It used to be one of the clear cut ways an expert could identify a “deep fake” was to spot oddities in the hands, like a six-fingered man, for example—”Hello, my name is Inigo Montoya; you killed my father; prepare to die.” The Princess Bride reference notwithstanding, when I learned this, I laughed out loud. Here’s why.
Back in 2016, I wrote a (very) short story in which an insidious alien invasion is at risk due to an unanticipated problem with the replication of human hands—yes, Body Snatchers (1993) was another big movie from my childhood.
I grappled with whether to share this story; I generally regard this blog as a source of light, and stories about “body snatchers” are meant to invoke fear. However, in honor of my Nostradamus-like moment and because I really do like this one, here it is: Hands.
Enjoy!
“Why’d you do it,” the police officer asks, his tone of voice filled with hatred. “What kind of monster would kill her own father? What the hell is a matter with you! Say something damn it!”
The murderess, a young woman, sits quietly in the seat at the table. “It was his hands,” she replies in a low voice.
“It wasn’t him. I know it wasn’t him. I could tell by his hands. It looked like him and sounded like him, but there were little differences. At first I thought nothing of it. Then he touched my hand, and I knew, and when I looked up at him, like the scales falling from Paul’s eyes, the familiarity that I thought had been there fell away. I noticed his eyes were off, and his speech was different. So, I screamed. That thing tried to calm me, and touched me with those God-awful hands again, and I screamed louder. I pushed him, it away from me and ran to the gun cabinet.
I grabbed my father’s shotgun. It had been his favorite. He had taken me hunting so many times as a girl. I pointed the gun at it. This diabolical noise came out of its mouth as it sprang toward me, and I shot it. My father taught me how to do that, and that thing was not my father.” The murderess starts to cry. She sobs loudly, her heart filled with grief.
“Get yourself together,” the officer growls and smacks her across the face. She grabs her face, but continues to sob softly and remnants of her eye makeup stream down her cheeks. She now has a red looking bruise where the officer hit her.
“Keep crying you stupid bitch. We know how to handle people like you where you’re going.” He grabs her roughly and makes her stand up. He jerks both of her arms behind her back and puts the handcuffs on tightly. She cries in pain as the metal from the handcuffs pinch her flesh. He pushes her out of the room.
On the way out, he sees the sergeant standing outside the room near the double-sided glass. “I’m taking her over to processing.”
The sergeant nods then immediately turns and walks in the opposite direction. He leaves the building, walking quickly, and travels to an adjacent building. He takes the elevator up to the top floor and makes his way to a large pair of ornate double doors. The secretary sitting in the outer office does not stop him as he goes in.
As he pushes through the doors, he sees an older gentleman sitting at the desk. The man at the desk has white hair. He looks up at his visitor expectantly.
“I’m sorry to bother you, sir, but I’ve just come from the station, and I think we have a problem. There has been another murder; this time a woman killed her father. She brought up the hands. It is like the case from last week. Initially I wasn’t too worried. I knew most would see such ravings as mere lunacy, but if we start to have more confessions like this, people may catch on. No one is going to believe that a group of individuals is suffering from the same delusion. What should we do?”
The man waits until the sergeant finishes, turns, and looks out his window. In the distance, the view encompasses large masses of rolling plains with little dots of civilization sprinkled here and there.
“Why so anxious? You’re starting to sound like them,” he says with disgust.
“It’s true we didn’t count on this problem. When we developed our duplication process, we didn’t fully consider all the ways the humans experienced the world. We focused too heavily on the visual experience, which, of course, we were able to do easily, but we didn’t consider tone of voice, mannerisms, touch.
The hands are of particular trouble where long-term relationships are concerned, especially with parents and children, as indicated by the two homicides you just mentioned. I’ve been having my secretary do some research on the matter, and I can’t believe we missed it.
You see, when a human child is growing up, one of the first senses a child experiences, well before their sight has fully developed, is touch. It grips its parents’ fingers. It nuzzles the parent’s chest. The parents use the hands to caress it, bathe it, and dress it. As it gets older, the parent holds the child; the parent and child hold hands as the parent recites stories prior to the nightly rest, as is human custom. The parent lifts the child when it falls. And it continues on and on. So, they instinctually know what the touch of their parents feels like.
Therefore, as has been demonstrated, if you replicate a human male who has labored his whole life and his hands look the part but feel like the hands of a man who has never done physical labor a day in his life, the child will know, and the visual duplication is no longer effective. It’s quite amazing really.”
The white haired gentleman, who’s been staring out the window while talking, finally turns his attention to the sergeant.
“You needn’t worry. Our technicians are in the process of correcting the problem. In the meantime, circulate a message on the network to avoid all physical contact until we can correct this problem. We likely won’t avoid all discoveries, but, next time at least, I’m hoping we can kill them before they kill us. And I trust that if that were to happen, you would handle it on your end?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good we don’t want to ‘tip our hand,’ as the humans say, before we’re ready for a full attack. There’s still much more to be done. Now leave.”
“Yes, sir. Thank you, Mr. Mayor.”
The sergeant turns and leaves the office. He passes the secretary on his way out. She is studying human facial expressions and mannerisms at her desk.
