When I opened the door, he was there. He looked up for a moment, smiled, waved, and then went back to studying the screen.

I stopped back out. The sign next to the door still had my name on it. I reopened the door.

"Excuse me," I said. "I think you might be in the wrong office."

"Passive language," the man said. "We can't have that."

He said this to me as he continued to study the screen, only briefly looking up at the monitor to register my presence.

"Who are you?" I said.

"Obviously," he said. "I'm me."

I looked at him and began to notice some similarities. The sports jacket, the jeans, and the T-shirt attempting to make a funny but profound statement about life were the same as mine. The hair, or gradual lack of it, was mine. The eyes and glasses were mine. I was standing before me and pondering how to say or write, which hurt my head.

I stepped in and closed the door.

"What are you doing here?"

"I'm your other. Sort of your clone. I'm here to do your writing?"

"What?"

"I'm here to do your writing."

"I do my writing."

"Apparently, not well. No, you do the writing that we sort of put over there." He pointed to the corner. The wastebasket was full to overflowing. I stepped forward and picked up a sample. I knew these words. I had written them before stepping out to take a break.

"What are you writing then?"

"I'm writing better."

"What does that mean?" I turned to look over his shoulder, my shoulder, at the work he was completing. It was better. It was insightful, and the phrases turned into a pirouette, capturing my ideas more elegantly than the discarded junk I held.

"How do you do that?" I asked.

"I just open up and write what I am feeling. It's easy."

I had tried this many times without success. Me, or he, or however you refer to the doppelganger of yourself before you, was doing it easily.