Puppets
Two friends were walking down the street.
One of them complained to the other about the misfortunes of his family life.
His wife had been nagging him for a decade, constantly fighting, demanding enormous amounts of attention and money for all kinds of trivial things, and routinely loading him with endless lists of household chores.
In reply, his friend told him a secret that, at least for a while, could free him from the tortures of his daily life.
His friend introduced him to a Smart Puppet – an exact copy of himself, built to order by a famous company.
It was a brilliant solution: the smart puppet could now remain at home, enduring the whims of his wife, while he was on his way to Brazil to fulfill an old dream of his – to visit Rio!
The only difference he noticed was that, if you listened carefully, you could hear a ticking mechanism, instead of a heart, inside the chest of the puppet.
Late at night, before leaving his house, the man looked into his bedroom on his sleeping wife for one, final time. Leaning over to kiss her goodbye, he heard a strange ticking sound from inside her chest.
It wasn’t his wife…
But by this time, his friend had already ordered a puppet replica of himself as well.
Source: based on Ray Bradbury’s short story “Marionettes, Inc.”