"You're useless to me if you can't be like her."
"Mommy."
"I'm not your mother. I found you in a bin."
Lisa thought back to all the moments she'd heard those lines. They were a constant in her childhood. And in her memory, they were a constant reminder of the failure she was. She was a Mimic, a flesh clone designed to replace a dying child in a family to make it easier for the grieving parents to let go.
Her mother often recounted the story of how she'd found her in a bin. Mariella's daughter was an infant when she was diagnosed with an untreatable disease. But Mariella couldn't afford a Mimic. Luck allowed her to find Lisa before her daughter passed away.
Lisa knew this was true. She had the chip slot on her forehead disguised as a scar, like all other Mimics. Her first memory was one where she realised a significant difference between her physical form and her control ability. She was originally a Mimic of a toddler. Implanting an infant's memories, even with a STAT (Scaled Temporal Ageing Trainer), there were bound to be some discrepancies.
Still, even as a Mimic she was different. Mimics are defunct after 5 years. But 20 years later—not counting the time she spent with her first family— Lisa was still functional, and Mariella brought her in for maintenance once a year.
But Lisa hadn't intended to live this long; she wasn't human, so she'd never made plans for the future. This annoyed Mariella, who expected her to become someone important like a lawyer or a bank manager.
"My daughter would have been capable of that. You're nothing like her."
To satiate Mariella's anger, Lisa worked several jobs, which kept her away from home and brought in enough money to pay their debts. It was at her job as a waitress that she encountered Fabio. He was a journalist working on a story about Mimics. and Lisa fascinated him.
"All Mimics I've found never lived past the teenage years. In fact, the flesh code is designed to terminate once they turn 18. You should have 'died' of natural causes already."
Lisa shrugged at him. How was she supposed to know why she was still alive? Maybe it has something to do with her yearly maintenance.
"A-Tech does not offer maintenance services for Mimics. You're a single-use, disposable product."
Lisa's story about maintenance piqued his curiosity, and Fabio left for a few days to investigate. He later returned, ecstatic to share his findings with her.
"You're not a Mimic! You're human!"
"What? What are you talking about? I have a chip slot."
"Well, yes and no. You don't have a chip slot. That scar is where the memory and the dummy chips were implanted."
"Dummy chip?"
"A cloned chip with Mimic identifier protocols. You're a human imitating Mimics."
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