Clone City

Ord heaved a sigh of relief as the door of the changing room clanged shut behind him. No one was there. He was glad. He did not want to talk to anyone. Walking along a row of metal lockers, he came to his own. He didn’t need to check its number: he knew it from the habit of years. He let his forehead fall and rest against its cool surface. Codes, he thought, what’s coming down?

After a while, he yanked the door open, pulled his overalls off and changed into beige chinos and a blue cotton jerkin. He was about to close the locker door when he caught sight of his image in the mirror behind it. Those lines around my mouth are getting so deep they’re making me look like a monkey, he thought. Seeing a frightened look in his eyes, he wondered, who am I?

Pushing the locker shut, he walked toward the door at the far end of the changing room. It slid open at his approach. He walked through and, head bowed, began to climb the stairs to the ground floor.

Reaching the spacious atrium of the ground floor of the Tower, he weaved his way through the crowd to a silver-line walkway. All clone walkways were silver lines. He joined the line waiting to step onto it. As he stepped onto its slow, gliding floor, clones were pushing past him. This is more like it, he thought, just a face in the crowd. He took several deep breaths as the tube within which the walkway glided left the Tower. The air of the surface always felt good after a day’s work beneath ground.

Looking out, he could see other tubular walkways above and below. Wherever a clone silver line ran parallel to a citizen gold line, there was partitioning. Ord wondered why. He supposed they did not want citizens and clones seeing one another outside of work. He looked up at one of the many screens that hung from above when he noticed The News come on. He tried to catch what was being said, but it was difficult to hear against a background of announcements warning them not to run, not to place luggage on the belts, not to forget any belongings and not to leave litter.

As the walkway became more crowded, Ord wondered why the silver lines were not wider. After all, there were far more clones than citizens. They outnumbered them three to one. The citizen walkways were almost empty. The thought sparked a sad memory. He remembered Krm.

Krm had worked at the Hub until last year. Ord wanted to help him, but in the end group pressure proved too strong. Krm had to be forcibly removed from the workgroup session. He was screaming, ‘We’re human, too. You put those slogans in our heads, you take them out. They’re not ours, they’re yours. Your lies, not ours...yours, yours, yours!’

It was the saddest moment of his life to see Krm dragged out of the room yelling and hollering like that. True, what he’d done a couple of weeks ago had been out of the ordinary. But handing in a C80 was following the rules. Krm had been removed because he’d gone individ and become violent. That’s why they’d taken him to the Encrypt. No one was allowed to visit the Encrypt and no one ever returned to work from there. He hoped they were looking after him. It still hurt. Krm was his twin.

Ord gazed down at the streets. It was already dark and, in the distance, he could see the neon-lit district he was gliding toward. He twisted his head from side to side. Codes, I’m stiff, he thought. Need a massage. He wondered if the strain was getting to him: Krm and the slogans, me and the new sorting instructions. Of course, we are all human, he thought and wondered why Krm could think that they weren’t. He looked at the silhouettes of a group of citizens on a gold line going in the opposite direction. What could be so different? Alright, they never met socially. But he doubted they could be so different that…they were less human. He ran through some of the obvious differences: citizens lived longer and some had children. Clones had to get permission for children. But no one did and that’s why no one felt any resentment. So why did Krm go individ?

As he was carried along, advertisements floated in and out of his vision. Most were eye-catching posters of products, places and events. Others were animated and displayed on screens. But here and there, slogans were flashed by a deep red pulsing light. Ord had just passed one and, though he’d not noticed it, the word ‘harmony’ came to mind. ‘We’re all Joypolitans,’ he murmured.

Stepping off the walkway, he walked down to the main drag of the Pink Zone. He stood looking around as crowds swirled past. In the distance, he could see the myriad lights of Joypolis Tower scintillating between high-rise buildings. Here, however, it was very different. The buildings were jumbled together. Ord looked at the tops of a line of pillars that had once supported a huge bio-dome. Not all of them were visible, some were concealed by buildings. They were a relic of the past. He didn’t know why, but he liked them. Perhaps it was their unusualness or uselessness, he thought as he turned into a labyrinth of small alleys.

As he walked past bars, eating houses, sex parlours, kiosks for stimulants and game houses, the smell of cooking made him hungry. He dived into a single-room restaurant, squeezed himself up onto an empty stool at the counter and ordered a bowl of noodles and steamed Chinese dumplings. As he waited, he noticed the restaurant was backed up against a section of an old pillar. He supposed these massive structures had been left because it would have been more trouble to tear them down.

Soon, a bowl of noodles was handed to him over the counter. Ord wasted no time tucking in. As he slurped the noodles up, the dumplings were slipped past his elbow onto the counter. Ten minutes later, he was outside wiping his lips with the back of his hand wondering what to do and which way to go.

As he looked up and down the narrow lane, a girl wearing hot pants and a pink plastic cape came up and handed him a leaflet. He looked at it. It read: ‘Discounts! Discounts! Look at these prices! Oil massage only 500 Jcs!’ As he looked at the pictures of the girls on the back, the girl smiled and said, ‘If you come now, I’ll do you.’ Ord noticed she had a perfect row of white teeth. ‘It’s the best place in town. Everybody says so. No messing about.’

Ord looked her up and down. Her cape reached the hem of her hot pants. He saw her legs were big at the top, but not fat. Her hair was the most striking thing about her. She had it fanned out onto a frame with fairy lights going on and off. What a get-out, he thought. He judged her to be about twenty-five, although she could have been older. It was difficult to tell, her face so caked with make-up.

‘Haven’t seen you before,’ he said, surprised at how he could have missed anyone so conspicuous in a district he frequented so often.

‘Eva,’ she said, wriggling her shoulders to better display her headdress. ‘I’m new.’

Ord wasn’t sure if she had said Eve, Eva, or Emma because someone had just come out of a Game Booth and the roar of machines had drowned her voice.

‘Whatever,’ he said, letting her take his wrist and lead him toward a purple door shaped like a keyhole. He thought he would have the regular course, then go and have a drink with Srl and Tor and try to stop thinking about when the secretaries would reply to his C80.

When Eva shut the door behind them, the racket outside was silenced as abruptly as if a switch had been thrown. It made the narrow foyer of the parlour seem strangely peaceful. Eva pointed to a man who sat at a desk behind a plastic screen with holes in it. At the same time, another man who had been sitting at the bottom of the stairs got up and gave Eva a tap on the ass as he passed her. With smoke curling out of his mouth, he pointed to the tariffs and asked Ord what course he would like.

Ord replied the regular, dug deep into his pockets and paid the man who sat behind the plastic screen. He followed Eva up the creaky stairs. As he did so, he noticed a small battery attached to the clasp at the back of her choke. So that’s how she does the fairy lights, he thought. Suddenly dizzy, he grabbed hold of the banister. As he closed his eyes, Krm’s face appeared.

‘Come on,’ Eva called from the top of the stairs. ‘You’ve only got thirty minutes.’

Ord looked up. She was standing, legs apart, golden hair lit up. She reminded him of a cartoon character called Sammy Sunrise. Sammy’s hair was fanned out like that, too. Not bedecked with lights, but like black flames. Sammy used to help kids when things went wrong. Like if a friend was going individ. Shakily, Ord pulled himself up the stairs wondering if he was ill.

Eva led him to a room at the end of an uneven passage. Entering, they undressed and got into a shower. She began to soap him down. Ord knew it was the risk of disease that made the servicers scrub their customers so well, but even so he wondered if she weren’t deliberately wasting time.

‘It’s okay,’ he said in all earnestness. ‘You don’t have to lick my ass.’

She stopped, showered the soap off him and began to rub him down with a towel. When he was dry, she led him to a bed with a mirror above. Eva adjusted the lighting to a dim red and asked him the usual questions: did he want it this way or that as she ran her hands over him and pushed her breasts into his face. He told her to suck him off first and then give him a massage.

After a few minutes, he knew something was wrong. He eased her off and looked around for his clothes. ‘Forget it. Uh, doesn’t matter,’ he muttered as he pulled his pants on. Looking at his limp cock, he thought that’s never happened before. Maybe I am ill, he thought.

‘You a Packer?’ Eva asked, thinking to fill in the time with small talk.

‘Yeah, but I wasn’t trained as one. I’m a Carer. I was transferred to the Hub. I been working there so long, I guess you could say I’m a Packer. No different from anyone else there. Yep, I’m a Packer.’ As he pulled his shirt on, he felt glad of the momentary darkness.

Eva said quietly, ’That’s odd. ’Cos I’m not a servicer, either. I was a Carer. Only three months ago. Bringing up kids, I was, till they said something about not needing so many and there being a shortage of servicers ’n all. Can’t say I like it much. I was trained as a Carer. Liked that. Liked it a lot, I did.’

Ord looked at her sideways up as he buckled his belt. ‘You, a Carer? Must be… kind of difficult…this work?’

Eva met his gaze full on and held it without saying anything. Ord wondered what that look meant as he looked away and said, ‘I…I filled in a …C80…couple of weeks ago, it was.’ There was no answer. He carried on, gazing past her, telling her about the change in his routine, how confusing it was, how unnecessary, how he thought he had to do something about it. He did, submitted a C80, better that than bringing it up at the meeting, especially as no one in the group seemed to know what he was on about. He’d gone to the secretaries, met a director, didn’t think that would happen, and what with the way he was remembering Krm, his twin, everything coming back, like at the least expected moment. Why, just few minutes ago on the stairs, he wasn’t feeling too well, not his usual self. Wasn’t like this; usually he could come, no problem. Catching himself, he wondered how long he had been rabbiting on when a buzzer sounded. ‘Sorry, I…uh.’

Eva looked toward the sound and back at Ord. He looked at her and shrugged his shoulders. She began to dress. When she finished, she asked, ‘You got everything?’ Ord nodded.

As they left the room, Eva whispered, ‘Don’t say anything to…will you?’ She pointed to the floor below, meaning, he supposed, the guy downstairs. Ord nodded. As he turned into the passage, she touched him lightly on the side of his arm. He was not sure what that touch meant and turned to look at her. He saw her smile. It wasn’t the same smile as before. It was different. He was trying to put a word to it, or so he would think later, when it vanished and they retraced their steps to the foyer.

As he walked toward the door, the man who was smoking, got up and thanked him for his custom and said they looked forward to his next visit.

Stepping out into the jangling confusion of the street, Ord set off in the direction of the bar he thought Srl and Tor would be at. As he did so, he mumbled under his breath: ‘Phew, better not mention this one to the boys.’ He had not gone far when he stopped and held his head. It was throbbing. He decided to go home. He had had enough for one day.