I met myself in the Mega City a week ago. It had never happened to me before, though I’d heard whispers of rumours that it had happened to friends of friends, people I hardly knew. I thought I had been more careful.
I was about to eat noodles and soup in a Chinese restaurant on Z street. My waitress – the one who’d taken the order from me – had changed shifts and I was looking at my phone, scrolling through the surgeries I’d need to do that afternoon, when the new one arrived with my food. I looked up as the bowl was put down, and my words left me.
Though it was inappropriate, she sat down opposite me. She must have been twenty or so years my junior, but the anti-ageing pills and technologies we have access to in the city made it hard to tell. It was like a mirror had just slid into the seat. For a moment we just looked at each other, examining our faces with the intensity and disinterest that you apply when you brush your teeth at night. I could see that the birthmark on my neck was there, but the scratch above my eyebrow from the bottle that fell off the fire escape and clipped me on the head last year was not. Of course, it couldn’t have been there, but it was impossible not to check. Were my ears that large? We both reached up to touch our left lobe at the same time. So, they were.
Her hands were like mine too. Long fingers. So strange to look at them out on the table like that, un-gloved, touching everything. Nail polish cerulean, a tattoo on the wrist. Louche and reckless.
‘Who are you?’ her voice sounded like mine, but the accent and rhythm was different. That’s how they spoke in the village. Slower. No rush. A lack of elocution.
I could have asked her the same question, but I didn’t, because, of course, I had some inkling of what had happened, an understanding of how this was happening, and it was one that I had no interest in sharing with her.
The woman claimed her name was Kethiwe. She’d run away from her family in the village and had come here to the Mega City to seek a new life. It was a story I’d heard hundreds of times before in the hospital from crack addicts, single moms, and injured workers. All of them gloveless. All of them so unaware of the full extent of what had been done to them. All of them thinking that by changing something, doing something different, working harder, they could alter their outcomes.
They didn’t understand that the urge to come here was pre-programmed, just like we needed it to be. How could they? Poor things.
I watched her mouth move, wondering if I too slanted my lips to the left. She had a chipped tooth, stains on some from smoking. She hadn’t been taking care of herself. Soon, she’d look older than me, with that type of behaviour. Words and complaints were gushing out of her like a torrent. She was drawing attention.
I held up a gloved hand in a stop sign.
‘Please. We can’t talk here. Finish your shift and I’ll wait for you outside. Get up now and carry on as if this never happened.’
I ate my noodle bowl, left my money on the table, and walked across the street to sit in the park where I could see the entrance to the restaurant. I called the hospital, cancelling the surgeries I’d scheduled. They would be fine without me for one afternoon.
As I sat, legs stretched out on the wooden bench, half an eye on the exit of the restaurant and half on the park, I thought about her story.
They all believed they came to find a better life. This was partly reinforced by the fact that none of them ever went home again. Evidence of success, some might say. Success of the system rather than any one of them.
The reality was that this meant one of two things. Either they found themselves and confronting this was too much for them, so they kept it a secret. Or they lived the life we’d designed for them and were too ashamed to admit that they were struggling, so said nothing, not wanting those they’d left behind to smirk and snigger at their failed dreams. A system designed for their servitude surely couldn’t breed enthusiasm or joy in the other village people if they knew the truth.
Or, I suppose, there was a third option. They didn’t make it.
While thinking, this bench that I’d sat in many times before after similar noodle lunches took on new interest. I imagined what it would be like to take off my gloves and run my fingers along its grainy wood, what a splinter might feel like, how the soil at my feet would crumble and stick to my hands. How wrinkles might feel, what I’d look like if I stopped taking the pills and going for my annual facial rejuvenation. What it might be like to visit the village, to have a chance at a different life. Foolish thoughts. The types that get you into trouble.
Look what happens when you’re curious, I said to myself. This. You’ve made a real mess of things.
There could be hundreds of me all over this city right now and it was my own fault. Or there could just be her. But this was unlikely. I would need to decide what to do, about her and all of them should I ever meet them. I would need to decide quickly. Uncertainty about the lesser versions of yourself never served anyone.
Time passed slowly, day dawdling into evening. Eventually, she exited the restaurant looking up and down the street, her face – my face – stricken with shock. I whistled and waved, and she looked over at me, beginning to cross the road without checking for traffic, jolting at the scooters that hooted and screeched at her. She made it across. I had the grace not to feel disappointed.
‘Sit down.’
‘I don’t want to sit down. I want to know what the hell is going on.’
‘Sit.’
She did. They always do. Bred for obedience, for compliance. I didn’t delay my explanation. It would have been cruel to prolong her suffering. Out with it. That’s the easiest way.
‘I work in a hospital. At this hospital and many others around the world, we don’t only heal people. We make them. When necessary.’
Her eyes searched mine for reason, for sense. I knew this must be a lot to take in and she probably wouldn’t have had the education I’d had, so I tried to keep it simple. I spoke slowly.
‘Sometimes, Kethiwe, the world just needs replaceable people. People who are like the connective tissue of a city – just beneath the surface. People to clean and tend children and sweep streets and pick up garbage … you understand?
‘Of course, nobody wants to be these people by choice. So, we solved that. We replace them by design. It’s easier if we control it.’
Her eyes grew wide. I looked down again at her hands and continued, wishing she’d at least painted over the chips in the polish.
‘We use a machine called 5f – five fingers. We use the pieces of you that you all, carelessly I must say, leave behind all over the place.’
I picked up her palm and held it close to her own face.
‘These fingerprints of yours – oily marks with traces of cells. That’s all we need now to make someone. It’s really quite advanced the way we designed the system. No excess, no waste.’
She pulled her hand away, and curled it into a fist like a fern unfolding in reverse.
‘Now, don’t feel angry. It isn’t as bad as it seems. Everyone here is happy, thriving even. They don’t have to do the things they don’t want to do, and we can all live peacefully. You get to perform a task that you are ideal for performing. We identify future gaps … I mean, when we need more of a certain kind of person in society – waitresses say – we make more. Nobody has to do anything they don’t anymore.’
While I gave her a moment for this to all sink in, my mind wandered back to the moment I suspected my mistake had happened. It was so many years ago now. I’d thought I was safe.
A baby was brought into the hospital, still young enough that the umbilical cord had not fallen off. He was alone, gloveless. Abandoned on a street corner. We see it happening all the time. People can’t control their desires but suddenly think they know what they want from their futures. Or they have the mistaken impression that they can redefine the way that life is going for them. All that hassle for a single moment of pleasure. Distasteful. It helps if you stay angry about how they behave. Reduces the urge for sympathy.
I’d seen hundreds like him before, but even I had to admit that he was beautiful. His eyes were still a little glassy, you know … searching for someone who would be there for him, for connection. Arms wriggling out for touch. Making groaning gurgling noises. Long black lashes.
He should have been taken straight to the lab to be put down and macerated for cells. That’s what we are supposed to do. Not sentimentalise. If he wasn’t wanted now, he wouldn’t be wanted in the future. That was the reasoning. No room for unnecessary. No room for extras.
But then he wrapped his little fingers around my gloved ones, and something happened. A moment of weakness. On the way to the lab I pulled over into a storage closet, took off my gloves, and held him. Felt the warmth of his soft skin on mine. Cradled him. I wanted to see what it might be like, you know. Like with the soil beneath the bench. I just wanted to try something different. To feel things.
Then the moment passed, and I took him to the lab and didn’t feel that sad about it, to be honest. He wasn’t really a person, not for long anyway. And he’d be put to good use, for all of us.
I must have left some of myself on him. My prints mixed in with his. Cells I didn’t think would matter. That’s the only way this made any sense. And now, I’d have to explain myself to the higher ups. Come forward and confess, be fired for my incompetence, and likely never be able to work again. My friends, colleagues, would shun me out of protocol though I knew many of them had probably taken the same risks. Or … the third option.
Kethiwe was still silent, mulling it over probably. I looked up at the trees of the park, heard the bird song. An Olive Thrush greeting the evening. She reached over to me and held my hand. I let her, safe beneath the gloves.
‘I met a man once at a bus stop’ she said, measuring her fingers against mine. ‘The bus that I took to come here. He walked up to me while I was waiting. He’d cut off his fingers with a machete. Said he didn’t want any part of this world. Warned me against it.
‘It didn’t make sense to me. He just seemed … mad. I mean, what type of person chops off their own fingers?’
A smart one, I thought. One who wouldn’t find themselves in the situation I was now in. Astute in a macabre sort of way. He’d never meet himself eating his usual lunch of noodles and soup and have to plot his own death.
Kethiwe let go of my fingers as if she could read my mind. ‘So, what now? What does this mean?’
‘Mean?’ It meant nothing, and it was a bit embarrassing that she couldn’t see that. This was a problem to be solved. One of three possible options. But still, she persisted, as though we could solve it together.
‘Don’t you see, you could be me, if the circumstances shifted slightly.’
I resented her tone. Felt something like anger, but suppressed it. ‘I could never be you, Kethiwe. That’s the point – there should never have even been you in the first place. It was a mistake, an accident. That’s all.’
‘But, it’s too late now. We’ll have to work something out.’
There was no we. I had my life in order. No extras. No excess. No waste. There was no room in my schedule for this type of unpredictability. I didn’t like the way she assumed that just because we looked the same there would be some common purpose. That we were alike in some way, and only circumstances made us different.
You could say that she brought it on herself.
‘Take a walk with me. I’ll show you where I live.’
‘Okay.’ She was uncertain. Her curiosity changing to concern.
I sweetened my tone. ‘There is a beautiful view from the bridge on the way. The water below roars and sends mist up into the air, scattering like glitter.’
They always love nature talk, the village people. I’d learnt from my hospital shifts that it made them feel at home. Pastoral pleasantries were part of my daily work. It felt underhanded, but I knew there was little point in letting that worry me. Not where we were heading.
She followed me up the street towards the cliff with the high bridge. It was odd to think of her taking in these surroundings with new eyes. For me this was a walk home I’d done on hundreds of days. So much of it was now unnoticed, taken for granted.
We walked over to the centre where I pointed out the fact that you could almost see the valley from here, and just beyond it the village that she was from. My pointed finger in my glove looked so safe, so perfect.
‘If you look down,’ I said, ‘you’ll see that the river actually flows in that direction. Towards the valley. So, they might connect at some point. Parts of this place feeding parts of that place. Connected.’
‘Like us’ she said, her voice soft, as she stood on tiptoes and looked over the railing. It wasn’t much of a push, just a gentle one.
Later, when I walked over the second half of the bridge alone, I made an effort to take in the view. To imagine what it looked like for that brief moment, through our eyes.
