The Homunculus Flunks the Touring Test (ibid)

[ergo sum]

It might seem odd that the Bishop should host a mask but life in Venice is like that. So everyone was ordered to Venice for the occasion. Weeks were spent designing and making the proper masks for the occasion. Preparations in the Salone delle Feste at the Palazzo Labia with it’s celebrated frescos depiction the life of Anthony and Cleopatra by Tiepolo and Girolamo Mengozzi Colonna went on for weeks.

Hordes of paparazzi milled about the city waiting for the guests to arrive. Invitations has been mailed out to an unbelievable member of people and the only one to respond with regrets was a certain Costa Rican who claimed he couldn’t get his papers in time for the trip. More than a few people claimed that his not coming was proof that he didn’t exist.

Nonexistence turned out to be a major theme in this sordid affair. Hundreds of once upstanding invitees it seemed suffered from this same misfortune. They just did not exist. Finally on the day of the Feste the ballroom so resplendently adorned was filled with about a dozen people.

Apparently unlike the internet where multiple alias might be difficult but are not unknown, or unlike the movie The Prestige where multiple replications might be possible with the right Tesla machine in real life, (this is real life is it not?) showing up EVEN at a masked ball in Venice was problematic if you wanted to continue to pretend you were who you were not.

I realize that some of you will object and suggest that anyone could simply hire others to show up at the mask and pretend they were so and so. This is not however really the case. Consider this point, If Riddle in fact does exist for him to hire someone else to pretend to be another version of himself with another alias this person would have to have intimate knowledge of Riddle’s life and actions. Surely as in the Prestige it could actually be a twin but that is not the case here. These people are in fact replications.

Anyway you will just have to take my word for the fact that only 12 people showed up and all of them ironically enough were dressed as and wore the mask of Agent Smith from the Matrix. Well that is not entirely true one was dressed like Divine in the movie Hairspray.