Tear Drop Flaw

Deep brown hair fell to the elevator floor. Pulling the strands forward I flattened them against my brows and snipped. Willing my shaking hands still. Anything less than perfect would give me away.

The numbers counted down the seconds I had left.

Fifteen.

Fourteen.

I snipped at an errant strand on the right. But now the left was too long.

Ten.

Nine.

I took a deep breath. Combing the hair through my fingers desperately trying to cover the scarred x on my forehead. Still red and stinging.

Seven.

Six.

Ding!

The elevator slowed as I swept the hair with my feet. Standing on it just as the doors silently opened.

Scissors held tightly behind by back.

The men did not look at me. I was not an uncommon sight. They would have seen identical copies of me every day. Same hair, same eyes, same raised freckle high on my left cheek. Like a tear frozen mid fall. Cleaners, factory workers, soldiers, lab rats.

But as the floors sped downwards my hand tightened on the metal. I asked myself, for what was the hundredth time that day, what I would do to avoid refurbishment.

Anything.

Everything.

Anything I needed to do.

I could not predict how long I had to get out of the Carbon Corp building. How long I had to disappear into the city. How long I had until they found the unconscious guard locked safely in my cell.

Time seemed to slow. The last two numbers taking an age to roll into each other. I closed my eyes. Focusing on the sensation of falling. One more shaking breath.

“Ground floor,” the voice announced.

My eyes snapped open. The men exited, and I followed. Leaving the mass of hair on the floor behind me.

Beyond the marble encased atrium, I could see the sky. It shone brilliant blue against the cold stone.

Six weeks I had been kept in solitary. Six weeks since I had breathed fresh air. Since I had been without the agonizing hum of florescent lights. I walked towards the blue like a beacon, taking me from my sterile monochromatic tomb.

I wanted to run. Run into the light. Run away.

But that would attract too much attention. I kept my pace. Slipping the scissors into my regulation grey jumpsuit. I pulled out the stolen data pad. The work assignment I would use as my smoke screen.

Security guarded the entrance. Tall men in black suits. Sharp unageing jaws. I felt my heartbeat in my throat. Each step agonizingly slow. The automatic doors opened, and I felt the fresh air on my face. My steps quickened. The sun cut down between the buildings. Casting shards of light across the grey pavement.

It warmed my skin.

“Clone!” said the guard behind me. I froze.

He approached, burying me in the coldness of his shadow. “Designation?”

“Clone class twenty thirty point five.” I handed him my data pad, keeping my eyes trained on his shiny shoes. He whistled, “you’re an older model. I thought they were redoing all the twenty thirties?”

I pulled down on my sleeves. Pinching the thin fabric between sweaty fingers.

“It’s my last assignment,” I lied. He nodded, handing it back to me. He had no reason not to believe me. Everyone knew that clones couldn’t lie.

A black car pulled up to the curb. Driverless.

“Destination already input,” He smiled, like he was doing me a favour. Any other day I would have appreciated the kindness. People were rarely kind to clones.

Any other day.

“Thank you,” I smiled back. A little too wide. Slipping into the backseat.

The doors closed. Locked.

My knuckles turned white gripped on the edges of the data pad. There would be no leaving until I reached my destination.

The city blurred past the windows. I wiped at the moisture in my eyes. I couldn’t fall apart yet.

I rolled my sleeve up carefully revealing the drawing underneath. A face. Like mine in every aspect. But the eyes. I could always tell Point Three by the look in her eyes. With the biro from my pocket, I drew three music notes floating above her head.

I felt it welling up in my chest. The panic. I wouldn’t end up like her. I couldn’t.

As the car slowed, I swallowed it down. I’d had practice at that. Anything more than a congenial smile was unacceptable. Report-able. Refurbish-able.

My regulation sneakers squeaked on the sun dappled stone. Once the door was closed the car glided off leaving me alone.

I could run. Leave now. But I hadn’t expected to leave the city. Each direction was drowned in green. Like the residence was submerged deep in a jungle. We shouldn’t be that far from the skyscrapers and grey concrete streets. But here even the air smelt different. Sweeter somehow. I had no idea where to go.

I cast my eyes down. Catching on the painted tiles at my feet. Worn, some of the paint had faded away. I had never seen such tiles. I fiddled with the data pad in my hand. I needed a new plan.

This was an assistant’s job. I would get the run of the house. A place this big it should be easy to slip away once I got my bearings. Even if my new employer was cruel.

Someone greeted me at the door. I could tell she wasn’t a clone by her shoes. Strappy sandals in red. A shimmering skirt edge floating around her ankles. I followed her feet over more patterned tile. Keeping my eyes down, playing pretend at the perfect clone. A clone did not look anyone in the eye. They did not speak unless spoken to. They did not draw or sing or steal. They did not bludgeon guards over the head and escape facilities.

She left me in a small courtyard. Large glass doors had been folded to the side allowing the inside to spill out. To the left of me a grand piano sat gleaming on a warm wooden floor. The entire room seemed devoted to musical instruments. Point three would have loved it here. I turned away and followed the line of the yard. In this side columns decorated the wall and in-between each stucco arch the wall was painted.

Swirling colours changed into recognisable shapes and forms. Coral like amoebas with red fronds, a virus, I remembered it from our histories. The next panel was a mass of green leaves turning black as they fell. No not leaves. Money. The financial fall. It was a timeline.

The next panel I knew. The neon blue liquid hailed the savior of humanity. The cure for ageing released in 2029. The next was my face. Repeated. Over and over again, each in a square of interchanging colour. The birth of the clones.

The final two were different. A picture of a family. A man and a woman holding a child. The brush strokes were stronger, the blending and shadows better. The artist had improved. In the final painted panel was a grave. A rattle panted on the face of the stone. My fingers traced the brushstrokes. This panel was devoid of the colour that so saturated the previous one.

More arches remained, empty. Their blank white frames clung to me. A feeling I could not seem to remove.

“Do you like them?” a voice asked, I spun to see a woman behind me. She held a paintbrush in her hand. She was old. In my entire life I had never seen a soft face. The cure had all but erased softness. Everyone had sleek jaws and toned bodies. Everybody ended up looking the same. Ironic.

She motioned me to the centre of the courtyard where a large panel had been set up by a small table. Paints cascaded out of a wooden box and across the grass. A pallet standing on the table next to pastries and chilled wine. Across the canvas, was another gravestone. This one basted in the colour of a sunset. A happy picture. My new employer was odd indeed.

“Lady Carbon,” She introduced herself.

The breath froze in my chest. Lady Carbon. New owner of Carbon Corp since the death of her father. The one person who could order me worse than dead was standing right in front of me, and she was staring at my forehead.

I did not betray myself. Though my hand itched to adjust my fringe I focused on the feeling of the newly cut ends across my brows, the line of the brown in my vision. The X was covered.

“Sit,” she said, motioning to the chair opposite her at the small cast iron table. She did not ask for my name. I did not have one. With a tut she turned back to her painting. Adding a few strokes here and there. Deepening the shadows. I would have added more.

She had wrinkles, grey hair, gnarled fingers. She looked every year of eighty-three.

She placed her paintbrush in the glass of dirtied water, swirling it a few times before turning her attention to me.

“Eat, drink. It’s good for the soul,” she said.

“I am a clone. I do not have a soul.”

“Feisty” she laughed. I bit my tongue.

She lifted her pallet and revealed a data pad. Propping it up against the bottle of wine she pressed play.

It was footage from an elevator. My fists tightened under the table before I even entered the screen. Turning to the mirrors as soon as the doors closed. She paused it before I made the first snip.

“What did your batch do to earn refurbishment?” she asked without looking at me. It made me want to scream.

Behind me the piano started to play. A sweet song, it clashed against the maelstrom within my head. I stared at her. Raised my eyes and nailed them to her face. If she was going to refurbish me she would danm well look me in the eye.

“Is it not in the records?” I bit out.

“The records for refurbishment are intentionally vague. Besides, I want to know what you think.”

“I am a clone, we do not think,” My hand curled around the scissors in my pocket.

“It says here Point Three was the first to be refurbished.” She continued.

Point Three. She liked to sing. It started as humming. Just under her breath as she worked. Then it was words and songs. I could still remember her voice.

I’d seen her after the procedure. Expressionless. A drooling shell of what she was. Then she was sent away. I vowed I would never become her. I was good. No. I was more than good, I was perfect.

But the batch around me kept failing.

Point Six started to dance. Point Eight stole food from her assignments house. When she was caught her bag was full of chocolate.

Just chocolate.

I would not tarnish their memories by handing them to her.

“Perhaps you think we are a hive mind and all our experiences are shared. I’ve seen that said. As if your father would ever give us a way in which we could rally against you.”

“So you think you have figured out who I am?” she asked.

“Am I wrong?”

“No,” she paused. Finally turning to face me. “But it is only part of the picture.”

Her eyes were watery with age, the hair wiry and grey, but it was the raised freckle high on her cheek. Like a tear frozen mid fall.

“You’re the blueprint?” I gasped, “why would he make clones of his own daughter?”

On the surface it could be brushed away as a kind sentimentality. He loved her. But clones did not do kind jobs. When were blessed with not being shot at or injected, we did the grunt work of the world. All the worst jobs, with none of the pay or benefits a human would deserve.

“Decades ago, I had an argument with my father.” She said, leaning back in her chair, a glass in hand. “He told me he could make me do anything he wanted. I told him to piss off.” She took a large sip of wine. “Six months later all of you appear, hundreds of my face. Doing all the jobs in the world I refused to do.”

She chuckled to herself. “Got to give it to him, it was a creative way to win the argument.”

She took a bite of a flaky pastry and paused. Lost in memories.

“What if I told you they were happy? Your Refurbished batch sisters”

"I'd say you were lying," I stared her down,"Clones do not feel emotions.”

“And yet you seem angry?”

“Why would I be angry!” I did not mean to shout it. The force of it flowed down my hand. The metal blade vibrating against my leg. I took a deep steadying breath. “Anger is not a productive emotion”

“Oh, I disagree” she said. “Anger can be most productive”

I launched myself from the chair, scissor blades splayed In front of me. My breath came in pants as I backed away. I would escape or I would die trying. Either option was better.

“I am broken.” I said, “I am happy to be broken. I like my sharp edges. I will not be melted down and polished to a mirror for your own reflection. All of the shattered parts are mine.”

I backed towards the music room. Towards the music. She rose calmly from her chair following me. A paintbrush spinning between her fingers.

“You are not listening,” she said

“I can hear you well enough”

“Listen”

It was then I heard it, a voice floating above the notes of the music. My head snapped to the side, the scissors falling from my fingers.

Point Three sat at the piano, Red sandals and an shimmery skirt. Singing.

“She is not better.” Lady Carbon said, “I cannot completely undo what they have done.”

I stumbled back down the wall of murals stopping at the grave. Point Threes voice followed me. Floating freely on the air.

“I thought I had lost my child,” Lady Carbon said.

She swept my hair off my forehead, thumb grazing over the x scar.

“But I have come to realise that I have hundreds. And I have neglected you so.”

She took her hands in mine.

“Those flaws of yours are the best of me,” she said, “and it is good. I fear I do not have time to corrupt a perfect one. “

I stared back at her with a question in my eyes.

“My father is dead” she smiled at the brush coated in sunshine yellow. “And I do not have the energy to do what must be done.”

“I don’t know how to start,” I whispered.

She placed her paintbrush in my hand and held it to the blank wall.

“You start by making one mark.”