My guess is that most people make both plus and minus assumptions about being a twin. Yes, it’s fun seeing an exact replica of yourself and the occasional mistaken identity thing can reveal some pretty juicy secrets about the sibling you’re being mistaken for. But the theft of your physical uniqueness, the fact that you’re a twin before being allowed to be an individual must be pretty disorientating.
Eric and Joe Campbell were fairly typical, seemed to enjoy themselves a lot and do things which actually encouraged other people to mix them up. It was only when they left school that they set aside the fun aspect of it all, mainly because, strangely, they developed very different skills. Eric turned out to be a gifted scientist, mainly in the field of endocrinology, while Joe’s talent was, first, for writing poems – mainly to impress girl friends – but later, using his linguistic facility to sit at a computer making up stories, slogans and jingles for industrial concerns, video companies, and even the occasional national broadcaster.
Their physical resemblance was, of course, still striking. They were both slim, handsome men, with plenty of hair, but Eric had none of Joe’s flamboyance or confidence with friends and strangers alike. He preferred his own company and the fascination of his researches. In fact, as his expertise had grown, these finds had produced some very effective remedies for certain hormonal conditions, which had encouraged him to think about branching out and benefitting from them commercially.
It was an idea he first tested on Joe in one of their rare get-togethers, when each caught up with the other’s latest schemes and activities. Joe’s were always quickly conveyed because very few of them lasted a significant amount of time and were basically either tales of editors’ ignorance or brief accounts of disastrous flirtations. Eric’s, on the other hand, were infrequent and, usually, deep, serious ponderings over various chemical experiments, the reactions of antibodies in unlikely contexts and other esoteric happenings incomprehensible to Joe.
But this time it was different. It was the word ‘hormone’ that caught Joe’s attention, mainly because, despite the fact that he knew that most of his brother’s work was hormone-related, his knee-jerk reaction was always to assume (or, at least, hope) that the talk might be of sex. On this occasion, it was more promising because it was followed by the expression ‘mammographic density’ and from Joe’s familiarity with women’s magazines, he knew what the ’mammo’ bit of such expressions was. But Eric had swiftly progressed to talk of ‘libid-derived hormones, amino acids, peptides and proteins’ so his interest wavered.
Until, that is, Eric uncharacteristically mentioned money.
Joe shook off the dream-state into which he was sliding and said, ‘What?’
‘I said there’s money to be made there if I could be bothered.’
‘Where?’ asked Joe.
‘Retrograde Densities,’ said Eric. ‘That’s what I was telling you. I’ve synthesised this…’
‘Never mind that,’ said Joe. ‘How will you be making this money?’
‘Well, I know the chemical messenger works, delivers it to the right tissues, but…’
‘Yes, but where does the money come in?’
‘I told you. Several of the big boys are getting into the market with products that…’
‘What sort of products?’
‘Like I said, the ones with actively retrograde densities. The ones I’ve been working on.’
‘So you’re telling me you’ve made this product thing that sells?’
‘Well, it could if I tried to…’
‘What’s it called?’ asked Joe.
‘Called? It’s not called anything. It’s just a bi-lateral incidence I’ve observed when you…’
‘Never mind that,’ said Joe. ‘You reckon you could sell it?’
‘No, I don’t care about selling things, but I’d like patients to have access to it.’
‘And you say they’d buy it.’
‘Oh yes, I’m pretty sure they would.’
Joe rubbed his hands together.
‘OK, OK,’ he said. ‘Brother dear, I know just the company you need.’
Eric just frowned.
Joe pulled a small notebook out of the inside pocket of his jacket.
‘Now what did you say it was, this thing?’ he asked.
The frown still on his face, Eric watched as Joe copied down his answer.
‘It’s not a “thing”. It’s a bi-lateral incidence of actively retrograde densities.’
Joe looked hard at the words, nodding slightly as he did so.
‘Perfect,’ he said at last. ‘OK, give me a couple of days and I’ll be in touch.’ And, with Eric just nodding, he stood up and left.
Just two weeks later, he texted Eric to fix a follow-up meeting.
When it happened, Eric was only vaguely curious but Joe was buzzing with energy. As he sat down across the table from Eric, he reached again for his inside pocket and pulled out a single rolled up sheet of paper.
On the blank outside, Eric could see the name of a major pharmaceutical company.
‘Told you,’ said Joe. ‘All you needed was a name and a campaign.’
Eric shook his head. Joe unrolled the paper to reveal a blinding white snowscape with lightning flashes on a dark background. Across the top of all this drama was a single word: BLIZZARD.
‘What the hell’s this?’ asked Eric.
‘Like it?,’ asked Joe. ‘I came up with the name, they bought it, and they want you to get in touch with their labs as soon as you can.’
‘But… Blizzard?’
‘Dynamic, eh?’ said Joe. ‘the complete, devastating cure. They love it.’
‘But what the hell’s it got to do with my experiments?’
‘Everything,’ said Joe. ‘You told me it was
“Bi-Lateral Incidence of Actively Retrograde Densities.” That’s B L I A R D. It just needed a middle bit, so I added the year you invented it, 22, squeezed the letters down a bit and… voila!’
The world of endocrinology knows this all happened many years ago. Eric still lives in his flat in Glasgow but Joe has a Georgian house in Richmond and properties in Scotland and the Dordogne.