I’ve always liked routine - I think that’s the biggest difference between me and my twin brother William, rest his soul. I went through school (and life if I’m being honest) doing the “right” thing and ended up with a steady-paying job and an average middle-class existence. William on the other hand embraced chaos and fell in with a bad crowd at school, that is when he attended it, dropped out as soon as he could, and got into a life of partying.

We lost contact for a while but I heard that he had gotten a job at a garage modifying vehicles. You know those cars or motorbikes that have obnoxiously loud exhausts so it’s like a robot is farting down the street? William installed those.

The garage was also a front for drugs, which he continued to use and is what led to the troubles in his life - and mine too as it turns out. His drug habit got out of control, he lost his garage job, fell into debt, and made some desperate decisions before dying - whether it was an intentional or accidental overdose doesn’t matter as he was driving at the time and wrapped his car around a tree.

Have you ever seen someone and done a double-take because they look uncannily like you? It happened to me. This was before I learned of William’s death, when I was driving past a billboard and saw “me” promoting some product, along with a few others, in the ad. I tried slowing down to see the ad but I was driving too fast. I made a note of the product though - some snack company - and looked up the ad online.

This was a well-established brand that had been around for years so I had to add the present year to the search field to find the ad I was after but there it was: it was definitely me eating the snack with some random strangers. Except obviously it wasn’t as I was no model for adverts so I reasoned that it was a weird coincidence and that this was simply someone who happened to look like me in an advert.

Later though I thought of William - he had been out of my life for so long by then that he was rarely in my thoughts - and wondered if he hadn’t gotten a gig as a model. It might explain it, him being my twin. I called his phone and an unexpected female voice answered - his last girlfriend it turned out - and that’s how I found out that he had died a few days ago; the funeral was tomorrow.

I quickly made arrangements to fly out in the early morning. The flight ended up being delayed slightly though - I was involved but I wouldn’t say it was my fault. Everyone had gotten on, tired and grumpy at the early hour, but quiet and compliant. The seat next to mine had been empty while the others filled up and I hoped it would remain that way - until at the last moment a young woman in a jumpsuit rushed onboard, ubiquitous phone in hand, and, of course, took the seat next to me.

Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.

I leaned back in the seat and closed my eyes, willing the time away and hoping I could get an hour or two of sleep. Until a shriek startled me awake - it was the young woman next to me, staring at me as if I was a monster.

“Are you alright?” I said, trying to look as non-threatening as possible.

She bolted up and moved a few steps away, pointing a trembling finger at me.

“He’s - he’s not a real person!” she said, to no-one. Well, not no-one as quite a few people had gotten their phones out now and had begun filming the outburst. This would be doing the rounds online in no time, I thought.

A couple of flight attendants were talking with her, one of them asking her if she had taken anything, which is what I was leaning towards too, but she kept shaking her head, saying that I wasn’t real, that she’d seen me before (the ad?) and that I kept appearing in her life. This wasn’t real, none of this was real - I was, apparently, an NPC. I looked up the term and it was gaming slang for a character in a game that isn’t controlled by the player: a Non-Player Character.

The woman was escorted from the flight and, after a short delay, we were airborne. And I got my wish - the seat next to me remained empty! I fielded a couple of questions from flight attendants and a passenger, who was filming our exchange, during the short flight where we all concluded that the woman was either on something and wasn’t having the best time of it, or else was plain crazy - or both.

I visited William’s apartment after the funeral and began sorting through things. Nearly all of it could easily be consigned to a landfill and I saw the remnants of William’s sad, short life: drug paraphernalia, assorted credit cards, bills and takeout packaging everywhere, the occasional rat scurrying around. I also noticed a rarity amidst the demands for money: a remittance from a company called Wilson Group that had paid William $100k for “professional services” - so that’s where he got the money for the new car he totaled and the drugs that led to that.

I looked the company up. Their website was one of those sleek but infuriating ones that looks professional yet tells you nothing about who they are or what they do. After some more searching I found out that they were a new company that offered up likenesses of real people for use in anything from hotel lobbies, shopping malls, advertising - whatever you needed.

So that’s what had happened with the ad: William had sold his likeness - which was mine too - and Wilson Group had licenced it to the snack company for use in their latest marketing campaign. Did that also have some connection to the woman on the plane who called me a NPC - did that mean that mine and William’s likeness was in a game or something online and that’s where the woman recognised me from?

I decided to call Wilson Group on their website’s number but gave up after nearly an hour of being shunted from one AI chatbot to another and getting nowhere.