Out in the great expanse of cosmos, little seeds float. They have been drifting for billions of years in the cold darkness of space from one planet to the other, driven by the need for survival and propagation, but most of all driven by spite (they will later claim an absence of emotions in favor of evolution and fairness, but they will be lying). They slip through the Earth’s atmosphere undetected by satellites, space probes, and telescopes. The seeds take root in the soil beneath the thickest of undergrowth and lay waiting for the perfect opportunity to blossom. And an opportunity always comes.

The slogan is the only thing that comes to Marina’s mind when the first clones appear at her cash register. The clones form a tight line one behind the other, like a paper people chain. Under the hard light of the LEDs, their hair shines silver with the density of spun sugar. Their long sideburns frame a square face that ends in a square jaw and a chin with a dimple the size of a penny. Their skin is pale with an almost greenish sheen underneath. As if someone saw a human through some distorted lens and threw together a close approximation of that image. They are of course all men, in a way that implies man is the only model there can ever be.

Actually, the slogan is the second thing on her mind.

“…Is that the Leader?” Marina whispers to Judith, the old timer working at the register behind hers.

Judith shrugs, and answers without glancing up from scanning six-packs of Mountain Dew for a nerdy-looking guy at the front of the line. “Didn’t you watch the news? It’s the new Department of something something. They work at the government building across the street.”

“Department of Merit, Virtue, and Excellence,” Mountain Dew Guy helpfully cuts in. “About time too.” He lets his white cotton T-shirt show from under his hoodie. The slogan is etched with a friendly font, full of rounded corners and a smiley face at the end: We Take Care of Our Own.

The clones all wear slate-colored suits and green ties. They buy one can of soda each, their faces frozen in a mockery of a smile. In fact, they look like they are in pain from the effort. Their teeth shine, bright white squares of the same size arranged in a straight line. There are rumors going around that the clones are replacing people. Mostly in high-paying government jobs, but bad news keeps coming every single day. Some people believe it, but most of them don’t. This would never happen here, they say.

Marina scans each soda while avoiding eye contact or thinking of the future of her green card and her wife Sophie back home. When she scans the last of them, something slips—no, detaches from the hand of the last clone. It is small, slippery, and veiny. It starts crawling towards Marina in slow motion, and she has to actively stop herself from smacking it with her shoe.

“Thanks! We’ll be back,” the last clone proclaims—not reassuringly—and lets the door close behind him.

The small veiny thing is still crawling over the counter, sprouting more hair-like appendages in its effort to reach her. Marina quickly takes out the Windex and sprays the fuck out of the thing until it stops moving. Then she carefully picks it up with a paper towel and tosses it in the bin before the next customer hits the register. Something in the desperate way she spritzes the creature makes her feel momentarily better and in control. Like everything is going to turn out all right no matter how messed up the world seems right now. She wishes she had a bottle the size of an aqueduct to spray all the doom and gloom away.

“Please relax. You’ll scare away our customers.”

The voice sounds like it could be her boss, Aydin. Almost but not quite.

Marina turns around to find her boss being not-her-boss. The man is wearing the same ugly polyester yellow shirt that signals the chain’s brand PriceLess, matched with high-waist beige pants that do nothing to salvage either color choice. The clothes stick to his body tighter than normal. It’s like they are part of him now, moving and breathing along with his skin. His name tag reads Aydin Yavuz, but the man’s shape is wrong. A square face framed by silver sideburns. Like someone or something tried really hard to re-arrange itself into Aydin but failed miserably. His thick brown hair usually held up in a ponytail now has a transparent quality, frail and silver. Marina can make out the yogurt section behind it, as if looking through tracing paper. His well-trimmed beard is disappearing too. In its place a chin dimple has emerged. At the spots where the hairs are missing something is pulsing underneath.

Marina feels Judith stare from somewhere in the back.

“Uh, you okay, man?” Judith asks but as soon as she fully sees him, she swallows her words.

The man—Marina can’t think of him as Aydin anymore—smiles in the same pained way the clones smiled. His mouth is two full rows of white squares.

“Back to work,” he says in a cheerful voice, and Marina stops looking Not-Aydin in the eyes as he steadily morphs into the spitting image of the Leader.

It’s an unspoken rule between people that the clones are now accepted and normal. A part of everyday life. How they have integrated so easily, one wouldn’t be able to explain. One day clones were only things in movies and scientific experiments one reads in the Sunday paper, and the next they were the Leader and his cabinet. More clones appear everywhere at a dizzying speed, and yet most humans don’t seem alarmed. As if reason or the instinct of self-preservation has been dulled by several degrees. Somewhere along the way seeds did more than plant themselves in the soil. They found kindred spirits among some humans. What one would call fertile soil.

When it first happened, Sophie was at her parents’ house for Sunday dinner with Marina by her side. Marina had been in the country just shy of six months and was putting her best foot forward by helping out Sophie’s mom in the kitchen. A fact that made Sophie feel both guilty and grateful. Her parents didn’t always take well to their daughter’s partners, but for now things seemed to be going smoothly. Marina was wiping the dishes and Sophie’s mom was putting them back on the shelf. The two of them had just been baking a pie from a family recipe Marina had brought.

Sophie could smell the leeks and the warm goat cheese melting in the oven and felt the familiar calm of the household noises as her father and brother sat on the couch to watch the Leader’s speech. The first one after he rose to the higher ranks of the Leadership. An outsider by nature, the Leader had crushed every opponent standing between him and “his people” as he called them.

The news theme started playing and the Leader went live. It was only for a second, but Sophie had the feeling of walking on a tightrope stretched on top of thin ice while wasps buzzed overhead. Everything was both reassuringly normal and extremely surreal ever since her family had been charmed by the Leader. Swayed by the things they liked in him while ignoring all the other things implied. She was never able to convince them that those horrible things would actually happen or were already happening. In a way, the road for the clones’ acceptance had already been paved.

Then the Leader duplicated on live television. At first, there was only one white square man sitting behind the podium, promising prosperity, the lowering of prices everywhere, and to hunt down anyone that didn’t belong. But as the minutes went by, the man started cracking open like an egg. If eggs were square. There were screams and sounds of disbelief both from the press and his personal security. Sophie’s family watched, mesmerized by the spectacle. Even Sophie’s mom and Marina joined them in the living room unable to look away from what was happening on screen. Tiny particles of unknown origin floated from the fleshy mass that had been the Leader a few minutes ago. The Leader thing gurgled with satisfaction as his essence spilled out into the room. The slate-colored jacket and green tie that were part of his suit melted into his skin and were remade again, wrapped gently around the new bodies that formed, all indistinguishable from the first.

There were now five Leaders in that press room: the original one behind the podium, one standing to the right of the first resting a hand on his shoulder (could someone pat himself on the back more literally?), a third one sitting in the front row chanting “We take care of our own” over and over, and two more standing all the way to the back on either side of the wall blocking the exits. And if a few people were missing from the crowd, it was hard to tell. The attention was never on them to begin with. A few ribbons of excess human flesh that remained on the floor slithered away from the cameras and hid under the rug and behind the podium. Then the video went dark and an air-freshener ad popped on the screen.

None of this deterred his supporters. In fact, it was more proof that the man could keep his promises.

Sophie’s brother chuckled as he still stared at the screen with some kind of awe, like a child in a magician’s parlor.

“I’ll be damned! The Leader will literally clone himself just to serve us. What an icon!”

It’s Saturday night, board game night, but all three guests forgot to bring a game and Marina and Sophie don’t even pretend to care. They all sit around in the living room, two on the couch, two on the floor, and one on the ottoman, like witches protecting themselves from the outside world by forming a magic circle with their bodies.

“So, what do we think they are?”

Gabriella takes a chug from a glass of whiskey she bought from the liquor store at the corner. It was a last-minute desperate buy to try and lift the mood tonight. It hasn’t really worked but it’s still a nice gesture.

Mateus looks up from his own glass so that only the warm brown of his eyes is visible. He waits for someone else to say it and when no one does he goes ahead.

“Well, aliens?”

Sage snorts at that and Mateus looks at them askance.

“What’s with their obsession with going to Jupiter? Clearly that’s where they came from.”

“If that were true,” Sage points out, “then they wouldn’t be trying to go back to Jupiter.”

“If they were really trying to leave the planet, I for one would back that cause,” says Sophie and everyone laughs.

Their laughter turns shrill and more awkward as they desperately try to cling to it for a bit longer. The silence that follows sits heavier on their shoulders. Somewhere outside a siren is blasting, and everyone instinctively holds their breath.

“Whatever they are, they want us to disappear.” Gabriella whispers inside her foggy glass. “Have you seen the group of clones appearing at peaceful protests? Standing and watching? Some protesters go missing afterwards. Snatched and turned.”

Marina and Sophie, who had been at a protest just two days ago, instinctively lock hands and eyes as if trying to convince each other they are still here. That they will always be here. A sudden glare of blue light flashes from the ottoman. It’s Sage scrolling through their phone, their forehead creased.

“The deal was no doomscrolling tonight,” Sophie says gently.

Sage shakes their head. “It’s not that. It’s an app. A colleague told me about it.”

They raise their phone so that everyone else can see. It looks like an average beauty app with a bunch of filters to brighten your teeth, remove your pimples and wrinkles, or make your eyes the size of your ears and the other way around. The logo at the top of the screen is scrawled with bold black letters and sharp edges that scream Snatched! Everything in it reads more alarming than inviting.

Mateus chugs down his whiskey. “Are you thinking of a glow-up?”

“No, that’s just a camouflage to pass under the radar. It’s to keep us safe from them.”

“…by giving us glass skin?” Mateus jokes but gets up nonetheless to get a better look. The photographer in him can’t resist commenting on the app’s features.

Everyone gathers around Sage as they show their friends how the app works. The filters, they explain, correspond to postal codes. See the numbers? That’s us right here. So, when you use this filter on your photo you send a signal to everyone that the clones are in this area. It will also slim down your face and give you bunny ears but that’s just a distraction. The point is, whenever you use it, you’re alerting everyone that the clones are coming. At least give people a chance to prepare, you know?

Gabriella, who’s working part time as a delivery driver is already downloading the app. “I know the codes by heart since I drive around all day. I might as well make use of it.”

The Foundation surprised Mateus with a call just as he had returned to his dingy apartment. He had been snapping pictures on his way home from his shift at the pizza place. Some of those photos are of the clones. A new project or an attempt to feel in control, he hasn’t decided yet.

Mateus has been staring at the director on the video call. The man doesn’t appear to mind lingering until the news sinks in. He just waits, a sympathetic look on his face that he has probably practiced before.

“Canceled?”

“I am afraid so.”

“Is the Foundation closing down?”

“Well, I didn’t say that!” the man in the slate-colored suit fixes his green tie. For a moment the real person behind this official dress-up shows and it’s someone exhausted and irritable. He takes out a handkerchief and pats his forehead dry. More of a ritual than a need.

Mateus secretly searches around the site of the newly renamed Foundation of Merit. It’s all about merit and excellence these days. Even for the most innocuous things. Just yesterday Mateus was talking to a friend whose gaming collective was renamed Meritorious Gaming Collective, which is by far the most ridiculous name they could pick. The Foundation itself used to be called Foundation of Emerging Talent in Documentary, Photography, & Film but that was too meritless of a term, so they decided to change it in a way that made sure Mateus and other people who didn’t fit their meritorious criteria would be left out.

“The Foundation is still doing excellent work.” The man has put his complacent look back on, although he looks slightly more impatient now. “We’re just choosing to focus on merit now instead of…you know.” He waves his hand in a way that triggers Mateus’s imagination in the worst possible way.

Mateus used to be one of the top contenders for this year’s Photography and Mixed Media Grant for his thesis project “Student Protest Signs as Art Installations and Expressions of Individualism,” which had earned the praise of all his teachers at his college’s Digital Media program. That’s how he met Gabriella. She kept showing up at the student protests with her pink hair and some of the most hilarious and scathing signs, and he immediately knew he had found his project.

“Are you saying I have no merit?” Mateus rubs his nose like he wants to tear it off and throw it at the man behind the screen.

“Now now, that’s not what I said,” the man huffs and looks at something off screen that makes him nervous all over again. “All I am saying is that there’s plenty of merit to go around these days. We have to focus our efforts on our own people.”

Mateus feels his cheeks burning. He doesn’t want to give away any emotion although his mind is spinning. He’s already thinking about that empty spot in his CV that could make all the difference in his visa application. Merit, excellence, is what they ask for, but they are not willing to acknowledge it in anyone they don’t approve of. And the money. It could make all the difference and help him focus on completing his project. Giving the protesters another spotlight while finishing his studies. Now it’s all gone to waste.

The man keeps glancing to his right although now his expression has taken on a calm resolution as he makes an offer.

“If you’re so sure you’ve got what it takes, we have a new form on our site.”

“A form?”

The man sends a link in the chat. Mateus clicks on it and a page with a pop-up that says Are you one of our own? Apply here! in bright red letters appears.

“Yes, it’s a re-evaluation request. If you fill it in, you’ll be stating that you want us to focus on you. That you’re as good as our own. And we do take care of our own.”

The director’s face has taken up most of the screen. He is leaning really close now as if letting Mateus in on a secret. It’s almost as if he is trying to sell the form to Mateus. But why?

“There might be a visit or two to your personal art space, but I think it’s a step that will put you ahead of the competition.”

Mateus has been counting on the grant ever since he applied. In fact, the grant has been the only thing on his mind for some time now. He’s been fighting for his art for so long and he is bone tired. Wouldn’t it be nice to get something for once besides the occasional praise? He isn’t arrogant; if anything, he grew up knowing that he had to work hard in order to get where he wanted to be, but he also knows his work has merit.

He accepts the pop-up and opens the form.

The line of clones is getting longer and harder to control. Marina needs to pee badly, but the queue is long and it almost never stops. One can of soda per clone per minute and her bladder is screaming, but she has to scan all of them or she’ll be fired. Maybe she wants to get fired? Perhaps getting fired wouldn’t be so bad right now? At least she could pee in her own time. She glances back at Judith’s stand, but Judith doesn’t look up, she never looks up. She is just as busy as Marina if not more. The other cashiers and employees are…not themselves.

What’s worse is that Not-Aydin is giving out promotions to the store employees. One promotion per day. How wonderful! It all happens in his office. You go in as yourself and you come out as someone else. Someone promoted, as he calls it. Now Marina can’t tell apart Aydin and the clone employees from the clone customers. She and Judith are the last ones standing. Occasionally someone that isn’t a clone will come in, and they either leave immediately or disappear behind the soda displays the clone employees set up every morning. Then they emerge as their new selves with a can of soda for her to scan. Marina has flagged the whole street on Snatched! as Danger! Stay away! And definitely don’t come near the soda displays! At least that’s what she hopes the filters convey to anyone who’s looking at their phone.

She really needs to pee. This is not a joke. It’s an emergency.

As she turns around one more time to plead with Judith to hold the line for her, she sees that Judith is already up, putting up a sign that she’ll be right back.

“Hey!” Marina feels a muted dread swelling up in her belly. Right next to her bladder.

“It will just be two minutes,” Judith says almost casually as if this is normal. She fixes a strand of hair behind her ear, probably to ease her nerves. “Don’t be a drama queen. This is a good thing. You’ll get it eventually.” And she disappears in the back of the store.

“That’s what I am afraid of,” Marina says distantly.

Another can of soda on the counter, another enigmatic clone smiling squarely at her, promising to come back for more. Will this ever end, Marina thinks. And most importantly how?

You’d think the replacements would take people’s likenesses, try to blend in, as every evolutionarily smart organism would do. But what everyone gets wrong in those types of movies is that if an organism believes they are superior to you, the better option, they will try their damnedest to shape the world in their likeness. Slowly and steadily, they’ll reverse the tables, making it look like humans are the parasites. Even aliens can be arrogant.

Humans are the ones out of place.

Sage wears their best shirt, the one with the golden and green stripes that matches the color of their eyes. They got an email yesterday, an urgent meeting with HR regarding their productivity and adaptability. Sage fixes their hair in the mirror because it keeps the dark feeling that swells inside their belly at bay but also, they’ll be damned if they get fired looking less than their best.

The day has already started off less than ideal; Sudoku’s plate is filled to the brim with food, but the tabby is nowhere to be found.

“Come on buddy. I’ve got your favorite!” They yell outside the window, hoping to hear the low mewing of the cat but the only sound outside is the gentle rustling of leaves. It seems that lately certain types of plants have been overtaking the neighborhood while others die out completely.

Sage looks at their phone and realizes they are running late. They leave the kitchen window ajar, just in case the tabby comes looking for a snack. Just before they leave the building, they knock on Mister Jacobson’s door.

“Hey, Mister Jacobson! Good morning, sir, have you seen—”

The words freeze on Sage’s lips as the old man who opens the door looks nothing like the white-haired, skinny man who used to be their neighbor. Now a much taller and square-looking man is wearing his baby blue sweater. The fabric is stretched thin over the vastly different body, so much so that it looks like part of his skin.

“Sage! Come inside, my friend.” The clone is doing a spot-on impersonation of Mister Jacobson’s nasal speech. Close enough to make Sage want to pinch themself. His hair is similarly thin as the old man’s white locks (Sage always suspected he was wearing a toupee), but the rest of their neighbor is gone. As if his hair and clothes are all that’s left of him.

Sage manages to gather their thoughts keeping their eyes pinned to the clone who sounds like their old friend but isn’t. “Gee, I would love to but I’ve got to run.”

“Oh, for the meeting today?” the clone says in a very casual, everyday voice. Sage doesn’t know how he knows about the meeting. They hadn’t seen their neighbor yesterday at all—they arrived late and went straight to the shower and then to bed. They can’t ask about it now. Their instinct screams at them to pretend everything is normal.

“Yes, and I’ve lost my cat.” Sage presses themself to keep talking as they walk down the corridor towards the exit. “Please keep an eye out for him?”

The old man, the clone, the Leader, smiles and raises his hand goodbye.

“If you say so!”

Outside, the streets are emptier than usual. Sage has to walk three full blocks before they see the first sign of people. Real people. And when they do, they pick up their pace, almost running towards them as if the normalcy of their lives (as much as it’s still there) will protect them from Mister Jacobson and the HR meeting. It takes Sage one bus and one subway ride to get to the main offices, and they remember why they prefer working from home.

The building is the run-of-the-mill glass façade corporate tower that swallows Sage as soon as they pass through the big revolving door. The feeling that something is wrong smacks them in the face the moment they greet the receptionist. Jeannette is…wrong somehow. Not in the same way as Mister Jacobson or any of the clones they have seen. She is still pretty much Jeannette but she is trying not to be. From her slate-colored suit and green tie down to her short-cropped hair with silver highlights, the woman looks like she is outright cosplaying as the Leader.

“Hey Jeannette, love the tie,” Sage says in an embarrassing effort to reclaim some of their sanity.

The woman doesn’t acknowledge their comment. Instead, she points at the conference area on the other side of the room and quickly turns her attention back to the computer screen. Sage walks the few dozen steps at an excruciatingly slow pace, feeling the furriness of the carpet around their ankles where the socks stop, smelling the moldy air from the badly maintained ventilator, and generally doing anything in their power not to have a full-blown panic attack.

The man sitting at one end of the round table is no different than Jeannette. Same costume, same shade and length of hair, and even perhaps some makeup to compensate for what likeness isn’t there.

“What’s all this, Danny? It’s still Danny, right?” Sage gestures at their boss, at Jeannette behind the door, at the world in general.

“Yes. Please take a seat,” Danny says calmly, disconnected from all the alarm bells that have gone off inside Sage’s mind. “There have been some changes to the way we do things around here.”

“Changes?”

“Improvements! For one, no more remote work. Everything has to happen on-site and on company computers. Second”—and for that Danny gestures over his shoulder at the glass door behind him. Sage can see a whole team of people cosplaying as the Leader, the light of their screens spotlighting their sameness—“you’ll have to become more of a team player, Sage.”

Danny opens a drawer and produces a costume—Sage can only think of it as a costume—of the same slate suit and green tie. On top of it rests a silver wig. Sage reflectively touches their own ashen blond pompadour, feels the soft curls at the top, the ones they spent so much time fixing this morning. In theory Sage is not too far removed from the costume Danny wants to make them wear. But they are still not good enough, not there enough. Not according to Danny, or the clones, or the people who came before the clones, the ones who laid the groundwork so the clones could seem like the natural evolution of things.

“No offense, Danny, I love a good suit. I really do. But this color makes me look like death.”

“This is for your own good,” Danny insists. Sage can finally read the urgency under his cool demeanor. “After all you are one of our own.”

Sage gets up.

“I don’t think I ever was.”

They feel all eyes in the office watching them, pressed like daggers against their skin, and for a moment they are certain they won’t make it out of the glass tower. That this is all there is. The end of the line. But their colleagues just stare. They are not clones and they are probably just as scared of them as Sage is. Otherwise, they wouldn’t try to appease the Leader like this.

For now, Sage has only two goals: first, make it to their apartment, and second, get themself and Sudoku out of town.

Gabriella’s van slowly pulls up near the college campus. There’s a student assembly at the main hall to decide the future of the protests. Too many students are disappearing throughout the day, and the student board is now divided. On one hand protests are their only tool to be heard, to be noticed by the news. Let people know that the future is still fighting for something. On the other hand, it makes them vulnerable, a prime target for the groups of clones. And while they appear like peaceful observers of the protests when the cameras are rolling, it’s when there are no official eyes around that they attack.

Just as Gabriella walks to the hall she hears screaming in the distance. There, at the east part of campus she sees a woman sprinting between two buildings that house the dorms. She thinks she recognizes her. It’s the girl from Business Law, who keeps all the meticulous notes and always sits a bit to the left of center. Her hair is undone, her eyes wild, and her knees full of scratches. She is sprinting forward like there’s nothing ahead. Like she’s only terrified of what’s coming after her. Gabriella thinks it’s the fastest she’s ever seen someone run or at least the most desperately. In a matter of seconds three things happen: Gabriella drops her books and starts speed-walking to where she guesses the girl is going, a group of clones sprints past Gabriella and heads for the girl (no sound comes from the clones other than the pounding of shoes on concrete), the girl crashes into a tree that she either didn’t see or couldn’t swerve in time to avoid.

The moment the girl is down the clones circle her. They stand over her watching until all of them catch up. Gabriella hates herself as she freezes on the spot, she feels her legs go numb with fear and she makes herself half-hide behind a corner. Then the clones bend over. Like a flock of pigeons pecking away at a half-eaten sandwich, Gabriella thinks and immediately tries to squash that thought. She doesn’t want to imagine the girl as half-eaten. Is she being eaten? Where do all the bodies go after they are replaced by the clones? After they get snatched? Her knees start to shake but she doesn’t leave. She wants to see for herself. Her eyes blink, but she keeps them focused as if she’s trying to figure out a magic trick. But when the clones are done, there is nothing left of the girl. It’s like she never even existed. Perhaps there is one more slate suit and green tie added to the crowd of clones, but Gabriella wouldn’t be able to tell; there’s too many of them to keep track of.

She slowly backs away without picking up her books. All the way out of campus and back to her van. When she finally sits on the driver’s seat, she realizes that her phone has been buzzing all this time inside her back pocket, and she feels retroactively relieved that the clones didn’t notice. There are several messages from the Snached! app but she doesn’t have time to read them. Something crashes on the passenger door. Gabriella sees a clump of silver hair and then two hands pressed against the window. Then more hands, and hands on top of hands, all looking the same, all pressing against the windows on the sides, the front and the back of the van. There is no sound, the clones make no sound, they only press on and try to pry the doors open. The only thing Gabriella hears is herself hyperventilating as she steals a glance at her phone screen again and realizes that there’s an alarm for the college campus and Mateus’s neighborhood, ten minutes’ drive from here.

Gabriella really doesn’t want to run over anyone today or ever but there’s no other way she can leave now. She closes her eyes and backs the van up just a little bit but when a body climbs on the hood of the van, she backs up harder and, oh my god, she has hit something. The thing she’s hit must have been hollow inside because it gives way immediately with a wet sound like she just smashed the biggest watermelon in history. Gabriella’s teeth rattle but she can’t stop now. She steps on the pedal and makes a hard right. More bodies under the wheels, more wet sounds popping from everywhere. Gabriella lies to herself that it’s just the sidewalk she is climbing on. It isn’t working. Bodies crash against the van repeatedly, like they don’t care for survival, hers or theirs. Most of the windows are cracked, and she thinks she sees blood trapped in the cracks, but the wet sounds have stopped. She’s free now and she’s speeding down the highway. Her phone hasn’t stopped buzzing.

Sage tries to be as quiet as Sudoku when he walks down the corridor to their apartment. They carefully turn the key while glancing at Mister Jacobson’s door, and when they hear the lock click, they slip inside like a burglar. Their phone has been exploding with notifications. Some of them—most of them—from Snatched! If what the app says is accurate then the clones have been spreading everywhere like wildfire. But Sage doesn’t need the app to verify this: Their own old sweet neighbor is one of them. Nowhere is safe. There are a few panicked messages from Gabriella driving to Mateus. Marina has texted in the group chat that she was fired from her job two days ago for needing to pee, and Sage thinks, Well, shit, it’s all going down.

They text Gabriella that they’ll be there. Then they text their sister, six hundred miles away. It’s been a couple of weeks since they talked—more like anxiety-dumped on each other about where the world was going—and then they lost touch again through the mundanity and absurdity of everything. Sage feels guilty now. They keep checking their phone while looking under every piece of furniture calling for the cat.

Sudoku is still nowhere to be found, but when Sage reaches the kitchen, the plate of cat food isn’t there anymore. They shouldn’t have left that window open, they realize now, but at the time it seemed like a decent idea. Stupid, stupid.

“Found your cat.”

Sage jumps. Mister Jacobson’s voice comes from the other side of that open window, and Sage realizes with some relief that the clone is on the outside of the apartment. What used to be Mister Jacobson is sitting at the bench a few feet away from the window; the plate is at his feet on the grass and the cat in his arms. He holds the tabby in a way Sage can’t comprehend at first glance. The cat’s head is fully inside the clone’s armpit as if Sudoku is sniffing him.

“Hey, buddy.” Sage doesn’t mean their voice to sound so quaky but it does.

The cat doesn’t answer and Mister Jacobson smiles. Sage doesn’t like that smile. These precise square teeth look more threatening than Sudoku’s sharp ones.

“He was a bit afraid this morning but now he is doing better.”

The clone picks the cat up from his torso and turns him around. Sage drops their phone and screams. Sudoku’s face is an exact replica of Mister Jacobson’s face, only distorted and compressed like a funhouse mirror. Sage’s mind goes blank. The small clone in the cat’s body meows and jumps off the bigger clone’s arms heading for the house. Sage shuts the window faster than they can think and runs out of the room.

“I told you he is doing better! And you could be too.”

Mister Jacobson makes a screeching sound from hell that could be laughter or could be a call for help of some kind. No matter what it is, Sage doesn’t want to listen to that shrill sound ever again. They grab a duffel bag from the bedroom and fill it with everything they think could be useful. If they are fast enough, they can meet up with Gabriella and make a plan.

Where did this species come from? And why? What made them abandon their own solar system and fly billions of light years away to a new planet, hide in some yet-unmapped area, and bide their time until an opportunity arose? What is their plan for this planet? A species that feeds on itself has no future. Evolution has forced the multiplicity of species, given enough time and the right conditions. The need for homogenization can only lead to the consumption of the self.

In front of Mateus’s apartment, the clones have made a circle. Gabriella parks her blood-splattered van behind a copse of trees at the park and walks the two blocks to his door. The sun has started going down, and she hopes that will be enough to conceal her for now. The world seems so silent, almost peaceful. There are no children in the park or in the playground next to it, and Gabriella is thankful for it. There are no adults out in the open either. At some point Gabriella thinks she sees a passing kid carrying an oddly shaped ball like it’s a trophy. His clothes are covered in dirt and when he turns to look at her from afar the child is wearing an old man’s face. The Leader’s face. The ball, Gabriella realizes, is also the Leader’s face. Or his head. Shapes and bodies have started to lose meaning in Gabriella’s mind and she picks up the pace but stops a safe distance from the apartment in a place where she has a clear view of Mateus’s window.

There’s a shape there by the window that could be Mateus. Gabriella calls his phone but nothing happens. It’s either bad reception or something else entirely. She keeps staring at the window. Her phone keeps buzzing with messages from Sage, Marina, and Sophie. Her parents are looking for her too. They hear conflicting news about what’s happening in the country, and they are begging her to leave as soon as possible. Gabriella feels almost nostalgic for the belief that airports are safe places to be right now. And it’s only been a few weeks. Everything and everyone is changing so fast it’s making her dizzy. Nowhere is safe anymore. She’ll have to find another way. After some time, the light in the apartment turns on—Gabriella doesn’t have time to see who’s there but she doesn’t have to. Soon the front door opens and another clone comes out. One holding Mateus’s photos. Or what could have been his photos. Gabriella recognizes the size and style from a distance. Even though the clones all wear the same suits and silver hair, and have the same square jaws, the one handing out the photos must be Mateus or the clone who took care of him.

The others in the circle accept the photos quietly and share them between themselves. Each clone holds one and they all look at them in silence. They lift their eyes to examine each other, and their attention goes back to the photos. The ritual goes on for some time until one of them turns around and hits the clone next to him viciously. Gabriella can’t make out if the first clone uses a stone, or just his bare fist but the clone that got hit stumbles backwards and falls to the ground. The rest of them gather around the fallen one and point at him. A shrill sound that a human mouth could not possibly be making comes out of them in unison.

When they are done, there is little left of the clone that was stricken. The liquid looks like thinner blood and the body doesn’t have any organs, at least none that Gabriella can recognize. The only things that stand out are a couple of seeds floating in the air from the fallen one’s body, their veiny, webbed edges helping them gain height, until she loses sight of them.

Gabriella, shaking, finds her van and jumps in. She doesn’t know what this means. She doesn’t know anything anymore. Then a hand reaches out and touches her shoulder.

“Motherfucker!”

“Sorry! I’m sorry!” Sage apologizes, keeping their hands in the air to show they are harmless. “I saw you from afar but thought the both of us would be an easier target. So I curled up in the back and waited for you.”

“It’s fine. I am sorry I screamed at you. It’s been a day.”

Gabriella hugs Sage so hard they almost fall over. Together they cry about Mateus and just sit there for a while. They call Marina and Sophie to let them know and tell them to get ready. They will be coming.

“You’ve got so many undelivered packages back here. I could barely fit.”

“Yeah, people are too busy murdering each other to call and complain,” Gabriella tries to joke and instantly regrets it.

“I can’t get my sister on the phone and have no way to reach her.”

“Shit. Okay, I can help. But help me out a little first.”

The two of them set to work, tearing open packages, keeping what seems useful for immediate survival purposes, like blankets, tools, and dry or canned food, and leaving the rest behind the trees.

On the way the streetlamps are broken, cars and stores are broken into, and sirens are heard all over town, but they never see a police car or an ambulance. Sometimes Gabriella and Sage think they see people staring at them through windows, their silhouettes highlighted by the house lights. Sometimes these silhouettes look like the Leader and sometimes they don’t. Nevertheless, they never stop.

It’s eerily quiet in the neighborhood where Marina and Sophie live. Gabriella lets the van idle between a burger joint and a laundromat like Sophie instructed them. They turn off the lights and wait. A van with broken windows covered in blood doesn’t stand out as much today as it would have a week ago, Gabriella thinks. The world was always a couple of weeks and a few essential workers away from total chaos, but nobody ever thinks about this. Even after the pandemic, people remembered the worst part of it as hard but manageable. In reality, it was manageable because a lot of workers made sacrifices to keep things running. Now there’s nobody to fill that spot. Society is all of its people giving time, and labor, and goodwill, and now most of the people are this one organism that keeps taking and taking. Society is but an extension of the circle of nature, and right now both of them are dangerously close to the end.

“I think I hear something.” Sage’s whisper is barely audible. They touch Gabriella’s shoulder in case she didn’t hear them.

There are sounds coming from the laundromat, specifically from a pile of clothes thrown willy nilly on the floor in the back and a bin toppled over in the middle of the floor. The clothes move, the bin twitches and then stops.

“What the hell is that?”

“Raccoons? Hopefully raccoons. Or like a coyote would be okay too.”

“Have you seen many coyotes around here?”

Sage shrugs. “I haven’t seen anything around here lately.”

Silence again. Both sets of eyes are fixed on the laundromat. Gabriella’s foot hovers an inch away from the gas pedal. Then a hand comes out of the bin, and a head peers out from under the pile of dirty laundry. The head is Sophie.

The hand better be Marina.

And it is.

Sage and Gabriella breathe in their first full breath in several minutes. The couple moves fast, backpacks in hand. They glide over the broken glass of the store front and jump into the van the minute Sage opens the rear door. A musty smell fills the van. Like dirty underwear and socks that have been left to mold in a teenager’s room. And they are all out on the road again.

“What were you doing in there?”

Marina stretches her obviously hurting back. “We were being careful. It’s chaos here. We couldn’t risk waiting around in the apartment anymore.”

“Did you know they are killing each other now?” Sophie asks.

Gabriella clutches at the steering wheel.

“Yeah, we saw something similar.”

“Why though?”

“I think it’s because some of them are wrong.”

“Wrong?” Gabriella thinks she sees a suspicious group crossing an intersection and turns the van the other way.

Marina shrugs.

“I don’t know. Just. Not perfect by their own standards. Defective. There’s been a slaughter outside of the government offices across from my job. All between themselves. Perhaps they think they’re being infiltrated by us.”

Somehow this makes them laugh, but it’s a bitter laughter. How the tables can turn and then turn again and again so fast that it’s not turning anymore. More like a downward spiral, unpredictable and impossible to get a grasp of.

“We’re going to see if my sister’s okay. Maybe crash there if it’s safe,” Sage says. Then their face lights up, remembering something. “Hey, Sophie shouldn’t we check on your folks?”

Sophie’s face grows pale and unreadable. Marina squeezes her hand a few times and then says, “We don’t think it’s them anymore. They stopped talking to us early on when I told them I didn’t trust the Leader.”

“They loved those fucking clones.”

They take turns driving. In normal circumstances it wouldn’t take them more than a day or two, but these are not normal circumstances. Every public space is a threat, every house conceals danger, and even driving on the highway feels like they’re in an old spy film and there’s always someone tailing them, someone unseen and ever-present. Stopping to refuel in abandoned gas stations feels like tempting fate. It might be paranoia, but they can’t stop feeling that they’re being watched.

At last, after a few days and an undetermined amount of potato chips, they arrive at what someone could confidently call the middle of nowhere. There are still houses around, farmhouses and barns and a few stone cottages hidden in the hills, but it’s been so long without getting into trouble they start feeling like normal people again, instead of characters in a movie they didn’t ask to be cast in. They might not have had a close encounter with a full clone, but they’ve seen all kinds of strange creatures on the way. Stray cats and dogs, horses, turtles, and even birds with messed-up faces or what seemed like fingers poking out of their bellies or backs. A deer with too-square teeth. Sophie jokes about having to eat some of those eventually if they are going full survival mode and if that would count as cannibalism.

“Hmm, maybe a little,” Sage says. “Not that I would be against it.”

Marina shakes her head, but it isn’t clear if she doesn’t think it’s cannibalism or just wouldn’t go down that road.

“There’s still plenty of food everywhere,” Gabriella says. “We just have to get to it. It’s not that bad yet. Perhaps it will never become that bad. Other places—countries are still okay. My parents told me.”

Sophie senses some kind of emerging panic in Gabriella’s voice so she changes the subject by pointing to the church at the side of the road.

“This looks quiet enough. What do you say we finally get a full night’s sleep?”

“It’s not safe,” Gabriella says. “Someone still needs to keep watch.”

“I can do this!” Sage offers. “I didn’t drive that much, and I am more rested than the rest of you.”

“We can at least try.” Marina rubs Gabriella’s back, trying to infuse some hope into her soul.

“Okay. Let’s try.”

The church is an old stone square with white-washed walls. The cracks on the façade betray neglect, but the garden full of strange blossoming plants tells another story. The heavy wooden doors give way easier than Sage expected. The church isn’t locked. The smell is what alerts them immediately that this isn’t exactly a safe place.

“Shit! What happened here?”

“Are they all—”

The floor is awash with a pinkish-red fluid that could be blood.

“Dead.”

It looks like some kind of ritualistic murder happened inside the church not too long ago. Nobody left alive. Must have been clones. There are no organs anywhere, just flesh-like parts and blood-like liquid and the face of the Leader battered, smashed, and slashed ad infinitum. In some ways it looks like the most bloodless carnage in history. Mostly because it looks so un-human-like.

“It looks like they were all standing in a circle.” Gabriella can’t stop thinking of that scene outside of Mateus’s apartment. A clone must have been deemed wrong and attacked. And then probably another one and another one, until there was no one left or maybe just one. Perhaps the last clone standing left this place to spread his violent message across the country.

“Watch out!” Sage pushes Marina to the pews away from the aisle.

Small particles levitate from the broken bodies like some kind of new miracle, but it isn’t a miracle. The wind has picked up now that the doors are wide open. The seeds, all webbed and veiny, make their way across the aisle without a care for the group. Once they make it outside, they lift up and up and up until they are nothing against the blue vastness of the sky.

“Are they leaving?” Sage is the first one to say what they are all thinking. What they all hope.

“I don’t know.” Marina looks up like she’s waiting for the seeds to fall down again. They don’t. “There’s too many of them, they’re everywhere. What if that’s how they cross the borders?”

They are all looking up now, and after a while a swarm of larks pierces the sky. They look like birds. Nothing is weird about them besides the fact they weren’t expecting them to look so utterly normal.

“I wish some of these birds will make it.” Sophie feels wetness in her eyes. She doesn’t know why it took so long to come.

“I hope some of us will make it too. Some of us have to,” Sage says in a low voice.

Gabriella heads for the church again. This time her step is steady and confident.

“Come on, we’ll need the rest. We need to outlive these motherfuckers.”

“How?

“Let them do to each other what they did here. We’ll just have to survive. And wait.”

Somewhere in the stratosphere little seeds make their way beyond the gravitational pull of the Earth. Their purpose clear: to find a suitable planet so they can flourish and spread. This feat seems almost impossible, but they have already traveled for billions of years into the vastness of space from planet to hostile planet and they won’t stop now. They are driven by a need for survival. But most of all they are driven by spite. Once the right planet is found they will lie in hiding. Wait for the perfect moment to spread their civilization.

Somehow the opportunity always comes.

 

(Editors’ Note: “The Snatchers” is read by Matt Peters on the Uncanny Magazine Podcast, Episode 70A.)

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