Immoral Contact

Irene Sawyer wraps her hands around her mug of coffee to warm them, hoping the heat will make its way to her heart. She stares into the murky liquid her husband made for her. Two creams and a sugar, just the way she likes it. He watches her from across the small kitchen table.

“Are you worried?”

Irene shrugs, but fingers of anxiety tickle her spine. Of course she is worried. It’s inspection day. The government invading everyone’s home to check up on them once a month always brings the entire town under stress. She is no exception.

“Are you not?” She finally glances up from her coffee to meet her husband’s gaze.

Clear blue eyes look at her levelly, and he nods. “As always.”

Irene clenches her jaw, her face twisting. She turns and peers out the window above the sink. The sun is strong even through this morning’s thick clouds, and it casts a hazy light in the atmosphere. Their backyard and the fields beyond are quaint and charming bathed in the yellow hue, but it seems unreal, as if she’s watching perfection on a screen.

“What are you thinking about?” he asks her after a long moment.

She’s toying with the gold heart-shaped locket that hangs on a long chain around her neck. It holds a picture of her and her husband outside on the farm, and a scrawling inscription of their anniversary on the back. She never goes anywhere without it.

“How messed up the world is.”

She can’t see his face, but she knows he’s frowning. Being able to detect his emotions without seeing his expression is something she has loved about these last few years.

“Not because of the cloning, of course,” she adds quickly, turning to him again. “Because of what they do to clones.”

His eyes crinkle at the corners, easily visible in his ivory complexion. “You think there’s something wrong with the enslavement of a people? What a radical concept, my love.” At this, he has the slightest hint of a cheeky smirk.

She dares to smile in return, despite her razor-sharp nerves. The enslavement of a people being wrong, Irene thinks everyone can agree on that. The government long ago admonished those in distant history who enslaved entire races because of the colour of their skin, their genetic makeup. Yet, no one seems to understand they are repeating a similar sin in the present. Clones are seen as subhuman, just as those in power want.

“If only they were considered people,” she replies flatly. They were produced with the sole purpose of being slaves, robotic companions to do one’s dirty work. Who would have known they’d sprout the capacity for human emotions? Who could have guessed they would have the same traits as those they are supposed to be inferior to? Even more astounding, clones and humans can fall in love, and they often have a desire to meet their “parents,” those who donated their genetic material to the government to be replicated.

Irene’s husband donated. Years ago. The picture from their wedding day, hanging above the table between them, displays them in their prime. Now her mousy brown hair is tinged with gray, his blonde hair fades into white strands, and fine wrinkles accent their eyes and smiles. This contrast is all evidence of their romance that has spanned two decades. It has been at least fifteen years since they were struggling to keep the farmhouse, and her husband decided he would donate. The government was offering top dollar for their new cloning experiment that would improve the lives of all, or so they claimed.

As if thinking the same thing as Irene, her husband reaches over to straighten the frame, perfecting it for the upcoming inspection. It’s better if things are just so.

She remembers asking him right here, when the kitchen was wallpapered floral instead of the dusty blue paint they have now, if he thought it was strange that there was a person with his exact genetic makeup somewhere in this country. If it disturbed him that he could run into a copy of himself on the street. She recalls his answer clearly, spoken slowly and deliberately as if he was thinking out loud: “No. He might look like me, but he’s not the exact same.”

He was right about that. His clone came looking for him years ago, almost a decade after he’d been made in a lab, and soon after the banning of human and clone relationships, whether romantic, platonic, or familial. He yearned to meet his “father,” despite this ban. And, same as with a father and son, he was not the exact same.

Irene watches her husband warmly as he drinks his coffee, his brow furrowing slightly every time he takes a sip. She loves studying his familiar face, and all the different expressions and emotions that cross it. The memory she reflects on over their morning coffee is a fond one, but also the reason they are nervous during inspections.

“Immoral contact with a clone,” they call it. On the third weekend of every month, two or three authorities check every home for evidence of this immoral contact. They must never know of that encounter five years ago, or Irene and her husband will be in indeterminable danger. So, they live their simple lives happily until the third Sunday of every month, when those two or three large and uniformed officers rap on their doors. This is to be polite; if the Sawyers do not answer, they will still enter, and inspect.

“They’ll be here soon,” he says, his eyes on the clock. He sets his mug down with a shaking hand, and she hops up to put on a fresh pot to offer the inspectors. When she plunks down again, her gaze slips back to the window like a magnetic force is pulling it.

Irene and her husband do not have much to worry about. There is no evidence of their immoral contact in the house or yard. They made sure of that. She remembers the panic, the sweat and searing anxiety on a day almost as balmy as this one, as they swept their home for every trace of him. On their knees, scrubbing the floor with bleach to get rid of the blood until their hands were raw, dirt smeared across their foreheads. She can still hear a faint echo of the metal shovel clanking on the linoleum.

She drops the necklace so it thumps against her chest, right outside her real heart, which beats faster than usual today. She’s never without it. A display of her unwavering devotion to her husband, chained to her when the inspectors stop by.

As long as they remain unsuspicious, the authorities will never go outside their house, or their yard. They will never have the desire, or the need to search in the field beyond, the one Irene stares at every morning from the kitchen while she plays with her locket, where her real husband is buried.