Best Australian Yarn 2023: Split Life ® by Jacqueline MacDonald

There is a chill in the air and you aren’t convinced it’s 100% due to the vicious air extraction unit overhead that’s causing the collars of your perfectly-starched white coat to flutter like your pulse. The insistent buzzing in your ears could just be down to the wall of refrigerated units filling the space behind your workbench. The rising nausea might be explained by the overwhelming aroma of antiseptic, formaldehyde and a heady cocktail of other chemicals. A sickening stench.

Is this actually what you suspect it is? Could this really be what began seemingly as a joke, mocked on social media, before being gradually dripped into the collective consciousness as something that would be acceptable and, in actual fact, necessary? If you do this, will there be outrage? Repercussions? Consequences, not just for you but for the country? Or have you all just become those proverbial boiling frogs?

But here it is. In bold type. In front of your very eyes on the screen of your headset. An order for a further 25 units of model SM-LG1-07 through SM-LG1-31. He really is going through with it.

So much has changed in your 40-year career. In the beginning, it had only been animals. Just mice mainly, maybe the occasional monkey, allowing medical researchers to do comparative studies on identical subjects. Then there was that famous sheep that introduced it all to the public. Like all good science, it was met with a mixture of awe, ethical questions and Luddite panic.

There had been talk for a little while of applications in agriculture; utopian dreams of ending food insecurity, which would have been great PR, but of course proved prohibitively expensive and attracted zero funding. At that time, the majority of researchers, struggling to find corporate patronage, branched off into stem cell work. But you’d stuck with it, convinced that the public could be persuaded of its utility, and the investors of its worth.

You had understood people’s initial reservations about the donor service. The public had misconceptions. You’d had to explain so many times to friends and family that the units were never conscious. They were held in suspended animation until they were required. You’d realised though that most people pictured this as dystopian fields of Escher-like seed pods harvested by bug-eyed robots when, in actual fact, the facilities you’d been to were more like aisles of boxed Buzz Lightyears at the Toy Barn.

A glossy, heart-wrenching marketing campaign had overcome the doubts in the end, focussing on the individual lives saved by the program: the rosy-cheeked child with her new heart, celebrating a birthday she was never expected to reach; the army veteran walking for the first time on his recently-grafted legs, his wife awaiting him with open arms.

Another message flashes before your eyes;“Obviously, this is a priority order. The client is hoping to have this product by Monday. Can you let me know the estimated delivery time on these units? Everything else is on hold until this is processed.”

You wonder if they can tell you’re jittery. They’re undoubtedly questioning why you haven’t acknowledged the order immediately. You’d had the wobbles before and had been talked off the ledge but no doubt you’re marked now as a weak link. Not having the required fortitude when push comes to shove.

You’d struggled somewhat with the introduction of Split Life. Models were purchased fully conscious and with some learning capacities. They could be trained up and sent to work, leaving their original free to spend time with family. It quickly became clear though that many customers were reversing that, preferring the models be left to deal with the drudgery of nappies, story time and wifely demands. And yes, the data analysis showed that 89% of Split Life customers were heterosexual men.

The behavioural science unit had worked diligently with the marketing team on the highly-successful ‘You are the Master of your Life’ campaign with that specific aim. Eventually, for those with the ear of the company board and deep enough pockets, a second model could be provided, leaving the original free to engage in whatever commitment-free lifestyle they desired.

You’d stayed in the end because of the black market. Counterfeit models were being produced and used in scams; inheritance fraud, biometric security breaches, identity theft. All those people who’d sent off their little vials and waited in anticipation to find out if they were 1/64 Lithuanian or Liberian, or if they were more likely to die of cancer or heart disease, were at risk of being replaced by an illegally grown model.

You’d been asked to lead a team tasked with developing a blood marker to be included in all legitimate models, meaning they could be identified immediately using a pin-prick sample. It didn’t end the black market completely but it made a dent. Customer confidence jumped again and you were proud of what you’d achieved.

You dictate a message and send it with a blink of the eyes;“I just wanted to check, has this order been through Legal?”

You were on holiday when this customer had ordered their first 6 models. It was 5 months after he’d been elected and he announced a cabinet reshuffle due to dissatisfaction at the ‘low output’ of some members. The news had caused a shockwave initially. You heard about in an airport lounge, waiting for your flight back from Bali. He’d filled ministries with his models. ‘How can this be legal?’ a nation had cried.

In a softball press conference he’d claimed he had received an overwhelming majority in the election which meant therefore that he, all of him, had a mandate. He’d dealt with questions in the parliamentary schoolyard in his usual manner, screaming “The people of this country voted for ME!” and making childish jibes at the opposition while totally ignoring their questions.

Meanwhile, the client media downplayed it and directed people’s attention elsewhere, probably onto incoming boats of asylum seekers or benefit cheats. Persistent critics were met with armies of angry troll and bots, splurge-gunning them with bile until they beat an exhausted retreat into silence. On social media it eventually morphed from outrage to jokes about “the Ministries of Mini-Mees” and within a few weeks the public had moved on. It was all just forgotten, or accepted as normal.

Your headset beeps again and you double-blink to open the reply: “You don’t have to worry about the legality. Just process the order and get the models grown ASAP. Just a few months until your retirement and this would be a pretty big achievement to go out on.”

Is that really a “nice pension you’ve got there, would be a shame if something happened to it”? It is true though. You nearly are done. You’re looking at enough money to spend the rest of your days in comfort at the beach house with regular trips to the cabin in Bali and to see your grandchildren in London. Are you really willing to risk all that? They are right, you’ve worked too hard to see it all ripped from under you now. What choice do you have?

But what if he really is planning to do what you suspect? The election is four months away and he’s started grumbling about the low quality of the opposition and jesting with journalists that, “perhaps I should just replace them too!”. Could he really do that? It would make the whole process meaningless, surely. But maybe that’s the point. Undermine the democratic system by making people believe it’s all pointless. They’ve been drip feeding that idea for years now. Have we finally arrived at the ultimate “I alone can fix it”? Is this how far the Overton Window has been pushed? The unspeakable now utterly unremarkable.

And even if that is all true, could you actually prevent it anyway? If you don’t process the order they’ll just replace you with some lab tech who will. What power does one person have?

The super-cooled air raises goosebumps and behind you the chillers shudder loudly. You open the customer file and double-check the model numbers, SM-LG1-07 through SM-LG1-31. The large, green Initiate Modelling nudge button looms before you.

The chemicals sting your nose as you inhale.

You blink.