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Narcissus,

                   or The Tears of a Clone

I

            He.  It.  He was missing that divine spark, there was no question.  Whatever could be projected upon a sheep or a pet, imagining that they had feelings and were capable of love…when faced with this new spectacle one couldn’t help but wonder if animals had been faking it all along.  Try telling that to a woman with cats.  With T-shirts of cats.  Their replicas didn’t seem to lack affection or behave any differently.  Their hobby was my job.

            I was hired to fall in love with my clone.  To do all I could to make it love me in return.  Romantic, passionate love: displays and everything.  Everything meaning everything.  I don’t know what I did to merit this assignment; I was told that I fit the profile.

            I was introduced to my double on a brisk February morning.  February, so that as I came to know my…self?, the months would warm and blossom into spring.  Presumably so would love.  These lab bound test-tube types are all weepies at heart.  The result, however, was hardly TV-movie material, hardly Capra-corn or Spielbergian sentimentalism but rather: Shavian with worse dialogue.

            We met, in a brightly colored, softly lit room with light jazz piped in (the theme from “A Summer Place”), and spent the majority of ten minutes looking one another over.  All kidding aside, it was jarring to see myself as others see me.  To see my hair parted on their right, not as reflected in a mirror.  To see the mole on my left cheek, more prominent than friends and lovers have assured me it is. And when he smiled I nearly leapt out of my skin.  It was as if the mirror beat me to my next move.  He smiled for the same reason I was about to, that objectively we looked unquestionably thin, almost skinny, though I had always doubted it.

            I guess I was given the chance to say no.  I don’t know how long a clone takes to germinate or to develop or to educate, it’s not my field.   I met my clone nine months after agreeing to the program.  For all I know he came about when I did.  The government has samples of everyone’s DNA so it could have happened at any time.  They get it from the womb.  He wouldn’t talk about his…coming to be.  There were subject matters that I was well versed in that he was unfamiliar with and vice versa, I presume this was done on purpose.  There were others on which we shared passion and, dare I say it, love?  Not love.  Fervor.

            On my salary.  That was a large determining factor.  Dreams though I have, and self-reliance and work ethic, it came down to salary.  Being financed for a whirlwind romance.  I could do anything I ever wanted to which would presumably be everything he wants to do as well.  And the prospect of love.  Perhaps enduring love, though no doubt destined to end badly.  Who could resist such trouble?  I suppose I was warned that he was emotionally unavailable.  A smidgen of a sociopath, I’m afraid.  Dogs and ducklings require protection; this necessitates attachment to a certain extent, or continued attachment for hunting purposes, etc.  I am able to take care of myself, so he was a bit of a no-strings type.  Not dangerous, still very considerate and polite, just uninvolved, unattached, not demonstrating love. 

They told me this a week before the meeting after setting me up in a nicely upgraded living situation at taxpayer expense.  I asked delicately if this was uncommon among able-bodied replicas not requiring protection.  The representative said no.  I ventured to ask whether those providing protection to the weak seemed to exhibit any attachment to their charges.  Consideration, he said, not attachment.  It appeared this was my big chance, my informational session, when some questions would finally be answered.  Do they know they’re lacking something?  Intellectually?  When asked they seem to, though they can’t say what; that is perhaps what accounts for their increased considerate-ness, it offsets any extreme misanthropy that could result from a deficient arbitrary love of life and mankind. 

Why me? You fit the profile.

II

Profiles aren’t what they were.  A profile today is a computer-compiled list of statistics, habits, predilections and larks compiled from the moment you require one slap from the doctor or two.  Anything you may buy for Sunday dinner cross-referenced with everything your grandmother ever did.  This was a warning light for me.  Let me explain: despite profiles micromanaged to a pin, when the government briefly made a pass at matchmaking the results were not so much disastrous as unbelievably tepid.  Then government technicians were found to be using the profiles they had access to in order to meet loose women.  System clearance was pumped way up and profile results were never used in any semi-public way again.

Back with the representative: I asked if his profile matched mine.  In many ways.  Not in others.  Sometimes surprisingly not.  I asked her if he had shown any predilection for violence.  She consulted a small small screen and answered, not particularly.  I asked if he showed a predilection for vanilla or chocolate.  She consulted and answered, vanilla.  You’ll have to ask further questions of him directly.  One more question…what do I call him?  She paused, consulted, shrugged, you’ll have to ask him that.  What do you call him?  We call him by your name.

A somewhat gracefully aging 34 year-old white lapsed catholic homosexual stands across from his double.  People often date those who look like themselves, but on our adventures they encouraged one of us to grow facial hair and the other to wear a hat or sunglasses at all times.  I speculate that perhaps that same day in another room a woman roughly my age was meeting her replica.  Perhaps thousands.  I know only what I’ve been told (not much).  I’m certain that some must have been assigned the clone of somebody else, perhaps the replica of a deceased wife.  Maybe they pulled the old switcheroo, some woman thinking, “this isn’t the man I married,” some child saying, “that’s not my mommy!”  To see if the replica would love.  We humans can love anything.  A rock.  A chair.  A collection of fibers in the form of a bear.  Even things that don’t exist.  Especially.  Would a replica love even their offspring?  Would they use their tear ducts when experiencing loss?

I was fortunate to be in possession of a name adaptable to different personalities.  Being born Robert I was a Bobby in grade school but transitioned to Bob in college, finally graduating to the full usage of my name.  I’ve often thought that Elizabeth is the kindest name for a girl. So many names to take on as they suit you: Elizabeth, Beth, Betsy, Bess, Liz, Liza, Lisbeth, Lizabeth, Eliza, Betty and Bette.  She could be any or all as they take her.  Sometimes you are not the one to decide: rarely does a Robbie ever mutate into a different iteration.  I myself was fortunate, fortunate to transcend Bobbyism, to never be a Rob or a Robbie.  I remember how difficult it was to imagine John F. Kennedy being called Jack, or that Jack Nicholson being called Jonathan.  Or John F. Kennedy being called Jonathan.  Or Nate, or Nathan, or Johnny.

It made things easier that he wasn’t a Robert, he was a Robbie.  Robbies are more boyish, more curious, more mischievous, easier to love and more difficult to possess.

Is he homosexual?  That should have been my first question, being so pertinent to my assignment.  It would have been a telling clue that he showed no preference one way or another when he was intent on satisfaction.  Anybody would do. Slight preference shown for men.  I’d say it’s due to higher sex drive and general superior moral laxity.  No sexual diseases on the government’s watch, no need to enforce heterosexual marriage to further overcrowd our planet, play ball!

He spoke first.

“Robert, I presume,” He smiled at the corner of his mouth ironically, the way I do when I feel a cliché has been unavoidably called for, resigned but unapologetic. 

“And you are Robbie,” I observed quite astutely.

“I suppose I am.”

“Do you know why you’re here?”

“The Dating Game.”

The resulting romantic fiascos of the profile match attempts had been broadcast; but did Robbie have my memories of them somehow or had he been shown them separately because it was recorded that I’d watched most of them?  Must have been the second, but his feelings about such a yawn-inducer and slight ironic embarrassment at having been party to such an unentertaining spectacle felt in line with my own.  And he didn’t seem to blame me for being the cause of his required viewing, though if that was because he wasn’t told why he was being shown them, he chose them himself, or he didn’t count those wasted hours as of too much value and derived the same satisfaction at seeing the experiment end so unengagingly as I did, I couldn’t tell.

“Don’t think so much,” Robbie chided me, “isn’t romance supposed to be about spontaneity?”

“Something I’ve never been good with, are you better?

“Somewhat.”

“I’m thinking of a number between one and ten.”

“Oh, stop it.  You’re the one growing the beard, you know.  I’m too youthful.”

“Handsome devil,” I remarked to the handler escorting him back to the vehicle.

III

It was remarkably easy to go about without anybody suspecting.  After all, to the best of my knowledge nobody was looking for it.  First thing we went and got ice cream.  As reported, he preferred Vanilla.  But he got a cone instead of a dish.  This was the first of several points of divergence between us that for the most part didn’t mean a goddamn thing but cumulatively I suppose you could argue environment over heredity on several points, including ice cream.  Who can say what colors his guardians painted his room when he was a child, if he was a child.  He couldn’t say, it was classified, and we were unobtrusively recorded for study at all times.  I didn’t have too much problem with that.  All of our activities were recorded anyway, whenever we made a purchase or passed through a doorway.  Presumably your inner life was your own.  What difference if there was a visual record.  What difference if they broadcast it?  The profiles knew all my activities; there is nothing capable of being hidden so there is nothing to hide.  Adultery was not reported to spouses, for example, though before tighter restrictions were placed on who could obtain access to the profiles there was some blackmail.  I could be reasonably certain that my foibles and exploits would not be cut together and broadcast, but what difference?  I was involved in a noble pursuit.

I know there is a description you are anticipating.  Dreading, anxiously awaiting or simply piqued I don’t know.  For the sake of delicacy and decorum I won’t count the ways, but not out of consideration for those who find such acts an abomination due to the shared gender of the participants; maybe out of consideration for those who find it so due to the participants shared genetic structure.  It cannot be denied that is a valid point, at least for debate.  I did not find it to be objectionable.  I assume it was known I wouldn’t; after all, I fit the profile.

In brief, it is known that there is an unavoidable hierarchy in the sexual practices of the male heterosexual.  Pitcher and catcher. Quarterback and Wide Receiver.  I promised not to be vulgar.  I cannot vouch for whatever practices may have been employed any hypothetical lesbian traveler across town, but in my bed my doppelganger had more of a yen to dominate than to submit.  Read into that how you will: typical male, not willing to put himself in the most vulnerable of positions, not willing to sacrifice for the enjoyment of others, of one special other.  Not willing to suffer for the one he loves.  Okay, enough with the fey stuff.  I must admit that it does make me blush to speak of it, though I suppose I would rather it didn’t.  I don’t know.  Conversely, Robbie never had any such reservations.  Though unlikely to display affection hand in hand it wasn’t uncommon for him to publicly indicate his lustful impulses. 

There was a carefree manner about him as he hopped between tiendas on beaches; me bearded, him shaded.  I think he hadn’t ever worked as I had.  I was enjoying my time even more for its being a vacation, but many worries about my future took hold often and wouldn’t let go until the second or third glass of whatever it was that night.  Consequently I developed a small romantic poetic pathetic drinking problem.  Despite all this the object of so many of my preoccupations was well ahead of me in cups, yet somehow it could hardly be called a vice in him.  Nobody who saw us together would suspect, and not because of outward appearance.  I suppose you could say the difference was that I was careworn.

I don’t want to paint the picture that Robbie was some sort of club boy.  He was considerate of me and not just in a patronizing manner.  If I hadn’t flattered myself that I was special to him I couldn’t have felt what I did.  I know that isn’t true.  Did he have emotions?  He had the results of hormones in and out of balance.  Endocrines, adrenaline, seratonin, testosterone; the humours: bile, phlegm, blood and whatever.  He had moods and he had tempers; he displayed these as unexpectedly and often irrationally as many do, but not so much more so that my evaluation of slightly sociopathic becomes more kind.  It remains dispassionate when I don’t.  Knowing that if he were the one here writing these recollections he wouldn’t have so much trouble sorting out impression and digression from observation and journalistic record makes it easier to allow myself my own time.  It makes me feel the importance of my wasted steps, my wasted efficiency.  It makes me feel human.  The loving care of digression.

IV

I cannot say he was someone to whom all joys were one, though that can be explained by fluctuating endocrines.  Preferences can mean nothing.  You may make an arbitrary choice and repeat it due to habituation until changing it from fatigue.  Many of those tried and true devotions I have established over my lifetime, some through intense effort and dedication, were shared by him.  But who can say why?  Who can say that he arrived at them by the same path I did?  An example: the mindless task of running.  I began after I finished university for several reasons and none at all:  to stay active; to stay fit; to give my mind a time to rest without sloth; to possibly encounter adventure and romance in places I wouldn’t otherwise be; to increase the probability that something random and memorable would occur in my day.  It was a ritual about routine and about routine’s opposite.  I had many routes to run and my decision of which to use or whether to use one at all could be arbitrary or predetermined, could be changed at the last moment in transit to create a new route, or to conform to an established route as I passed one by.  He seemed to follow this same pattern.  He would run with me at times, or one of us would break off, or go opposite routes, even break off halfway after agreeing to stay together.  We would meet at random and either join up, wave a greeting, or pass each other by as strangers.  One difference: he actually enjoyed running, while I never did.  He did not seem to enjoy driving, and neither did I.  We often had to draw lots to choose who got to not drive.  We had several games we’d play to determine such things and we’d choose one at random, or for certain things we’d always play the same game.  We liked the same foods for taste, not always the same textures.

Was the sex different without mutual love?  During, I can’t honestly tell.  Though I have revealed myself capable of brushing vulgarity I expect credit for not diving headlong in.  That refers not to the fact that I will abstain from explicitly enumerating sexual activities, but to the tawdry asides that I will find it irresistible not to inject due to, what?  Continued discomfort with my own sexuality?  Perhaps some.  More a lack of the willpower required to avoid cheap laughs.  Suffice it to say that the only time the question arose en flagrante, something else failed to arise.  That was the last time I tried to directly mix philosophy and fornication.  After, there was a difference and we’ve many felt what that is.  It is oftentimes manifest in a quick exit from the bed, followed by loud urination and finally by a question completely unrelated to the matters at hand such as, “Would you like to go to the sculpture garden tomorrow if it doesn’t rain?”  There is a way the preceding actions can be performed with a fear of intimacy that is endearing and there is another where the problem is apparent.  How long did it take me to figure it out?  No time at all, or several months.

V

My job involves a lot of math.  The math courses were kept around to develop ordered thinking, but there was a stressed relation between proofs and philosophy; between imaginary numbers and abstract thought.  Somebody has to know what these machines are up to: it is my job to bridge the gap between an equation that can be done simply by a machine of some hundred years ago and an implication.  The majority of my reports read like PhD term papers, a vacillation of pros and cons of what can be accomplished simply by pressing a button and running a program.  Programs and sequences, and I provide some higher-ups with what may or may not happen if they push that button.  Do they push it?  I am not told.  Do they read my reports?  I don’t know.  Do they probably, in the event they read it, use selective parts of it to justify what they were going to do anyway, even if only to themselves?  Odds are.

My math was in service to my job, not that as a student I altogether avoided notions such as numerology, but the magical becomes banal in time.  Although Robbie’s discernment of ramifications and predestined results was on par with my own, the area to which he applied his mathematical skill was far aground.  Not having a practical application at hand he applied it to Astronomy.  For some ridiculous reason this, more than anything else, made me fall in love with him.  Romanticizing a sky I was wholly unfamiliar with as a vision quest rather than what it was: an enormous equation.  The most time we were ever apart was when he would study the sky and I would occupy myself elsewhere.  Sometimes I did research relevant to my work but mostly I hid and watched him slaving over pen and paper.  I have no knowledge of Astronomy so it was that much easier to mythologize what he was doing.  Naturally, the ways in which we were different were far more interesting than the ways in which we were the same.

My love did not come about as a result of intense identification or symbiosis, it was not because of long talks or gratifying copulation, it was not even the simple result of continuous proximity.  Put simply, I had no choice in the matter. I loved him because I had no choice.  I can’t say if I loved him because I love all humanity or if I did so because I’m capable of loving a block of wood.  Maybe I loved him out of vanity and slew him out of jealousy. 

Of course, it is also possible that he was an abomination in the sight of God.

VI

I suppose events could have turned out differently.  I could have made a call, said it was enough, presented my own impressions and I would have returned home to find Robbie gone and no further mention made.  That is not how it seemed from my perspective.  My eyes were clouded, I was entangled, I saw no other ending.  He gave no indication that he saw the same finish, while I became more and more set upon my course of action.  But he knew and I knew, I believe now, that we had this date from the beginning.  In the middle of the night we awoke at the same time, dressed silently, and walked to a place where we could see the stars. 

This was my own conceit, but he knew where we were going.  When we arrived I dawdled, looking at the sky while he waited patiently.  Wordlessly, I walked behind him and shot him in the back of the head.  He crumpled to the ground and was still.  I returned home and slept.  In the morning I returned to the scene of the crime and found no trace.  I was not contacted by any agencies or detained.  I returned to work that morning and have continued my life as it was.

I try not to look into the mirror too often.  I find myself there more and more.  I wake up looking into my own eyes.  I keep waiting for my reflection to beat me to a smile.  It doesn’t have a soul.