Chapter 1: Section 7: Page 62: Line 108 (1090)

 Separated by a couple-three letters in name as if alphabetically double-refracted, you could say. . . .

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Let's not forget Merle's drunk while coming up with this theory lest we eviscerate him too harshly. But then I also shouldn't forget that Thomas Pynchon's books are historical fantasies where pretty much anything can be true. I already have no trouble believing that Lew Basnight can hop dimensions, traveling from one timeline to another, possibly even going from the real world to a work of fiction (as opposed to hopping from one fictional Chicago to another). I believe that Randolph St. Cosmo is an angel based on the character Orc from William Blake's America A Prophecy. I believe Pugnax, based on a cartoon character that doesn't yet exist in the novel's timeline, can read. Why shouldn't I also believe that Blinky Morgan and Edward Morley are the same person split in two by some kind of flesh double-refraction invention. Maybe Edward, as a small child, walked into a brick wall one day, diverting himself in one direction while Blinky bounced off at a perpendicular direction (or just came out through the other side?). This could explain why Blinky became a scofflaw and a thief because he found himself all alone and having to fend for himself at a young age. It's like that episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation where they find a clone of Riker stranded on a planet for years. A clone that, may I say, proves Barkley's theory correct that the Federation's teleportation system doesn't work as suspected; it's actually a suicide/cloning machine. It kills the real person and just creates a clone at the destination. How else can you explain a double-refracted William Riker creating Thomas Riker?

I will say the similar name minus the couple-three letters convinced me more than their pictures. That doesn't mean I'm gullible and easily convinced of bullshit; it just means the pictures look so dissimilar one to the other that the spelling of the names was a greater argument for the double-refraction.