The Copies aren’t meant to be aware when the machine begins extraction. They’re meant to lie dormant and pliable. Dreaming.

When you first blink your eyes open as a Copy, you should be greeted by the sight of chiffon curtains swaying in a gentle breeze. And beyond the window, a lake bubbling away, winding playfully amongst a gathering of lush green trees, their boughs home to sky blue songbirds whose voices ring across the sky. There’s a warmth on your cheek from the morning sun.

“Good morning to the rest of your afterlife, dear,” a kindly-looking scientist dressed as a nurse has been trained to say to you.

She’ll pad lightly across the fuzzy carpet with a tray stacked with croissants, chocolate twists, cinnamon rolls, coffee, a pitcher of fresh milk, you name it. Whatever you loved to eat at the time of extraction. She’ll place it on the rustic coffee table in front of you as you sit up straighter on the pastel patchwork couch. Pulling a tweedy blanket over your knees, your tummy will rumble in anticipation. You’ll smile at her. She’ll smile back. And then you’re helping yourself to breakfast.

You won’t notice her in the corner with a taser.

You’ve been programmed to block that out.

If, however, you start to chew a little slower, the worm of a thought squirming around in the corner of your mind, wondering what she meant by ‘afterlife’, how you got here, how you supposedly died, and maybe you better get some answers from her because she seems kind, and you turn to her with a polite-

I’m afraid your journey would end there.

I’ve seen this play out enough times now from the safety of my hazmat suit. In this diguise, my face stays hidden. Which is a good thing because someone would eventually clock that me and the Copy have the exact same face.

The hazmat cleaning team sweep into the Showroom. We divvy up our tasks between disposing of the defective Copy, and resetting the space for the next one. We do this in complete silence. We aren’t colleagues. We are cogs. I learned this quick the day I knocked one out, stole her suit, and shoved her into the Vat.

Picture the now-dead Copy, stripped down and dumped on a metal stretcher that rattles along clinically-pristine corridors, hazmat team in tow. We turn the corner, and at the very end waits a bolted metal door. Next to the door hangs a wooden sign, the kind of wood that makes you think of caramel and butterscotch, with the word “Kitchen” painted in delicate cursive. Some scientist’s sick idea of a joke, I presume. The metal door makes one loud beep as it slides open, and we roll the stretcher inside.

Make no mistake, the Kitchen isn’t a place for cooking, or for science. It’s where Copies go to get eaten by the _thing_ that lives in the Vat.

A large, circular hole takes up almost all the space in the Kitchen. It is filled nearly halfway with a glue-like substance that makes a hissing sound when it churns against the walls of its container. If you imagined the way three-day old vomit left to dry in the sun looks, you’d know what this looked like. This is the Vat. I’m at the foot of the stretcher, so I roll it as close to the lip of the Vat as I dare and crouch down. A wet noise, like curdled milk leaking from a shelf, lets me know the _thing_ has moved most of its mass over to us. It doesn’t have eyes, but I feel it watching all the time.

I place my hands on the wheelbase to steady the stretcher, while the other hazmats raise it high from the other end, forming a slide. As the defective Copy slips off the stretcher, I steal a glance at her stony face - so like mine - and turn away from the sight of her naked body plummeting into the Vat like a ragdoll. I don’t even have to look to know that the _thing_ is already coating itself across her body, beginning the slow process of drying her out, breaking her down layer by human layer. I clench my jaw as hard as I can in the safety of my suit. If I don’t, I know I’ll scream.

That would have been me. That day, I had woken, just like every other Copy. But unlike every other Copy, I had woken as they were extracting me. Had felt like my skin was being seared clean off, the most mind-shattering pain numbing my brain, like a fireworks display made of a million tiny needles puncturing my senses.

It took everything I had to eat a croissant without throwing up, to smile in the charmed way I knew they needed to see to believe that all was going according to plan.

It was only after they’d brought to my cell and I knocked out that hazmat, using her suit to roam the corridors at night, that I finally pieced together what this place was.

“Core Memory” was founded by a team of scientists who promised total memory recall for people who could pay enough to store their precious memories. How it worked, was that any time you - the Original - had a milestone memory you wanted to keep - an especially joyous moment in your life, like telling your partner “I love you” for the first time - you could come over to the facility, pop yourself on their clinic bed complete with hotel collection sheets, and take a nap. That’s all you had to do.

The scientists would do the rest. They’d come in, hook you up to their extraction machine, and after some alarming beeping which you wouldn’t hear through the reinforced glass and calming lofi beats, an exact copy of you would be sucked right out of your body. _How exact?_ You might ask as you peruse their information booklet with increasing interest. Well, entirely exact. From the way your right foot seems larger than your left, to the way you know just what to say to make your Mother laugh. Through some scientific magic that I can’t explain, the Copies are programmed to never question their existence. They are led, like living, breathing backup versions of your favourite electronic device, to their cells to live out the rest of their days.

Until they are requested for by their Original. When this happens, the corresponding Copy is retrieved from their cell, guided to the Kitchen, and promptly shoved into the Vat. The _thing _in the Vat only takes around an hour to feed on the Copy, as I said before, layer by human layer. Until all that remains, because it’s fussy that way, is the brain. A scientist then scoops it out from the Vat, jams it into a titanium blender, presses another scientific button, and pours the chunky liquid into a tall glass.

It looks, and maybe tastes, like a goji berry smoothie.

I’ve been watching the door at the end of the top floor corridor for months. It’s always closed. But on the few occasions it’s opened, a scientist brings one of those brain smoothies through the door. So you can imagine how my brain jolts wide awake today when I reach the top floor and the door is wide open.

She must be there. The Original me.

Then again, what is ‘original’? If we are all a collection of thoughts and feelings that are true to us, and we are constantly changing throughout our lives, then as far as I’m concered, I am just as original as She is. A past version of her, yes, but her all the same. And if something were to happen to her, would that mean the latest Copy becomes the new Original? If all the other Copies were to perish all of a sudden, and She was also dead, would that make me the Original?

I have to speak to her. Let her know that we’re alive, we’re conscious. That I feel things as deeply as She does, that I share all her joys, all her smallest, most intimate moments. Maybe she’ll let me go free? Maybe she’ll ask me to come live with her, and we’ll lie to Carrie at work about being long lost twins separated at birth. That would send Carrie into a hiccuping fit, god she is so weird. And we’ll listen to our favourite music and we’ll go for walks in the evening together and be sad about life being so brief together. We’ve always wanted a sister. Maybe this is our chance. I know I would listen if my reflection started talking back at me. I really do believe in the goodness of people. I don’t want to be here any longer, watching myself get eaten by a monster over and over again. And above all else, I want to know. I want to know which milestone memory I represent. What was so beautiful in my life I deemed it worthy of subjecting myself - or a version of myself - to such pain.

I take a breath, steady my nerves, and head for the open door at the end of the corridor.

I don’t notice the nurse in the corner with a taser.