Office-Tel

“Gombae!” The 4 of us lifted our glasses, Ji-Eun and I shielding ours from view as we sipped the foul liquid. The TV on the opposite wall was playing K-Pop videos. I watched as Jun-Ho of One-Life drove a tiny yellow SUV up a miniature hill until he spilled out. The footage cut to a different field full of purple flowers and ballet dancers with another member of One-Life in the foreground, dancing with a yellow duck floatie around his waist. The video cut once more to a living room scene of the full band in plush bathrobes, jumping on furniture. Suddenly everything reversed - the beverages made their way back to their containers, ballet dancers leapt backwards through the air, and Jun-Ho was resurrected from the ground, gracefully floating back into his mini-SUV. All this in the time it took me to set down my glass.

The waiter came by and Na-Lee ordered more Pa-Jeon and fried chicken for the table, which was already full of Anju. Min refilled our glasses from the pitcher. Her nerves had been fried further than the chicken since starting medical school, and she spilled a generous amount of the piss-colored liquid before she made it to me, the pitcher now empty.

Na-Lee thanked Min and turned to me, taking a drink of her beer. “Congratulations, sister! Are you having any second thoughts?” A new video had started. The 6 members of iKon were all dressed in white suits. They each rotated through center stage, eyeing the camera provocatively, then were caught by surprise when they were doused with bright-colored paint as their verses finished.

“Why would I have second thoughts?” I responded, a little too defensively.

Na-lee’s tight-lipped smile softened, reminding me that I was speaking to a friend. “I’m sorry. It’s just that you were always so much smarter than the rest of us. I don’t think I would have gotten into Chungnam without your help studying for the Su-neung.” 

A couple of high school girls at the next table were arguing about whether Bobby or Ju-Ne from iKon was more handsome. I thought of Yeong-Ju, then grabbed Na-lee’s glass and took a swig of beer. The taste reminded me of old seaweed washed up onshore. “I have a job…and an idea of where I’m going. That’s enough for now.” Na-Lee looked at me skeptically then smiled, offering me some squid.

Min, who was attending the same medical school as Yeong-Ju in the Spring, joined in, “You should take the Su-neung and come to Inje with me, Yae-Lim. I bet things will work out between you and Yeong-Ju, if you do.” She looked at me, pleadingly, her bangs framing her doll-like face.

“It’s too late for that.” I wasn’t sure if I was referring to Yeong-Ju or to taking the Su-neung. Luckily no one pried. I brightened, “Hey! Did you hear about Ju-Ne and Rei being seen together in Itaewon yesterday?”

____

In Korea, there are rooms for everything. Singing rooms, bathing rooms, drinking rooms, PC rooms. Before I graduated from high school, my boyfriend Yeong-Ju and I would take the train to Suyeong and rent a TV room. We’d play reruns of old Korean dramas, and turn the volume up high. We never actually did it, don’t get me wrong - it was a seedy place. That is not where I would have my first time. But there was touching, kissing, and over time we knew almost every inch of each other’s anatomy by feel. As the couples in other rooms got louder, we would switch to action films with loud chase scenes and explosions. We learned to bring our own blankets. That is where I had my first orgasm. It’s also where I had my first break-up. It was a Wednesday night and Yeong-Ju had snuck in two bottles of soju. 

 “I can’t see you anymore,” he said in a hushed tone. He had a cut lip and a bruise on his right cheekbone. He was usually handsy after the first bottle, but he was oddly standoffish that night.

“Yeong-ju, what happened?” I reached for his hand, but he pulled away.

Yeong-ju’s eyes stayed glued to the screen as a guy in a tuxedo sprayed bullets from a semi-automatic weapon at a row of ill-equipped mobsters. The glow of the screen lit his face in a pallid light. “My dad says I have to date someone from 인제. He said if I am going to put in the work to be a doctor, I should expect at least the same from my partner.”

I cupped my hand around his face. “Your dad is an asshole. Did he do this to you?”

“He is the asshole who is paying for my college.” He didn’t pull away.

______

Years later

“Welcome!” The clerk at the front desk of the Office-Tel, who I had heard spent the summer holiday at his family’s in Incheon, greeted me formally.

“I’m a little early today.” I avoided looking at the neon menu behind the clerk. Despite my work here, it still upset my stomach to look at it.

“That is okay.” I detected no trace of irritation. He opened a drawer from the back table, beneath the neon sign listing the day’s specials, and grabbed a set of keys. I had been coming there for long enough to know that the key ring had more keys than there were doors in the Office-Tel, but I did not know what passages those other keys led to. 

____

I left the room in darkness. It was good for my nerves. A faint glow from the center of the room shed light on the rows of bookshelves to the left, filled with encyclopedia-sized text books. The desk in the back of the room was covered in earmarked medical texts and notebooks. Somewhere between all that mess was a laptop, where I did most of my actual work.

A metal arm in the middle of the room held the 3d printer suspended in mid-air. When it was working, it reminded me of a magpie tearing at a piece of prey - the key difference being that this machine added to rather than subtracted from living tissue. The light from the printer illuminated the metal tub below. The tub, as long as a man is tall, held a viscous liquid that reflected the light back. I had come to this Office-Tel nearly everyday since I graduated high school. It was my place of study. But unlike my peers who attended fruitless universities, it was also my place of invention.

And he was there, as well. Not upright and suspended in some glass tube, like in the movies. He was fragments, yes, but those fragments were constructed of the same DNA as the whole. In a metal tub, bathed not in light but in vital amniotic fluid, nourishing his soon to be living tissue. There was the perfect hand, the skin so pale it was nearly translucent. His long and slender legs, leading to his toes, which looked disproportionately large, magnified by the refracted light at the edge of the fluid. He was the oval curve of his mouth, his lips slightly parted, as if preparing for their first inhale. 

And his eyes - he was his eyes. The DNA from his fallen strand of hair would not recreate the 쌍꺼풀 he had post eye-surgery. It is one of the many details, along with his white hair, although achieved with much more difficulty, that has taken so much time to procure. He was fragments, yes. The space between his humerus and his shoulder blade, which should have been neatly threaded by his rotator cuff, was all exposed tendons, muscle, and bone. His deflated pelvis was flattened against the bottom of the metal tub due to a missing sacrum. The details of human anatomy know no end. Despite all of the difficulties I have had to overcome, I look at Jun-Ho and laugh: in the rest of the world, we look at each other, all utterly complete, fully formed, living humans, and we take stock of all of our uncountable, imagined flaws. But here, looking at him and in spite of his fragmented parts, I see and feel only wholeness. 

What I was doing wasn’t exactly legal, but then again I was pretty sure that nothing that happened in that Office-Tel was. The rooms were mostly used, as far as I knew, for micro-replicating organs, typically by someone selling them on the black market, or by a desperate relative. If you were good, and you knew the right people, you could even have yours put on the menu - in code of course - and sold right here. I did it for a while, mostly to fund my project, but as far as I knew, no one had gone so far as to create an entire being. Or rather, to re-create one. 

There was a knock at the door. My stomach dropped. In my 3 years at the Office-Tel - no one had ever knocked. It was an unwritten rule, conveyed through the curt formality of the employees and the furtive movements of its patrons: Do Not Disturb. Another, louder knock. I moved closer to the door - there was no eye hole and no way of barring someone’s entry once the deadbolt was unlocked. An older woman, sounding agitated, called from the other side of the door, “Hey! Are you in there? I could use some help!”

I spoke tentatively, “Sorry, but I can’t allow anyone in here. This is a privately leased room.”

“My printer is going haywire - I don’t know how to turn the damn thing off! I was printing a spleen for my son…it must be 3 feet long now!”

I hesitated, “Each printer has a kill switch where it attaches to the arm.” It seemed impossible that she wouldn’t know this, but then again, anyone can rent a room.

“The kill switch is stuck - it must have gotten jammed. The MBES program is frozen on my computer.” So she wasn’t a complete idiot. “If you connect your laptop and enter a force-stop command, it should fix it. Please. I’ll make it worth it to you.”

I went to my desk to retrieve my laptop. Then, going against my better intuition, I unlocked the deadbolt and stepped into the hallway, locking the door immediately behind me. The woman was a middle-aged lady from a room down the hallway. Her hair was up, and she wore a blue designer blouse and matching gray skirt. She looked on edge, but forced a smile, “My name is Su-Min. Please, come!” I followed the lady as she walked quickly toward her room. I estimated it would take me two minutes to help her, and a 3 foot long spleen wouldn’t be of much use to her son. I waited as she unlocked the door, noticing she smelled like marshmallows.

The woman, whose name I had already forgotten, ushered me inside. A shoji screen covered my view of her printer. I smelled the marshmallows again, and then felt something pinch the back of my neck. My knees suddenly weakened. Darkness is not black, I realized. Darkness is its very own color.

____

I came to, sitting in a brightly lit room, my arms and legs velcroed to a chair.  I couldn’t remember how I had gotten here, but the room had the same smell of iron and wet moss as my own. I thought of Jun-Ho - did someone know? Was he being kidnapped? Was I being kidnapped? 

I flexed violently, but the straps didn’t budge. I was facing the back wall, my senses on high alert. The room was the same as mine, but the shelving units on the surrounding walls were much larger, and rather than being filled with books, they were stocked with plastic bags containing what looked to be various micro-replicated body parts. Everything was labeled and organized by body planes, sections, and vital and non-vital organs. There was one section labeled “Country of Origin”, which I couldn’t make sense of.

The door behind me opened. I detected a faint smell of marshmallows. I remembered the lady in the blue blouse. “Is this about Jun-Ho? Are you trying to steal him? Because it won’t work. He isn’t done yet and I’m the only one who can finish him.”

“Your little cloning experiment?” The woman sounded calm now, “no, that I have no interest in.” She stepped towards me, “what I have in mind for you will be much more…suitable to your abilities.” My muscles tensed as she swung my chair around. Her 3d printer was directly above me, but rather than a comically long spleen, underneath it was - and I couldn’t quite believe what I was seeing - was me. Stark naked, with a blank but curious expression, looking back at myself sitting in the chair. Was I having some sort of out of body experience?

“Yae-Lim, meet Yae-Lim.” The other Yae-Lim looked to the lady, then back at me. She had a smudge of pubic hair, whereas I was shaven. She did not have the double-eyelids that I had post-surgery. Other than that, we were identical. “Can you believe it? Only 3 days old, but already fully grown. One of my best replications, if I don’t mind saying so. She’s a little vapid, but strikingly beautiful. Wouldn’t you agree?”

“I…I don’t understand.” 

The woman walked towards the other me, “Did you honestly believe that you were the only person out there, or even in this building, experimenting with replicating another human?” She feigned insult.

“But, what is she for? Why am I here?” I thought of the body parts on the wall behind me, some with different countries of origin. My pulse quickened.

“That we will get to. But for now just know that you are going some place very far from here, and Yae-Lim here will be taking your place.”

The other Yae-Lim smiled, “감사합니다, 수민씨. 예림씨는 반갑습니다.” Her voice was higher than mine, and much less terrified of our predicament. 

“Yae-Lim, she is going to hurt you! Do something. Fight back!” It was a desperate attempt, but I would fight back if it were me. And, weirdly, it was me.

Su-Min’s laugh was high-pitched and sinister, “There is no point in all that. She is programmed now only for social niceties and basic survival instincts. Much like many of your fellow Koreans. Perfectly harmless.”

“You can’t do this, this is wrong. People will find out. My family, my friends, they will know. You said it yourself - she is vapid.” 

“You would be surprised. Friends and family, they prefer the new replicants. Yae-Lim is programmed to do everything right - to be helpful, kind, and smart. The buyers, on the other hand, they pay a much higher premium for genuine human frailty. It is much less fun having a plaything that never fights back, that never shows any sign of weakness. At least that is what the markets show.”

It was worse than I had imagined, but a clearer picture of her intent formed in my head. “You are deranged. My family will know. My friends, Na-Lee and Min, they know what goes on here. Your replicant acts nothing like me. They will suspect something.”

Su-Min considered this, “Most people know a little, but few have the imagination to even guess the rest. And Yae-Lim learns as she goes - you have already given her enough voice and body language pattern data to mirror your current state of terror. Show her, Yae-Lim.”

Yae-Lim’s shoulders hunched, and her bright countenance turned to one of abject fear. She spoked shrilly, “You can’t do this, this is wrong. My family - they will know!”

Su-Min continued, “Your laptop will provide enough data for her to predict your behavior for years to come. But in reality, she won’t need to. After a few weeks of following your breadcrumbs, she will be able to choose a brighter path for herself. Perhaps one that’s a bit less…socially isolating.” Su-Min looked at me dubiously. “My advice to you: avoid thoughts about your former life, it only makes things harder. Accept your circumstances, and look for little ways to make them better. I have met your buyer. You have no idea the amount of luxury that could be afforded to you, if you make him happy. Find out what makes him tick, and your days will be like clockwork. Unlike your failed experiments here.”

The other Yae-Lim looked at Su-Min, her eyebrows furrowed. “Failed experiments? What does that mean?”

Su-Min blustered, “You are not permitted to ask questions right now, Yae-Lim!” Yae-Lim looked back at me, but this time I could feel her questioning me with her eyes. Suddenly, the whole thing felt utterly ridiculous. This wasn’t a robot version of me, after all. It was my own body standing in front of me. My own mind. 

I flexed against the restraints, looking intently into my own eyes. “Yae-Lim, listen to me, we are the same. This woman, she wants to harm us. Whatever she has told you is a lie. I know it’s not in your nature to hurt anyone, but you have to protect us.” Yae-Lim’s countenance, mirroring my own, turned fierce. 

Su-Min was unphased. Turning to the replicant, she spoke, “Yae-Lim, let’s get you dressed and ready to join the world. What do you say?” Yae-Lim looked at Su-Min skeptically, and then her leg muscles tensed as she stepped forward, head bowed, and swept Su-Min, headfirst, to the floor. I hadn’t realized how soft and frail Su-Min was, how much of her power was contained solely in her voice. Yae-Lim released me from the restraints, and together we fastened Su-Min to the chair.  I looked into Yae-Lim’s eyes again, and I realized that Su-Min was wrong. My eyes were not vacuous - my eyes were always beautiful.