I remember hearing in a discussion about what to do when someone needs a blood transfusion or organ transplant but there’s no donor available, someone threw out the idea of taking the needed material from death row inmates. The casual assertion that live should be preserved and that the sick and dying should be saved, but at the costs of those that are "Non-People" stuck with me. It made me think about what other populations would be acceptable as "Non-People" for whom their suffering would be justified in order to save "Real People."
Vale disliked long batches of white noise. The constant ticking of a clock or the humming of the lights above tended to irritate them. It would pick away at their patience like a tiny jackhammer as they dug their nails into their palms and struggled to keep still. How is it that every waiting room in the universe had the same three cheap plastic chairs with terrible back support and one leg that was always just slightly shorter than all the others. It was forcing them to sit leaning heavily to one side so they didn’t hurt their back, and they had no idea how much longer they’d have to wait. That was the price they paid for showing up thirty minutes early, but they had assumed that a new employer would value them showing such dedication to their new career, or something like that. Transfer requests and applications sometimes felt more like spinning a roulette wheel and praying than anything that could be effectively strategized or studied for. They sighed and turned their head up to the little TV in the corner to distract themself.
The broadcast was muted, which means that they still had to deal with the consistent white noise in the background, but it at least gave them something else to focus on besides the empty room. Either intentionally or by unlikely coincidence, the TV was displaying an ad for the company that Vale is currently sitting in the waiting room of. Even without the audio, it was easy to tell what was happening. Images of sick people in hospital beds, mostly children, flashed across the screen. They coughed and sputtered, holding the hands of loved ones as they look up for what might be the last time. Their bright innocent eyes and frightened faces were obscured by tubes in their mouth and nose. In a bold, white font, text scrolled across the bottom that listed symptoms and chances of multiple types of organ failure. The camera then cut to smiling kids leaving the hospitals, clutching stuffed animals and surrounded by the joyous celebrations of relieved loved ones. A post-surgery scar on their chest was the only thing that showed there was ever anything wrong with them. They had nothing to be afraid of, now that they’d received a transplant from the corporation’s custom-designed organs. In the corner, the logo of a smiling heart stitched together down the middle appeared alongside the name of the corporation: Vivi. Then the necessary legal disclaimer began as it always did on medical commercials like this. As the advertisement fades out, Vale wondered if it was going to loop back to the beginning again or play something entirely new. They didn’t get a chance to find out, however, as they were suddenly brought back to reality by the sound of a voice to their side addressing them.
"Hey, you’re the new transfer, right?"
Vale looked up, having been so distracted that they hadn’t heard the door open. The world came back into focus as they were yanked from their own thoughts and dropped into reality again. Standing across from them was a woman they’d never seen before, her neutral expression gave little insight into her personality or thoughts on the present situation. Her face was stone, revealing nothing except for an excessive fatigue marked by dark rings under her eyes. Her badge read ‘Citrine’ followed by an engraved golden emblem emblazoned with the stitched-heart symbol that branded her as an employee of Vivi. A flash of familiarity flickered through Vale’s mind, but it quickly faded away. They got the sense that they’d seen this woman before, but they just couldn’t place where.
"Uh, yes, I am. I was told to wait here until someone comes to get me. Are you the overseer here?"
Citrine shook her head, her eyes glancing to the side for the briefest moment. If this was meant to be a sign that they messed up in some way, she didn’t affirm it verbally.
"You don’t think they’d roll out the welcome party for every new employee, do you?" She responded, her words scathing but her tone just as bland as ever. It didn’t even appear like she intended this to be a direct insult; just a fact about how things were around here. "No, I’m not your boss. I’m just the person they ordered to show you around. Assuming you make it past the first day, you’ll be introduced to a few of the people who actually make this place tick. Until now, I’m just a supervisor who’s here to verify that you’re a good fit for us. And that you’re skilled with the blade, of course."
"Is that an issue? Everyone accepted here is licensed for harvesting. I wasn’t aware there were people who would lie about things like that", Vale asked timidly. It was hard to get a read on Citrine and they were worried they’d accidentally upsetting her.
"You’d be surprised at the amount of people who walk in here with a permit and then immediately damage the products." Citrine explained with a small grimace like she’d seen such things happen more times than she could count. "Companies like this pay harvesters well, so desperate amateurs who fail their certification will do anything to make it in, especially if they’ve come on difficult times. If you look in the right places and ask the right people, you can fake a license. Then, of course, they show up to a place like this and graze the wrong artery and there goes years of resources down the drain. Stuff like that will get you fired and fined if you’re lucky and spending time in a cell if you’re not. So I really hope for your sake that you are who you say you are."
She said this like she was warning them, giving them one last chance to back out before they ruined their own life. Luckily for both of them, Veil was confident in their legitimacy and all they did was nod in response. This answer was good enough for the woman as she walked over to the metal door closest to her and scanned her badge. A small red light on the doorframe turns green and she took the handle in one hand, silently gesturing to Vale to follow her.
"I hope you’re not bothered by strong smells. This place is essentially a slaughterhouse when you brush away all the prestige and feel-good ads, but you’re prepared for that, aren’t you?"
She asked. Vale nodded again as the creeping feeling of recognition grew stronger. Citrine opened the door and leads them inside.
She was not exaggerating when she compared the atmosphere to that of a slaughterhouse. The dark metal walls encasing them fit irregularly with the strong stench of raw meat and chemicals. Other workers were occasionally visible darting between the rooms, some of them carrying boxes and some of them dressed in full surgical gear. None of them paid Citrine or Vale any mind. They seemed to recognize that an orientation was happening and were doing their best to avoid interfering.
The mechanical whirring all around them merged with the clanging of their feet on the grates below to form an almost musical beat. Wires and cables ran across the floor, snaking in and out of the walls and connecting to the base of the massive cylinders lining the dim hallway. These cylinders also acted as the main source of light, casting an eerie blue hue over the tunnels as they walk.
Inside the cylinders, Vale could see the half-formed bodies of clones lined up in a clean row like meat in a deli. Some of them were young, formless things with stubby limbs and the remnants of a tailbone still curled up behind them. Many of them are much older, their faces indistinguishable from that of a normal human’s, except for the unnatural gray tint to their skin from years of soaking in preservative fluid. Vale was silently grateful that all their eyes were closed. They don’t think they could handle dozens of lifeless gazes staring into their soul as they walked through the hall of suspended corpses.
Citrine must have noticed their discomfort because she spoke up again.
"They’re just raw meat, kid. It’ll be no different than a butcher cutting into a cow or a pig. You don’t have to be afraid of them."
The first bit of emotion crept into her voice. She sounded exhausted.
"I’m not scared." Vale protested, keeping a few steps behind Citrine despite their words. "I just don’t like how human they look."
"They don’t even have a fully functional nervous system. Even if we did let them out of the tubes, they’d barely be considered alive. They would move and breathe and maybe speak a few words, but they’d be completely helpless. They wouldn’t be able to bathe themselves, clothe themselves, or even feed themselves. They’d be completely reliant on someone else their whole lives."
She said it like she was trying to convince them of something.
"Vivi is efficient. It’d be too much of a waste of resources to grow a normal brain along with a body, especially since it’d be basically vestigial."
"I know that. I’ve read the articles." Vale mumbled that last part under their breath, not wanting to take any risks with the temper of their supervisor. Citrine didn’t even look back at them as they continue to walk down the corridor. Vale tried to focus on the ground ahead of them instead of the bodies in the tubes, afraid of what they’d see if they spent too long staring at the figures frozen in time. Out of the corner of their eye, they thought they saw a finger twitch. They knew it was just their imagination, but it frightened them all the same.
After nearly a minute of silence, the emptiness sparked a sudden recollection in Vale’s mind, and they realized where they knew Citrine from.
"Excuse me, I’m sorry if this is invasive, but were you ever featured in a commercial a few years ago? Like the ones that play on the TV in the waiting room."
Citrine gave pause at that, her subtle reaction alone telling Vale that they guessed right.
"Yeah, a while back I was featured for one of the company’s promos. I wasn’t in it for very long, and this was before I worked here."
Vale’s memories come flooding back. The commercial hadn’t been focused on her, but Citrine appeared briefly to tell her story as someone whose brother had been in desperate need of a kidney transplant. She had tears in the corners of her eyes and the brightest smile on her face as she explained that Vivi had saved her brother’s life. Vale knows that many of those commercial families were likely just actors, but her joy and relief had felt so real it was tangible through the screen.
They knew that they shouldn’t ask, but they couldn’t help themself.
"…Was it true?"
Citrine stiffened, freezing for just a second in the hallway before she continued walking forwards as if nothing had happened.
"…Yeah, it was. I was just a medical student back then, but that was what inspired me to pursue a harvesting career. I wanted to help people and give back to the company that had saved my brother." She answered. Vale honestly hadn’t been expecting such transparency from her, and it made them decide not to pry any more. Citrine looked like she’s about to go silent again, but then she turned her head back towards Vale once more.
"…That was a long time ago, though."
Vale thought about the Citrine in the commercial and the Citrine before them. They decided to stop asking questions. The two of them continued in silence.
Soon afterwards, Citrine stopped at a branch in the hallway and held her badge up to a door on the left, leading Vale inside once the handle turned green and allowed them access.
"You’re sure you’re not bothered by this?" She asked. This time, her question sounded different than before. Something about her tone reminded Vale of a warning, like this was their last chance to back out.
"I’ve done autopsies before. I’ll be fine." They responded with faux confidence, trying to force a sense of calm back into their voice. They’d never been bothered by mutilated bodies or gory crime scenes, but it felt different to know that the things they’ll be operating on were never alive to begin with. They understood that the clones technically aren’t people and that this kind of work helped save lives, but it was a whole different feeling now that they’d seen the forever-corpses with their own eyes.
The room that Citrine led them to was larger and more spacious than the hallway and lit with actual ceiling lights instead of the glowing fluid in the tanks. It was uncomfortably sterile, with every surface cleaned and polished to a shine and not a single speck of dust gathered in even the most remote of corners. A single other employee is standing off to the side, laying out sharp, metal tools on a stainless tray as they walked inside. His face was covered with a surgical mask, and he gave Citrine a nod before exiting from the same door they just entered from. Vale stood aside to let the person pass, both impressed and a little taken aback by how routine this whole process seemed to be.
There were no bodies in sight in the new room, but the small metal hatches on the walls were a near-perfect replica of the interior of a morgue. Vale had no trouble imagining what was hidden behind them. There was an icy chill to the area, which they assumed to be intentional to help keep the harvested products fresh before they could be preserved and sold. In the center of the room is a metal table, not unlike the ones that Vale had performed autopsies on before. The only difference between them is that this one had straps dangling down from its side, currently unlatched.
The presence of this irregularity causes Vale to do a double-take, and they were about to ask Citrine the purpose of those devices before she interrupted their train of thought. She didn’t give them any time to prepare, simply reaching out and grabbing the handle on a drawer on the side of the room and tearing it open.
"This should all be relatively familiar to you. Besides the whole ‘no brain’ thing, the clones have bodies that are functionally identical to a normal person." Citrine says it like she’s reading off a script that she’s been instructed not to deviate from. She doesn’t exude a shred of fundamental belief in her own words.
Regardless, she picked up the tray with the surgical tools and brought it over to the operating table. Some of the objects she handed to Vale to hold as she sets up the scene. As strange as it was, they felt like they could only calm down once they had the scalpel in their hands. This, at least, was familiar.
"Once again, I cannot stress enough to you how much you don’t want to cut into this thing unless you’re sure you can finish the job. We can pump the clones full of hormones all we want but the absolute maximum we can propel their growth is four times faster than a human’s. So, if you slip and accidentally damage one of the organs, that’s several years of work down the drain. Growing these things isn’t cheap."
"I know." Vale responded, a basic statement to match Citrine’s redundant one. They knew that she was right about the value of the products they were harvesting, but they didn’t like how little faith she was showing in their abilities. They earned the right to be here just like everyone else, and it’s not fair that she was acting like they’ll slip up before they’d even seen the subject.
"…Just making sure." Citrine narrowed her eyes, thoughts running through her mind that she didn’t bother sharing with her new coworker. She then retrieved a pair of surgical gloves and put them on, looking Vale up and down. "You got disinfected before they let you in here, right?"
"Yes. They were very insistent that I wouldn’t bring any foreign contaminants near the products." Vale answered, taking a second pair of gloves and a mask and slipping them on. Vivi’s sterilization technology was top of its field. One treatment and it would reduce the subject’s passive contamination by nearly 90% for up to twelve hours. The only downside was that their immune system would be weakened afterwards and whoever underwent the treatment would be at higher risk of infections. This typically wasn’t a problem for people who stayed in Vivi-owned buildings where everything was already sterilized. The moment they stepped outside before the treatment wore off, though, the subject would be at risk of catching usually harmless diseases. Vale suspected that this benefitted Vivi by forcing their employees to stay on company sights after their shift was complete, encouraging them to work longer hours.
"Good. You should be ready, then. Hopefully." Citrine said. Her face is mostly covered by the mask, but Vale could swear they saw the smallest glimmer of hesitation in her eyes, like she knew something they didn’t. Vale tried to suppress any signs of nervousness, assuming their supervisor would perceive it as a sign of doubt. Hopefully this would all get easier once there was a body in front of them. Corpses were easy to figure out. Unlike real people, dead bodies were simple, predictable, and they didn’t make Vale feel like their worth is being tied to their production.
"So, we just pick a body and get started?" They asked, trying to keep their voice even and gesturing over to the small hatches on the wall. Citrine slowly shook her head, that little spark in her eyes still lingering no matter how much Vale tried to tell themself it was just their imagination.
"The managers here at good old Vivi have decided that your first harvest is meant to be a test. They need to know if you’re fit to work here, and determined that any old corpse won’t do", she elaborated, her voice a touch quieter than it was before. She walked over to a larger hatch a few feet tall that’s connected to the ground and placed her hand on the handle. It was over twice the size of the other hatches and square instead of rectangular. Vale opened their mouth to ask about it, but Citrine didn’t give them the chance to vocalize their confusion before she grasped the handle of the hatch and pulled it open.
There was a child behind the hatch. A young boy, only about six years old with the palest skin Vale had ever seen hidden behind thin hospital clothes and bruises. His limbs were weak and gangly, enough that Vale was confident they could snap the boy’s wrist with a single hand if they desired. His hair was light, but the exact color was hard to tell under the obscuring darkness of the hatch. Dull pink eyes stared up at the two adults from the hole in the wall, sclera bloodshot with tears as the boy lays motionless, barely conscious. It was like he was looking right through them, staring into the void at something only he could see.
The boy reacted to the light shining into the small crevasse in the wall by lifting a single arm to weakly shield his eyes. His movements were sluggish, his skin pressed so tightly to the metal floor that he appeared to be merging into it. Vale couldn’t move, paralyzed by shock and waiting for something about the scene to break and it all be revealed as a cruel joke. They look over to Citrine to verify that she was just as horrified as they are. She had to be, right?
Citrine’s expression had hardened, but she walked over to the child like she was on autopilot. Her eyes didn’t show a spark of willing recognition of her actions as she grabbed him by the shoulder. The child let out a weak croak as her nails dug into his skin and he was dragged to his feet, bare feet slapping against the cold concrete floor. Whatever force was keeping Vale frozen in place vanished at the sight of the child in pain and they finally spoke out.
"What are you doing!? That kid’s still alive!" They protested, taking a step back as Citrine drags the boy over to the table and pulls him up onto it. He didn’t struggle, arms hanging limply from his side like his muscles were too atrophied to hold the weight of his own bones.
"It’s not a kid, it’s a clone. An unregistered one too, so it’s currently one of the most illegal beings on this planet right now." She said, looking up at Vale like she was daring them to challenge her. No, "daring" isn’t right. It’s more like she was begging them to.
"Did you not think that we harvested from recovered unregistered clones? You know we do. Everyone knows we do. It’s public information. Things like this were illegally made with stolen government resources and we’re just repossessing them. Plus, the organs we get from these things help save actual sick kids. Or what, do you want to tell parents on the waiting list that their dying child is going to have to wait longer for a heart transplant just because you don’t want to make hard choices? It’s just meat, Vale. It’s not even really alive." Her voice grew more rigid as she ran through all the reasons they did this, as if Vale wasn’t the one that she was trying to convince. Vale was still frozen in place, staring at her in a mix of disbelief and horror. They weren’t warned that they’d be doing this today. Why weren’t they warned about this?
For a moment, a flicker of guilt crossed Citrine’s expression, before she pushed it away and continued to organize equipment, ignoring the thrashing of the child on the table.
"Quit looking at me like that." She said, voice numb. "This is a test. Everything we do here is completely legal, and that includes the harvesting of unregistered clones. If you can’t handle that sometimes you’ll have to operate on something that resembles a human, then you shouldn’t be working here in the first place. You shouldn’t have applied. It’s not like I signed off on this. Everyone goes through this when they first sign up. I went through this, and I didn’t fail. We’ve got to make sure our harvesters are prepared for the job and willing to do what’s necessary to save a life."
She handed a pair of surgical gloves to Vale who took them on instinct. They were just staring at Citrine, mouth agape as they searched for words to embody what they’re feeling.
"But…why is this one alive?" They eventually landed on; eyes locked firmly on Citrine instead of on the body on the table.
"Unregistered clones are made illegally through the misuse of stolen cloning tanks. Nine times out of ten it’s because someone wants to bring someone close to them back from the dead. It’s usually child or a sibling or even a lover, in the worst cases. It doesn’t matter why. Eventually they get found out and repossessed, and then they end up here."
Citrine pointed to a tattoo on the clone’s shoulder just above his collarbone.
"It didn’t even have a number until it was discovered, see?"
The marking reads ‘172-GAN’. It was just an identification number, not unlike what all the normal clones here have. Vale didn’t know what it meant, but it didn’t matter. For all that it’s worth, the child might as well have had a barcode carved into his skin.
"We…we’re not going to cut into him while he’s alive, are we?" Vale asked, voice weak as they started to run out of excuses. They came here of their own free will. They wanted this job. They put in the transfer request themself with their own hands. Citrine was right, if they couldn’t handle the dirty work, then they never should have come here in the first place.
"Of course not. It would be irresponsible to harvest from a live subject, anesthetized or not. Movement caused by involuntary muscle spasms would rupture the organs and then all of this would be for nothing. No, we’re going to euthanize it humanely first, and then we can start harvesting. That’s why it’s already been sedated prior to us arriving." Citrine explains, the child unreactive even as she mentioned their intent to put it to death. It was as limp as a ragdoll, remaining silent even as Citrine pulled a tube connected to a mask up from a box below the table. She gently pressed the mask onto his face and tapped some buttons on the side of the machine. She must have noticed that Vale was still looking at her in shock, because she glanced back at him again, pitiful.
"I know you think this thing is alive because it moves and breathes, but so would the subjects in the hall if we let them out of the tubes. The only difference between them is their cognitive ability. If this child wasn’t sedated right now, it’d be speaking to us like any other person. Right now, though, it’s as lifeless as the bodies in the hallway. It will be no different, Vale. Where is the line? At what point should it not be okay to use these organs to save a life? Is it because he can think, and they can’t? Is that what makes it human in your eyes?" She asks. Vale didn’t respond, looking at the floor in shame instead of at the child on the table.
"If you’re not okay with this, then that’s fine. You can leave right now and nobody will stop you. But if you were okay with coming here to slice up the things in the tube, then you have to be okay with taking back Vivi’s property when you’re asked to. They’re just clones, Vale. There are real kids out there that need our help."
A silence fell over the room as green dots lit up on the side of the child’s mask and the machine its connected to whirrs to life. Citrine just nodded, not expecting an answer. The fact that Vale hadn’t turned around and left is answer enough for her.
"Now here, you use those wipes to sterilize its chest. I’ll keep an eye on its vitals and let you know when they cease.
Vale moved as if in a trance, unbuttoning the clone’s threadbare shirt and picking up one of the disinfecting wipes. They remove thin layers of dead cells as they wipe it across the child’s chest, revealing skin underneath paler than anything they’d seen on a person before. They had been too far away to see clearly at first, but now that they were up close, they realized that they’d underestimated just how pallid this child was. His chest was nearly translucent, with Vale almost able to see the movement of blood through the veins and capillaries under the surface of his skin. This gave them pause for a moment, enough to almost block out the sounds of the gas being released into the tube and the weak light in the child’s eyes growing dimmer.
"Something’s not right…" They mumbled, causing Citrine to look back up at them.
"I already told you; you’re allowed to leave. I can finish this job, it’s alright."
"No, I mean this clone doesn’t look healthy. Come see this."
This, at least, gave Citrine pause. She leaned over from her spot keeping the mask sealed to the clone’s face and looks down at where Vale was pointing.
"…Huh. What the hell is that about?" Citrine says, before turning back to the clone and removing the gas mask from his face. The child’s body took an instinctive gasp, clean air filling his lungs again and returning oxygen to his near-dead limbs.
"That shouldn’t look like that. What’s wrong with its skin?" She questioned out loud. She hadn’t been expecting an answer, neither of them had. They thought that they would be left with this mystery on their own before referring to a superior for a solution.
In stunned silence, they heard a wheeze escape from the child’s cracked lips, a single tear escaping from the corner of his eye. Some distant, fading part of the child was still tethered to the body just enough to speak a single sentence, before consciousness left him once more.
"Mama said…I’m an…albino…" He hesitated a moment on the last word, enunciating it slowly like he’d only heard it a few times. Now that she’d gotten an answer, Citrine slowly backed away and buried her head in her hands, murmuring a soft curse as the clone fell silent once more.
"Somebody down at resource processing messed up the quality check on the incoming products. This clone’s defective and we currently have no replacement."
"A pigment disorder is…really that bad?" Vale asked timidly, genuinely confused by this but not wanting to waste the stroke of luck they’d been given.
"To the consumers it is. The company wants to avoid being sued by a client who realizes they’ve received a transplant from a defective product. Nobody’s going to want organs that come at risk of deformities."
Vale genuinely didn’t think albinism would have any effect on the quality of an organ transplant, but they weren’t about to argue with corporate regulations right now. Besides, Citrine had been working here far longer than they have. She knows what was and wasn’t desired by the company and the consumers better than they did.
"So, what do we do with this kid, then?" They asked, trying not to let the relief they felt bleed into their voice.
"We’ll have to send it back to resource processing. They’ll figure out something else to do with it. After that it’s none of our business." If she was feeling the same relief that Vale is, she didn’t show it. She doesn’t show much of anything, really.
"Then…what should I do?" They asked, their voice softening automatically when drawing attention to themself.
"Give me a second to send the clone down the line, then I can show you how to retrieve one of the typical bodies from the tanks. Somebody else another day will have to lead you in harvesting an unregistered one. Hopefully I won’t be assigned to supervise you again and the next time we meet we’ll just be normal coworkers." She said, unstrapping the unconscious clone from the table and revealing raw marks on the skin where the straps had been digging into its tiny limbs.
Vale couldn’t help but hope the same thing.
