The Proteus story shows how ugly the consequences of his power can get. One of Jamie’s duplicates becomes a host for Proteus. That’s a very different situation from sending anot…

The Proteus story shows how ugly the consequences of his power can get. One of Jamie’s duplicates becomes a host for Proteus. That’s a very different situation from sending another version of yourself to help with a job. A duplicate can be caught up in something horrifying, and the fact that another Jamie exists doesn’t make what happens meaningless. That’s where this ability becomes more interesting than just having numbers on your side. How much distance can you really put between yourself and something that happens to another version of you? I don’t need the story to stop and explain every possible rule for that question to be uncomfortable. Fallen Angels uses him in a different setting. Jamie and Siryn become involved in the search for Sunspot and Warlock, and suddenly he’s part of this odd little group rather than just being one of the familiar people on Muir Island. With a cast that strange, somebody who can multiply himself somehow isn’t even the most unusual thing happening. His presence works because he can contribute without turning every problem into a giant display of force. More bodies can help, but they still have to figure out what they’re dealing with. Having another Jamie available doesn’t automatically give him information he didn’t have or a solution he hadn’t considered. Where I’m at in the reading, I’m interested in how much room there still is to explore him. There’s the practical side of what his duplicates can do, the personal side of living with that ability, and the question of how separate those versions of him can feel.