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You are tired, (I think).
And you are. Tired, that is. You have held your head up and your back straight and your shoulders back and you have spoken only when spoken to and you have jumped through every hoop they have placed in front of you. And so now you are tired. Tired from the endless negotiations and from days upon days upon days of wearing heels that are too tall so that you don’t feel so impossibly small.
You wonder when exactly it was that you decided to grow up. Because it had to have been a conscious decision. Your life is not a bildungsroman; your life is a chemical reaction, the disappearance of products as they’re being made pushing you farther and farther towards completion. Because your life has been a test, an experiment. You accomplish something and they (the scientists) say: “That is not enough, do something more, do something else, do something better.”
You would rather your life be poetry than equations and formulae, but the words don’t fit like numbers do. They’re malleable and soft and lack the structure you need. Stability builds foundations, like numbers and fact. Flowery prose has never done you any service, and science is all you know. You are an experiment, you are a subject, your name fades to a string of three numbers, a letter, two more numbers. You have to remind yourself: “My name is Rachel.”
But Rachel is not who you are. It is the name that has been assigned to you, much like the ID tag, 437L93, written on test tubes and slides and folders and video and audio tapes. You wonder if you ever really were Rachel, if the name had meaning, once, beyond its six letters.
You lose yourself in tapes of your childhood. To remember, to forget. You watch the younger you – you look so different now – squeal and laugh and smile. And, in the privacy of your cell (one of many you can choose to occupy – they’d be barbarians if they didn’t give you at least that freedom) you practice the sounds, the movements. Your lips, larger than they once had been, form around the words, saying things like “I love you, too, Daddy,” along with the child you had been. Maybe, once upon a time.
You wonder about the words. I, meaning something that you personally had decided – you are decisive, and you agree that this is likely. Love, which the dictionary defines as “to hold dear” or “to cherish.” That one is the kicker, really, and you find the sentence doesn’t even apply after the second word. But still you look on, hoping that something will redeem you. You, the direct object, in this case Daddy; it means there is someone worth claiming to love, and you try to remember how that feels. You cannot. Too, which implies that this emotion of love is repeatable, that it is not a single-output function, and if you cannot fathom giving it once, how can you be expected to distribute it multiple times? And Daddy, of course; you know what Daddy means – your father, Ethan. A scientist, though not one you’ve seen since childhood, not one in the sea of lab coats that swirls around you at all hours. Because he was Daddy and not a scientist – the two just happened to apply to the same man.
Love isn’t much of an experiment, you find, because it is not repeatable. You cannot replicate the results for measure or for study. You do not have Daddy to test this love against; you do not have Mummy to compare your love of Daddy to. And, supposing it could be replicated, there is no meter for it, as insubstantial and unquantifiable as an abstract idea such as love is. Love is measured in poetry, and you speak only in figures.
You are not a poet. You are a scientist. There is a poem that goes much the same way, something by a nameless someone on the internet. But you think how it cannot apply because it talks exclusively of love, which is something you cannot understand. And, scientific terminology aside, love remains unquantifiable.
And yet you don’t let yourself be curious.
A scientist’s curiosity, a scientist’s ache for the thrill of discovery: you crush it in your fist. You choose instead to stand tall and be rather than question. Because you are a tool, and you have immeasurable worth as you are. You are spokesperson, businesswoman, scientist. You are anything they need you to be. Because you do not question and you do not hesitate.
But you need to know your own history in order to become the paradigm. It turns out that you are the experimental group, not just a curiosity like Schrödinger’s cat – unfounded, unrepeatable. There is another, a woman who shares your DNA, almost to the letter, a certain 552C40. The files are censored, sensitive information redacted with thick black tape that you cannot see through, cannot pry neatly away with a manicured fingernail. You compose a formal request for access and frown when it is denied.
Who is 552C40? They have never hidden anything from you before. Anything you’d asked, they’d provided. Textbooks, tutors, travels, anything. And yet they deny you this woman.
You take your frustration out on your assistant circa bodyguard, Daniel. You’ve been involved for some time now. He doesn’t mind. And if he does, it isn’t his place to question you. He is beneath you.
You exert control, exert dominance. You are predator, he is prey, and you plan on consuming your fill of him. You kiss him, you command him to take off his pants, to sit down, to stand up, to turn around. You penetrate him with fingers in his mouth. A slap if he so much as reaches for you. You are in control. And your sexuality is something you control very strictly. It is your weapon, it is your tool. You are a sight to behold, a looming force in the bedroom, watching his erection with the barest hint of satisfaction as you do the fucking, not him. He may as well not even be there.
You demand information on 552C40 in the morning. You tell Daniel to fetch it for you. He replies like a slave with a submissive “Yes, Miss Duncan.” Because he is not of rank to call you Rachel. He is replaceable. You are not.
It is something you remind yourself of when you apply your makeup in the morning. Eyeliner in perfect, sharp lines. Lips painted a bold red. Eye shadow light, but enough to bring out the green in your eyes. You are irreplaceable.
During the day, you make inquiries, asking the right questions to the right people. You learn that 552C40 shares your birthday. You learn that she has managed to hide from them and their tests and prodding needles and endless barrages of questions. You learn that they wish this hadn’t been true. You learn that she was meant to be a point of comparison for you.
You still don’t know her name. They don’t care to know her name. You do.
You wish you possessed the rage to destroy your office – if only for the satisfaction of making others tidy it up again. You imagine what it would feel like to break, straight down the middle, a fissure appearing right through your core. You wonder if seismographs could measure the trembling in your fingers after you text Daniel: Update pls.
He does not respond, and the hours tick by and you find your infinite patience wearing thin. You wonder, as the sun sinks below the horizon, if 552C40 is someone like you. Though you don’t know exactly what you mean by that: like you. Does she feel love through more than a series of memorized lines because the memories have long since faded?
But the real question: why do you care?
You already know you are special. Science was your foundation: editing your genome like red pen on the first draft of a mediocre poem. (Like the one crumpled on the floor of your closet, leftover from when you were nine years old; like the one folded up beneath a snowglobe on your bookshelf, from when you were just shy of eleven; like the one hidden in the page of your dictionary, creased from being opened so many times to study the definition of love, from when you were sixteen.) You are a genetically modified organism, the sort of classification that applies to corn and wheat and fruits that are, for example, coated in excess gibberellins so they might grow bigger. The next generation (the filial generation, a la Gregor Mendel) is, by consequence, bigger. Better.
But there is no filial generation in your particular pea plant experiment. You are barren – some side-effect of the poking, prodding, red-pen reassignment of your DNA – you will never be a mother. You’re not certain that you would have wanted children, that you would have been a good mother; you were, after all, raised by lab coats and test tubes and red pens. You know what it is like: the endless testing, the questionnaires, the surveys, the experimental drugs, the vaccinations, the constant presence of watching eyes that strip you down to an object. And you would not wish that on a child, filial generation or not.
Still no response from Daniel. You drum your fingers on your desk, passing through meetings in a haze, checking your messages more often than you should. You schedule a massage for the evening after dinner – for a distraction. You’ll cancel it later.
You’re at dinner. Table for one, glass of Bordeaux, plate of filet mignon. The bubble of laughter from the table next to you drifts through the air. You do not feel lonely, but you are alone. There is no room inside you for loneliness. The empty space takes up too much.
A text. Sarah Manning.
You pay your bill and leave, heading to your apartment where Daniel is surely waiting. In the back of the limo, you look her up by name in the company database. No matches. You dig deeper, tapping into FBI and Interpol. Criminal record. Of course. Two counts of petty fraud, one count assault. The mug shot won’t load. You resign yourself to waiting. But you are patient – or so you tell yourself.
The ride in the elevator to the top floor, the walk to the end of the hallway, time stretches on between the limousine and your penthouse. Your keycard in the lock. Your heels announcing your presence as you pass from carpet to hardwood, draping your coat across the back of a chair in the dining area. The lights in the main room are off.
You don’t call out. But you also don’t step out of your shoes.
Light spills out from the open door of the bathroom. You hear muffled cries, like when you used to scream into your pillow at night. Those first months after you lost your parents, when the tears would no longer come and you were so impossibly angry. You wonder, in passing, what it’s like to feel anger. You don’t remember.
You round the corner.
“Daniel,” you chide, “This is not how you treat a guest.”
Sarah – for it must be her, though her head is drooping and her hair is in her eyes – is tied up in the shower, wrists bound with zipties up above her head. There’s a gag tied tightly around her mouth; it might once have been her shirt, for she doesn’t seem to be wearing one. She’s standing there in a black bra and too-tight jeans, chest heaving such that you can see the definition in her abdominals. Her arms strain, flexing and relaxing so that she can adjust her feet, so she can tug at the bounds on her wrists; her biceps stand in sharp relief.
At the sound of your voice, her head jerks up. It’s like looking in a funhouse mirror. She shares your face, your eyes, your nose – though blood drips from one nostril to pool on her upper lip. She has your natural hair: thick, dark brown. It would probably fall straight if she wasn’t in such a compromising position.
There’s a small gash on her forehead that’s oozing down her temple.
Daniel turns around, eyeing you with raised eyebrows. “Rachel,” he says. “Your itinerary said –”
“My itinerary is subject to change,” you interrupt. He dares not speak over you.
You clasp your hands in front of you, circling closer to him, though having eyes only for her. You check for other injuries, find bruises on her forearms in the shape of fingers, one on her ribs. But those are fading.
Her eyes track you as you circle to the side, flitting between you and Daniel behind you. Wide, wary. Like an animal. She shrinks back when you step closer. Her knees quiver, and she adjusts her arms again.
“Release her,” you demand, not even deigning to look at him. “This is unacceptable.”
You reach forward to gingerly remove the gag from the woman’s mouth – the woman who looks like you.
“Who the bloody hell are you?”
Her accent, thick, lower-class English – probably London area. The words are hurled free with a violent force and she strains against her bonds, leaning forward into your face, not so afraid now that you are here, now that she can speak.
“I could ask you the same, Sarah Manning.”
You watch the power her name has over her. Watch as it hovers above her head. You are the scientist, you are the experimenter. You make note of her reaction, commit it to memory. Watch her body sag slightly, watch her hands go slack, watch her immediately lurch out towards you, anger replacing fear. Watch the direction of her eyes, still flickering between you and Daniel who is now climbing into the shower with a knife in hand. Smile as she kicks out at Daniel’s knee, taking the majority of her weight on her wrists for that instant. Daniel deserves to be punished.
Daniel is half a second from reaching out, from striking her. You pluck the knife from his hand and step between them. “Control yourself,” you warn, “or leave.”
You notice for the first time his split lip, the bruise on his cheekbone, his eye swelling closer and closer to shut. It amuses you. This tiny woman tied up in your shower, this woman who shares your face down to the mole on your cheek, was able to strike a professional, damage him, make him bleed. Perhaps you should fire him. You will deal with that later.
Daniel stomps out of the bathroom, his footfalls heavy like an ill-behaved child. The door to the penthouse slams shut behind him. And you and your sister – for she must be your sister – are left alone.
“I apologize for Daniel,” you say, slipping the knife easily in the space between her wrists and the ties, listening to the bonds snap. “He has quite the temper, and you seem to have offended him.”
Sarah scoffs. “Yeah? Well, he can bugger off.” When both her wrists are free, she drops slightly, barely catching herself in time not to slump against you. She rubs at her raw and bleeding wrists, but keeps watching you.
But she doesn’t watch you like the scientists, codifying and classifying your movements. She watches you like she’s digging deeper, peeling back layer after layer of what makes you you. She reads you like a book of poems, pouring through the words explicit and implicit, red pen and all. She snatches her shirt from your hand, shaking it out and slipping it over her head – it’s just a loose tank top, nothing worth the aggression.
And you can see that she’s fighting not to be curious, not to ask the question that’s burning behind your teeth, under your tongue (because surely she feels the same). You can also see how she looks around you like you’re an obstacle – now that she’s unearthed the depths of the soul you probably lack. How she shifts her weight from foot to foot until you’ve backed out of the confined space of the shower.
“Would you like a drink?” you ask, because it’s polite, not sure exactly if you expect an answer or how long you can avoid an explanation.
“Bourbon would be great,” she drawls, clambering out of the shower herself, following you into the kitchen. You can feel her eyes wandering. Checking exits, probably.
You pick up the phone and she blunders, “What are you doing?”
“Calling the lobby,” you reply. “I don’t keep bourbon on hand, but I’ll be sure to order you up something nice.” You turn away from her, focusing on the desk clerk, Troy, and your desire for “your most expensive bourbon.”
Sarah treads quietly, despite the large boots encasing her feet. You don’t hear her move, even on the hardwood. Part of you screams witchcraft. Part of you knows better and considers weight distribution on the heel and the ball of the foot. Simple physics.
She’s the one to speak first. “What is this?” she asks, and you turn.
There is no object for “this” to apply to. She’s not holding anything, she’s not gesturing to anything. It’s pronoun-antecedent disagreement – more like a chiasm than a simple slip of a his or her or its without an obvious subject. But you brain knows what “this” means; it means you: you and her.
“We’re twins,” you say, keeping your tone clipped, because cordiality is all you know, “born of science. Genetically modified in vitro.” You could explain more, but you gather that she wouldn’t understand. Wouldn’t care about the beauty of the science and the ins and outs of the be-all-end-all red pen that crashed through your collective genome.
She eyes you with that quiet scrutiny, taking in your posture, your haircut (as severe as the rest of you in a sharp, blonde bob with not so much as a single brown hair visible). She takes in the stillness of your hands, loosely held together against your body, takes in the silver varnish that coats your fingernails. She takes in the tightness of your calves from a decade spent in heels – the way you’d watched her biceps and abdominals contract before. You see her cataloging differences, much as you had, vacillating between them and the jarring similarities.
You notice that you have the same unconventional smile: pronounced canines, short and square lower incisors. You had rebelled when the scientists wanted to file down your teeth, to give you the “perfect smile.” It was probably the only fight you ever gave them. Because your mother didn’t have a perfect smile either.
“Parents?” she asks, in a choked voice.
“Deceased,” you respond evenly.
“Children?”
“I cannot conceive.” You wonder why it is so easy to keep emotion from your words, while hers spiral closer to entropy with every syllable. Perhaps it is because you cannot feel. Perhaps it is because you have dissociated from all feeling – for feeling must dwell somewhere
You make a note to research Antisocial Personality Disorder further when you have a moment. It would be an explanation, though possibly not a correct one.
Sarah’s mouth drops open, and you see her fingers splay against her thighs. You register this as shock, surprise, astonishment, perhaps even indignation. But you wait until she clarifies.
“I have a daughter,” she explains, glancing down, up, towards the door, but not at you. “She’s eight now.”
That space you always thought was empty ignites. You are struck by how unfair it is that this woman, this poorly-designed copy of you, could have a child. And you cannot. And again, you wish that you could break and destroy the way that you know she does. You know it because her past actions suggest it, you know it because Daniel’s condition proves it. You wish you could be a destructive force. Or even just a mother.
And you didn’t even have the option.
She notes the tension in your jaw – as subtle as it is – and her shoulders inch upwards. “Look, Rachel, right?” When the name sticks, she continues, “I don’t know how well this playin’ sisters thing is gonna go for us. You’ve got, well – and I’ve already got a family.”
She can’t even compose a sentence. You wonder if she speaks figures the way you do because she’s obviously not a poet. You wonder if she knows as many languages as you (five) or if her net worth is even half of yours (in the multi-millions). Glancing at her again, you decide that no, she does not. She is merely a tramp that fell between the cracks.
The wild type: untested, unmanipulated, unaltered. Because this makes you the atypical mutant type with your infertility, presumably resulting from the experimental procedures that peppered your childhood. But surely, surely science can’t have failed you. Surely it is Sarah Manning’s fault. Because blame must be placed.
This daughter she has should have been yours. And for the first time since you learned that emotions would get you nowhere, when the scientists frowned at you for your tears and your screaming, when flinching away from needles and being afraid only made it hurt worse, you feel angry. You feel angry and you have lost control.