73 and Me

ME

‘C – L – A – R … and the rest I couldn’t see.’

There was a long pause in the continued conversation. In that moment I looked forlornly at my frosted tumbler and proceeded to lift it to my mouth and take a constrained sip. I then sat it down with two gripped fingers and placed it evenly back on the table. The bar itself was partially occupied, but the geographical spacing of our table meant that the glass landing on the table emulated an exclamation of frustration and dejection.

‘That’s fucked up.’ 

‘Clarity. What kind of sick joke is that? Like you could make a patient spell anything to test their sight. The word itself is so stupid because a lying kid could just have guessed that and not had to wear glasses.’

‘Yeah, isn’t that an obvious loophole? What kind of optometrist would make that decision? How did you even find this guy Anna?’

Virginie and Marlon both cracked up, as was their wont. Their presence in this conversation was an extension of what they brought to my life. Their sarcastic nuanced opinions about modern media and journalism and delusions of eloquence regarding personal style brought an apricity of warmth and level-headed decency to my life. I had known them for years. Like many people you encounter over the progression of a personal epoch in a particular place, I felt like I had always known them, and they had always been barrelling towards me and helped facilitate the pinnacle of my entire narrative. Alone, my opinions on the future were consistently bleak and macabre. With them however I felt like I had been elevated to a higher degree of existential existence. In this open plain I could be openly honest, receptive to concepts and anecdotes that were new to me, and comfortable with a version of myself that I had buried inside myself long ago. The imposter I had become without them was favourably committed to avoiding cruel scrutiny. This same bitter cognitive dissonance was shattered any time I was with them.

‘I just googled optometrists near me, and he was the closest nearby. His store or whatever seemed clean, so I figured fuck it.’

Marlon interjected.

‘Do your new glasses work?’

I nodded.

‘What are you moaning for then?’

‘Oh my god! Shut up man you know that’s not the point.’

The three of us then proceeded to laugh in our own individual ways. Marlon had a short but loveable laugh that had become expected but never tiresome in the stint I had known him. He had a heart of pure ivory, it was of pure biological production, and at the same time, I felt like his time and effort was constantly exploited by women he decided to court. Virginie had a loud full way of cracking up that attracted attention from a five metre radius. Coupled with her objective attractive qualities, she had gone many a night without ever having to pay for a single drink. I envied and pitied her ability to hone the consideration of most. I was sure in some ways it was nice to be so wanted.

My own laugh was my own. I had of course heard it before in voice notes but had always felt it had remained an element of myself that had never changed despite the twenty-five years of everything I had lived through up until this moment at the Métier D’Art Bar. Our chuckles collectively blended into a symphony of unanimity that affirmed that our undying association with each other. We were unbreakable. Even though I had known that already, it has always been a pleasant memento in turmoil to recoil this fact under duress.

Our booth was spacious yet the table was scattered diversely with empty glasses. My drink of choice on this occasion was an Old Fashion, a beverage that I had come to enjoy at university. My tastes for bitter drinks amplified and veered further from the sweetness of ciders and other alcohol I had youthfully relished. Consuming those drinks as an adult felt detractive of who I was.  As a result, my space at the table did not feel so monopolised because the size of my empty tumblers allowed a good deal of personal space in front of me. Marlon and Virginie however had become partial to Long Island Iced Tea and other long drinks so had to peer over the skyline of vacant beakers to even make eye contact. 

This was something they always did. Their efforts to hold keep hold of a conversation with me while intoxicated was gratifying. This was especially thoughtful considering their short height relative to my own. 

Much like when any friends congregate, we ventured on that night through many conversational thoroughfares. We discussed many things. At this moment however I am struggling to recall the exact details of the conversation. I would like to blame the alcohol for the lack of transparency. I’m sure they would like me too. I felt intense adoration for them. I did then, now, and always will.

As we departed the bar that evening we got on with our fond farewells to each other. In a warm embrace they held me as I held them in the cold dark street. To no avail we drunkenly reminded each other of our unquestionable loyalty for each other and split. Even now it’s amusing that we would even need to vocalise something so blatantly apparent within the dynamics of our social circle.

I then proceeded to walk home in the icy, harsh, blackness. It was tiring but enjoyable, as I was able to soak in the pleasance of the vacant city and toil for myself in a way that I knew would facilitate my evolution. The lack of traffic (foot, or otherwise) was zen. However, I drunkenly thought quite a bit about a homework issue I had when I was very young. The memory came to me originally in the bar when we were talking about our earlier years.

The first question asked:

4 Crocodile + 2 Crocodiles =

I answered six. The second question then asked

4 Crocodile + 2 Caterpillars = 

I answered six again.

I vividly remember crying to my mother about how I did not understand the question. At that time, I felt frustrated that I had been tricked by someone who felt they were smarter than I was. It was only until I became an adult that I realised what this was – a preparation for my limitation. A strategy concocted to make me think that this sort of unfairness is normal, and I should come to terms with accepting imbalance. It was painful to think about. As I ambled over the bitter asphalt that night, I thought about how my younger self would see me now and wondered if they would like how I’ve reacted to what life has thrown at me so far. It’s impossible to say. If I was partial to gambling though I’d say they’d have been disenchanted. But I hope they’d know that I tried my best. My memories of that night concluded as I faintly remember getting within the vicinity of my neighbourhood. The next morning, I would wake to find myself reborn as a new entity and become an oddity more separated and isolated than ever before.

73

Anna woke in the early hours of the morning. The morning was clear and bright, but she felt atrocious. Having walked home, she had given into the intense fatigue that accumulated after failing to find a taxi and flopped onto the bed. Her apartment was simple. It had a bedroom, a small hallway to the bathroom and a quaint kitchen/ living space that utilised a minimalist aesthetic. She had fallen asleep with her clothes still on. On the walk home Anna’s phone charge had rapidly died when was using Spotify to listen to Sophie. As a result, she had been left without the facilities to even phone a ride by the cold grace of wilted phone battery. Without feeling the want to freshen up or brush her teeth she simply walked through the door, threw the keys onto her nightstand and escaped into unconsciousness. 

Internally she felt adequate. Her delicate portion of sweet potato curry from the bar’s vegan menu had been so filling that Marlon had taken to staring the plate down as Anna slowed her consumption of the meal. With around two fifths of the plate remaining, she raised it over the glasses in front of him and lowered it delicately down in front of him without saying a word. He picked up the fork, and whimsically grinned as he scooped the last of the curry (which was mostly rice) into his mouth. The food resembled slop, but he cared very little and he ate it like a starved dog. While the meal itself had served her diaphragm properly, her head had been left accounted for. As such the petty headache that had started to accumulate in her head last night walking home for three quarters of an hour now felt more like a brain haemorrhage. She groaned deeply and proceeded to move off the bed and onto her feet. She felt light-headed and unstable yet at the same time fully conscious. Her stature in the room felt vertically elongated as if she were being chastised to an invisible pillar in the room’s centre. The red walls of the bedroom were dulled from progressive sunlight. Anna’s hungover state appeared to intensify these tones and now appeared to be and intensely blushed and sanguine hue. She lightly moved on her feet towards the bathroom. Her lack of company practically every moment of her occupation in the apartment ensured that she was granted tranquil silence in her vulnerability. On the contrary however, she often felt intense isolation. In Anna’s mind, her largest problem was that she a loner, but loathed to be desolate. Her friends often protested in her absence that she simply felt insecure to the point that it could be emitted through practically every instance of conversation. She loved people more than herself. A hardened shell emerged when she felt that her raw, cold pain was exposed to the world. Her husk was not one that opposed energy but disengaged by use of quarantine. Her isolation would be brief, but the pain would eventually subside.

Anna came to her mirror and opened the cabinet door immediately. She pulled the small, spent sliver tin foil strip of ibuprofen from the shelf. Only two capsules remained, so she kissed the foil as if it were a dying relative. She then popped the two remaining capsules with a sense of easement. She then looked at the pack and pondered how the effective medicine could cost so little yet help her so much. She hoped in that immediate moment that she could impart this feeling on someone else someday. Her dream was to help in this way, shave with Occam’s razor and die peacefully. Her intense pain was subsided for a moment as she mustered a smile as the hazy cloud that circled her mind began to settle.

She then closed her cabinet and then focused on herself. The following blurred re-adjustment period brought Anna an unexpected surprised that had usually been haunted by desires for clearer skin and a more cohesive hairstyling.

Below her parched eye on the left side of her face, Anna could see clearly the tattooed etchings of two digits ‘7 3.’ The font was bold and somewhat stylish. The skin around the tattoo was reddish but the product was nonetheless professional.

Anna focused blankly on the digits for an incomprehensible period. To her, the moment felt like a void of infinite eons, spread across the existence of her whole production. From her perspective, her entire family history, her lifetime and the legacy of her name into the future, wrapped around this single isolated phase of physical recognition. Allotted phases of realisation followed her as she tried to question her position, her past, and then finally reason with what to her was wholly unreasonable. The silence in the bathroom was deafening as Anna broke out in an iced sweat. This felt instantaneous and escaped from her what felt like every gland of her body. 

The desperation of her howls and shrieks that would follow would have brought anyone within her company to be psychologically traumatized until their expiration - as if the progression of an entire lifetime of effort and trial was written off by an unexplainable action imposed by an alien tormentor.

Over time, her pitiful rationalisation of this physical transformation gave way to a rage that dwarfed the extent of boundaries of who she believed she was. Had someone accompanied her this far, they would have been surely torn apart like a glued Lego set. They would have been aggressively reasoned with at first and then smashed by a claw hammer in perpetuity until raw evidence was laid before her. 

Although she felt desperately isolated, she thought about her friends. While initially she considered the insanity of her predicament, a fragment of her was excited to tell her friends about the hilarity of her conundrum.

‘They’ll fucking love this’ Anna thought.

She took her phone out of her pocket and walked over to the charger by her bedside to plug it in. As soon as her battery was at 1%, she turned it on. She could see the reflection of her portrait in the dark screen. The backwards digits stared back at her. Anna mustered a smile. When the phone finally loaded up numerous messages brazenly buzzed the device in her hand. Immediately she could see the image icon of her group chat with Marlon and Virginie with a 100+ next to an image of them all. She had not opened the chat since before the bar. The image was one in which they were hunkered down at a music festival, drinking cheap wine spritzers and smiling comically. Frankly, she did not remember the image being captured nor the weekend of its birth. To avoid disharmony, she pretended to recall the moment with joy. In this moment the image may as well have been photoshopped since it made so little difference. She was not there. She wasn’t anywhere. 

She decided not to answer their concerns until she had got the ball rolling on her ‘cure.’ She was the type to get distracted and this was not the time for that. Instantly she noticed the phone had no service connection to her personal broadband. Under normal circumstances, this petty inconvenience would have been tolerable to a point. She walked over to her Wi-Fi router to find a single cable had been cut from the base. The cut was precise and clean to the point that it appeared factory made. It was as if the separation was how it was supposed be assembled.  This was clear sabotage. She shakenly threw her phone off the end of her bed and held her face in her hands. Anna was petrified.

Hours of flailing and complete bewilderment eventually turned into days of intermittent sanity. Anna did not clean her small apartment. She could not bring herself to eat. She did nothing but rethink her walk home. Was I that drunk? She pleaded with herself. What did I do? How could this happen? Am I in danger? What is 73? Who am I? What will I do? 73. The number burnt itself onto the roof of her mind. The digits glared down from the topside of her skull downward onto her thoughts. The numbers relished in her pain.

WE

Obviously, this was not my own doing, Anna asserted that. Whilst she did not remember getting home, she was sure she had not been so out to lunch that she had wondered into a parlour (had one even been nearby or open) and decided to brand herself like a runaway slave. When Anna drank, she frequently found herself slipping into valleys of merciless self-loathing. Despite these feelings, inebriated or not, Anna could never bring herself to hit the self-destruct in any such way. For the most part she envied those with the courage to mark their bodies. Tattoo art was beautiful. This was not only because it could reflect beauty in its’ purest sense, but also because it marked the courage of the prey, these marks scream; ‘here I am! Attest my presence in this world! All I have is experience. I cannot threaten nor be threatened. My weakness only shows when I make direct eye contact with the enemy, but I must seize the moment to go for the kill.’

Anna’s love for herself was genuine. Contrastively the self-hatred she felt for herself often felt artificial and she could sense herself feeling off when not feeling conceited.

Anna carefully inspected every faucet of her apartment for the remnants of another human being. The door and two windows were the only access points to the outside world from the internal chamber. Unless the intruder was highly covert with the skills of a hyperbolic espionage agent, she assumed they would have entered through the door. Her apartment was on the 9th floor. She inspected the door to find no evidence of violation. Fuck, she thought. She sat back onto her bed and exhaled deeply. The thought of leaving made her frightened. What lay beyond the threshold of her door filled her with indescribable dread.

All the while the strong sunlight beamed through the windows in a fashion that seemed Archimedean. She lightly pulled her hands away from herself and set them at her sides. The light warmed her face as she fastened her eyes shut. In this void she could see a version of herself in the past staring back happily. As time passed, the smile on her face changed from an innocent smirk to what appeared to be a cruel leer. The quietened acquaintance between the two mirrored duplicates assured Anna that any internal remittance due towards the other was nullified. They were the same and distinct. Anna felt no different. In this aura, she was nowhere. She was neither a passenger nor a superior. She felt weightless and critical.

HE

Anna woke on her bed after what would have been one hundred and twenty hours of defeated keening. Her flat was deadly silent and she keenly listened for abnormality. She felt well rested and yet still emboldened by indignation. She staggered up to the mirror once again and checked to see if she remained marked. As she stood staring at herself, holding the sides of the sink like the hips of a willing suitor, she folded in on herself and began crying exasperatedly. Her sadness was emblematic. She knew and accepted her truth, but still detested the indiscernible history of it all. 

For many minutes she waited in absolute silence and pondered the prospect of never leaving this apartment. Clearly things were rigged against her, but why? She thought deeply about the subject while listening to the silence that crammed her bedroom.

Suddenly, she could hear the noise of her front door opening. The latch of the lock was not unengaged, but she could tell the sound of the sway of her front door as well as her own voice.  The noise was an immediate influx of energy, as if the narrative of her callousness was going to be elucidated and her fate would befall her in aggregate. She stepped silently with socks on behind her bedroom door and waited for the intruder to enter.  She listened out for the intruder with every second. She breathed carefully through her nose as she held her mouth shut. Neither occupant made a sound. 

She scanned the small room. Her generalised lack of material desire facilitated a lack of physical retaliation. She had very little to work with.  In a hushed instant however, she saw the phone she had thrown against her wall. She hunkered downwards to pick it up. Her physical retrieval of the phone was seamless as her feet did not move from the planted position behind the door. Turning the phone over in her hand, she saw it was clearly shattered beyond repair. She held the phone in her fist and leaned back against the wall. Still not a sound. 

Anna felt an undeniable presence in the room next door. The air was crisp and untampered. Anna’s heart rate accelerated, and she felt herself becoming more agitated for the climax of her redemption. Anna’s hand stayed lightly touched against the door and the point of the upper hinge so that it would not cast a shadow over to the opposite side. The door opened slowly, while Anna nimbly leaned against it; waiting to use it as leverage to throw her weight at the intruder who would uncover himself as he had done roughly a week or so before when he left her there.  

The door continued to open as Anna gazed intensely at the edge of the frame. The sliver of a long brown coat could be seen emerging from the passageway. All at once, a figure emerged. The figure was a middle-aged male who wore a profusely long tan jacket and loose black trousers. Further down he wore what appeared to be thick darkened foot wraps. His stature was inferior to Anna’s. He was around five foot six. He appeared inquisitive enough but not intimidating. In her mind, the man seemed far more like a family lawyer or greengrocer than anyone with the capacity to commit malicious intent. 

Anna remained stationary until the door began to slowly close. Her arm remained lightly pressed against it. She knew he was alone. Even though his unnerving way of gliding around like a phantom on ice could be executed by multiple people, it was likely he would not want to attract further attention.

This was when Anna picked her moment. In an exhale, she lunged towards him with her broken phone clamped down in her hand. One loud footstep lay between them and as Anna took this step, the figure rapidly circled round to face her. Anna centred her clamped hand squarely towards his head and used every ounce of leverage she had to inflict maximum force. Lacking specialist skills in this area, she found herself involuntarily closing her eyes as she thrust everything she had towards this trespasser. She came down on him with everything she could throw in one fistful.

‘No. N-‘

The voice of the man was typical yet deep, even despite the provocative situation. Anna’s hand contacted some substantial piece of flesh which was then proceeded a doubled-up sound of thumping onto her floor. The phone flew broke from her hand and shot across the room to hit the wall once again. Her hand was instantly in agony. 

She opened her eyes to see the man laying unconscious on the floor. She stepped over him to see exactly what he looked like. Her worn rimmed glasses with little to no discernible facial hair. His face was slightly fattened and did not resemble that of a drug addict or starved misanthrope. His left temple had a small but painful looking gash which is where Anna was sure she made contact.

Anna tiredly smiled for the first time in what would have been a week or so. This attempt at breaking and entering was haltered and it had been her doing. Here before her lay not just an opponent she had physically bested in a competition of cat and mouse; Before her lay responses and answers to the ambiguity of her situation. 

She immediately set about tying his hand to the feet of her bedframe. She could not think of anything to use without turning her back on this corpse, so removed her own shirt and set about restraining his hand with veracity. Unsatisfied with the lack of control, she removed her shorts to tie his other hand to the opposing post to be doubly sure. She rifled through his pockets and found nothing except a single key. Holding the key up to the light of the window, she could tell it was the key to her own front door.

She then stood up and looked over him. He was wrangled over in a T position like a crucified fig. She felt this was an image that would embolden the sort of painful torture that lay ahead of him if he felt like withholding any sort of information vis a vis her ‘7 3.’ She was desperate.

PLEA

By the time the intruder that sat corralled before Anna had come over, she had been busy preparing to ensure she would hold all the cards in the conversation. In three hours, she had dragged his drooped body into a wooden chair that she had brought through from her kitchen and fastened him to it with numerous lengths of tights, belts and items of clothing. She was sure he would be uncomfortable. She placed a large bandage over his eye to ensure he would not have to be rushed away for lack of blood loss and never seen again. All this took less time than she anticipated so she even had the time to start assembling some food for herself. On her bed lay empty plates that had been full of pesto pasta and frozen garlic bread that had been heated. She felt better about this situation and ate with contentment. Salvation of some form lay on the horizon and the ball was rolling towards it. She was beginning to bite down on her last green apple when she heard a small groan come from the man in bondage. He exhaled deeply through his nose and then tried to flex his body slightly. Anna witnessed the procedure of consciousness that transfixed this man as he opened his eyes to see he had been harnessed to a chair like a drunk passenger on a commercial airliner. Her then proceeded to look up to Anna. His eyes were red and blackened.

‘73.’

He said this with a small, quiet whimper but managed to muster a grin likewise. Anna continued to eat her apple as he tried to fix himself into a comfortable position. Of course, Anna knew this would not be possible, so she placed her half-eaten apple on a plate and began her interrogation.

‘Why’d you come back? To finish the job?’

‘It is part of my job yes. Although not a part I particularly enjoy.’

Internally Anna wanted to spring over and start slapping this intruder with all her energy and demand what she wanted to know. Her fists were balled up. Externally however she maintained a cool façade.

‘Start talking. From the beginning, and don’t act like you don’t know what I want to find out.’

‘You’re number 73 of I don’t know how many others. I was sent here to check up on you. We normally have a grace period of three days but some unforeseen circumstances meant an extension was in order. We figured fuck it, it’s not like you’d be doing much anyway. Our surveillance says you’ve not even left the building.’

‘Stop fucking double talking me. I’ve never been one to raise my hands to anyone, but I’ve got nothing to lose now. You understand?’

He nodded.

‘I’m scared of you’ Anna admitted.

He nodded again and Anna’s impatience amplified. His response was relaxed to a certain degree. Anna’s demeanour had shifted, she was quick to listen and respond.

‘What do you know about cloning?’

‘What?’

‘Cloning, you know? Like sheep.’

‘About as much as anyone else, which is practically nothing.’

‘Well 73, that’s what you are. At the turn of the century, a wealthy researcher perfected the art and started cloning himself. We just call him the ‘creator’. You’re a product of the lineage that he created. He cloned himself and each year new clones reveal themselves to us by accident or by registering their retina scans. Around their mid-twenties clones tend to have to have their failing vision rectified at an optometrist. It’s a genetic defect that has carried through and made it possible for us to track you and many others down. Some of these clones tend to be too stubborn to do anything about it so stay blind but manage to operate under our radar. We call this the nurture effect; it all depends on the individual.’

Anna was taken aback by the quantity of information but processed it quickly. Her mind in this moment felt mechanically autonomous, like a Xerox printer.

‘Who are you?’

‘I am what could be called a covert agent that works for a P.I. firm. We operate globally. We are tasked with hunting down clones and marking them. We keep track of who and where they are. We have been working this project for the better part of a couple of decades.’ 

Anna breathed deeply to absorb the news. She raised her hand to her face and began to cry. She felt cold and alone, perhaps more so than ever. The news was abstract and outlandish, but she believed every word. It was too grotesque to be fictitious. 

‘Actually, your case is quite remarkable in many ways. Firstly, had you not visited an optometrist, we would have practically never had any chance of hunting you down. You’ve been the only case in which a retina scan was the be-all-and-end-all testimony that made you a candidate. I think you know why.’

‘Because I’m a woman now.’

‘I’m sure this life hasn’t been easy for you. It’s often we come across duplicates that have been adopted by wealthy families and have lived like pharaohs up until our intervention. Looking around here I can see you’ve got a yearning for keeping things marginal. I took no pleasure in doing what I did. Attracting attention is something that some clones come to relish. What can be seen as an eyesore to some can be beneficial to others, 73.’

‘My name is Anna. 73 is a fucking number. Stop talking to me like I’m a non-entity. Why would I be marked when I don’t look like this supposed guy who cloned himself? Why haven’t I met anyone else with a tattoo on their face. And why the fuck did you think it would be okay to leave me in the wind for a week you weirdo fuck?’

Anna without knowing it had reciprocated insults she had been tail end of onto this drone. When the words left her mouth, she felt an instant prang of bitter memory. She felt humiliated that she had become what she hated and her eyes swelled with slack tears that flowed down her face.

‘It’s a policy that we don’t learn names. Typically, we discover new clones in eight-month increments. We have nine stations across the globe working practically every hour of the day. Shortly after we found you, we had a two more clones crop up in this area, hence our delay to communicate.’

‘Where does he live?’

‘I can’t tell you because I don’t know.’ 

‘Why did he clone himself?’

‘We think for him it’s a matter of vanity and potential celebrity. Right now, we feel the issue is contained, but we also guesstimate back at the agency that it’ll only be a matter of time before the issue attracts global attention. Some clones look forward to that.’ 

Slowly, Anna walked over to the man in the chair and slapped him with the back of her good hand. The sound of the slap made an echo through the room that crashed like a shattered mirror. Anna stood over him as he exhaled the pain of the hit. His eyes were filled tears. Although she detested his presence, she was glad he was at least human in some capacity. She looked down on him like he was a wounded animal.

‘I work for the sister of ‘the creator’; she was the one who decided to mark you like so many others. She’s a wealthy benefactor like him but doesn’t drink from the same fountain of unadulterated recklessness. The alternative would be to have you destroyed. I’m so sorry.’

‘Why are those the only options?’

They waited around four beats. Anna could see she had no leverage. She understood the parameters of the narrative presented to her. 

‘I think you know why, Anna.’

‘Yeah, I do. And if I were to remove the tattoo?’

‘You’ll be remarked in perpetuity, ad nauseum.’

SEE

Anna sat in silence with the restrained man for a grace period. She stared at him as he looked around the small room looking for points of interest to keep the conversation going. To him it was good that Anna was talkative and passionate. 

‘I’d like to thank you Anna.’

Anna adjusted herself on her bed in slight disbelief.

‘For what?’

‘A lot of the time when clones get the better of agents we are killed right away. Of course, what we’re doing isn’t legal in just about any sense so it’s likely I’d have gone the way of the Dodo, with about as much evidence to show for it. Do you know why the Dodo bird went extinct?’

Anna looked seriously at the man and proceeded to slightly shake her head. She could tell he was trying to keep her talking. He could tell she was on the verge of a colossal anxious cessation.

‘They were too friendly for this world. Some claim that they were too stupid to recognise humans as predators, but I like to think it was because they just enjoyed being around people.’

Anna interlocked her fingers behind her head and flopped backwards onto her bed. She stared up at the ceiling and hypnotized herself by focusing on the polarity of the light fitting that hung down above them. The interrogation was exhausting, and Anna had little fight left.

‘Which brings me to my main point - how you should live on from here. I can see fury in your eyes. Live for yourself. Don’t try to fix this. You can choose to believe this or not, but this thing, what it is, stretches beyond yourself. If you let imparted hatred stir inside you it’ll destroy you. The original creator is practically impossible to find, we have no accurate reference on where he resides, or ironically, what he looks like. We think it’s likely he has changed his appearance to continue playing God. Even if you do manage to track him down, killing him will be unfeasible.’

Ann sat up once again. She was calmed by the notion of fixing injustice in this moment. 

‘This is a silent murder. You don’t know me or what I’m thinking.’

‘While in my work I deal with a lot of the same faces, two clones are never the same. They are always different. They have their own interests and live their own lives. Some clones even come to love the creator and consider him a father figure. You are you. An eye for an eye is unwise and delusions of eloquence are foolish.’

‘Can I meet one?’

‘It’s a matter of policy that at this particular moment – ‘

‘Aw fuck the policy! I have how many fucking brothers out there and you want me to sit on my hands for the rest of my life! You’re inhuman.’

‘I’m sorry you feel that way Anna. You’ll most likely meet them soon.’

‘I’ll bet you are.’

FREE

Anna lay in silence with the man for two hours. The restrained man adjusted himself to a position of comfort in his bondage and meditated on his position, for him it was a flat period of quiet contemplation, for Anna, the time was filled with reminiscent thoughts and idealisations. In her mind, fantastical and profound dreams were minimal; a good home and a spouse, and ideally children with food to feed them every night. Where was her parallel to that now? Her lack of enough clerical funds to facilitate this imagined reality had bound her life in a Promethean fashion. 

‘Desires’, Anna said, ‘I have so many with no means to achieve them directly or by proxy.’ 

She had gone an existence of time without realising her life was being dually lived by an inestimable number of twins to herself. Her frustration against those who facilitated her truth faded. Miserable is not who I am or what I want to be, so why do I feel despondent? Anna contemplated the irrational amount of effort she would have to endure to have her satisfaction – hone new skills to find a vague figure, infiltrate his circle and then strike, like a patent Monte Christo. There’s too much pain already Anna thought. It’s far easier to loosen my grip and let go for my family’s sake.

While they would be born in a void, her relatives would share a biological shell and be placed into a society devoid of concern. From that point, they would travel through time and live separate lives. These lives would likely serve to be autonomised in deprived environments. This cruel placement would mitigate the likelihood of exposure and coverage of identical people who appear around the world. They would share an experience within the parameters of the exact same genetic trajectory. They would be different in age and background but endure a past as part of a faction which works in anonymity to create a narrative of centrifugal pain and circumstantial taxes. Anna was now conscious of the fact that her life had been preordained within an impermeably locked room. 

Her attention drifted between the conduits of memorable instants that had worked for her until that exact moment. While feeling dazed she felt a disturbance of vulnerability slowly swell up within her and sluggishly evaporate to leave her in a state of dimensional consciousness in which the air in her tiny room tasted freshly formed once again. She breathed in through her mouth in a computed breathing pattern that allowed her to fill her diaphragm and leave her body in a comfortable fashion. She thought about her personality and soul. The bed against her back felt comfortable yet robust and supportive. The sanguine anger that had swelled within her had spilled outward as she became more aware of her ceiling. The elevation of the ceiling was an ample space for her to project herself to the world. This personal space would be hers and no-one else’s. She had gained a tenace for self confidence that she had gone without. She felt omnipotent and infallible in her new sense of growth. 

Anna moved herself upward on the bed. In what was a wholly silent sequence she made eye contact with her prisoner and decided to move over to untie him. She bounced off her bed and worked to remove the burden of restraints that kept him a translucent entity of information. While they had spent a significant amount of time in the room, Anna had forgotten precisely what the man said verbatim or what his voice sounded like. Her hands were steady. The man then stood up and turned to Anna. He was shorter than she remembered, and his eyes told her that she would not be distracted anymore. Their relationship had expired, and his eyes had become damp again. He held out his shaking arm and Anna clutched it in a rational manner. She shook it firmly and gently let it go.

He stood with the servitude of an elderly prisoner who had become institutionalised by an active overseer. He held an unwavering loyalty to a celibate dream that had marginalised and then wrapped his identity with a patina of inconclusiveness. The man then proceeded to turn around and walk out into the open world. The forlorn echo that his footsteps made as he walked away from Anna assured her that any of her weak, querulous bleating that she had felt for her own the perceived difficulty about her positive afflictions for desire had faded into ubiquitous insignificance. 

Anna was alone with herself once again. In this moment however she felt freer than she had ever felt. Her vision was unsullied, and her arms were allegorically open.

GLEE

The life Anna experienced outside of her apartment was a repetition of triplicate responses that firstly aroused surprise and even shock in people which was then followed by a slow and low tremor of self-pity and embarrassment which finally gave way to a sense of amicable acceptance. The people around her felt exhilarated by her transformation, and frequently commented on its’ unique reflection of her subconscious character. Anna bided her time. Typical responsibilities and aspirations that were once elegantly crafted from the clarity of her own understanding were ceaselessly smoothed over. These once firmly gripped feelings were rendered unattainable. Anna, despite this palpable alteration was given new insight into a reality that was previously plagued by a cumbersome and dismal fog. She could now look down at herself with an undeniable sense of identity. She was herself. And by being herself, she could now afford herself the ability to circle the wagon and speak her antipathy for social injustice with moral impunity, because she felt this had been lost long ago anyway.

In her new life she found herself repeatedly dreaming the same distinct dream. In this imagined narrative she would follow the short life of a young child. This child would firstly play in the street with friends and then be heralded into the vicinity of a large ambiguous explosion which would make the child deaf. The tears that came from the child who tried to hear their own voice would flow rapidly. The latter half of the complete dream sequence would then skip forward in time to a lively packed stand-up comedy show in a large, dignified theatre. The deaf adult would always sit down the front and attentively read the lips of the comedian who could cause an uproar of laughter every ten beats or so. The comedian would then proceed to notice the deaf audience member and they would interact in a heart-warming fashion. The deafened patron would respond to questions on a small whiteboard they carried on their person and the wider audience would hear the comedian elicit responses and then read the answers aloud. The questions differed each time Anna slept but they were always light. The conversation would eventually reach a point where the comedian would always ask ‘what do you miss hearing most?’ The deaf figure would always scribble the word ‘laughter.’ The auditorium would finally fall profoundly silent and then Anna would wake up. When she awoke, Anna felt a twang of dejection and loneliness as she constantly pondered what would happen next in the conversation. Even though it was her own dream, she could never seem to finish it off. She enjoyed the thought though, that she could conjure her own finale, and craft her own destiny in the following day that would come.

One hungry and serene afternoon after having endured one such chronicle the night before Anna ventured into a bakery on the opposite side of town. She purchased a fresh pain au chocolat. She clasped the crisp bag and then proceeded to place it on a table. She opened it diligently and took a bite. She then tore off a small piece and placed the pinch on her tongue. 

At that moment she turned her head to see a small infant child walk up to the glass counter and gaze at the pastries. Anna considered the baker who looked down at the boy. He was a twenty-something year old student with the vitality of blind will and presumption of a youthful archetypal. 

The baker proceeded to smile at the innocence and pleasant disposition of his naïve patron.

‘Well, hello young man.’

Anna was warmed. She rotated her head towards the entrance to see an ambitious couple holding onto each other as they gazed on to see their child’s first experience of uninhibited retail. The pair embraced each other with a dignified satisfaction that no doubt stemmed from knowing that their child had become a part of the community and had been given the freedom to make his first foundational choice of judgement.  This child would have to live with his choices from this moment on. The woman was short and exponentially fair. As Anna moved her focus on to her husband, she clasped eyes upon a recognizable exterior that mirrored the genetics of her own. The man was happy and smiling with the features that she had inwardly and outwardly endured her whole life. The man was her brother, her kin, Anna thought. His clear face was beset with the blissful ignorance and minimal ease of an ancient pathway. He was younger than her by about five years. Caged freedom. This term seemed poignant.

The family of three united as the child walked out with a small pouch of goods and proceeded to walk down the elongated street. 

Anna was tranquil and casually walked across the street and leered at her nuclear family from afar. The beautiful child. The devoted spouse. The industrious breadwinner.

Anna cavalierly trailed behind them with an illuminated temperament and broke bread with the family as she walked. She belonged to that illusive group. They appeared to be right in front of her. 

They walked the same path but existed millions of miles away.