Title: Do Clones Dream of Dolly
Author: Joe

I.
The first time I opened my eyes, darkly glowing embryonic fluid clouded my vision. I blinked slowly, wondering at the nature of my surroundings but having nothing to compare them to. I could sense that I had a form, a material self that carried weight even as it was suspended in this strange liquid. My eyes widened in fear; it was the first emotion that I felt coming into the world.
 
My birth was not a natural event. When I emerged from the tube I’d been created in, my body was already nineteen years old, just like all of the other clones born in this facility. As I cried and struggled for breath, doctors and scientists made notes on hovering electronic tablets and prodded me with instruments. One doctor stands out in my memory. He was a slender man with dark, tousled hair, large surgery goggles and a mask obscuring his face. He leaned over me as if reading a machine behind my shoulder; then, he quickly inserted a needle into my arm, pressing some mysterious serum into my bloodstream. A spasm wracked my body at the feeling, but my atrophied muscles betrayed only a twitch. He looked up quickly.
 
“Good luck,” he said, his voice laced with sympathy. He dropped the syringe into his pocket, hiding it from view from the other scientists, and wandered out of the room. At the time, his words were just sounds to me, but I’ve relived this memory in my dreams too many times to forget a single detail. Later I would wonder why he’d behaved so strangely, and why he’d wished me luck.
 
I spent the next forty hours of my life being prepared to be useful. I was fed special muscle-building proteins through a tube as I lay in an electrocuted bath meant to stimulate muscle and brain interaction. My skin was scrubbed free of the layers of embryonic deposits and dead cells to reveal raw pink flesh that had never seen sunlight. Next, I began a cycle of phototherapy to introduce my skin to the world and my eyes to differing levels of brightness. A small metal stud at the base of my neck was connected via wire to a tablet, programming some invisible machine built deep in my mind. I would helplessly stand, sit, or speak at the touch of a button. During all this time, no one spoke to me, but they did speak to each other using the kind of small talk that people indulge in when they feel like no one’s watching. In fact, they treated me like an animal incapable of thought or reason, and their behavior was an extension of that idea. Why censor yourself in front of a dog, or a cow? They can’t remember, they can’t repeat you.
 
After I was thoroughly prepared, I began the routine that would become my entire life. I soon learned that I was one of a group of ten identical women. Like ducks in a line we followed one another from place to place through the dark halls of the facility, blankly obeying the programmed instructions in our minds. Every morning we were woken up from our warm hibernation pods with a small dose of adrenaline and shuffled to our various and repetitive daily activities, and then at the end of the day we were led back into the hibernation pods and coaxed into slumber with chemicals. 
 
Although we were like one another in almost every way, we were vastly different from other clones. I slowly began to realize that my world was a small piece of a larger place. While traveling between destinations I would sneak a glance through large glass windows to see hundreds of thousands of other clones: some floating along moving walkways and escalators, others attached to eating tubes or doing clumsy group exercises. Those clones wore bright orange paper shirts and pants, the kind of clothing that was easy to recycle and reproduce. The cheap material left a faint orange residue on insides of their elbows and the base of their necks. Each of them had a black number from 1 to 5 on their chests, and subjects with higher numbers seemed to be allowed to grow hair, although it never got very long. They all looked completely different. I never saw a single one that looked like another.
 
Once I realized this, I began to pay attention to the way me and my kind were treated. Every day when we woke up, the first stop of the day was the Maintenance Room, where we were bathed, covered in strange powders and oils, and our hair was brushed and dried with careful fingers. Our skin was meticulously examined; any blemish was dealt with quickly with serums and noted on a tablet. In contrast to the cheap orange paper suits that the other clones wore, we were clothed in soft white shirts and leggings. They were warm but breathable, making it easy to walk through the facility but also helping us stay comfortable through our group exercises. Each shirt had a small silver notation embroidered on the chest; mine said 9C9. I’d managed to get a good look at it while undressing one night, but I didn’t want to look too hard – I had a feeling that being curious about the world was taboo for some reason. At any rate, my fellows didn’t seem to care about anything, so why should I?
 
It was many months later, lying awake in my hibernation pod, until I began to wonder if my sisters were in fact like me at all. Were they still affected by the sleep chemicals? Did they need to be woken up with adrenaline? Didn’t they wonder what the attendants said to one another, or if our voices could also make independent sounds? I felt an unexplored universe in my head, but I was unsure of where to start, or why I even bothered. Eventually the chemicals stopped helping me sleep and I would lie in my pod for hours until it was time to wake again. Each morning I furtively searched for signs that another had also passed a sleepless night, but it was impossible to know. Every face stared ahead blankly, went about the prescribed tasks at hand, and never met my eyes.
 
One sleepless night, I closed my eyes and retraced my memories, thinking of the sounds I’d heard in my short life. My eyes opened as I settled upon the first words anyone had ever spoken to me.
 
“Good luck,” I croaked, and smiled.
 
II.
 
Every week we were examined individually by the same scientist, a bubbly young woman named Jana. I always relished these interactions. Her badge, held aloft by a lanyard, bounced against my face as she leaned over me to adjust the settings on some mysterious machine. She smelled different than all of the other smells I was used to; I knew antiseptic, synthetic protein drinks, and sterile cotton, but I didn’t have a word for her smell. Her hair was a shocking red that wrapped around her ears in short curls, framing a smiling brown face with matching red lipstick. She always wore the same white lab coat with the same collection of pens and stylus tools in the pocket, but everything she wore underneath its open folds cycled constantly. It was amazing to me that a person could have such variety with their clothing. Today she was wearing a soft beige sweater that made shushing noises as it brushed against my cheek. I closed my eyes, breathing deeply, enjoying the intrusion into her personal space.
 
A needle poked into my arm, quickly filling a blood capsule sample. I blinked, surprised by the pinch of pain, but Jana didn’t notice. She never noticed anything that I did, whether it was out of the ordinary or not. She hummed as she lifted the capsule to the light, checking the color.
 
“Your nanobot count seems to be pretty high,” she chattered. She often talked to me while she worked, or talked on the phone. Sometimes if the test she was doing involved minimal interaction and maximum waiting, she would flip on a wall screen TV.
 
“I’m going to run some tests, I think,” she continued. “Hm, I guess that means that I’ll have to take another blood sample for the diagnostics work. This shouldn’t hurt a bit,” she joked. I stared at the ceiling and tried to memorize her smell again.
 
After about ten minutes, Jana stood and walked towards a grouping of glossy machines, depositing the samples into a sliding tray and pressing some buttons. The machine began to make a whirring sound. She checked her phone absentmindedly, making small sounds of disapproval.
 
“You know what?” she said suddenly, almost causing me to jump. “Who needs boyfriends, anyway? I mean, Rick and I weren’t really official, but still…” She collected a sheet of data from some mysterious printer and plopped back into her chair, wheeling it back over next to my bed. “If you go home with someone enough times, I feel like they have an obligation to consider your feelings. He hasn’t answered my calls for two weeks. Two weeks!”
 
She scowled as she daubed my arm with antiseptic. “He thinks he’s so busy with his fancy legal team, always blah blah blah all the time. I just wanna be like, you know what, I’m one of those people that makes sure you get to live past two hundred, you know?” She sighed dramatically, taking my pulse again while I wondered what on earth a legal team was. “I’m not, like, the highest up on the totem pole or anything, but the work I do is really important. And you know what, considering that I’ve just now finished my post-doc with this job – ” She snaps some dark goggles onto her face and makes a wide gesture with her gloved hands – “I think I’m doing pretty well for myself. Monsan is the largest clone producer in the world, and let’s be real, this is a cutting edge project!”
 
She settled in her chair with a self-satisfied smirk, flashing a series of lights across my chest with a large machine arm. Eventually, her goggled face fell, and her smirk grew sour. “I bet he’s seeing that slut Mallory,” she muttered. “I know he thinks she’s cute, I see him watch her when he thinks I’m not looking. She may be on his legal team, but she’s just the office meat sock.” A good portion of the self-satisfaction swelled back into her posture. “I, at least, have some pride.”
 
I was so confused, but greatly loving the sound and shape of each word she spoke. The most beautiful so far was the word “meat-sock.” It was definitely a word I would be saying to the top of my hibernation pod later.
 
Jana turned off the machine and pushed the goggles up her face, peering at a screen just behind my head. I willed myself to keep my face relaxed and my eyes pointed away from her, but in my heart I imagined that she was looking me in the eye and we were laughing together, both solidly in the know about legal teams and Mallory’s. As I was lost in my daydream, Jana’s phone buzzed. Her eyes lit up and her hand dove into her pocket to search for the name on the screen. “Hello?” she said breathlessly, furiously swiveling her chair away from where I lay and over to her desk where there was a sea of paperclips and pens to distractedly fiddle with. “Rick? This is unexpected…”
 
I focused on her conversation, wishing I could hear the voice of whoever was on the other end of the phone. “Oh, really?” Jana breathed in a seductive voice. She laughed a sultry, false laugh, even throwing back her head. “That’s great news! No wonder you’ve been so busy! Should we…celebrate?” She spun the chair around in a circle, face practically glowing. “I would love to. I’ll be done at work around seven, and I have weekends off, so if we left after dinner, we could be at your beach house by midnight.” She listened for a minute, and then giggled, blushing. “I guess I could. I know how much you like red lace. Well, I have to…finish some things here,” she practically moaned into the phone in an attempt to sound alluring. “I’ll see you at eight, handsome.” She hung up and stared at the screen for a moment, then looked up at me.
 
“Oh my god, you won’t believe what just happened!” she squealed, throwing her legs and arms out into the air. “His team just closed a gigantic case that’s earned him a partnership in the company! And he wants me to celebrate with him at his beach house all weekend! And he totally called me his girlfriend!” The flush in her cheeks deepened and she brushed red curls away from her face, breathing quickly. “He said that Mallory and the others invited him to Vegas for the weekend but he like, said that he would rather spend the weekend celebrating with his girlfriend.” She laughed, a more genuine sound than the laugh she’d offered on the phone. “I wonder if they’ll have a party? I need to get a new black tie dress, if that’s the case.”
 
Her expression softened, and she crossed her legs, thinking. “Maybe I should ask Mallory to go shopping with me and the girls…she really isn’t so bad, you know, she’s like, a nice person, and she’s new in town. I bet she doesn’t have anyone else to go with...” Jana stared into the distance for a few long minutes with a benevolent smile as I struggled to understand anything that she’d just said. Suddenly she snapped back into the present, and I quickly adjusted my gaze away from her and towards the ceiling. “Oh my god, I have to finish up here quick or I’ll be late.” She glanced at me, chewing on her lip. “Maybe I could skip the nanobot bloodwork…I mean, you just have a few extras, I’m sure everything will turn out normally anyway…well, I’ll check it next time if it still looks a little funny.”
 
In my hibernation pod that night, I repeated all of the strange words I’d heard Jana say. “Rick?” I breathed, running my finger through my hair. “Rick, you are Vegas? How wonderful. That’s totally legit. When can I see you? Beach house?” I chuckled seductively to myself, imagining how interested Rick would be in what I was saying. “I don’t work on weekends, handsome. I am a gigantic partnership. I’ll see you at eight, handsome.”
 
III.
I had been looking forward to my next encounter with Jana all week, hoping she’d be just as talkative. My excitement as I was led down the hall towards her office was only betrayed by my quickening heartbeat and twitching fingers. As we rounded the corner through her open door, the orderly in scrubs that escorted me jumped. “Gah!” he shouted. A quick yelp from an unseen person answered him. 
 
“Holy shit, you scared me,” the orderly laughed, recovering. “You must be the new intern.”
 
I followed him in with a bland expression on my face, not sure whether I should be excited or disappointed. With minute flickers of my eyes, I managed to examine the intern without looking like an unnaturally inquisitive clone. She was a small lithe woman with shortly cropped blonde hair and an oversized lab coat covering well-pressed office wear. In fact, her clothing seemed extra immaculate, as if she were trying to impress someone. I wondered who that person might be, and then it dawned on me that she might be trying to impress everyone at once; she might be nervous about being in a new place, eager to please her new coworkers with clean clothing.
 
“What’s wrong with it? Did it get enough time in the hibernation pods?” the intern asked. Suddenly, I realized that my eyelids had drooped over my eyes as I’d been lost in thought.
 
“Don’t worry,” Jana reassured the intern. “Sometimes if you leave them alone for too long they relax a little bit. It’s natural. Her brain doesn’t receive stimulus the way a normal human brain does.” She tapped the side of her head knowingly, red curls bouncing. “Thanks for the delivery, Carl,” she called after the departing orderly. If I could have blushed, I would have. Jana used “her” instead of “it”; it was embarrassing but also spiked a feeling of pleasure in my stomach.
 
“Sit down, 9C9,” called Jana. I acted robotically, approaching the sterile examination chair and sitting stiffly inside of it. “Kelly, I’m going to grab a soda from the mini fridge, do you want one?”
 
“Should we be speaking around 9C9?” whispered the new intern. Jana laughed, a loud sound in a quiet room.
 
“Don’t worry about it, Kelly. Those protocols are for the bigwigs to ensure that the data is kept as pure as possible.” I noticed that Jana’s style of speech had become much more refined around this new Kelly. “Honestly, they don’t even have higher brain functions, so if you don’t use a programmed command, I’m not even sure she can hear you.”
 
“Couldn’t the brain eventually rewire itself? I mean, they have whole brains and healing nanobots, …”
 
“Not likely,” Jana said. “Maybe if you gave them, like, twenty years of intense therapy, and a lot of special proteins and stuff…” She chewed on her lip, thinking. “Honestly, a clone’s brain spends every moment from conception to its nineteenth year growing in a tube with zero outside stimulus. That’s the main reason that the higher regions of the brain never develop. We don’t even have to suppress any programming, it’s just like, not there.” She pushed her hair behind her ears and put on plastic gloves, snapping them at the wrists and motioning for Kelly to do the same. “Of course, some people believe that when a human body is grown from a tube, it’s missing that special little something, a soul or whatever. It never had a chance at being a real person anyway.”
 
Kelly nodded breathlessly. “What do you think?”
 
Jana swelled slightly with self-importance, enjoying the attention of the intern. “Honestly? How could souls, or something equivalent, not exist? If souls didn’t exist, if they weren’t, like, the difference between me and 9C9 here –” she gestured at me with an empty syringe “—then why can I laugh and talk and stuff and she can’t even feed herself? And honestly, working with clones, there’s no way I could think otherwise. Like, the work we do here, this technology took thousands of years to develop through civilization up to this point, you know? Making a human is an incredibly complicated process. I don’t know, it just makes me think, like, this can’t all be by accident.” She took a sample of my blood and held it up to the light, but didn’t seem to really be looking at it as she talked.
 
“Wow,” breathed Kelly. “I’ve always considered myself an agnostic, but you make a pretty compelling case for intelligent design.”
 
“What can I say?” smiled Jana generously. “I create life here every day. Surely we have, like, a nesting doll scenario here. I create, I was created.”
 
There were a few moments of silence. Kelly licked her lips nervously, asking, “I don’t want to be rude, but would you mind, I’m just curious, what is your religious affiliation?”
 
Jana laughed. “I’m not offended at all, girl! If we’re going to be stuck in this room together from now on we should totally get to know one another. I’m actually an agnostic as well, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t have some pretty specific ideas about what probably happened. And the second there’s scientific proof for a faith, you bet I’ll get in on it!”
 
“A scientist first,” said Kelly admiringly. Jana puffed up a little bit more. I wondered if she was going to pop.
 
“But enough about me,” Jana said briskly, suddenly having acquired an air of serene knowledge. “What questions do you have about the research process? Do you understand what we’re doing here?”
 
“I think so,” Kelly said quickly. “We’re looking for anomalies, right?”
 
“Yep!” Jana said brightly. “So this is 9C9, a part of the 9C test group. She’s clone nine out of ten. We’re the people in charge of testing all ten of those clones every week, one after another, to narrow down any anomalies the test group may have as a whole – or any anomalies the clone might have all on her own.”
Kelly frowned. “That’s one thing I’m confused on. Why are there only ten clones in the sample group? That seems really small.”
 
Jana nodded. “You’re right, it is small. There are a few reasons for that. Firstly, clones are really expensive, and each sample set takes a huge amount of resources and time – I mean, incubation alone is, like, nineteen years! The early test groups were pretty large, though. The very first one, the 1A group, was a thousand clones large.”
 
“Wow!” Kelly exclaimed. “That’s a lot! Did you have to fully incubate them the nineteen years before you could start the second group?”
 
“Sometimes,” admitted Jana. “But most of the time, we would be able to diagnose issues in the early stages and adjust the next groups genomes accordingly. Until 9C9’s group was, uh, conceived, we were creating new test groups every year. But that brings me right back around to the biggest reason there are only ten of them.” She smiled secretively.
 
Kelly leaned in closely as if a throng of people were trying to listen in on their conversation. “Okay…”
Jana smiled with delight. “This is the final product. We think we’ve finished. They’re still prototypes, but so far, they’re exceeding expectations.” Kelly gasped in amazement. “In fact, next month we’ll be presenting them at CloneCon to a bunch of, like, really important investors and stuff. You came at the perfect time!”
 
Kelly looked worried. “Isn’t DEF CON going on at the same time? Haven’t there been security issues before?”
 
Jana looked upset. “Yeah, last year they broke into our showroom and stole a clone. They’ll probably try again this year, so we’re doing CloneCon in the showroom this year instead of a casino like we used to.”
 
Kelly shook her head. “What’s their problem, anyway?”
 
Jana waved her hand. “Who knows? These are the same people that inject hacked nanobots into their systems and refuse to get regular clone upgrades. The less you understand them, the better.”
 
IV.
A man with tanned skin and greying hair had started observing our exercises along with a flock of hovering tablets taking notes and chirping ceaselessly. “Meeting at five,” one squawked. “Chairmen want to discuss transfer. Reminder. Remind again at ten ‘til?” The man answered it with a deep voice. “Response: Yes, please.” He walked towards a series of holographic monitors in the front of the room, staring intently at whatever it showed him. The hovering tablets followed like a swarm of insects.
 
My interest was piqued somewhat, but lately I had been in a funk and was unable to become sufficiently curious about this strange new man. I had been outside of the tank for almost three years, and my grasp of the English language was much better than it had been when I’d first emerged. There were still some words I didn’t understand, words that had a specific scientific or medical context, but I knew enough now to have some serious existential questions about myself. Lately I’d found my mind returning again and again to the conversation between Jana and Kelly about a month previously. Since then, they’d developed a comfortable friendship that existed outside of the office as well, so while the conversations were enlightening and helped me improve my grasp of language, they often didn’t discuss work related matters around me. Popular topics included ‘who’s gotten fat in the office,’ ‘who would you sleep with if you had to choose someone,’ and their relationships. A month ago I’d never dreamed it was possible, but I’d grown tired of hearing about Rick.
 
I wanted them to return to their original line of inquiry – what was the difference between a human and a clone? Was it a soul? I had a vague idea of what a soul was; it seemed to be a special something that made you more of a person, or less of one in its absence, a concentration of your personality and humanity. If that was the case, I wasn’t sure where I stood. I felt different from the clones around me, as it seemed that none of them had any interest in their surroundings. It was truly as if they had no higher brain functions.
 
It was even worse with the regular clones, as I’d heard them called. My interaction with them had been extremely limited over the years, but I’d seen their group exercises and they looked like shambling goo-people next to the sharp and precise motions my sisters and I performed. It was clear that our central nervous system had much stronger connections, but then, wouldn’t that imply that there had to be a sentient, intelligent being operating everything? Or was it all due to the programmable processing chip installed in our brains? I wondered briefly if I wasn’t as alone as I thought, but was simply surrounded by better actresses than I. As we turned in unison to execute a flying kick, I knew this couldn’t be true, just by glancing at their slack faces. I had to fight to keep my expression neutral nowadays, and even the strange new man with the gray hair had noticed that I was…anomalous.
 
I found it hard to care. What was I if I didn’t have that essential something? Was I an animal, a tool, or something in between? If I’d been allowed out of my tube at the earliest possible stage, like a naturally born child, would I have developed a soul, or found that I developed normally without one? Would I be indistinguishable from someone like Jana, who truly believed that a god-being had decided to designate me as a “non-human”?
 
That’s what was really bothering me, I realized. The soul explanation might be true, but it wrote off any kind of speculation into the morality of those who created clones. I picked at the thought like a sore wound, a dull sense of anger forming in the pit of my stomach that was mixing with the ever present fear of discovery, rot fighting rot. I wasn’t sure why I was here, why I was forced into daily repetitions and turned into a carbon copy of nine other creatures, but if the idea of a soul existed then it gave a person the perfect excuse to forgive themselves for trapping a human in a tube for the first nineteen years of their lives, robbing them of their higher brain functions.
 
Just like that, I realized that I’d referred to myself as a human being. What did it mean? Did I truly feel that way and did I even know what it meant to claim such a thing? I’d been moving through the exercises routinely, but as I felt anger and fear warring inside of me, I began to move with a purpose. My leg rose in a kick at the same time as my sisters, but it reached its peak much faster, and my foot thudded back onto the floor a full second before everyone else.
 
A red light came up in front of us, indicating that we should stop. Terror boiled up inside of me, threatening to come out my mouth, but I kept my stare impassive even as my ears began ringing. The man with the gray hair walked towards me slowly, every footstep stretching my composure to its limits.
“That kick could’ve taken a person’s head off,” he mumbled. He looked at my arms and prodded my biceps. “Query: What are the anomalies particular to 9C9?”
 
One of the hovering tablet bots answered in a tinny voice. “Six recorded anomalies. Anomaly two through five related to nanobot levels in blood. Abnormally high among test subjects but not at unhealthy levels. Issue unresolved. Anomaly one and six related to muscle stimulus response. Eight percent higher than the average for the sample group. Hypothesis according to Dr. Jana Sverts: accelerated muscle and nerve interaction.”
 
“That could be due to the nanobots. Query: does 9C9 receive the same proteins and gene therapy as the other test subjects?”
 
“That is correct. There is no difference in treatment, chemically or behaviorally.”
 
The man rubbed his jawline, staring at my muscular frame. I fought to appear as empty and brainless as a stone.
 
“Command: Send memo to Ms. Morgan. Tell her that I want 9C9 in the very front row of the presentation. Her muscle and nerve coordination is exceptional.” He started to walk away, and then quickly turned back to peer at my face. My heart thudded but I refused to meet his gaze. Breathe in, breathe out.
 
“Command: Send a memo to Dr. Jana and ask her to keep an eye on 9C9 nanobot level development,” he said slowly. “And tell her to do extra tests on the nanobot samples so we can rule out faulty bot reproduction code. Clone can be placed in transfer procedure queue.”  He walked away and the exercises resumed. My hand almost shook as I completed the rotation, aware that from now on, I would have to be a little faster than everyone else – but not too fast.
 
What had I done?
 
V.
 
Sadly, my next meeting with Jana was postponed. That Friday, instead of doing our regular daily activities, we were taken to the Maintenance Room and examined by a team of strangers. The man with the salt and pepper hair was there as well, but in lieu of a lab coat he wore a sleek three piece suit made out of a darkly shimmering material. He talked quickly with the strange new people, gesturing towards each of us in turn. We sat dumbly in our maintenance chairs, waiting for whatever novel thing was going to happen.
 
We were scrubbed, powdered, waxed, and tweezed. Fortunately, they’d given us localized anesthesia to block the pain – I’m sure no one wanted to know what a herd of wailing brainless clones looked like – but I seemed to metabolize it pretty quickly, and by the end of the plucking session I was struggling to keep my composure. After what seemed like an eternity, it ended, and we were rinsed off with varying chemical baths. Then, all of the other clones had their hair covered in strange pastes and tied up around their heads. My hair was simply dried and brushed out. The man in the suit wandered over to my chair and lifted a lock of it, examining the curling white sheen winding between his fingers.
 
“Yes,” he said to the stranger working on me. “Keep her hair as natural as possible, she’s going to be the face of the product. I want her in the Monsan jumpsuit as well. Make sure you use the white one that Jess designed for the expo, not one of the orange ones.” He began to walk away, and then turned around abruptly, waving a finger. “Also, have them try to do an exercise in the heels. If they can’t handle it, go ahead and switch to barefoot. But, I would prefer the heels,” he smiled. “Sex sells, as they say.”
 
Later, after we’d been dyed and airbrushed to glossy perfection, we were lead to the cubbies where we normally found our soft white sweaters and leggings. I walked robotically to my assigned cubby, marked 9C9, and reached in to grab my assigned clothing. My hands touched a slithering white fabric and I froze, unsure of what to do. All around me the other clones froze in dumb confusion.
 
“Oh for Christ’s sake,” a man with a holographic clipboard and bright red spikey hair huffed at his fellows. “Help the poor things put on the clothes.”
 
A doctor wandered over to me and put my foot through some openings, pulling the fabric up my body and zipping the thing up. I was wearing a skintight white jumpsuit made of a fabric that looked like albino snake skin, but was soft and breathable. The jumpsuit had a tight collar that traveled all the way up my neck, snapping together with off centered black snaps. There was a large open circle on the chest, and the outfit seemed to be propping my breasts up considerably. The sweatshirt I normally wore was comfortably confining, but the chill draft enabled by this new clothing raised goosebumps all along the large expanse of skin showing. With each breath I jiggled, an interesting sensation. Finally, I was helped into shiny black boots with impossibly high heels and fabric that rolled all the way up to my thigh. The doctor stepped back to inspect his work.
 
“Wow,” one of his companions said, wandering over. “That is one hot clone.”
 
The other doctor elbowed him, hissing, “That’s a weird thing to say, man.” But his eyes, just like his friends, continued to flick towards my cleavage.
 
As expected, our first few steps in the heels were disastrous, and if it weren’t for our genetically enhanced bones and ligaments, I’m sure someone would have broken an ankle. However, thanks to our rigid martial arts training, our balance and muscle control soon had us doing our exercises per normal, except about seven inches taller. This time, we were outfitted with a small lens over our right eye that clipped behind our ears, alit with lights that mimicked the commands we were given throughout the day. Then, strangely enough, we were taken to a completely different part of the facility and placed in a dimly lit room with white plastic chairs. We sat and waited for what seemed like hours.
 
I kept my back straight and my face blank but my mind was racing with excitement. New clothes! A new place! An eyepiece! What was going on? Were we going to see even more of the facility? It had never occurred to me that I might get to see a new place, and now that I had, I was eager to go exploring. A daring idea entered my mind: what if I found a way to slip away and come back without anyone noticing? I wasn’t wearing my old clothing, so maybe no one would recognize me at all! I could go have a conversation with someone and practice my words and facial expressions! I could direct my gaze anywhere I wanted and not feel like I was being discovered, a nebulous and unshakeable fear.
 
Suddenly, there was a light in the corner of my vision. I stood automatically, falling into formation almost before I even knew what I was doing. Strange hands grabbed at my elbows and I was dragged to the exact middle of the line instead of my place near the end. I swallowed with apprehension, wondering if I’d somehow spoken my thoughts aloud, or if the doctors had learned to read minds. However, no more extra attention was paid to me, and as we entered a dark hallway I felt my pulse began to return to normal.
 
We were ushered into a large room with strange, glittering props and long cloth walls. A swell of noise came from behind the cloth, pierced melodically by a human voice amplified far beyond what I could imagine. My once excited mind began to stumble. I was unsure of this new place and now unsure of whether or not I was really enjoying this break from the norm. Suddenly the monotonous repetition of my daily life seemed soothing; I felt my hands shaking as I tried to make sense of the disembodied voice, the strange blank loudness like a giant creature that underlined the voice’s words, my new clothes. As happy as I’d been I’d now had my fill of excitement, and desperately wished for my hibernation pod. After a life of dulled sensations, I was finding myself over-stimulated.
 
Blinking green in the corner of my vision. We lined up for an exercise, once again reminding me that I was situated in a different place than normal. More strangers grabbed elbows and repositioned everyone until we were in a V formation, and I was leading it. I tried to still the quiet shaking of my hands.
“And finally,” the Voice brayed. “Let me introduce you to…Generation Nine!”
 
The cloth wall lifted, revealing that it wasn’t actually a wall, but merely a divider. I stifled a gasp at the vastness I felt before me, realizing that the droning beast I’d imagined was actually the sound of a large group of people resting in the same space. Fabric scraping fabric; hands scratching faces; muted coughs and whispers. A bright, merciful light coming from above us was somewhat blinding, so I couldn’t make out any faces or understand the true size of the room, but what I could see sent thrills of fear through me. Why were all of these people staring at us? Why were we dressed up, standing in front of them?
 
Blinking red and green simultaneously. Once again I was relieved at my automatic response to commands. My body seemed to be moving without me, going through the exercise smoothly and calmly, and I felt somehow that I didn’t live inside of it any more. As my leg kicked high into the air, I took in the strange smells and sounds, trying to think around the suffocating panic I felt gripping my chest. As I finished the kick, my foot slammed against the floor, much harder than I had anticipated, causing a large bang as I settled into the finishing pose. Then, applause.
 
“Yes!” said the Voice. “Yes, they are marvelous.” The applause died down, although now there was a wave of exciting muttering washing through the crowd. The Voice continued. “The future is here. With the promising success of Generation Nine, now we will be able to put human minds into the host body of their choice. Complete modification is possible. No more do you have to rely on the same tired old copies of your genetics; you can choose something taller, faster,” he paused for effect, “Sexier?” There was scattered laughing from the audience. The Voice seemed encouraged as it continued. “Of course we will still have the old genetic material on ice if anything is to go wrong in your shiny new host body, but that’s not likely to happen. This generation has an incredible healing factor, as well as resilience to disease, radiation…and even aging.” The muttering got louder. “That’s right,” the Voice said smugly. “Instead of getting an upgrade every twenty years, Generation Nine only needs one every eighty years.” He might as well have dropped a bomb. A wall of sound hit me, a combination of shouting, clapping, and standing. After a few moments, the noise died down.
 
“Think of the possibilities!” said the Voice delightedly. The audience hung on to his every word. “For those of us who need gender reassignment surgery, you could skip that step altogether! No more dangerous reconstructive surgeries every twenty years! Or, if you have a predisposition for a genetic disorder, you can leave all of your treatments behind! Maybe you’re simply tired of a year of therapy and recovery every twenty years…let’s be honest, the longer I’m here, the faster they seem to come!” More laughter pealed forth from the audience.
 
“We will be providing more information throughout CloneCon, but for the moment, I’ll take a few questions.” The Voice paused for a moment. “Yes? In the front row.”
 
There was a short screeching sound. “Yes, I’m Samuel Harding, from Global Enterprises.” This new voice was higher, and shook a little. “I have a question about the switching procedure. If the host body has an entirely different set of DNA, how does it not reject the new brain?”
 
“Excellent question, Samuel,” the Voice said smoothly. “It’s partially because of the healing factor, partially because of some new nanobots that our engineers have cooked up for us. I don’t know the details, but we’ll get Dr. Brian up here in a little while to spread some science. We are very hopeful about the risk percentage. The estimates show that the risk factor is smaller than five percent!”
 
More muttering from the crowd. “Yes, in the fourth row,” said the Voice patiently.
 
“Hi, I’m Mai Xing, from the University of Science and Technology in Colorado. When you say you’re hopeful, does that mean that you haven’t actually done the surgery on this generation yet?”
 
The Voice laughed, soothing the unease that rippled through the crowd. “Of course we haven’t, Mai. Even though we are optimistic about the patient’s successful transplantation, we want to be absolutely sure about our methods before we go to human trials. It would be unethical to needlessly endanger a life. After all, where would we be without our patients?”
 
Another round of applause went through the crowd. “Ladies and gentlemen,” the Voice said loudly, “Now it’s time for some quick Q&A with the lead scientist, Dr. Brian. But before he comes up, let’s give these hardworking scientists another round of applause for all of their hard work on these clones.” Thunderous applause followed, and the curtain was slowly lowered.
 
VI.
 
My ears were ringing as the applause fell over me like a rockslide through the fabric. I finally knew my purpose, the reason that I’d been grown in a tube and led around like a sheep. My body was a tool, my brain a placeholder for someone else’s.  Everything I’d done, everything I’d ever experienced had been in preparation for some – invader – who would force their way in and push me out. I imagined another person putting me on like a glove, shoving their fingers into mine. I’d served my purpose, and now I need to be used. My usefulness was in my death.
 
Stagehands wandered towards us, talking quietly. “We need to get them back into the labs,” one said, pressing buttons on a tablet.
 
“Yeah,” a young woman agreed. “Those psycho DEF CON weirdos could show up at any minute. Security is better this year, but still.” She shuddered distractedly as she took my pulse.
 
“I thought it got cancelled this year,” her partner said.
 
“Who knows for sure,” she shrugged.
 
They shook their heads disapprovingly and motioned us into a line. We almost made it to the door before a sequence of soft, high notes rang out.
 
“What’s happening?” moaned one of the stage hands. They began to stumble drunkenly, losing their grips on the wrists of the clones, who started stumbling as well. One by one, they all fell to the ground, moaning and vomiting. I was frozen in place with surprise.
 
A group of people stepped out from behind a tall stack of sound equipment. They were wearing an assortment ripped jeans, goggles, and large headphones, with colorful bandannas wrapped carefully around their lower faces. One of them, a tall woman with onyx skin and a shaved head, leaned over a vomiting stagehand and chuckled.
 
“How the hell did you do that, Pirate?” she asked, shaking her head.
 
“Dog whistles,” one of the men said, waving a fistful of small black objects tied together with rubber bands. “Set the frequencies to disorient normies. Won’t affect you if you got the latest DEF CON nanobot plugin.”
 
The woman shook her head again, laughing. “That’s not what those updates are supposed to be used for.”
 
Pirate shrugged. “Not what dog whistles are for either. Works, though. You mad, Crash?”
 
The woman shook her head. “Not at all. Is this the right clone? I’m guessing she got the plugin installed as well?”
 
“Yes,” chimed in a slender man covered in tattoos. “She’s connected to the network. Azouri successfully injected a batch of custom-baked nanobots when she was ‘born.’ We’ve been doing software updates for some time now.”
 
Crash nodded and stepped towards me carefully. “You need to come with us,” she said calmly, motioning towards her group.
 
I took a step back, fear gripping my chest. “Why? What are you going to do to me?” My voice was raspy with disuse, the words feeling awkward in my mouth.
 
Crash spread her arms wide, gesturing around her. “Not what these assholes were going to do, that’s for sure. Your brain will be staying right where it belongs.” She stepped towards me again, gently taking my hand in hers. “We really don’t have time to explain. We’ve been planning this for a long time. You have to trust me.” She pushed her goggles up so I could meet her gaze. Her large brown eyes wore a serious expression.
 
Hope blossomed in my heart, pushing away some of the fear I’d carried since my first moment in this world. “Okay. I trust you. Help me,” I pleaded, stepping towards her. “I don’t want to die.”
 
Pirate sighed, the air hissing through his teeth. “We recording this?” he asked.
 
“Yeah, I’ve got my cam on her,” a woman near the back said quietly, gesturing towards a ragtag bunch of hovertablets following behind them.
 
“Good,” Crash said, an edge of anger in her voice. “People need to see this, see a clone begging for her life. You see this, assholes?” She turned towards the floating camera as it focused on her face. “Clones are humans. Clone harvesting is murder, plain and simple.” She turned back towards me and motioned quickly. “Let’s go.”
 
I followed the strange group of people through the door into the hallway, gripping Crash’s hand tightly as she led me forward to freedom.
 
VII.
 
We walked quickly through the dark hallways of the showroom, narrowly avoiding patrolling security guards and wandering CloneCon attendees. We finally reached a large, locked door with a key fob reader.
 
“Anyone have a fob? Bodyhackers, I’m looking at you,” hissed Crash.
 
“I’ve got it on my RFID.” A young man waved his arm in front of the key fob reader and the red lights turned green. Crash flashed him a thumbs up and pushed the door open.
 
Suddenly, we were outside. Above me, an infinite blanket of blue threatened to crush me flat. I felt my throat tighten and my knees buckle; strong, hard arms caught me.
 
“Help me,” I moaned, screwing my eyes shut.
 
“Shit,” whispered Pirate. “Probably agoraphobic. Tank, can you carry?”
 
“Sure,” a gravelly voice behind me said. The strong arms lifted me up, cradling me against his chest. I pressed my face into his shirt and began to cry quietly.
 
“It’ll get better, sugar,” Tank said soothingly. A few hands patted me sympathetically as we walked away from the doorway. I kept my eyes closed until I was set down into a soft chair, a strap of some kind buckled across my chest. I put my hands over my face defensively as I heard a door slam.
 
“You’re in the van now,” Crash said, shaking my arm. I peeked around my fingers at her. We were in a large vehicle of some kind with chairs lining one wall and an assortment of technology lining the other. Candy wrappers lined the floor and the windows were painted black, thin slivers of light filtering in along the cracked edges. A mattress lay on the floor at the back, tattered sheets in a pile at the center.
 
“Welcome to the Fortress,” Crash said cheerfully. “This is where we live. Me, Tank, and Pirate,” she clarified. “Everyone else is staying at the casino. We’ll meet them there later. Tank’s up front driving.”
 
“What casino?” I asked tremulously.
 
“Caesars Palace this year,” Pirate answered, dropping into the seat beside me. “Different next year, I think.”
 
Crash waved her hand dismissively. “We can talk about that later. Do you know why we...uh…”
 
“Kidnapped,” Pirate said helpfully.
 
“Yeah. Do you know why we kidnapped you?”
 
I shook my head slowly. I was having trouble adjusting to being addressed directly by another human being. “I’m not sure.”
 
Crash sighed, running a hand over her shaved head. “This is something that’s been in the works for a few years. As I’m sure you’ve figured out, most people prolong their lives with cloning technology. Once your body begins to age significantly, you get your next clone ‘upgrade,’ which as you can imagine, kills the clone.” She looked angry. “It’s murder. There are better alternatives, like using advanced nanotechnology.”
 
“Like what I have?” I asked tentatively.
 
She nodded. “Correct. When you were ‘born,’ you had the standard nanotech that most people have; rapid healing, virus protection, cancer prevention, et cetera. We use better tech that keeps us young and eliminates the need for clone upgrades. Plus, it’s customizable.”
 
“Bodyhacker’s wet dream,” said Pirate.
 
“Exactly,” Crash agreed. “We had one of our people inject some of our custom-cooked nanobots, and since then they’ve been repairing the damage that the forced hibernation did to your brain, among other things. Did you ever feel like you were different from the other clones?”
 
“Yes,” I admitted.
 
“That’s why,” she said, a somber note in her voice. “The bots have been rerouting your neural processes, rebuilding parts of your brain that had never been used. They’ve also been multiplying to replace most of your blood cells, rebuilding your muscles with harder organic fibers, and so on. You’re practically a cyborg like Tank.”
 
“Cyborg?” I asked.
 
“Metal arms,” she grinned, slapping her bicep. “Didn’t you notice?”
 
I stared at her blankly, unsure of what to say. She shook her head apologetically. “Sorry. I forget that you’re new to this human interaction thing.”
 
I nodded slowly. “What now?”
 
She grinned again. “Now, we’re going to go low for a while, teach you how to be a human, maybe even let Pirate turn you into a bonafide hacker.”
 
“And then?”
 
“We take those fuckers down.” She flexed her fingers threateningly. “Clone harvesting companies tell the public to fear nanotechnology because the money’s in cloning. Why teach people to maintain their own bot systems when you could charge them thousands of dollars for a full body upgrade? It’s robbery, man. Robbery and murder.”
 
I nodded again, lost in exhaustion. This had been the most eventful day of my life, and I was beginning to feel it.
 
Pirate noticed my fatigue. “Mattress at back,” he gestured. “Can sleep for a while.”
 
“Thank you,” I said quietly. Crash undid my seatbelt and led me to the back of the van, helping me balance as the vehicle moved beneath us.
 
“What should we call you?” she asked as she tucked the sheets around me. I thought for a moment, then pointed to the metal badge on my chest.
 
“My name is 9C9.”