Mr Capaldi’s studio is both a working laboratory and the setting of a decisive disclosure: an artificial double of Josie is being prepared, and Klara has been selected not merely to train it but to become it if Josie dies. Its stark rooms and concealed upper workspace make visible the tension between the family’s hope of preserving Josie and the disturbing idea that a person might be reproduced through another’s close observation.

Setting and Approach

The studio occupies a five-storey brick building set apart from its neighbors. The building’s unpainted, dark exterior and zigzagging fire escapes contrast with the bright, carefully controlled space inside. From the yard, Klara imagines that the cleared surroundings may be connected to some misfortune and the work of overhaul men; this remains her impression, not an explanation supplied by the scene. The approach is marked by the family’s physical care for Josie: she walks cautiously over cracked ground beside the Father, who takes her arm, while the Mother watches before taking Klara’s arm in a gesture that echoes theirs.

The Mother prepares Klara for the encounter by telling her that Mr Capaldi may ask many questions and that she should answer them. She calls Klara “honey,” the first time she has used that term of affection. The small gesture accompanies the move into a setting where Klara will be examined for what she knows of Josie and for what she might be made to do with that knowledge.

The Main Room and Its Apparatus

Inside, the Main Room seems almost the inverse of the building’s dark, severe exterior. The floor and enormous walls are nearly the same shade of white, and strong ceiling spotlights make it difficult to look upward. The room contains little furniture for its size: a large black sofa and a low wheeled table. On the table Mr Capaldi has arranged two cameras and their lenses, equipment that gives the room the character of a place for both observation and construction.

At the far corner, two charts covered in intersecting ruled lines stand beside a light metal chair and a tripod lamp. The corner initially looks dark and lonely; when Mr Capaldi switches on the lamp, it becomes brightly illuminated, though new shadows appear. The scene’s lighting does not simply reveal the room. It creates a carefully staged field of visibility, a fitting environment for a project that depends on studying Josie closely enough to reproduce her.

The Hidden Studio and the Double

Beyond the visible room lies a private work area reached through the Purple Door. Klara has observed the door’s code twice and, while the others are occupied below, slips away from the balcony without making the metal mesh ring or crossing the spotlight beams in a way that would cast moving shadows. She keys in the code and enters unnoticed. Her careful passage turns the studio into a space with two levels of access: the family’s formal visit below, and the concealed work of making the double above.

The inner studio is L-shaped and extends beyond the building’s ordinary boundary. Counters along its walls hold shapes, fabrics, small knives, and tools. Around the corner Klara finds the artificial Josie suspended in the air, her feet level with Klara’s shoulders and her body leaning forward, arms outstretched and fingers spread as if frozen in a fall. Beams of light strike her from several angles, leaving no place to hide. Her face resembles Josie’s, but its expression is unfamiliar: the upward curve of the lips, without Josie’s kind expression in the eyes, makes the figure look afraid and disappointed.

The double’s clothes are not ordinary garments but thin, translucent pale-yellow tissue arranged to suggest a T-shirt and loose shorts. Under the sharp light, her limbs appear especially fragile. Her hair has been tied back in the style Josie wears on ill days, but the material is unlike anything Klara has seen on an Artificial Friend, and she is certain Josie would dislike it. The details show both the precision and the limits of the imitation: the figure gathers recognizable signs of Josie, yet its materials and expression make its artificiality impossible to overlook.

The Studio’s Purpose

The visit is presented at first as a survey of Klara’s understanding. Klara believes that the questions are meant to test how well she knows Josie—how Josie makes decisions and why she feels as she does—and concludes that the results will show she can train the upstairs double. She insists that giving up hope is wrong. The studio’s real purpose is more consequential than the test she has inferred: the Mother explains that the family came chiefly because of Klara, and Mr Capaldi corrects her understanding directly.

Mr Capaldi says that the artificial Josie is empty and that the family is not asking Klara to train it. If Josie dies, they want Klara to inhabit the figure with everything she has learned, until there is no difference between the first Josie and the second. He says the Mother chose Klara carefully because she believed Klara could learn Josie deeply, not just superficially. The studio therefore houses more than an unfinished likeness. It is where intimate knowledge is recast as a proposed means of continuation, and where the boundary between understanding a person and replacing her becomes the family’s urgent, unsettling question.