Fantastic Metropolis

But for all the clones he had turned out over the past three years, since he had begun, he had never seen one of their dead bodies before tonight. Oh, he had heard of the fates of a few. Murdered by a gang, struck by a hovercar. He imagined most starved to death or froze. He had heard that several had been taken into homeless shelters. It always intrigued him to wonder where his creations had disappeared to in the vastness of the city. Once he had been thrilled to see one of them still alive after a year, eating a bird in a little courtyard park. The thing had looked up at him without recognition, its flesh permanently dyed a vivid red and spiral brands raised on its forehead and both naked pectorals, like some lovely demon. Even if people did not venture close enough to see his branded signature, even if they never knew Drew’s name, even if they thought the thing was a painted madman, a mutant, an alien being or a true demon, they would marvel at it, and even if Drew never saw them marvel, he was gratified knowing that they did. Whether people gazed in admiration or horror, he knew they gazed, and in gazing at his creations they gazed at him, their creator.

Even though he turned them loose, he was always connected to the beings; though he disowned them, he owned them each and every one.

Coffee in hand, he moved around the partition to check on his work in progress.

In aquarium tanks atop a work bench and against the walls here and there, indistinct organic forms hung suspended in gurgling solutions of violet liquid. Some were embryos, though in one tank he had grown a copy of his head alone like a living bust; he meant to offer it for exhibition just like this to a local gallery, hooked up to life support in its womb-like container. He knelt, said, “Hello, Robespierre.” He tapped the glass, watched the eyelids flicker as if from a dream. He had suppressed growth of hair, eyebrows and lashes to keep its resemblance to a minimum, but for the sake of impact had left the thing as human-looking as possible.

More sloshing; he looked up to see a swell of violet fluid pour over the lip of the main bath, run down its side. He sighed, rose, took up a mop as he went to peer into the tank he had dubbed “Narcissus’s Pool.”

Drew couldn’t help but grin at it. At her.

Where he had suppressed hair in the disembodied head, he had encouraged it here; long dark hair stirred lazily around the clone’s face like a sea plant. He had not distorted or marred her face, had instead achieved great change through skillful genetic work. It was not a surgical sex change, but something more subtle and true. This was, for all intents and purposes, an actual female version of himself. Even Nature in Her genius could not achieve such a thing: an identical twin of the opposite sex.

He rolled up his sleeve, slipped his hand into the bubbling violet fluid. Took one smallish breast in hand and kneaded it, as if he were molding the breast out of clay. He ran his thumb over the nipple, coaxing a reaction. It took several minutes, but at last the nipple began to harden. And so, in his way, did Drew. He grinned more broadly yet, and watched her eyes move in REMs beneath their thin lids. Soon he’d awaken this sleeping beauty. And he did make an awfully fetching woman, if he had to say so himself.

He let his eyes trail down her body to the flaring of her hips, then to her shadowy patch of hair. Back up to the breasts which he had kept on the modest side, resisting the temptation to make them more bountiful. He didn’t want her to be a caricature.

Yes, she was lovely. It was a pity that he had already ruined her mind. What kind of woman would he have been in that sense, he wondered?

Though he had not, admittedly, obliterated her mind to the extent that he usually did in his creations.

 

IN THE SECTION of his loft that he thought of as his living room, on the wall above the sofa, in fact, Drew had suspended the one clone which he constantly kept on personal display. It had a human enough head, but he had suppressed the formation of eyes, for he did not want anything to be perpetually gazing at him as he went about his work and his life, or dozed on his couch. But the thing did grunt or wheeze, sometimes. It was hooked up to a life support unit hidden behind the couch. A keyboard was on a side table; when the rare friend visited, Drew could amuse or tease them by hitting keys to inspire movement of the limbs or the face of the crucified thing—mostly just electrified muscle spasms and jerks.

Its chest was opened up in two wide sheets like a spread cowhide, the flaps of a dissected frog belly, spiked to the wall. The ribs showed through a translucent membrane, as did the nest of fat bluish intestines.

The first time he had seen the thing, Sol had said, “Drew-man, I think you must really hate yourself, to humiliate your own body like this. It’s masochistic. You create yourself so you can destroy yourself. It’s a kind of suicide, isn’t it?”

Drew had laughed. “It’s art, that’s all. I just choose to use flesh as my medium. People always have. Tattoos and brands, scars and piercings, circumcisions and clitorectomies. Flesh as canvas; only it hurts less to do it to a clone of me.”

“Yeah, see, that’s it—a safe way to punish yourself.”