home

“I mean, they've got flesh and bones, just like us-”

“But they are grown in a lab, without any real parents and they have artificial intelligence, just like any robot. Not to mention, they could do weird things.”

“So they're not real. Not really.”

“Exactly.”

Their discussion trailed off. From my vantage point on the archway above massive doors, the steps receded and their heels trailed off the edge of my vision. I lay perched across the ledge, my side pressing onto the multicoloured glass. I stared out into the slowly rising glow that is the moon above the horizon. I watched the beam of pure moonlight hit the glass and shatter into a million hues, strewn across the marble floors. They part around a sapling merely the height of a child. 

I slid off my refuge, landing lightly on both feet, crouched. The courtyard was deathly quiet, the sounds of the night playing muted as I crept up to the plant.

Not human.

The leaves were smooth, ceaseless.

No feelings.

Fake.

I grabbed an outstretched bud and wrenched it off. The sapling lurched forward, before its branch detached with an unearthly sound.

I let the leaves sieve through my fingers, rocking side to side in the still air, before floating to a stop gently among its fallen comrades. A teardrop joined them.

*

That morning: I had spent much of my time, as I always had, in the lab, bustling around trying to mop up a mug of spilt coffee. The stains were all over the lab reports and despite my best efforts, the assistant robot would not wake to help me. I heard the reports were needed by midday, but by midday the only thing moving in the lab were a couple of white rats ogling at me, scampering around their force field cage. I’d slumped into the swivel chair, wondering how on earth I was going to replicate a whole stack of reports. I contemplated asking my neighbour for his help, but one look at me and he was blustering with excuses to get away. I’d never liked him. I didn't even catch his name. I just glared as he left, trailing looks of apprehension back to me every now and then.

More unnecessary dawdling in the lab, then the doors shut behind me with a hiss. I straightened from the stack of notes I was ruffling through, confused. The LED panel by the door was pulsing red, with the letters: locked. 

Locked? I turned back to the table, rifling through the papers more frantically. Where, where, where? A dam held back my recollections of the previous day. Try as I might, I could not push past it. The flashing red illuminated the walls and it unnerved me. My shadow was cast large against the walls, along with the sheets of paper that went flying in my careless pursuit of anything to get me out.

There it was. A switch stuck to the side of the wall, behind a stack of paper. I strode towards it, knocking things left and right. 

The moment I flicked it, the wall next to it slid open soundlessly. So, this is where my aimless meandering brought me. I slid into the room, not knowing what to expect. In the darkness, a smell steeped. It was strong as tea leaves brewed till their bitterness stewed out to the water. Something jarring, but not overwhelming. Something lurking in the folds of normality. 

I ventured only as far as the red glow did. I toed the line where the shadows fell, uncertainty gripping at me. Maybe I should go back.

The rough outline of something rounded peaked out of the dark and I strained my eyes to see it. Its shape slowly melded into something vaguely recognisable. A glass pod, ones that used to house specimens of dead creatures that floated in questionable goo. This one was life-sized, untouched save for a very thin slit down the middle, its edges jagged like lightning. Something slathered on the edge was reflecting more light than it should. 

Blood.

I’d crossed a line I shouldn't have. I knew the moment the force took me off my feet and rocketed me onto the table back in the main lab. The edge dug into my back and forced the air out of my lungs. For a miraculous second, I stared down a charging shape, before instinct took the wheel and I flung myself sideways. The something rammed headlong into the table with a shattering crunch, sending paper into the air. Just like that, the tension slipped away as the papers eased back down to the floor in their unperturbed pace. Heart still pounding, I rose to my feet, eyeing the figure, words dying in my throat.

Its… me.

I know what I looked like, of course I do, but the girl woman on the ground matched my likeness like no other. She looked more me than… me. Her visage was so profound in its congruity to mine that I almost expected her lips to part when mine hung open, like a mirror image. Blood oozing from the newly inflicted gash joined the dried bits crusted on her lips, gracing her cheeks as it rolled down, dripping onto the floor. Only that marred her appearance and made me realise that she was indeed not me.

But still… it was creepy. I averted my gaze. I couldn't look at her anymore, couldn't face what this meant. What did it mean?

I should focus on what I can figure out right now. I shook myself out of my stupor, then stepped straight into the dark room, striding right up to the glass. Again, the smell invaded, but sharper, more striking. The sludge that caked onto the cracked edge suddenly made sense.

Blood.

To the left of the pod, a control board stuck out of the blackness. I pressed an index finger gingerly to it and it sprang to life, the light stabbing into my eyes. I squinted at the words.

Pod Breached

Yeah, I could see that. I swiped at the screen, not caring how hard. The panel quivered and shook as it flashed a new page. Compared to the previous page, this one was full of tiny words and numbers that made no sense. 

Cognitive duplication - 80%

Physical replication - 100%

AI upload - 100%

Cancer cells eradication - complete

Cancer? Replication? Duplication?

Words swam without meaning on the screen, its bright light cutting into my vision, piercing to the back of my skull. I stared and stared and stared until black spots danced, pulsating across the screen like dark cuttlefish.

“Don’t move.”

I whipped around before the command sank in, stepping back and pressing up against the panel, eyes blinking away the blurriness as I stared down the barrel of a gun.

The woman was silhouetted against the light, her face clouded in darkness, but there was no mistaking the anger on her face.

“You -!”

She spat the profanity at me. I gaped at her, hands trembling.

“Who are you?” My question struck her across the face, as though she could not fathom why I’d ask such a thing. She threw back her head and laughed incredulously, the sound maniacally issuing from her blotted silhouette. 

“Who am I? Who am I? Have you forgotten what you did to me, you ungrateful wrench? I made you, you escape, ruin my lab, and leave me half conscious in here? Did you forget all...this?” She gestured with one hand to her mangled lip. 

I gulped. I could only shake my head and watch as she let a breath leave her parted lips. Her eyes fell, as if disappointment was taking over her anger. She strode up to me, gun falling to her side. With one hand, she waved me away and I scrambled to one side, watching as she squinted at the panel. Her eyes linger on ‘cognitive duplication’ “80%,” she muttered. She closed her eyes, pinching the bridge of her nose. “So,” she said through a sigh and gritted teeth. “He was right. It isn't possible. They always wake up before 100%.”

“Never mind. They won't know, they won't know.”

She raised the gun again. Her eyes pierced me sharper than any bullet.

“Live for me, will you? At least you can, for longer.”

She forced a tiny grimace, and pulled the trigger.

The scream caught in my throat and I bolted, reaching the outer door just as it edged open. I pushed past the men in lab coats outside, barrelled through the crowd and burst through another set of doors. The sunlight blinded me. The people overwhelmed me. I turned this way and that and there were people everywhere. People talking, people walking, people laughing. Loud, so loud. I gripped my head, stumbling blindly. 

I ran

*

Am I not real? That was what they caught me muttering as they surrounded me in the courtyard, guns pointing at me. That was the only thing I uttered as they lifted my limp body into glass and the lid seal around me. 

I pressed up against the pod, feeling the gas stabbing into my sinus, filling my lungs. My face, distorted in the thick glass stared back at me, the familiarity twisting and churning into something that was not mine. Hers. I thought about the home I never had, the memories that were injected into me. I saw my mother’s face, felt my father’s firm grasp. No, her parents. Her memories. Her life.

I want to go home.

Where is home?