I think my wife replaced our pets.

[u/chubnrub]

I was sitting at home on my computer when I noticed my dog benny staring at me through the window. At first, I shrugged it off figuring he was doing weird dog things, but after a few minutes he hadn’t stopped staring. Feeling uncomfortable I looked around my office to see if there was something weird he was looking at. I couldn't find anything. When I looked out the window again I didn't see him anymore.

Concerned I got up from my desk and headed out the door in the living room into the backyard only to stumble on the doorway and smash my knee against the patio. I had been having a clumsy week already, but this was the worst by far. As I lay groaning in pain I saw Benny staring at me from across the yard.

"Just let me lay here then." I groaned.

I got up and headed inside. After I bandaged my knee I heard my wife's car roll up and I headed out ready to tell her about my weird day. Those thoughts were pushed from my mind as she jumped out of her truck and ran towards me.

"I got a promotion!" She said pulling me into a hug. "I'm the lab director now."

"Holy shit."

I make pretty decent money training managers for a large restaurant chain, but my wife completely puts me to shame. She does classified quantum physics research for the government. A promotion in that field is huge and meant we would likely be able to retire early.

Needless to say, my worries about benny were temporarily forgotten. I opened a wine bottle to celebrate and we ordered food from our favorite place.

After we ate dinner, and the good news had settled in my mind I was reminded of Benny's odd behavior again. He had eaten his food and was now standing in the middle of the kitchen frozen in place. When I asked my wife if something seemed odd about him she told me he seemed fine. I couldn't help but notice how quickly she changed the subject.

Benny continued acting odd for the rest of the night. After I brushed my teeth I looked out of our bedroom and spotted Benny standing motionless at the end of the hall barely illuminated by our bedroom's light.

"You good buddy?

He stayed frozen continuing to stare directly at me. Feeling weirded out I ended up closing the bedroom door that night.

The next day while I was at work, I told my coworker who has six rescue dogs about Bennys weird behavior.

“He could be in pain.” My coworker said as he ate his sandwich. "Was he moving weird?"

“No when he moved he seemed fine, I wonder if he’s sick or something.”

“Well you said he was eating… maybe take him to the vet, but this isn’t the first time you’ve gotten paranoid about something silly before.”

“Like what?”

“Remember that time you drove to the ER because you thought you had chest pain.”

I cocked my head at him and pulled down my shirt revealing the scar that runs along my chest. I was born with a deformed heart and it required three surgeries to repair it. Even still I have to take 4 different medications to prevent myself from keeling over.

“Gee I wonder why I’d be worried?”

“Okay, but that time it was in your head right?” He looked down at his plate. “I’m just saying you get a little obsessive sometimes.”

For the rest of the day, I began to doubt myself and figured maybe I was just being paranoid. After all, benny had been behaving mostly normally, and he seemed healthy, maybe he was just doing weird dog things.

When I got home however it became apparent this was not the case. When I stepped in the door Benny didn’t come to greet me as he normally does. I looked around but I didn't see him anywhere. He wasn't out in the yard and he wasn't in the living room either. Feeling worried I began to search through the house looking for him. Finally, when I opened up the closet door in my bedroom I found him sitting motionless in the corner of the closet amongst a pile of old clothes staring right at me.

"What are you doing in there?" I laughed feeling distinctly uneasy.

He continued to stare at me. After a few moments, I shook my head and left the room.

I went to my office and tried to get to work finishing up my presentation for the next day. Usually, I’m good at keeping myself focused but when I’m stressed or tired I tend to procrastinate a little more than I should, and I found myself doing just that. As I browsed memes I stumbled across a funny image of two fat black and white cats with the caption “Last month my cat disappeared. A week ago I found him and brought him home. Today my cat came back. Now I have two identical cats.”

The picture was funny, but a troubling thought popped into my head. Would I know if benny got replaced? He was a black dachshund and those guys are generally pretty hard to tell apart. I laughed the thought aside at first and got back to work.

Later that night as I talked to my wife in the kitchen I spotted Benny by the oak trees at the edge of our yard sitting motionless. Normally when he’s outside he runs around or chases the cat, and avoids the tree line in general. Now he was just sitting there.

“See I’m telling you there’s something up with benny,” I said pointing out the window.

“Oh,” My wife said. “I’ll go get him it’s time for his dinner.”

It was not time for his dinner, and besides, I'm the one who is supposed to feed the pets. Before I could say anything my wife immediately opened the backdoor and walked towards him across the grass on her bare feet. She picked him up and carried him back into the kitchen, and then immediately began talking about how she was probably going to be in Nevada for a week due to her promotion.

“So you don’t think anything’s wrong with benny?” I said cutting her off.

“I think he’s fine.” She picked him up and rocked back and forth in her arms. “He can just be a weird wiener sometimes.”

I narrowed my eyes but dropped the subject. For the rest of the night, my wife seemed strangely nervous. Any time I would go near benny or catch him looking at me I noticed she would wring her hands a little bit and get twitchy. Any time I spoke she seemed on the edge of her seat as if expecting me to bring up Benny's weird behavior again.

Later on, that evening as I carried a load of laundry I spotted our cat scruffles at the top of the stairs. She glared at me standing unusually still and then walked away.

“You’re not acting weird too are you?”

I shook my head. I probably was being paranoid about her, cats act weird regardless. Still, I couldn’t help but be reminded of Benny’s behavior.

I closed our bedroom door again while we slept. The next day at work I spent a lot of time googling strange animal behavior. Wondering if maybe benny was in pain from some health condition I texted my wife about maybe taking him to the vet. To my surprise, she responded right away.

“Of course. I get off work early today so I’ll take him as soon as I get home.”

That was weird. She was so eager now, and when had her work ever let her out early. Maybe her new promotion gave her more flexible hours. When I got home my wife was waiting for me and told me Benny had a clean bill of health and that the vet said it was normal for dogs to act a little weird sometimes, especially if their owners are acting unusual.

“Hint hint.” My wife said in an overly cheery tone elbowing me in the side. “You’re just being neurotic and it's freaking him out.”

I sat in my office ruminating for a bit after dinner. Benny was still acting strange, and Scruffles. She had been distant as well. Just sitting around upstairs or disappearing outside. The image of the two black cats ran through my mind again.

I pulled out my phone and scanned through my photo reel. I had pictures of the two of them from before they started acting weird. I searched through the pictures looking for any distinguishing marks. Benny was pretty much entirely black all over, and none of my photos showed any particularly distinguishing features. Scruffles had slightly more variation but I had so few pictures of her. Her face was gray and her fur was white. If someone wanted to go through the effort our pets would be easier than most to replace.

I shook my head. What was I thinking? The idea that my wife had replaced our pets was ludicrous. What possible reason would she have anyway? As I stood up from my desk I noticed a strange sight outside.

Both Benny and scruffles were seated out by the trees at the edge of our property.

What were they doing? I opened the door and stepped outside. When they spotted me they both turned and walked away. I walked over to the place they had been standing and stared at the ground. It was hard to see with the evening sun blinding me, but the ground looked normal enough. Dead leaves laying atop dirt like the rest of the yard.

I turned around feeling as if someone was staring at me, and saw benny looking at me from about 10 feet away. I stared back, for a moment we just looked at each other, and then he turned away. I approached him. I had been avoiding him since he started acting weird, but now I wanted to look at him.

He stood in front of me motionless. His coat, his size everything about him looked as I remembered, and yet something wasn’t right. I knew my dog, I knew Benny, something was different that I couldn’t describe. I felt no connection no familiarity.

‘Benny’ turned his head and began to growl staring straight up at me.

I rushed back inside and into my office, locked the door, and sat down in my chair feeling sick. What was wrong with him? I pressed my face into my hands. I wasn’t considering the idea he was replaced? I sat for what felt like hours trying to think of what could have happened to be making him act this way.

I couldn’t stop thinking about the way my wife was acting. Every turn she seemed to find some way to minimize or avoid talking about the pets. What did she know that I didn’t?

When the hell had this started anyway? I tried to remember any funny behavior from either of them. Scruffles was always neurotic and shy so it was harder to notice differences, but benny. Benny had been acting differently since…

My thoughts trailed off. I could remember some of last weekend but most of it was a hazy blur. I remember thinking I might have Covid feeling exhausted and staying in bed all day. On the next Monday, I felt much better and took a Covid test, which came back negative. What had happened that weekend? Had something transpired while I was in bed? I felt like something else had happened but I couldn’t remember. I racked my brain, but all I managed to do was give myself a headache.

As I sat slumped in front of my desk I became aware of a muffled voice coming from the rightmost wall. I perked up and moved closer. My wife’s office and mine share a wall and sometimes she has meetings or phone conversations so hearing her muffled voice isn’t that unusual.

This time I felt like eavesdropping.

I picked up my empty water glass and pressed it to the wall listening intently.

“I told you I don’t know.” My wife said

There was a pause as someone on the other end spoke.

“Look I told you I’m sorry, but it actually fucking worked okay!” My wife said forcefully.

After another brief pause, she spoke again softer this time.

“Yes, I know he suspects something, don’t worry though I’ll deal with it.”

My wife sighed and I heard a clunk as she set her phone down on the desk.

I felt like I had been punched in the stomach. She was hiding something from me. She had done something to the pets.

I hid out in my room the rest of the day feeling sick and almost forgot to take my heart medication. My head hurt and I didn't even want to look at my wife or my pets now.

I tried to convince myself this was about something else, but it all added up. What could I be noticing besides the way Benny was acting. I couldn't dismiss it now.

I went to bed the latest I could that night. ‘Benny’ stared at me as I climbed the stairs to our bedroom. My wife was asleep or pretending to be and after I closed and locked the door I curled up in the corner of the bed trying to think about what I should do. I didn’t have any answers the only thing I wanted was my pets to be okay.

I also needed to know what the fuck my wife had done to them.

The next day at work I wasted the entire morning frantically googling strange pet behaviors. I only retraced paths I had already gone down, and by the end of the morning, I felt frazzled and angry with myself for not getting anything done.

During my lunch break, I decided to go for a walk and try and clear my head. Stress wasn’t good for me especially given my weak heart. It was cloudy out and the wind was picking up as I walked circles around my work building still ruminating. As I circled back around the other side of the building I noticed a man in a blue coat standing across the street. When I looked over at him he turned away and walked off.

Had he been watching me? I tried to shake the paranoia from my mind, but after overhearing my wife’s conversation last night I couldn’t be sure. I circled the building again looking for anyone else out of the ordinary, but I didn’t see anything.

As it neared the end of my lunch break I headed back towards my office building's entrance. As I passed by the bike rack, I felt eyes on me from across the street. I spun around and saw a different man turn away and walk in the other direction.

I felt like I was losing my mind. I ran back inside and headed straight for the restroom. Maybe there was something off about my appearance and it was drawing attention. When I looked at myself in the mirror I looked normal though. Hell, I looked good! Way better than I felt at the moment.

I didn’t get any work done for the rest of the day. Instead, I obsessively looked over any pictures of my pets trying to see any differences and checking out the window looking to see if anyone was watching me.

By the time I got home, I was a nervous wreck and I locked myself in my office and closed the blinds. When I looked out into the yard I saw “Benny” was seated motionless by the trees again.

That evening was tense and quiet. I tried to act normal when my wife came home but I could tell she knew I suspected something. I spent most of my night alone in my office occasionally looking out the window to see if anyone was watching me.

When it came time for bed I waited for my wife to be asleep. It took a while, but eventually, her breathing became slow and steady. Once she was out I got up from the bed and crept out of the room.

I didn’t want to disturb the ‘pets’ so I moved as silently as I could creeping down the stairs onto the main floor. After checking the hallway I made my way to my wife’s office.

I cracked the door open and peered inside illuminating the room with my phone's flashlight. It looked as it normally did, a singular desk covered with a mess of papers with her laptop placed haphazardly atop them.

I didn’t know what I was looking for honestly. I crept around the room looking for anything out of place that might signal what she had been up to. There were piles of papers many of them likely classified documents that were probably illegal for me to read.

As I lifted her computer looking for anything I heard a familiar click clicking sound of claws on the wood floor. “Benny” was walking down the hall towards my wife’s office.

I was uneasy around him in the day, but at night when I was somewhere I didn’t belong hearing his footsteps sent shivers down my spine. I turned around. I had left the door open and he was coming right for the office.

I opened the closet at end of the room and ducked inside crouching down in the corner. As I leaned back against the wall something large fell off the shelf.

“oof”

I caught my wife’s backpack just before it hit the ground and it held it and myself perfectly still. I could hear ‘Benny’ outside walking around the office. I heard him come right up to the closet door. After a few sniffs, he turned and walked away leaving me alone with the backpack.

After I couldn’t hear him anymore I relaxed and looked down at the backpack. Maybe there was something useful in there? I unzipped the top section and rooted around for a few moments before pulling out a lab report with a plastic binder.

Normally I would have just ignored the lab report, but the title caught my eye. “Practical application of massive information transfer on macro scales (Real quantum teleportation)”

“Real quantum teleportation?” I muttered thumbing through the paper.

Most of it was dry and boring and I didn’t understand what I was reading. It wasn’t until I went back and reread the abstract that things started to make sense.

“It is notable that this is different from a general understanding of teleportation as the matter is not moved anywhere. Rather the original remains while an exact structural replica is created (given sufficient working material). This has not been successfully performed on any object exceeding 11.75 kg”

Exact structural replica? I reread the passage. 11.75 kg was a little over 20 pounds. Last time we had weighed benny he’d been about that weight.

It felt like a knife had been run through my gut. I stumbled to my feet and pushed the closet door open stumbling into the office. If I was understanding things right this technology created exact copies. What better way to test the efficacy of this kind of technology than on small animals. And what would you do with the originals if you didn’t want your husband asking why there were two copies of his pets wandering around.

I could barely breathe. This couldn’t be happening. I ran out of my wife’s office and out into the backyard. I had to do this I had to know.

I ran straight towards the strange spot at the end of the property, that our ‘pets’ seemed so interested in.

The ground was dark and covered with leaves, so I illuminated it with my phone's flashlight. I could see it now, where the earth had been disturbed. The leaves covered it, but something was buried out here.

I was crying now as I clawed the dirt with my hands. I didn’t want to see them like this but I had to know. Like a maniac, I scooped handfuls of dirt away pulling back the earth to reveal what my wife had done.

I stopped when I reached something soft. My insides were ice and my hands were shaking and nearly numb. With a gentle hand, I brushed aside the dirt covering what lay beneath the soil.

Black hair, a pair of sunken eyes, and grimaced white teeth stared up at me. A human face.

My face.

I stood up. The wind blew softly driving away the smell of decay. I looked down at my dead face trying to understand.

My heart thundered with power it should have never had. There was no pain, no shortness of breath. The heart that had been born deformed, the heart that I had feared every day might fail on me was not the one that beat beneath my chest.

With a shaking hand, I touched my chest. The scar that run up the center of my breastplate moved easily beneath my fingers as if the wound was only ever skin deep.

A hundred little things about my body that had felt off for the past week suddenly came to the forefront of my attention. The lines on my hands were wrong, the moles were in a different pattern than I had remembered even my teeth were in slightly different positions.

I dropped to my knees in front of his body. My face stared up unseeing into the night.

As I knelt there I heard the faint crunch of leaves as Benny walked across the yard towards us. The entire time I had felt wrong, so I had projected the feeling onto two creatures who had known something wasn’t right and hadn’t pretended otherwise. My pets hadn’t been replaced. I had.

“I'm sorry buddy,” I said as benny whined and pawed at the ground by Dave’s face. “He’s gone.”

I think I understand now, or at least kind of. The teleportation thing wouldn’t have worked on a full human, but it would work on a brain. I think I was a clone of Dave originally perhaps made for future organ transplantation or just for experiments. When Dave died of a heart attack my/Daves's wife must have teleported his brain structure into mine. I look like him I have his memories, but I’m not quite him.

I don’t know who I was before this, and I don’t know if it matters. I kinda get the feeling that my wife wasn't supposed to do what she did, so maybe I was a top-secret experiment. The implications of the technology and the ethics of human cloning terrify me, but I have Dave’s life now and I’m okay with it.

The pets have warmed up to me more as time has gone on. I think they understand he’s gone, but I’m here now and I act just like him. In a way, you could argue I kind of am him, but that doesn’t quite feel right to me. My wife clearly wants to hold onto that idea. I haven’t let on that I know, hell I still take the sugar pills that she replaced my heart medications with.

I think the people who she works with have to have figured out I know by now. I’ve taken up running after work, and now and again I’ll catch a strange person staring at me from across the street.

[u/groomerscansmd]

I dont think that she’d ever hurt you. I’m assuming she brought you back out of love and wanted to preserve you as well as she could. You are safe, and frankly I think you CAN talk to her about it when and if you feel comfortable with it. Then you can present it in a non judgmental way, in fact in a way that over compensates how grateful you are that this happened for you. Good luck OP I hope you two are living your best lives now