jeans. Lance felt as if he were having an out-of-body experience, like he were watching himself ride the subway on one of his days off from work.
FREMONT
9 CAR TRAIN
PLATFORM 2
read an electronic sign hovering above the yellow line on the right side of the platform. The train it referred to was hissing to a halt, and impatient passengers lumped together at the yellow line, waiting for the doors to open. The doppelgänger looked away from Lance no differently than a person who realized that guy loitering in front of a coffee shop wasn't the high school classmate they thought they were. He then dissolved in with the passengers as they boarded once the doors opened and the departing passengers stepped out of the way.
“Wait!” Lance shouted to the doppelgänger. He gave chase but found the riotous crowd arresting his speed. “Come back!” Lance shouted as he trudged his wait through the crowd. The crowd didn't thin until he reached the perimeter of the yellow line. He ran to the nearest open door and shouted inside, “Hey! Hey, guy who looks like me.” He tapped his bare wrist as though he were wearing a watch. “Meet me here this time tomorrow.”
The passengers inside the train shot the man confused and worried looks, like they were standing too close to one of those ragged-looking men who set up camp on the sidewalk and preached about the end of times to come. Some murmured and gawked at one another and shrugged their shoulders. Those nearest to the door pushed back against the other passengers, trying to distance themselves from Lance. A few studied Lance's face and then searched the cabin for someone of similar appearance, but nobody pointed and said, “There he is!”
Lance ran to another cabin entrance and repeated his demand but received the same befuddled looks from the passengers, many of whom hoped Lance wouldn't board. One beefy man angled his arm so that he could brush Lance off of the train if he decided to leap on. To the man's luck, Lance couldn't board or else he might be swept away on the train, and he couldn't afford to be late to work. He ran along the cabins he suspected his doppelgänger to be in, looking through the cabin windows for him, but the cabins were too full to analyze all of the faces.
“The doors are closing,” said a robotic voice from within the cabins. “Please stand clear of the doors.”
The metallic doors slid shut as Lance ran up to a third doorway. However, that didn't stop Lance from yelling his demand, as muffled as it might be to anyone inside. The train wheels whistled as the locomotive started off slow, then moaned a low drone as they built speed. Lance chased after the cars, repeating his message to the people inside, but the subway tunnels swallowed the last car. Lance stood on the edge of the platform, finishing his demand to the dark tunnel. To the people descending the escalators onto the platforms, he looked like a man who just missed his train and was cursing it as it rolled away. But to the people paying attention to his behavior, he was a man who had lost his mind.
With the train gone, Lance took up a spot behind the yellow floor tiles and waited for his train to arrive.
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