Telstar

It was April 14th, 1647, and Christiaan Huygens was burying Christiaan Huygens.

The fresh name still hung on Huygens like a baggy shirt as he shoveled an unmarked grave. “A copse for a corpse,” he thought gravely, chuckling darkly at one wordplay from the tongue of the English as he overlooked another.

The new Huygens was no murderer; he was a former best friend who had watched in horror as his friend was swallowed whole in weeks by a consumption no doctors could treat. That brilliant student, the pride of his father, dead, dead. And what a father—the new Huygens respected Constantijn as much as he did his son. So much so that he could not leave Constantijn childless.

Many had told the inseparable friends that they were like twins in more than just appearance, and those words gave Huygens strength as the shovel grew ever heavier in his pampered hands. They had also given him strength during his weeks of intense study of every last detail of his friend’s life, begging Christiaan for more stories, the better to prepare for impersonating him.

The “real” Huygens (they both laughed at the thought) was enthusiastic about the plan—as much as he could muster enthusiasm while wasting away. Neither of the two was sure which had thought of the idea… and really, it felt to them like just one more in the long series of pranks the “twins” had already played.

It also wasn’t the first secret they had shared. The palpably-mortal Huygens knew full well that his doppelganger was cursed with immortality. The choice of brutally sudden mortality was still trivially easy for the brilliant boy—which is not to say that his friend was even eager to rob him of it.

Light spilled in through the trees, and the power of the moment left an imprint on Huygens that would remain with him for at least the rest of his impersonated life. An imprint of light, an imprint of time. “The best impersonation I can give,” he mulled, “is to study these two things, like he would have.”

As he clambered up after lowering the body, he felt fresh-born. He was anxious before a new world and the challenge of fooling so many, especially a loving father. Christiaan Huygens gulped and launched into a new orbit. The light still spilled down, and he daydreamed. “Maybe someday I will be a satellite.”

You might ask: what was the old name of the new Huygens? But this is a silly question. What is a name to a werewolf?