The Alphabet Project, part 3: "Clone"

Yes yes yes, I know I was writing "Chest", and it still isn't finished. To be honest I've lost patience with it to a certain degree as I've come to realise that it isn't terribly good. A written and extended version of a video I saw on YouTube? Hmmm. Great one, Pete. Anyway, I've been dying to write this one for ages now, so here, at long last, rough and unedited and exactly as it was after I finished typing, written in about twenty minutes in my classroom after a day of teaching, is "Clone"...

***

The bananas were the start. When it was decreed that they should be a certain length, a particular colour, and have a very specific curvature and maximum girth this was the start of it all. We had ubiquitous bananas, each the same, almost as if they had been pressed from a template and sprayed with a garish shade of paint, most likely called “custard fantasia” or similar.

Then our money changed. Governments were keen to abandon currencies which had been used for generations, switching to token-like coins and weirdly fake-looking notes instead. It took a while, but gradually every nation succumbed, and over time people grew accustomed to the new money they carried, saved and spent.

Over the years, cars appeared to be designed in such a way that they all looked the same, one having echoes of another, and somehow we all changed our tastes too, so a glance at any street or motorway would reveal silver car following silver car, the shades of one copying those of another.

When did we suddenly develop this need for conformity, for standardization? Whenever it happened, it was the start of it.

Maybe, just maybe, this is the ending...

Last month they announced there would be a standard design, shape and operating procedure for something else entirely, and immediately they started to roll out the changes. It’s a worry, and more than a little bizarre, as this time they’re doing people. Everybody needs to be the same height, weight, measurement, colour and so on. We all need the same hairstyle – cue transplants for the bald – and the same clothing. Our DNA is being altered, so we all have the same genetic makeup. It’s odd, walking down the street, seeing so many people who look and dress in exactly the same way as one another, especially when they’re in a queue, or arguing. In a way you can’t help but think there are mirrors all over the place, a bit like living in a huge kaleidoscope. Sure, it makes buying clothes much simpler as they’re all the same in colour, shape and size, and medical treatment is easier because everyone reacts the same way to drugs, but there’s something else besides.

For some reason, somebody somewhere decided that the standard appearance for a human being should be mine: my face, my hair, my body. It’s eerie when I see somebody who has been “done” in the street, and we stop and stare at one another for a while, almost forgetting who is the original and who is the clone, and on more than one occasion the person before me has reached out to touch my face, shedding a tear as they realise this living mirror is how they are, slowly losing the memories of who and what they were.

Gradually the process is being performed on everybody, vast surgeries being equipped in sports centres, arenas and school halls, people being treated, clothed and sent home in the course of a single day. They turn on the television of an evening, see themselves as newsreaders and singers on talent shows, and in silence eat the same meal as their neighbours, who eat the same as theirs.

I go to bed at the end of the day and my wife asks me to kiss her goodnight. I look down into her eyes, the same as mine, and feel the thin scrub of stubble on her chin, the same as mine.

It’s hard to love her anymore.

***

(Written in Manchester on 28th July 2009)
(C) 2009 Peter Lee / A Nasal Hair Production

All comments gratefully received as always. Next up: I might finish "Chest", and post the video which inspired it, and after that there will be "Deep"