"Who Am I?" - A Short Story By Natasha Katherine Low

“Sam, it’s day. Time to go.”

I blink my eyes open in the faint gloom of the room. I hear the sound of multiple pairs of feet padding down the hallway beyond the hulking figure now standing within the frame of my steel door. I relish my last few seconds of peace as the dream I had enjoyed the night before fades away. I had been dreaming of my brother, Scotty, and the time we’d both stolen mum’s car for a ride together after Scotty was grounded for seeing a girl my parents hadn’t approved of. It was one of my favorite memories we shared, one of the few moments that I’d ever felt accepted by my big brother.

“Sam. Let’s go.”

I sit up, shrugging off the grey blanket and pushing my legs off the side of my bed so they landed noiselessly on the cold floor. I push my feet into the pair of black slippers laid out from the night before, and grab my green woolly towel from where it was on its stand. I walk past the guard, and he grunts as he slides my door shut after me and pads three doors down to Freddy’s room, past the other guards who were waking up the others in between.

“Hey Sam.”

I nod in response. Jacob Wiles is always in the shower room before me. He is one of the few friends that I have at this summer camp.

I finish up my shower quickly and dry myself before discarding my towel into the waiting basket of dirty laundry. I wasn’t the latest, but I wasn’t the earliest either. A hefty stream of kids was already filing out towards the ‘learning room’. I walk after them, smiling at familiar faces as I go by, nodding at their greetings. I was not usually one to talk much.

“You have five minutes, children,” came the announcement from the speakers above us. Our pace simultaneously quickened at this, and soon I had reached my station – a singular, hamster-ball contraption (which is what I usually called it in private) in the midst of a sea of many other similar copies.

I peel at the rubber portion around the plastic, circular entrance – glancing distractedly at the fingerprints along the side – presumably from the time I had last left it.

I frown. Hadn’t I just cleaned this before our education block had concluded yesterday?

I shrug it off, quickly dabbing the prints off and glancing around me as the other children continue clambering into their own ‘balls’, unperturbed by my brief hesitance. I pull at the milky, translucent door, and it swings open with a ‘pop’ sound. I climb in, head and shoulders first, and reach across to the other side to slide the bottom half of me into the leather chair. Some tendrils of white smoke are still left from the day before. I shut the door before they can escape, sucking them in and enjoying the first teasing cloying of calm.

“You should learn to clean up after yourself, kid.”

I blink my eyes open in surprise. A ball room guard is peering in at me through the translucent surface, his eyes squinted and his expression unhappy. He grumbles something under his breath as he latches the entrance to my ball.

“You guys sit in these every damn day and you still don’t know how to operate the removal module when you leave. Haven’t we told you what would happen if that gas of yours makes it into our main ventilation?”

I close my eyes, adequately berated. He leaves soon after, still muttering something that I could no longer catch.

“Children,” the voice now reverberates within my entire casing, “It is time to continue with your learning. Begin now.”

I pull the metal headset down onto my head, clicking it hastily into place. I feel it start to hum against my temple, and I squeeze my arms into the metal bands along the sides of the leather chair I am on, waiting for them to snap shut and properly secure me before the familiar thinking gas fills the room.

I blink as a shadow falls across my ball, confused. The guards would not usually patrol once learning had commenced. I reach my hands up to my headset in surprise as whoever it is begins to unlatch my door noisily. I glance down as the metal chair bands snap shut over thin air, gasping in exasperation. Man, was I in for some real punishment now… and I hated the electric room.

I grind my teeth as my door is pulled open, ready to let loose a tirade of cursing at whoever decided to play such a prank on me. My words die in my throat as I see who it is.

“Scotty!” I exclaim.

Scotty flinches at my voice. He is staring at me with red eyes, his mouth agape. He appears to shudder, stepping back and saying nothing as he stares at me.

“Scotty, what are you doing here?”

I hurriedly pull off my headset, leaving it on my chair as I all but leap from my ball. Scotty stumbles backwards, apparently taken aback by my enthusiasm, but I did not care. My heart was singing with happiness and relief.

“Scotty, I missed you so much! I thought I would never get to leave this camp. I’m sorry –”

He steps forward and clamps a shaky hand against my mouth.

“Hey,” he says gruffly. “Stop. Let’s get out of here first.”

I nod slowly, suddenly confused. Hadn’t Scotty come to collect me? Why did he seem so unsettled?

“Here” He hands me his old maroon jacket and a pair of jeans that are too tight for me. I pull them on over my suit in delight, smelling home in every fiber.

I sense his impatience as I tug on the clothing, and he tugs on the skin just below my wrist as soon as I am done, almost dragging me to a door along the side of the room.

“How do we get out of here?”

I realize he is asking me a question. I was too lost in a haze of my own excitement and joy to hear him the first time.

“I don’t know,” I say honestly. “We are to stay locked in our balls until meal time, and then we sleep in our rooms at night.”

He looks at me incredulously. “You sit in that ball every day?” He is pulling me down an unfamiliar hallway.

“Yeah.”

“What do you do in there?”

“We learn.”

He glances at me in some exasperation. I blush under his disapproval.

The words come spilling out of my mouth. “I mean, we watch videos, and we do some exercises or tests, and they’re about all kinds of things. There are some tests about global studies, arithmetic and etiquette – I mean, sometimes there’s other stuff I like, soccer or music videos. Sometimes I even get to watch videos of our family trip, Scotts.” I pause as he glances sideways at me, “I think everyone gets different videos though. We aren’t really allowed to discuss what we learn.”

“I see,” he sounds strangely choked up.

I gasp as he forces open a door and we are suddenly out into the open. I stop, rigid, feeling the blast of cold morning air against my face, and he glances back at me in a mixture of irritation and uncertainty.

It has been so long since I have felt the air from outside on my skin. In fact, I think it’s been almost…

Almost…

I blink.

I didn’t know.

“Come on,” Scotty mutters, tugging my along by my arm. I stumble after him. We scale a gate, and he helps me as we drop down on the other side. We run towards his waiting red Chevy.

He starts the engine, and soon we are chugging along to home.

“Is it far, Scotty?” I say, realizing that I had no idea where this camp was in relation to my home.

“No, we stay thirty minutes away,” he glances at me carefully. “So… you didn’t know that, huh?”

“I can’t actually remember how we got to camp,” I admit. “Maybe I fell asleep in the car when mum drove me here the first time.”

He is now staring intently at the empty road in front of us.

“Yeah. That’s probably it.”

We pull up at our driveway. To my surprise, Scotty reaches behind my head and pulls the hood of his jacket over my eyes. I don’t protest, however, merely excited at the prospect of finally returning home.

The house is silent as we enter. Mum and Dad are probably out running some errands. I follow Scotty up the stairs, my heart thudding as I think of my room, and my bed – and all of my things I had left behind.

Scotty pauses as he stops at my door. I notice the sudden change in mood, and a hot flash of dread makes an abrupt appearance.

“What is it?”

Scotty watches me, and says nothing as he slowly opens my door.

Somebody is lying in my bed, a sort of breathing aid from his nostrils. His head is bald, and his face is pale, and almost his entire frame is hidden under his blanket – but there was no doubt.

He was I.

I gasp, and the other me watches me intently. He makes an attempt to sit up, and then groans loudly, as if from pain. In a flash, Scotty is across the room, trying to help.

“Who are you?” I say softly. He hears me anyhow.

“Hello,” says the boy with the same face and voice as me. “I know this must be a shock.” There is a dark amusement in his tone, but still it was not an unfriendly one.

Scotty’s eyes have softened. He looks at me, and hesitates. Then he says, “Come in, Sammy.”

His words seem to have an effect on the boy in front of me. He flinches visibly, and then his face relaxes with maturity, an understanding that should be years beyond his current age.

“That’s right,” he agrees softly.

I walk forward slowly, leaving the door open behind me.

“Who are you?” I ask again, this time with a stronger voice.

The boy looks me squarely in the eyes. He tries for a smile, and I realize that I am grateful for it – for it seems to have cost him so much pain that I almost didn’t feel worthy of the gesture.

“I’m Sam,” he smiles at me. “And one day soon, you will take my place.”

I cannot think of what to say, so he speaks again.

“I am dying, I think you know it – for you are me, after all,” he sighs, “And I know you weren’t supposed to come here before I was gone, and everything is settled, but I wanted to meet you – so I asked Scotty if I could.”

He grins.

“You really do look like me. In fact, I think you already are me.”

I feel my world stop spinning.

What was he saying? Who was I?

What did this mean about everything I had come to believe? Could this be a dream, could I be experiencing a madman’s hallucinations in my sleep, from which I would wake and begin my day as it should have?

I was who I had been – Sam Morgan. I knew this, physically – I had my eyes. I had my face, I had my body, I had his voice – yet, who, or what, was I? How could there be two souls of the same person?

Or did I not have a soul? What did a soul constitute of, and what of I – clearly, a copy of a real person – what did my soul mean?

“Sammy?”

I heard my mother’s voice at the end of the hallway, at the top of the stairs. I turn to see her, her hand over her mouth and her eyes wet with tears. She is frozen in place, as is my father, who stands over her shoulders, his face pained and knowing – he knew the truth, yet she did not.

“You’re okay… Sammy?”

My mother starts off in a broken sprint towards me, before my father can stop her, her hands against her chest in her joy and disbelief. She gets close enough to see Scotty – and her steps falter.

“Oh.”

I feel my heart break into pieces as her face crumbles, and my father sweeps her up into his arms, tears refusing to fall from his own eyelids even as he looks at me with blurred eyes, his jaw set.

“Scott, what have you done?” he shouts angrily. I glance behind and watch Scott flinch, as did the me – the real me – in my bed.

I hear heavy footsteps thundering up the stairs.

I recognize the guard, the one who wakes me up event morning, and I see the one who always guards my table at lunch... they are dwarfed by at least four others of similar build and urgency. They are shouting something at me, something inaudible.

I glance back behind me. Sam – the real Sam – is looking at me intently.

“Take care of them, Sammy.”

And then all I see is white, and then silence.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I wake up in the back of a van. There is angry talking throughout the vehicle, but I am still too disheveled and groggy still to understand what is being said.

They pull up in front of camp – although I feel I have been inside it for a very long time, this is only my second time seeing its exterior.

They are dragging me to the end of a hallway. I pass by a familiar meal room, and inside I see my friends – Jacob Wiles and Freddy Kingsley. I push past the guard and break into the crowd of children. The guards are taken aback by my sudden movement, and fail to catch me before I blend back into the familiar group of faces.

I realize I am back in my white suit. This gives me some time.

“Sam, where have you been?”

“Why weren’t you in your ball?”

“Did you run away from camp?”

“Where have you gone?”

“We should never leave our learning balls!”

“You were being crazy, Sam.”

I wave my hands in exasperation. “Guys, listen to me. Listen to me!”

They pause for a moment, and I take my chance.

“There are others – others of us, more of us – out there, beyond these walls,” I say loudly, struggling at first to be heard over the din, and then gradually quieting my tone as the others go silent. “They are us, as we are them – but they are dying – and we… we are their replacements. Do you hear me? This isn’t a camp, listen to me – this is… some kind of… cloning –”

“That’s enough,” one of the guards has reached me, and he clamps his hand over my mouth. I glance up at his eyes – though his face is cold, there is something in his eyes that tells of his true sympathy. “Take him,” he instructs the others, and they all but carry me out of the room.

I hear my friends as I am leaving, and I feel a cold put in my stomach.

“What a far-fetched story!” someone exclaims, to a loud rumble of laughter throughout the crowd.

“Sam is such an idiot,” somebody else says, half-jokingly.

“He must have hit his head on his grand escape out.”

“He was always a little weird.”

“I never heard such a stupid tale in my life!”

Their voices gradually dim as we leave the hallway, and we enter the room that I had been meant to be brought to in the first place. It is like the chair I had seen in my usual dental clinic… or was that even my clinic?

I felt my heart drop. I did not think so. I had probably never gone beyond the few meters I had managed to go from this place today.

There is a man in a white coat. He is now looking at me with sad eyes.

“Sam,” he says quietly. “Tell me, if it were you – and Jacob had been the one to see and return with the experience you have had today. Would you have wanted your world to be turned upside down, to be shaken out of your simple existence of waiting to see your family – to need to reconsider exactly who you are, and the truth behind everything you had once believed in? Would you have wanted to question if everything you once thought you knew was correct?”

I close my eyes. This was exactly what had happened to me. And I knew the truth.

I shook my head.

His eyes softened. “I know what you saw today was distressing for you, Sam. I know it’s too much for a ten-year-old boy to handle.” He looks at me with kind eyes, and I let him approach me. He guides me to the chair, and I climb on willingly. “I will help you to forget.”

I sit, and I close my eyes once more.

If there was a God, then I was ready to forget.