Two become one

Written by Anakin McFly

met

Through shaded eyes the room is muted into greys and gentle shadows; its harsh, antiseptic light grows softer in the dimness. On the bed, the other stirs, his body battered close to death, his mind fogged with disorientation eased by nurturing smile. Playing the hallucination, the non-existent fantasy, his fresh newborn perfection grows surreal by the reality of weathered flesh and seasoned bone. He sees him, impossible phantom, like a dream just out of reach; struggles to grasp and comprehend the foreign self-extension, but he slips away in silence to leave him in tender mechanical care.

spoke

Rope whipping the ground in cruel snapping strokes of his frustration; bottled hate unleashed on patient floor, worked muscles straining to feel real its bodied identity. The other shuffles by, his dazed gaze trailing across the features on his face, over his stubborn physical exertion. He takes on the role of ghost now, and steals, in puzzlement, away.

The pound and thwack of feet and rope take on a deadening rhythm. He's an automaton; man-made; inhuman; robot; a program housed in a parody of human form-

The other is back. He drops the rope, throws punches at a bag. Resentful fists fly in angry blows. The other tries to speak. Lost in routine, he barely hears. He doesn't want to hear. An invisible barrier stands erect in cold avoidance born of tension. Words fall limply on deaf ears. He tries to block the intruding voice, the pleading voice, familiar voice. Drops short replies with perfunctory curtness and wishes he would go away.

Handshake: denied.

played

Ball traces path from him to him; from practiced hand to amateur counterpart. Adjusting nets and boundaries. Drawing lines, setting limits, carving selves.

touched

Teeth grit in violent anger, fingers digging deep in shoulders. Forceful grips with sudden strength in desperate struggle for control; from new perspectives he makes contact with his arms, his back, his hair. They are both his and yet a stranger's, both so known and yet unknown. Wrestles back his own identity from a weakened, ageing self. Delivers slamming blows, cathartic throws; the other falls, defeated.

discovered

Mortality.

knew

Packaged selves in subterranean metal boxes laid in rows. Slumbering in static rest: do clones dream of repeated sheep? Personal belongings sealed in bags: attachments manufactured, built to order, uniqueness churned out by machine. Life stories written in duplicate. Shared pasts, shared lives, shared destines,

shared

Outdated pain of love now lost, homes not to be re-entered. Kin rendered stranger; imagined kin, by-product of false fantasy. Lives out of sync sunk in illusion; willing delusion, reinforced. Thoughts of green grass and rays of sun, of rich soil moist with morning dew, of buildings yearning for the sky and people living out their lives in heterogeneous paths alone. Unreal, the shifting mindscapes lead him deeper in the known deception. The moon is all he's ever known; the moon is his, his native home.

felt

Warm skin against his brushing fingers, soft concern in anxious voice. Together in unspoken thoughts they ponder their existence. What is death, and what is life; what is love, what's sacrifice.

died

Memories entwine in bottled air in the quiet of reminiscence. The other's time comes to an end; his laugh grows dim, his smile grows faint within his suit of foreign skin.

And two

become one.

departed

He does not stir the newborn's sleep. His journey is his own.

"We're not programs," he tells the face of eager emotion writ on screen. "We're people. Understand?"

The naive smile is hard to read; he knows not if it understands.

But for himself: he hopes he does, he hopes he has, as his transport speeds towards the Earth, that magic place he knows from dreams, that alien land soon to be home.

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