KLEPTOMANIACS
by Azur Vuur
“As long as we steal”

The horror lit face of the clerk as she swiftly packed the cash in the bag flashes through my mind. Sweat trickles down my neck underneath my mask as I turn to run out, the satchel clutched in my hand. Who says I don’t work for my money? I slip in my car and drive off. With the security cut, Authority is going to be late in knowing.

I’m sitting in the back seat of my car, lighting up a cigarette. It’s sweet when a job comes off. I breathe the smoke out the open door. Relaxing. I take another drag.

Now! I can feel it. Something’s watching me from the back. I don’t know where but I can feel it. I lean out the car laughing and barring my teeth; I’m not one to show fear. 
Nothing. Trees swaying with the wind. I turn back inside the car; feeling like this is a bad movie with nothing but an editor as a director. Putting in any cuts to make a story. It hits me.

Black. Colorless. Pure black. Nothingness. Now everything. Seats steering wheel dash windows car trees houses wind. What the hell happened?
Suddenly a hot sensation wraps around my head, seeping in. I look around the car. We all look around the car. The sun moved down. Ten minutes passed. We looked around again and suddenly… I became aware.
I was sitting in the front seat now. I had moved. 
How the fu- 
I’m in the passenger side. I turn to the left. I watch the figure in front of me spin his head over to the other. I notice another figure sitting next to me with the backdoor open, holding a cigarette. 
“I’m trippin’ you guys” my words drag out, my tongue pulling them out like a wad of gum. 
What the hell, we thought. 
I look at the two guys in the passenger seats on my left. 
Oh. Shit. 
Realization hit me. Like a mindless twitch of the hand. I’m shocked. I must have finally lost it. I laugh. The others smile.

“So, where are we going?” 

Anywhere.

The sun finally set and we’re at our house. 
So much for anywhere… 
We discover a black mark on my left wrist. It’s crusted with blood. He thinks of it as no big deal and covers it up with some gauze. It kind of tickles actually… It’s hard to stay focused. Every move we make feels like a flex of a finger. This is going to take some getting use to. None of us had seen how we had gotten here, or how the mark got on my wrist. 
The city. 
The city isn’t going to like any of this. There’s been a ban on cloning since the country approved duplication. And since none of us seen who birthed us, the city has no reason to believe us. Even so: complaining is for the weak. It’s going to take some practice before we can all synch up. My consciousness keeps switching between each body. 
It’s going to take some effort to expand it to a reasonable limit. We are already developing differing personalities each time I don’t inhabit the other. We’re quickly becoming characters in our own movie. I’m going to need a mentor…

The city officials check houses once every week to make sure everything’s in order. Right persons living there, bills paid on time, no criminal record. Just honest enslaved people. 
They use to check everything electronically until self-duplication went public. Now deeply understood, the copy of someone can also be controlled by the original person, though they have to be in-tune and receptive to themselves. The practice is borderline spiritual. And the methods of how to interact with the clones are only legally taught to people in the duplication supporting cities. I live in a city that still believes in parallel universes, so they believe that if people clone themselves, they are actually taking a paralleled version and manifesting it in this dimension, point and time in this universe. Advanced science states the opposite: people that are duplicated here, are duplicated in the other universes. Neither theory is efficient, so it makes a good thing to start a war about.

Here in the city where I live, the policy is: NO DUPLICATING. Which means, what you do stays secret until you’re arrested. But everyone knows a secret.

I met Cera in a Bolshevik nightclub. After about a few drinks we start talking about clones, I’m alone of course, all of us nicely disguised. It makes it harder to act natural. Cera had a double before, but since she was reported to Authority after a lady seen them in the restroom putting on make-up in the mirror, she had to have hers terminated, which is a tiring process of who’s who since they want the replicated body destroyed. Nowadays she steals stuff. We’ve been on a few sprees before, and I’m sure she wouldn’t mind the next one I’m planning.

The clubs filled with chatter and noise, of waiters at the top floor. Retro disco echoes from below.

“Does anyone actually sit down, and decide to become an addict?”
“Actually, is anyone actually sat down, and forced to become an addict?”
People aren’t getting enough clean water. Every remedy is becoming poisoned by the thought of man.
Authority is cold and dead to understand creativity. Productivity, productivity, productivity.

“I mean everywhere I turn, I see some sort of addict.”

“History has a funny way of keeping consistent.”

It doesn’t matter what it is, when something feels perfect, it’s hard to let it go.

“You seem really in control right now”

“They’re just not talking. Everyone’s mind is preoccupied with something else, luckily it’s only about the music, dancing, or that girl over there that looks like she could use a drink.”

Cera explains a few techniques to me for a half-hour. When the waiter’s not looking we all decide to leave and slip out onto the street and back into another club, more relaxing and shadowed. 

We get in just as a boy is sitting down at the piano towards the center of the room. We take the table next to the right of him and the piano. He smiles at us and begins to play. The music is slow and builds up, immersing the small club. I’m lost in intricate melody. Then I notice he has tentacles for fingers. Sliding smoothly and elegantly across the marble colored keys. An experiment; now a club shut up.

It happens to all of Authority’s experiments, they’re too imperfect so they’re shot out and left to wander the world. Some wind up in places like this for extraordinary talents. Extraordinary.

Cera is going on about a man named Tim who thought he could hide his son from Authority. His wife was randomly selected for an abortion by the city. They fled and had him out of the country; his wife died a few days after complications of her caesarian section. Tim brought his son back after a few years, and lived in the city until authority discovered his son. Tim found him in his boxing bag. After a couple punches, a few crunches, he zipped open his bag and there’s his boy, mutilated.

Because of all these clones running about and overcrowding, abortion is mandatory. Like a feral wolf out in the forest, impregnated and roaming around in pursuit of food. If she cannot even fend for herself, the growing embryo is naturally absorbed back into her body. She’ll get knocked up in a better place, in a better time. So city grants births every few years, usually when there’s an incident, usually when numerous people die.

I smile. “I have an idea for a heist.”

Tim is sitting hunched over his glass at the bar as I walk up.

“We heard about your boy.”
“Yeah, so what?”
“We think we can help you.” He turns around.
“My son is dead.” Fire flashes through his eyes. “How can you help me with that unless you want to kill me too?” 
If someone wants to kill themselves, what’s it matter? It’s their life right? I’d kill this body if I were brave enough. Suicide takes courage. And isn’t courage honored?
“That won’t help you.”
“You need to change your mind.”
“We have a better way to ease your pain.”
Tim looks over the clones carefully. Each with it’s own duplicated expression. A moment’s silence.
“What is it?”
“Have you considered cloning? The city won’t approve of it but I doubt you want to be staying here for long. We know someone that clones for free. You know how cloning works don’t you?” A cool smile spreads across their face.
“I have nothing else to lose. They have a saying around here: if you’re afraid to die, you shouldn’t have been born.”
How true.