The Scientists

BBC Breaking News, May 28, 1986, 17:00. Two Scientists have been spotted on the Kingsferry Bridge, fleeing London. They are now travelling by foot and are speculated to be attempting to flee the continent. More updates are expected shortly as law enforcement arrives on the scene.

Police cars droned like air sirens as Eliza sprinted with Marty off a dirt road into farmland, not daring to look back, breaths coming quickly, too loud. Calm down, Eliza's mind raced. Shut up. They shrank behind a low garden wall, damp stone cool through Eliza’s thin T-shirt, clammy skeleton hands. “We’re going to be caught,” she panted, a stitch in her side from running. “Fuck, we’re done for.” Fuckfuckfuck.

Marty clamped her hand over Eliza’s mouth, eyes wide, her fingernails carving marks on Eliza’s cheeks like smiles. Eliza closed her eyes, tears leaking from the corners she didn’t dare wipe away. Hands reached into her ribs, constricting her heart like a rabbit ensnared in a trap.

The flashing lights skimmed by, blurring them into the lush countryside like spilled watercolours. As Marty released her, Eliza let out a whimper. Marty leveraged herself to her feet, brushing dirt off her skirt and examining her mud-stained socks. 

Eliza burrowed her face into her knees, catching her breath, working to untangle the knot in her throat. She sprinkled her tears into the ridges of her corduroy trousers like showers on ploughed land. “Shite.”

Marty leaned against the wall, massaging her temples, and clearing her throat as she extended a hand to Eliza. “Eliza." Eliza unfurled herself, the fraying end of a rope. “We have to keep moving.” 

“Yeah,” she swallowed. “Let’s go.”

They trudged silently through the rolling hills, itchy grass and mud fumbling for a grasp on their ankles. Eliza swatted at a mosquito buzzing past, dodging crickets as they hopped over her feet. Shaky from adrenaline, her head pounding at her temples, she searched for any markings or posts giving out directions. They’d eventually make it to the coast, but it was hard not to suspect they were aimless, dust floating in sour light. She had accidentally left their map in the car when they ditched it about eight kilometres back on the Kingsferry Bridge, another reason for Marty’s hostility towards her, so she only knew the general direction of their destination. East.

She watched Marty, hoping she’d announce a plan. Her skirt hiked up her knees, exposing calves covered in gooseflesh-- the skin of a strawberry. Her mouth was taught, avoiding Eliza’s gaze, but somehow she sensed her staring. “What?” she snapped.

Eliza gulped. “Should we find someone to ask directions from?” Marty raised her eyebrows and scrunched her nose as if Eliza were quite mad.

“Who would we ask?” She laughed mockingly, her steel eyes irritated. “We’re in the middle of nowhere and fugitives.”

Eliza fidgeted, twiddling her thumbs. “Yeah, okay.”

“We’re not lost,” she insisted, jaw clenched. “As long as we keep the sun behind us, we’ll get there.” Dusk twinkled imminently, dappled pinks and oranges rippling over the grass like the tide.

Eliza nodded silently, eyes downcast, biting the dry skin off her lips, suddenly hyper-aware of her tongue clinging to the roof of her mouth, cloyingly parched. She thought to suggest that they find some water, when Marty tripped, landing on all fours like a cowering dog.

“Shite!” Marty exclaimed. Eliza touched her shoulder, offering a hand to help her up, but she shouted, “Get off me!” Eliza fluttered back, seeds from a torn packet scattered into a flower bed. Marty righted herself, dusting off her scraped-up palms, studying the skin puckered with mud.

Eliza crossed her arms, waiting for Marty to say something, but she stayed quiet, her chin held high. Marty continued, her pace slightly faster than before, assuming Eliza would follow. Perhaps hoping she wouldn’t.

Eliza scurried to catch up with her, quickly glancing over where she tripped as she passed by to avoid the same fate. She discovered a littered bag of Walkers salt and vinegar crisps, slick with residual rainwater. Sam. What she always ate. Eliza smoothed the bag out, folding it into precise fourths, and burrowed it into her trouser pocket.

Marty didn’t notice she stopped. They continued in silence.

BBC Breaking News, May 28, 1986, 23:00. The Scientists are believed to be lying low on the Isle of Sheppey. Do not engage or offer help; if approached, call 999 or 112.

By dark, they abandoned attempting navigation and set up a shelter in a copse of trees, nymphs blending in with the bark and sprouting leaves. Eliza drank from a river weaving around the roots, cupped in her hands and acrid from dirt. Her stomach ached for nourishment, but there wasn’t any, so she drank more.

Marty’s anger muted, snagging like barbed wire. Conversation would only be reciprocated with metal trenched against bone, yet Eliza still found herself wishing to drag her fingers across the spikes.

They spent the night sleepless, shivering as the humidity stroked their skin, eyes pinned open by the stars leaking through the cloud cover and dripping from the tree limbs, iridescence thick like syrup and milky from the moon. 

It surprised Eliza that she didn’t miss the city, now rendered artificial and crudely industrial. She hadn’t ever seen the stars like this. Not with the sky so open and cluttered all at the same time.

They rose the next morning, eyes heavy with insomnia. The sun guided them this time, knotted to the dawn in the East. Eliza estimated that they had an hour’s hike before arriving at Leysdown-on-Sea.

She took to collecting things she came across in addition to the crisps bag. They all tangled with Sam, electrical wires sparking, fraying. A fire hazard. A deflated red balloon speared by a tree branch caught the light like Sam's eyes on her birthday, verdantly gobbling the candle on her chocolate cupcake. Eliza, Marty, and Sam hid in the bathroom closet of their flat, conversing in hushed tones. Breathing "Happy Birthday", soundless lips blazing in exaggerated shadow and light. "I wished for a chicken," Sam confessed, snickering yet half serious, before Eliza could warn her that spoken wishes plummet, fragile wings resting on thorny branches, torn the instant they take flight. "Suppose I found my Natural and asked her to move to Cornwall or back to Leysdown-on-Sea?"

Marty chuckled, rolling her eyes. "Don't be daft. They'd never let you." But Eliza thought perhaps it didn't matter. Birthday celebrations were forbidden, yet there they were.

A golden candy wrapper blending in with the tall grass whispered in the same crinkled tones as the crystal bowl filled with caramels at the Scientist Testing and Affairs Building reception desk. Eliza saved their spot in line while Sam took handfuls, a welcome distraction to people bustling about like ivy on an edifice, speckling brick-like verdant freckles. Marty joined them on the rare occasion she wasn't assigned night shifts. The sharp edges of the candy chaffed their cheeks, toasting their tongues with sweetness, as sunkissed as the wrappers that housed them.

An orange leaf from last fall glowed the same colour as their assignment note cards. They always burned the same shade-- tangy blood oranges stinging cracked lips-- but they were the most saturated that day. Two weeks ago. Sam munched on a bag of Walkers salt and vinegar chips, flavouring coating her fingertips like frost, while the receptionist droned, handing them both note cards with neatly typed instructions. Elizabeth Taylor, radiation testing. Room 327, Uranium. Eliza's mind was infested with apprehension, hordes of locusts ravaging her brain. Most retired after a week of Uranium. "Good," they had breathed, obligatorily, when their neighbour Sarah had retired after only a day. “That’s good for her.” Good, good, good. That was their purpose: to hollow, like trees carved by beetles from the inside out. 

They began to climb the staircase, but Eliza’s legs shook, refusing to carry her. She clung to the handrail like her sanity, not daring to speak.

"Eliza?” Sam inquired, gently.

“Yeah?”

“Let’s switch.” She held out her card.

Eliza shook her head. “No way. I’m not letting you do that.” 

“Come on, please? I just want to get it over with." Eliza sighed, contemplating the note card. If Sam really wanted, then…

“Don’t retire, okay? I know it’s what we’re supposed to do eventually and all, but… I like working with you.” She gave Sam a half grin.

"Promise." Sam placed her card in Eliza's hands, stained with oily fingerprints.

She could pretend that Sam would be fine. They had, after all, defied the rules once, with the birthday cupcake, and there were anomalies who went through Uranium testing unscathed.

That day. Two weeks ago. When they discovered that, like wishes, promises spoken aloud forget their merit.

Eliza found her third green thing, a sliver of plastic sticking up like a gravestone, when they made it to the town, a sign in cheerful lettering marking their arrival. Leysdown-on-Sea.

Marty spoke for the first time since yesterday without looking at Eliza. “She lives on number four Shellness Road.” 

She had better still have a boat, Eliza thought. “Okay.” They rounded a corner, coming to a long stretch of beach. 

It seeped into Eliza like a siren's song. The ocean breathed differently than the Thames, the spray drenching the breeze with salt, sweet and clean. She paused to listen, eyes closed, to the crash of the tide, soothing her and promising a simple existence. 

Marty startled her out of her meditation, reality a pulsing headache. “Eliza.” She followed as Marty led them down a winding path lined with weeds, sand crunching under their shoes like cereal.

Somewhere, across the ocean, was Belgium. And there, they would be free.

BBC Breaking News, May 29, 1986, 08:00. The Scientists were sighted entering the town of Leysdown-on-Sea at around 07:30, and since then their trail has been lost. Any information on their whereabouts should be reported to local law enforcement immediately.

Dr Donna’s thin face, crowned with silver curls, greeted their knocks, cataract-ridden eyes squinting. She was elderly, even for a Warden, well past her sixties. Eliza had planned to become a Warden once she was thirty-five, pursuing the promise of a decrease in testing. Sam countered that it was only a temporary salve.

“We’re all replaceable, Eliza,” Sam proclaimed. “It’s another trap.”

“Who are you?” Dr Donna croaked, waving a bony finger at Eliza and Marty, her skin stretched thin and waxy. 

“Dr Donna? It’s Martha Shenton.” Marty stepped to the front, hiding Eliza with her height, and spoke slowly and deliberately. “You were my Warden ten years ago? My younger sister is Samantha Shenton.” Is. An interesting tense to choose.

Dr Donna squinted through her glasses on a silver chain, recognition dawning on her face. They looked in a state, covered in dirt and wild hair. “Ah, Marty. Yes, I remember you and your sister-- quite the troublemaker she was. Is this her?” She pointed to Eliza.

Eliza’s jaw dropped open, an awkward pause extending as she looked to Marty, who finally cut in, “Yeah, that’s— that’s her.” Disgust soured her words, her lips refusing to form Sam’s name.

A smile cracked on Dr Donna’s lined face like a broken eggshell. “It’s wonderful to see you two again. Have your Normals moved back to the country?”

“Yes,” Eliza confirmed, stomach writhing and alive with the lie. Everything Sam Wanted.

“Well, thank you for visiting. I have some things to attend to, but if you’d like, I can put on some tea and we can chat in a bit.”

Entering, children's shrieks echoed into cobwebbed corners, dusting off the stone cottage walls. Following Dr Donna to a round oak table in the kitchen, Eliza brushed the hand of a girl she could have mistaken for her younger self, freckle-faced, bobbed mousy hair bouncing behind her as she chased after a friend. The girl's supple skin exuded childhood, spending summers sunbathing by the poolside, eight years old and free from testing for two more years. The memories crackled, thin like a sun-faded photograph drenched in swimming pool water, but the scent stung heavily— chlorine and tanning lotion and vanilla ice cream dripping down her arm.

Marty and Eliza sat in silence, blistered feet relieved. Something bubbled in the kitchen-- savoury aromas Eliza tried to ignore-- her stomach gurgling. She traced the grain of the wooden table, rhythmic like the waves, while staring out the window. A flock of seagulls flitted in the sunlight, their laughing calls piercing. They all looked the same, melting into one mass, the brilliance of the flurry of feathers dizzying. She closed her eyes, letting the children's voices from the other room bleed into the shrieks of the gulls.

She couldn’t see the living room, but she heard Dr Donna chiding the children. “You can watch the television once you’ve done your chores,” she quavered, met with groans. 

“May I listen to the radio while I clean the bedroom?” Eliza's lookalike begged. 

“I don’t see why not… and James, you’re in the yard today, so make sure to feed the chickens…” Chickens. No wonder Sam loved it there. 

Eliza couldn’t listen anymore. Guilt smothered her skin like a heavy ointment, oily and thick and impossible to remove once absorbed. “You didn’t have to say that,” she blurted abruptly.

Marty glared at her. “What?”

“Say that I was Sam. You could have said—”

“Whatever.” Marty crossed her arms. 

“I guess I wanted to say thank you.”

Marty shook her head, cooly. “You should have retired instead of her. Then we wouldn’t have to pretend.”

Eliza trapped her tongue behind her teeth, the tension in her clenched jaw preferable to the bitter letters tingling.

"Yeah, just ignore me," Marty muttered, voice acidic.

Eliza sighed, quavering. “Sam made her decisions. I didn’t make her choose anything.”

“You switched with her!”

Eliza began to answer when her lookalike walked in, a broom in one hand and a radio in the other, passing to the door right across from them. She caught a glimpse of rows of identical beds through the gap left in the door.

She exhaled, replying, “Sam switched with me, there’s a difference.”

“Why didn’t you stop her?” Marty shook her head incredulously, untainted grief ringing her eyes red like coaster-less mugs staining coffee tables. “Why didn’t they stop her? It’s against the rules to switch.” Desperation trenched ravines into her.

“People do it all the time,” Eliza explained quietly.

Marty’s voice cracked. Her head collapsed on the table, words muffled. “Does it matter?”

“No,” Eliza admitted, breathlessly. “I should have—”

“Just shut up!” Marty furiously rubbed her tears away, the ocean on her cheeks, pouring into the hair at her temples. In her heavy exhales Eliza could almost decipher words. I want my sister back. I want, I want, I want.

Eliza reached out across the table and clasped Marty’s rough hand. Her fingers flopped, thin silver fish marooned onto the sand, sunset scales dripping with warmth as their bodies cooled. Beauty in death, hot and cool. Limp, but stationary. “It’ll be okay.”

But then she heard her name from the open bedroom door.

“Yes, Dr Taylor and Dr Shenton. They’re shouting at each other… yes, number 4 Shellness Road… okay, I will,” Eliza's lookalike muttered.

Eliza sprinted at her, Marty cornering the girl against the wall, fist clenched around her wrist, startling her into dropping the phone, bouncing from the cord like a yo-yo. “Who did you call?” Marty demanded. The little girl twitched in fear, a moulting bird.

She covered her head with her unrestrained arm. “Please don’t hurt m—”

“WHO DID YOU CALL?”

“999,” she squeaked, slipping to the ground as Marty released her. 

“Fuck.” Sirens in the distance lacerated the calm of the sea, cracking each stone in the cottage until only dust remained. “We're not alone," Marty gasped, peering out the curtained window, a cascade of police lights showering in. “Shite, what are we going to do?”

“Run.”

BBC Breaking News, May 29, 1986, 10:45. The Scientists have been spotted on Shellness Road. 

Police cars droned like air sirens as Eliza sprinted with Marty. Again. They were scientists, after all, always bolting in both ways of the word’s meaning, cleaving themselves into fragments as they fled, then scraping the scraps back together. So vast and insignificant they had no choice but to encompass their shadows. We’re all replaceable, Eliza. Had Sam already been replicated, another child born from her Normal’s DNA? Bolted like lightning, shedding off itself. Bolting like screws, rickety construction.

She couldn’t think of that now.

They left the sand road, trudging into the cliffs, not daring to look back. They panted, clutching stitches in their sides, the wind running its fingers through their hair, combing it into their faces with salty breath. They passed more cottages, more stretches of beach, all blurring into monotony. Run, run, run.

A police car skidded to a halt in front of them. Eliza and Marty backed up, scurrying, only to find themselves surrounded by four more cars from behind.

The officers exited their vehicles, cocking their guns. Eliza dug through her pockets, searching for anything, procuring fistfuls of rubbish. Her unruly reflection glared back at her in a cellophane wrapper she dropped.

“Eliza.” Terrified tears poured down Marty’s face as she pressed in close. “What do we do?” she whispered.

“Run.” She bolted, clasping Marty’s hand.

Retirement hung imminently, a fall through the cracks, memory dissipating. A sensationalised story with no name. Soon, third or fourth versions of them would roam London with the same impossible dreams, no memory of predecessors. 

They pushed through the crowd, ploughing officers into the sand. 

In decades, all that would remain was rubbish stuffed in pockets, rotting the earth and killing seeds. 

They ran, they ran, they ran. To the cliff’s edge.

Two shots rang, two bodies swallowed by the ocean.

BBC Breaking News, May 29, 1986, 11:00. The Scientists have been retired.