Between living and existing
Title: Between living and existing
Author: colorfulgrey
Pairing: Taemin-centric, side!2min, friendship!Taekey
Rating: PG-13
Genre: Angst, Sci-fi,
Word count: 1983
Summary: A few hours had passed since my world had turned upside down. I don’t know how and I don’t know why, but somehow I woke up. People like me, humans, never wake up.
Disclaimer: I own nothing but the plot.
AN: This one-shot was written for the 21st challenge of shawol_haven. I had lots of fun writing this, so I hope you like it! ^^
“Do you know how to shoot?” was his next question. I was still staring at his hair, a mix of pink, turquoise and black. What a pity that I forgot his name - it was just as unique as his hair.
“I was a sniper during World War 5.”
“Wonderful!” he turned around and went into another room without further explanation, leaving me alone in his office. The whole interior was kept in black colors - the carpet, the walls, the desk and also the curtains, even though I didn’t understand what the purpose of a window in an underground building was.
A few seconds later the young man -Key! Right, that was his name - returned with something that looked like a gun, and fortunately worked like one, as I would find out later.
“Why...” I stopped, weighing the deadly weapon in my hand. “Why are you giving this to me?”
“How else did you intend to kill your clone? He won’t drop dead just because you woke up, you know?”
I continued to look at the gun; my mind was so full of questions and confusion that I didn’t understand a thing anymore.
Suddenly I felt Key’s hand softly ruffling my hair. “You’re not alone in this, Taemin.”
A few hours had passed since my world had turned upside down. I don’t know how and I don’t know why, but somehow I woke up. People like me, humans, never wake up. We sleep through eternity and serve as a gene bank for our clones. It was this weird idea of an eternal life that created this sort of living system - that was what Key had explained to me after he had dragged me from the street and brought me down here to his HQ.
In order to live forever, clones are being created. They live their lives like normal people, without knowing that they are just a copy, until they die - after that they are being replaced by another clone from the same person. The original, the human, stays in the “incubator” and receives the experiences and memories from the clone - he is kind of a memory library of all his clones.
Thanks to that I know how the surface of Mercury feels under my fingertips and how small the moon actually is, even though I’ve never been there. (My 23rd clone had been an astronaut, but unfortunately he had died when he and his crew had tried to enter the sun.)
My newest clone was an ordinary boy, not older than 18 or 19, with an obsession for dancing (strangely most of my clones had this obsession). He was lucky: he got born into a rich family, was able to visit a good educational institution, had great friends and even a boyfriend.
The weird part was that his boyfriend’s original was sitting in front of me.
On his bed.
In the room we both share.
Great.
It was highly awkward to be with a person in one room, who was, on the one hand, a complete stranger to me, but on the other hand, my better half.
The first few days after my arrival I tried to avoid Minho as often as possible. Our conversations consisted only of Hello’s and Good Night’s, nothing more and nothing less.
It was a week later that I considered the possibility that maybe he had woken up before my clone and his clone got together and thus knew nothing about their relationship.
We were already lying in our beds and the switched off lights helped me built up courage.
“How long…” I croaked. After clearing my throat I started again. “How long have you been here?”
A few long seconds passed and I already thought that he didn’t want to answer or that he might have fallen asleep already, when I heard his deep voice.
“Two weeks.”
Oh.
“So…you know that…our clones…” I couldn’t continue the sentence.
“Yeah.”
“Have you already killed your clone?”
“No.”
“Ah, ok.”
“Hm.”
An embarrassing silence spread inside the room. I heard him shift in his bed, but that was it for the next few minutes. I was drifting off to sleep when I heard him whisper “What would your clone do right now?”
That question took me totally off-guard. Why the hell would he want to know something like that?
Yet, the way he’d phrased that sentence sounded more like “I spy with my little eye”, so I decided to play along.
“He would probably lie in your clone’s bed right now. What would your clone do?”
“Hm” was all he said before he started thinking. This was a funny way to break the ice.
“He would probably try to warm you clone’s feet with his own.”
“Right, my clone always has cold feet, it’s pretty annoying.” I chuckled.
“So what would your clone do?”
“He would probably crawl out of bed and look for his sleep socks.” Minho burst out laughing. “Oh yes, I remember his sleep socks!”
It was weird hearing Minho “remember” something he never experienced himself.
“So, what would your clone do then?” I asked.
“My clone would probably sing a lullaby to your clone.”
“Oh my god!” I cried. “He totally would. Ouch, that’s so cheesy.”
We continued this game of “remembering” memories which weren’t ours until we decided that it was time to sleep, but I actually couldn’t. One thought kept bothering me throughout the whole night: Who am I?
The memories I had weren’t mine. I was defined by my clone’s past doings, so what did that make me as an individual?
There was only one room left in this building which I hadn’t explored yet, so I sneaked up to the door and opened it carefully.
The first thing I saw was Key, leaning against the railing and looking …at the city?
I found myself on the rooftop of a skyscraper as it seemed, but that wasn’t possible, was it? I always thought that we had been underground the whole time…
“Woah!” I ran next to Key and looked down, being stunned by our distance to the ground.
“Key! How… why… I thought we were underground…when did we... I don’t…what…” All of a sudden he elbowed me in the side, which surprisingly hurt quite a lot.
“Calm down, Minnie, this is just a simulation.”
I gasped loudly, because that fact was even more astonishing. Everything looked so damn real, I could feel the light breeze and there was even a soft drizzle. I held out my hand in fascination; I could feel every tiny water drop fall onto my hand, but it didn’t become wet.
“Jinki did a pretty good job on this one. It’s the closest we can get to fresh air down here.” He reached into his back pocket and put out a pack of cigarettes.
“Do you want one?”
I couldn’t help but stare at the cigarette pack. The logo was so familiar to me; I knew how the cigarette would taste, how it would feel between my lips - my clone was smoking it.
I looked at Key, wondered if he knew about that, but he seemed clueless. “What’s wrong?”
It would be so easy to continue living the life of my clone. I could easily inherit all his habits - hell, I already did - I would know what color was my favorite one, what my favorite food was, what music I preferred to listen to, I would know everything! Yet, it would feel like stealing my clone’s personality and his life.
What gave me the right to end his life in order to survive? All these years I had done nothing, I was sleeping while he lived, so what gave me the permission to kill him only because I woke up?
“Why do I have to kill him?” I blurted out, cigarettes long forgotten. “Why do I have to kill my clone?”
I couldn’t read Key’s expression before he turned towards the city and lit a cigarette.
“The world doesn’t need two of you.” That sounded quite harsh, but I knew what he meant.
“What would happen if your clone would die a natural death? Right, they would try to replace him immediately. What do they need in order to do that? You. But you’re not there anymore. So what are they going to do? They are going to hunt you and thus us. I don’t really need that. So,” He looked directly at me now. “you need to find your clone as soon as possible and finish him off. The more time is wasted, the higher the risk that he dies.” He flung his cigarette butt over the railing - where the hell did it fall? - and put his arms around me. “Reality is quite brutal.” He whispered softly.
I know, was what I wanted to say.
Reality is always brutal if your world crashes down around you like a cart house.
It was easy to open the window in order to sneak in, I knew how they worked - after all, it was “my” home. The dining room hadn’t changed at all; it was still the disgusting recreation of an old noble banquet hall.
I - no, my clone - never bothered to change this room, even though he hated it so much. What kept him from doing so, weren’t the beautiful plates or the crystalline wine glasses: it were the chandeliers. There were dozens of them hanging from the ceiling, reflecting the light from the outside and scattering it in every corner of the hall.
He had this wish, this stupid little wish of destroying them, of seeing them fall and shatter on the table while the diamonds would fall down and roll over the floor.
I decided to grant him this wish.
I took the gun Key had handed me and aimed at the chain of the first chandelier. The way it crashed down on the table, destroying all the porcelain and glass, was very spectacular.
I climbed onto the table, just because I could and because I wanted to have a better view of the destruction, and shot the second one down. The pearls and crystal marbles fell like water droplets all over the place - it was marvelous.
Without a warning the door flew open and a young man entered the hall. He had short, red hair, brown eyes and feminine features.
He looked like me.
It was me.
My clone.
I shot the third chandelier.
For a short moment he watched in fascination as the luster fell down in front of my feet, covering the table in jewels, then his eyes wandered back to me.
I shot the next one.
He was so shocked that he didn’t register the shattering anymore, he just stared at me, at himself, at his perfect copy, his original.
The fifth chandelier crumbled down.
As I walked forward on the table I kicked the remains of the dishes away from me, noticing that on some of them was blood. I must have had a cut somewhere.
The impact of the sixth chandelier made the table shake dangerously. My clone, though, hadn’t moved a bit.
There was only one luster left between us. My mission was easy: kill your clone and take the corpse with you.
His eyes showed me though that he didn’t want to die.
He wanted to live.
I had just started existing while he was already living.
Was this fair?
No.
He deserved it more than me.
I shot the chain of the last chandelier.
“Take Minho and run.” I warned him.
The cold steel of the gun felt kind of soothing against my temple.
“They won’t stop until they kill the both of you.”
I looked outside of the window; the world had been covered in a beautiful light blue.
My favorite color.
“Understood?” I asked my clone.
He nodded obediently.
And I pulled the trigger.