Clone Village

Chapter 2

At the door, the masses of girls are slowly filing out. Along with the alarms blaring, there's a quiet, softer beeping that indicates girls scanning their wrist bar codes at the door so that they'll be accounted for. Slowly and silently, Etta and I work our way outside. Others are talking, and the murmuring rises from the group and bounces off the metal walls, reverberating in the open space above our heads. Eventually we make our way outside.

We stand in rows, waiting for everyone in our dorms and the others to come out. I can see other people across the hard packed earthen expanse in front of me, the seas of gray masses undulating slightly as people move about. When we've all made it outside,  the buzzing of voices slowly dies down until all I can hear are the breaths of the people around me, and a few distant coughs. A voice on the loudspeaker bids us to turn to the east, where our country's flag is waving in the morning breeze, and to stand with our hands clasped behind our back while our national anthem plays. There are no words that we know of, but the music sounds mournful and almost bitter, an impression made worse by the metallic buzz coming through on the old fashioned speakers. The song ends, and I'm just about to leave when the doctors show up. I'd forgotten. Today is a check-up day.

There's quite a few of the doctors, with about five per dorm house. They all wear long white coats and have unfeeling expressions. And every single one of them is a woman.

They begin to work their way along the rows, using their medical devices to check our temperature, pulse, and blood pressure all at once with a quick scan across our foreheads. Then they scan our bar codes, and the data is sent into immense documents that keep track of our well being. Every once in a while, people are taken away when their physical is not up to standards. We never see them again.

The doctor steps in front of me, and I automatically stick out my wrist. I've been doing this ever since I can remember, and it's a reflex now. She swipes the scanner across my head and takes my code. Her gray eyes never meet mine, her mouth never flinching from the stern line it's set it. And then she's gone, off to the person in line next to me. They treat us like specimens to be tested, like cattle being inspected for the overall health of the herd. But then, to them, we're no better than cattle.

The whole process of scanning everyone doesn't take more than twenty minutes, and then we are dismissed to go back inside for breakfast by the voice on the loudspeaker. Etta and I find each other in the crowd and begin the slow descent to the dorm basement, where the kitchen is.