Crunch
I had been walking among banana trees, the dried leaves crunching beneath my feet. Suddenly I'm jolted to awake by something landing on my chest. I immediately open my eyes wide to see a small mammalian predator that has just jumped up onto my chest. Or rather onto the banket, for I appear to be wrapped in a blanket on a couch. I hold perfectly still but it's clearly too late to go unnoticed, as the creature walks towards my face. I search the depths of my subconscious memory for what it might be. Some kind of feline... lynx? bobcat? caracal? It doesn't seem entirely malevolent, in fact it might even look friendly.
It licks my face with its rough tuna breath tongue. Ah yes the domestic housecat, in my alarm I had skipped over that one. I sit up wiping the cat saliva from my face.
I'm in a cozy looking room with armchairs, bookshelves, a television, and a generally cozy decor, lots of sunny yellow and copper-coloured accents. One corner of the room opens into a kitchen and eating nook, glowing with the morning sun.
"I see you've met my little lion" says Dorothy with a laugh, through a mouthful of grapenuts cereal from where she is sitting in the breakfast nook.
"Haha yeah, he gave me quite the start" I say with sheepish smile, rising and padding across the room in my now-wrinkly scrubs.
"Coffee?" she asks, gesturing towards a pot of delicious smelling dark brown liquid.
Looking out the window I see that it is a beautiful sunny day. She has a small yard full of flowers, and it appears there are a fair number of bees traveling too and form some point above the window.
Dorothy notices me looking at them and says "yeah they moved in a few days go, freaked me out at first but I'm becoming rather fond of my little flying monkeys"
After possibly the most delicious breakfast of my relatively short life --rye toast with butter and honey, and freshly ground coffee-- Dorothy invited me to come do some errands about town with her. She did her best to politely downplay her surprise at my lack of knowledge of things she considered incredibly basic, while at the same time I found I knew a lot about things many people didn’t understand. I knew that banana trees are all clones of eachother, but not what year it is or the shocking political developments in Iran that apparently everyone was talking about.
Life seemed much more do-able now that I had a friend though. Yesterday's bizarre goose chase began to seem so far away. I felt a newfound sense of having opinions about my lot in life and interest in what the future might hold. There was so much more to the world than I had been previously led to believe. With this newfound confidence I asked Dorothy to bring me by the Institute I had come from, they couldn't just toss me out with nothing at all.
The sterile white on white of the Institution had become so dull, claustrophobic even. The receptionist in the small stark lobby directed me to a little cubical room which seemed halfway between an office and a hospital room. Presently a small grey haired scientist pulled back the curtain and entered. I had seen him frequently before, but I had never gotten to know any of the staff at all. Immediately I felt a bit cowed and as if it were presumptuous for me to be behaving as anything other than a pliable science experiment again. I swallowed and resolved to stand up for myself.
"What can we do for you Seven Twelve??" asked the scientist with a slight bemused smile.
"Well... I would like to know.... ummm... everything. Who am I a clone of and why for starters"
His eyes grew wide for a moment and he leaned back in his chair in thought for a moment. After wahat seemed like an eternity he leaned forward and put his hand on my shoulder as a father would to his son. Possibly the first behaviour I'd seen by any of the staff toward me that wasn't entirely cold and clinical.
"Well... Seven Twelve... you'd like to feel more on the same footing as everyone else I reckon?"
"Um, sure?"
"Well. Here's the thing. Not one of us here really knows why we're here. Knowing would take away the greatest mystery of life"
I frowned, quite unsatisfied.
"And besides, what makes you so sure you're a clone?" he continued with a wink.
There was a quiet roaring sound in my head as the whole picture I had put together today of my new life came crumbling down.