by Amy Lilwall
The hissy scream got closer; Bonbon and Jinx peered through the bars again to see where it was coming from. Jinx opened her mouth to yelp and Bonbon smacked her hands to her face and looked through her fingers. The biggest vacuum bot Bonbon had ever, ever seen crawled across the floor between the two walls of cages. It swayed from side to side, side to side as it made its long, shiny path and searched with its mean red eye, sending out funny tubes and brushes every now and again to reach the bits it couldn’t get into. Bonbon stared as it touched the end of the corridor then, making a different breathy noise, turned itself around and blew on the shiny path all the way to the other end.
‘Oh, I forgot to tell you; Benjie has decided that he wants to be an accountant when he grows up. Yes! Funny, hey? I thought you’d like that. I said to him, you must talk to Auntie Lyon about this; I’m sure she can tell you how to go about it. What’s that? Yes; although his reading age is below average, but his guide told me it’s normal for that development phase. And thinking about it, I was the same right up until I was about eleven, and then I just got it! Some kids are like that, aren’t they?’
Bonbon was sure she could hear the cages opening and closing one by one. She strained her eyes to get a better look and managed to glimpse a red shape. It seemed to be getting bigger and closer. A movement in the cage opposite caught her eye. One of the littlers was waving at her to do something.
Bonbon shrugged; what was she trying to say?
Jinx had noticed as well; she pulled on Bonbon’s arm and signalled for her to go to the back of the cage. Ah… That was what the waving littler wanted them to do. But the noise was getting nearer and Bonbon wanted to see exactly what that she-one was doing.
‘I know! The problem with yellow is, even if you have the tiniest hint of red in your skin, it makes you look like a strawberry. I’d stay well clear; or you could take a pigment pill? What? Who cares if it’s not summer, you could take one that just gives you a slight glow, you don’t have to go orange.’
Suddenly, two black shutters cut off the end of their cage so only a line of light could get through. They blinked; the shutters hmmmmed towards them. They turned and ran to the back of the cage. ‘No!’ Bonbon yelped, pressing herself into the wall. Just as she felt the wobbly hmmm tickle up her belly the shutters opened and were sucked back into the walls. The floor in front of them was wet and smelled like clean tiles. A face appeared at the end of the cage. Big brown curls tied up in a red scarf. The eyes seemed to be covered in blue paint. ‘Eye-shadow,’ said the old littler, inside Bonbon’s head. They couldn’t see the mouth.
‘Newbies!’ Short lines jumped from the corner of each eye. A finger tapped their square clippy thing. ‘Lyon! I’ve got two new ones,’ she said. The eyes flicked at the screen then back again. ‘Bonbon and Jinx! Hi! I’m Moira. You’ll be seeing me a lot.’ Both eyes squeezed together for a second as if each one were giving a quick smile, and the mouthless head turned and opened the next cage. ‘Gosh, there have been so many during these last few days! Well… Apparently, they’re not supposed to communicate, but they’ve found out a way of doing just that. No, I mean communicating with their owners; they’re allowed to communicate with each other. Um… Well… They’ll go through some memory thing… Some kind of treatment I think, then they’ll be put into the room I told you about, you know the one where they can’t speak? And then… I’m not exactly sure… What? When I’m speaking now, you mean? Yeah, they understand most of it, I think…’
Moira appeared at the cage opposite; she pointed a remote control at it and the black shutters travelled to the back. She opened the door and squirted something on the cage floor before scraping up bits of flake and shit and toenails that made a little ridge just in front of the door. She vacuumed up the ridge with a sucky tube attached to a bright red box on her back. She closed the door, hit the clippy square and moved on to the next cage just as the shutters were reopening.
Bonbon turned to see if Jinx was watching but she lay on her tummy, her head rested on her arms and her eyes closed. She looked around her feet; the floor was already dry. Strange. The tiles at home took much longer to dry. Jinx would often slide about on them. But that was before that one time when some of the liquid got into her mouth and she stayed in the basket for three days all shaky and sweaty. After that she would hide in the plant or the toilet box whenever the floor was wet. Bonbon crawled next to Jinx and watched her for a minute or two, dabbing at the floor with her fingers to be sure it was dry, before lying down beside her. She’d get up and listen to what the others would have to say once Moira was gone.
* * *
That awful day came… They had known it was coming.
At least he went in his sleep, Isabel thought to herself. He was, after all, almost twenty years old. Isabel knew that cases like this were extremely rare, for… well… ‘that particular race’ to live to such an old age; but that was no comfort. She couldn’t form the words, even inside her head… Dog, Labrador, Jasper… That horrid vision of him lying on his own paws, tongue out and eyes closed, always seemed to envelop those words. She knew as soon as she saw him in the living room that morning; he didn’t look peaceful and asleep as dead things are supposed to. He looked dead.
None of them could make the words to talk to each other without their faces crumpling, without the vision of the dead thing filling the spaces where the words were supposed to be; even the pen that scratched across Watty’s notebook made horrid words like ‘putrefying’, ‘decompose’, ‘rotten’… So they all skirted around the subject, ignoring the empty cushion and the missing tap-tap-tapping of clawed paws on the parquet every time the fridge was opened. There was an echo in the house where a song used to be; a draught where there was warmth. Three brains would trick their owners into thinking that a head popped up from behind the sofa when they came in through the front door, that skinny feet lolloped across their beds in the night and that the pressure of a solid, dog-smelling object brushed against their legs as they sat at the kitchen table reading the paper. They were amputees, scratching at their missing itchy limbs.
‘I should have loved him more,’ Isabel whispered to herself as she lay alone in her room; knowing there was no cure for old age, but more cuddles and games might have, at least, made him feel younger.
* * *
Susan lay on the sofa, her knees hooked over the arm and her feet dangling into nothing. One slipper had fallen onto the floor, the other clung to her toes. Every so often, she’d draw her feet up towards the ceiling as she asked herself what would happen if some sort of sharp-toothed animal was loose in the house and had caught sight of her feet. Inevitably, thoughts like this would jump to something else, then something else, her feet lowering back to their original position and the back of her mind would again be focused on the bowl of chocolate raisins that balanced on her belly.
She squinted at the TV as the picture seemed dimmer than it had done the last few times. It must have been because it was daylight, just about; and the late afternoon sun fought with the TV to claim the living room. She could have raised her hands and clapped them three times; that would have brought down the shutters, but that kind of movement would have made the bowl of raisins wobble dangerously. For the past fifteen minutes, she’d been telling herself that the TV would eventually win its battle against the sun; it would start to get dark soon enough.
Two men in brown suits sat opposite each other, a pot plant and a glass table between them. They leaned back in their chairs, their legs crossed the same way and their elbows following the angle of the chair arm, like two people who’d just eaten a big lunch. As they took turns to speak, their hands wiggled and waved, limp at the wrists; their arms too lazy to punctuate what they had to say.
‘I suppose many people are wondering why Billbridge & Minxus was allowed to take over after Dr Hector’s rapid, erm, decline.’ He paused for a moment, then: ‘Tell us about Isabel.’
‘Well,’ the other replied, ‘Isabel was the first successful ca
se story of the Mini Human Phenomenon. She agreed to collaborate with Dr Hector.’
‘Wait… How did she agree? Did she use sign language, or—’
‘No, no,’ the other interrupted, smiling. ‘Together they drew up a contract, which she signed with her own hand. She had full-human capacities, you see. She could speak and write.’
‘Really?’
‘Mmm-hmm.’
The interviewer leaned on one elbow and traced the outline of his mouth with his index finger as he thought about this. ‘But the new race was designed to be limited with regard to communication and, um, ability?’
‘Ah! Well, this is the greatest mystery. Nobody knows the exact procedures that were used to bring her into the world. That, in itself, is another story…’
‘Apparently, it was a great scandal.’
‘No.’ The interviewee coughed and crossed his ankles. ‘I prefer to use the word “story”.’
A nod. ‘Of course.’
‘Anyway, given the circumstances, the fact that she even came to be was miraculous. The obvious conclusion is that her egg hadn’t been manipulated before the point of implantation; a theory that was backed up by Dr Mark Hector, given that he’d been working for years to produce a being like her and hadn’t been able to. He was so inclined to believe that Isabel was the unlikely result of nature that he plunged into a thorough investigation and found that her embryo had been taken before the manipulation of the nucleus.’
‘So she was really a, er, a natural miracle?’
‘Nobody really knows the truth… But the fact that he believed she was put her in a very dangerous situation.’
‘Why was that?’
‘Well, because Dr Hector, who’d always been fascinated by how she came to be, made several clones of her.’
‘What did he plan to do with them?’
‘We think he was trying to harbour egg cells from the clones to continue his quest to make a smaller human race; he wanted to find out what would happen if he combined the cells from Isabel with cells taken from a full-human; would he get the result he’d been looking for all these years? We can only assume that he failed as, shortly after Isabel died, he shifted his attention back to full-human embryos. By that time, the original problem of overpopulation seemed to have, somewhat, come off the boil.’ The speaker’s eyeballs rolled downwards and gazed at the pot plant for a moment. ‘When the embryo scandal did come to light, it was made public. But the Isabel scandal, um, story was kept rather hush-hush…’
‘Are the clones still with us today?’
He shook his head. ‘No. The Isabel clones were, unfortunately, not destined to live for very much longer. Many didn’t make it past their fifth or sixth year out of the lab.’
‘And so, after a while, the company decided to pick up from where Dr Hector had left off?’
‘Well… The same but different, some might say. Still adopting, without having to search very far for the adoptees.’
‘Many would find it surprising that you were allowed to do this.’
‘If we hadn’t, we would surely have gone out of business. You see, a lack of unwanted children in the world is something that we were, of course, very happy to be presented with. But a lack of children full stop: that was certainly something that Billbridge & Minxus couldn’t foresee. When scientists started to perfect the skills that had, ironically enough, been suggested by Dr Hector in order to cover up his embryo scandal, we approached the authorities about a potential collaboration.’
‘Yes! This was a phenomenon in itself, people just weren’t having children.’
‘When we released our first model ten years ago, the average age for new mothers was forty-five, the average age if I might clarify; and seventy-eight per cent of all offspring had only-child status. That’s to say that those who were not strictly only-children had at least twenty years between their own age and that of their nearest sibling. Our “Little Love” scheme is primarily in place to give children something to love so that the next generation of adults will be less individualist and more open to procreating.’
‘Wouldn’t you agree that it’s ironic how many elderly people have been attracted to the scheme? Given the principal intentions of “Little Love”.’
‘No.’ The other uncrossed and re-crossed his legs. ‘This was all foreseen. It’s only natural that older people should want, and be entitled to, something to love. Especially those who live alone.’
‘And are littlers ever removed from families or elderly owners if they fail to look after them properly?’
The other leaned his head so far to the side that it was almost on his shoulder. He searched the ceiling for his answer. ‘It’s rare because… Well… You have to remember that choosing families has long been our main occupation at Billbridge & Minxus, so, I guess what I’m trying to say is that we’re rather good at it.’
‘Stop!’ shouted Susan. ‘Rewind! Play!’
‘And are littlers ever removed from families or elderly owners if they fail to look after them properly?’
‘It’s rare because… Well… You have to remember that choosing families has long been our main occupation at Billbridge & Minxus, so, I guess what I’m trying to say is that we’re rather good at it.’
Hmmm. Could Susan interpret that to mean that if an owner had been chosen by the company, it was because that owner was believed to be fit and capable? Maybe. She would hold on to that thought and tell Hamish about it when he got home. It could add to Mrs Lucas’s case… But it wouldn’t help Bonbon and Jinx. ‘Play,’ she said.
‘And how are the new beings made? Can you assure us that there’s no cloning or embryo manipulation going on here?’ the interviewer chuckled.
‘I’m afraid, in the nicest possible way, I’m going to have to ask you not to associate those words with the processes at Billbridge & Minxus.’
‘Ah!’ said the other, holding both his palms up and bowing his head. ‘Of course, forgive me. Let me ask that question again so that there can be no misunderstanding: unlike the cloning techniques and embryo manipulation used by the-previous-company-whose-name-has-since-been-discontinued, Billbridge & Minxus collaborated with scientists who’d come across a new way of creating human cells; would you care to elaborate?’
Oh God, thought Susan as she plunged her hand into the bowlful of raisins; Hamish would love this.
‘Of course.’ He coughed and leaned forward ever so slightly. His lunch was obviously only just going down, greedy bastard, thought Susan. ‘The cells are taken from the donors and coaxed into an embryonic state. However, before they reach that state, scientists are able to manipulate the cell structure so that it is different to that of the donor. The result cannot, therefore, be classed as a clone.’
The interviewer wrinkled his nose for a fraction of a second. Then smiled and went on.
‘Some people might ask why Batch Eight, the first model, were all exactly the same if they were not… I mean… After the worrying techniques used by the-company-whose-name-has-since-been-discontinued you can understand what sort of completely wrong conclusions some people would jump to.’
The other slit his eyes. ‘Quite.’ He leaned back in his chair again. ‘I must be clear here, they would naturally have grown to look very different from each other; it was Billbridge & Minxus that manipulated their appearance so that they would all look the same. Giving them the same sex and aesthetic was simply due to the fact that we were trying to limit the variables that could potentially affect behaviour over time…’
Susan heard the front door slide back and looked up. ‘Hi,’ she said.
A Hamish-shaped lump sat on the stairs and started to untie its shoes with sharp yanks.
Oh dear; they’d changed mood again. But fuck it; she’d really had enough of being such a misery guts when he was down in the dumps. Last night he’d been lovely to her when he’d found her crying in the kitchen. He’d even got his ScreenJotta out. Maybe she should take a leaf out of his book. ‘What’s wron
g, babe?’
Hamish put his hands over his face and exhaled into them loudly, hoping that the heavy breath would drag his thoughts of Emma out with it. It did. But as soon as he had no more breath left to breathe out, the air in his head regathered into shapes of her. This was shit. This was terrible. He’d tried staying at work until well after his last client. He’d tried going to Shepherd’s on the way home. He’d tried sitting on the driveway for twenty minutes, and now he was back in the house. With Susan. When all his brain would let him do was think about Emma.
‘Is anybody in?’
He pressed his fingers into his ears. He should never have phoned her, he knew he should never have phoned her; in fact, that was the last thing he’d said to himself before leaving the house: ‘You know, Hamish, it would be against your better judgement to phone her.’ He’d obviously totally lost the plot… And now he’d gone and stirred everything up and there would be no putting it right again. He’d arrived at the office extra early, which meant lying to Susan. He’d acquired the phone number from Sandra, making her suspicious, and then he’d told Sandra that Emma was coming to the office and shouldn’t be charged – making her doubly suspicious – and then he’d fucked everything up with Emma. ‘You are a reasonable man, Hamish!’ he heard himself saying out loud although his voice sounded all muffled and underwatery because his fingers were still stuck in his ears.
Susan’s hand waved in front of his eyes. He unblocked his ears.
‘Did you just stick your fingers in your ears so you didn’t have to listen to me?’
‘To hear you, not listen to you. I mean… I’m sorry, Suzie, I’ve had a funny old day. I, um…’ He scratched his cheek and followed his hand with his eyes back to its hanging position between his legs.
Susan nodded; pictures of yesterday evening with the cuddle and the ScreenJotta and all that complicity, seemed less bright and lovely. No, no. She wouldn’t cave. She would let him be sad for a change. ‘That’s okay. Everyone has bad days.’ She nodded, tilting her head to the side, waiting for the rewards for her patience to trip from of his mouth. Oh Suzie, I don’t mean to be gruff with you. Then he’d stroke her cheek or say something like: I’m sorry, let’s go and enjoy an evening together. Or most probably: How are you feeling today? Any word of Tweedledum and Tweedledee?