Clone City

It seemed like any other day at the Hub. As canned goods came bobbing along a conveyor belt, clones packed them into boxes. Further along, the boxes were sealed so that when they reached the end of the line they could be pulled off onto the floor to be sorted. Once sorted, they were stacked onto trolleys and driven off down the broad lanes that intersected the rows of shelves that criss-crossed the warehouse floor.

When a trolley arrived at the section designated for its goods, a Packer would step forward and check that they corresponded with the numbers on his docking sheet. If they did, he unloaded them. When the trolley purred off, he would begin stacking them onto the shelves before another came along.

High above the shelves and suspended from the ceiling by cables were transparent tubular walkways. They radiated out from a central hub to the administrative offices that lined the surrounding walls. It was this pattern that had given the warehouse its name – the Hub. Sometimes, managers would pause while crossing to view the work of clones below. From such a vantage point, the clones must have seemed small, almost ant-like. But this was how it was, and today, just like every other, everything seemed normal.

Yet it was not. One clone, a Packer called Ord, felt disoriented. He was finding it difficult to sort the boxes according to the new instructions. It was a small thing in itself – to stack them according to colours, categories and sizes. But it broke a habit of years. Ever since he had been transferred to the Hub, he had only ever stacked them according to weight – heaviest at the bottom, lightest at the top.

Ord stood nonplussed, as he thought how he, like the rest, had worked like robots and been praised for it. And wasn’t that the whole point? They had to work like robots to prove that robots weren’t needed. Or, at least, that’s what they’d had drummed into them. But then, another thought sprang to the forefront of his mind: who am I to question? He hung his head in shame.

But the questioning began again as he knelt to check the colour, category and size of a box. He rubbed his left temple as if this might ease the speed at which thoughts sped pell-mell into his mind. It seemed to him that he could no longer be sure of anything anymore and that it was this change that had triggered it. He hardly knew how to put it, but only a few days after the new instructions had been introduced, his mind began to cloud. He had never experienced anything like it. He’d even had bouts of dizziness. Was it really the new routine? he wondered, biting the inside of his lower lip. Or was he just reacting badly to change? Slogan 32 said, ‘No Change Is Good Change.’ So why had they made this change? There! He was at it again – questioning. But, try as he might, he could not stop.

He wondered if his co-workers felt the same. Furtively, he glanced around. The nearest was Url. He was the one who had suggested the idea in the first place. Ord had thought nothing of it at the time Url had stood up and explained to the workgroup why he thought coding the boxes would be better. Judging by weight had led to too many mistakes, he had said. Ord had nodded his agreement like everyone else. But now, he felt confused.

He had tried to talk to Url about it, but he told him to bring it up at the next group meeting and added, pointedly, that private discussions were useless. Nonetheless, Ord asked others what they thought about it. None of them could understand why he found it so difficult to adjust to the change. He decided he had better not bring it up at the meeting. If he were the only one speaking out, he would risk distancing himself from the group. ‘Individuality Divides,’ he muttered, citing one of the most important slogans.

Instead, he had decided to submit a C80. It was the only option left. After all, he thought, this is what we’re supposed to do when we can’t talk about things in front of the group. Although he could not think of a single clone who had ever done this, he still thought it the safer course of action. It was less direct, less confrontational. The thought of standing up in front of the workgroup, to say nothing of the citizen-managers, to explain why he alone found the new rules so difficult… No, no, he shook his head, can’t do that.

He had been steeling himself to the task all week, but each time he had found an excuse to delay. Pushing his fingers deep into his short-cropped, light brown hair, he told himself he would do it today. And yet he still dithered. He hated doing anything out of the ordinary. Didn’t every packer? What was it the slogans said? Team First, Self Second? Or was it, ‘Team is One, Self is None.’ Good Codes, he thought, shocked at how he could not recall this important slogan.

When the sound of chimes signalled the end of the shift, Ord pretended to be busy as co-workers headed for the changing rooms. When he judged it safe, he walked quickly, though not so fast as to draw attention, toward the massive column that housed the staircase and elevators that linked the Hub to the other floors of Joypolis Tower. As he approached, a door slid open. Entering, he glanced from side to side. Glad to see no one there, he began to jog down the spiral stairway since the elevators were reserved for citizen use only.

As he fretted about what he would say to the citizen clerks of the Secretarial Section, his pace slowed. How, he wondered, would they react? When his mind became a torrent of if-this then but if-not-that then, he stuttered to a stop. With one foot hovering over the lower step, he craned his neck upward. The glare from the electric light merely added an unwanted intensity to his indecision. It’s no good, he thought, and was about to turn tail and run back up when, hearing footsteps, he froze.

He stood stock-still. To his amazement, a woman came into view. And what a beauty, he thought, his eyes widening.

She stopped in surprise and stared at him.

Ord turned and carried on down. He heard her footfalls follow his in a one-two beat. An A-class beauty for sure, he thought. He’d seen A-class beauties on the screens, but never in the flesh. He was wondering what she was doing here and why she wasn’t using the elevators when the secretarial floor came into view. Panicking, he wondered if he should just stop, let her pass and then race back. He now felt as if he had been driven down by her.

Four more careful steps brought him level with a dark-tinted plastic door above which, in unadorned lettering, were the words ‘Secretarial Section’. He stopped and stood with his back to the column that formed the centre of the stairwell waiting for the woman to pass. As she distanced herself from him, she triggered the door’s sensors.

Two secretaries – a man and a woman – came into view. They were on the point of saying something, but froze on hearing the doors hiss open. The man smiled to the woman outside and raised five fingers to signal that he would be along shortly. The woman smiled back and pointed downward to indicate where she would be. As she sashayed past, Ord came into view. The man lowered his glasses and the woman cocked her head to one side. Ord took a deep breath and stepped forward.

He did not walk right up to them, but stopped short and bowed from the waist to indicate his lower rank. Glancing at the woman, the man raised an eyebrow.

‘What is it?’ he asked.

‘I’d like a C80,’ Ord croaked. He saw the man was about fifty and wore the high-soled footwear of the Director Class. He never dreamt he would come face to face with a director. He assumed it would be an ordinary citizen.

‘You’re a Packer, correct?’

‘Yes,’ Ord replied, knowing he had recognized his work category by the emblem on the breast pocket of his overalls. All clone personnel at the Hub came under the category Packer even if their duties were more specific. ‘There’s been a change in the stacking routine and… I’d like to say something about it,’ he said, his voice petering out.

The woman touched the director’s elbow so that he turned and she could whisper something in his ear. Facing Ord, the man asked, ‘Have you discussed the matter with your workgroup?’

‘No,’ Ord gulped, beginning to feel hot. ‘It doesn’t seem to affect them. It’s just me. I’m confused, that’s why I came, you see, to follow the rules.’ As he stared at his feet, he felt a bead of sweat trickling down his right temple.

The man conferred with the woman again. The man gave a sigh and the woman gestured Ord to follow.

She led him down a corridor at the end of which they turned and walked in front of a row of grey metal cabinets that housed hundreds of drawers labelled according to the forms they contained. She opened one and drew out a C80. It made a dry crackling sound when she flapped it and pointed Ord toward a solitary desk that stood in front of rows of banked desks. Once Ord was seated, she placed the form on the desk and withdrew.

Ord felt the stares of those sitting in the amphitheatre of desks behind drill their displeasure into his back. This wasn’t how he imagined it would be. He felt as if he had been ordered to confess to a crime. It was all wrong. He thought his hand resemble a white crab as it slid across the desk toward the pen. No sooner had he taken it than he put it down to wipe his sweaty palms on his overalls. This done, he picked up the pen and began to write quickly, not because he had thought it through, but to get out of the place. It was hot, dry and stuffy. He hated it. He wrote:

I am confused. The new instructions for stacking the boxes, the new categories, codes, and colours for sorting, it makes my head ache. I feel dizzy, as if some sign had wormed its way into me. I am forgetting some of the slogans…