She twitched her full head of black curls back and stood a little straighter as the lady in front moved out of the line and out of sight. Just a few minutes more to her turn. The boy who manned the counter cocked his head to the side to count the remaining candidates and sighed as he registered the masses of people queuing up all the way out the glass sliding doors.
Jan bounced a little on the balls of her feet while watching the people who passed by her. Her suit was immaculately ironed and she had bought a new pair of shoes just for today. She was just waiting to pick up her tickets so she could get to the interview buildings on time and hopefully be back in time to get a hot meal with the tickets.
Today was a busy day in the ticketing office. The boy's chocolate brown mop of curls bobbed up and down as he scampered from one end of the counter to the other. He was so fast that Jan actually saw two of him. And then she blinked to clear her vision. Apparently, there really were two of him. A third curly mass of hair in that same shade of chocolate brown popped up behind the counter. Ok, there were three. She breathed a sigh of amazement.
The owner of the ticketing office must have been pretty rich in order to afford to buy all three clones. They never really came cheap although they were actually just slaves. Cheap labour. The irony of it however was that ever since humans stopped producing children, nothing was cheap anymore. And love was almost impossible considering that there were at least a dozen other people out there who looked, talked and walked like you. People would fall in love with the wrong clone and then there would be a repeat of the Sibling Murders.
The world was a chaotic mess. And in the midst of it all, she still had to line up in order to buy meal tickets. The absurdity of it all.
~Rei Shiori
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