Before Miya stood a six year old little girl identical to herself from that age. Round cheeks, red lips too big for her face, and dark irises that blended in with the pupils. Even the bob, cut out of straight black hair, was ripped straight out of the nineties.
Small feet shifted back and forth. Nervous or excited, Miya couldn’t tell. Really, she was having trouble on focusing on anything at all.
Today was Miya’s Transference day, and she was terrified.
The company sales representatives had been outside her rec center nearly ten years ago. Smiling brightly, wearing those bright baby-blue polos.
The sign proclaimed in cheery font Extend: Live Longer!
The time had been early and so most gym attendees were past the age of seventy. Extend apparently knew their target audience well.
She had planned to stride past and avoid eye contact, gripping her water bottle before her, held out like a weapon. But Elise, whom she could barely call an acquaintance, had seen her and it was too late. Elise had flapped an excited hand in her direction.
“Miya! You’ve got to come check this out!”
She’d repressed a groan and backtracked.
By then she had heard of Extend. After all, her childhood had echoed with sci-fi fears of clones after Dolly the sheep was born. The anxiety amounted to a whole lot of nothing for many years. But now, here they were.
The boys in baby-blue company polos holding clip boards greeted her and answered questions.
Yes it’s true, she could spit in a tube today. Then they only needed to extract an egg to develop a viable embryo.
Yes, it’s legal. You saw the Supreme Court Case?
Only when she was ready. But six years of advance warning was required.
A now-familiar panic had crept up Miya’s stomach. It twisted up her throat and infested her mind.
What, she wondered, had she to show for her life?
A lucrative career as an administrative assistant, but at a company to which she held no strong ties.
Her mother died early, and so she had no close ties with family.
She had no children.
More and more she felt regret at her decision that day. But it was far too late, now.
Miya carefully descended to crouch on one knee before the child, and braced herself with a hand on the ground. The little girl would only hold Miya’s gaze in fits and bursts.
“Hello,” she said. “My name is Miya. It is a pleasure to meet you.”
The little girl’s eyes crinkled. Her eyes brightened.
“I’m Miya, too!” the girl squealed.
Brochures told her that giving the child her own name prepared neural pathways for easier Transference. She only flinched a little upon hearing it.
“It seems we have something in common,” Miya said. She coughed uncomfortably and rose shakily to her feet.
Something was unlocked within Little Miya and all shyness was expelled. “Come to the park with me!” she demanded.
Miya looked uncertainly up at her escorts, her Experience Managers. They nodded eagerly.
The smart one, whom Miya had designated as such by horn rimmed glasses, whispered to her from behind his clipboard. “It’s encouraged. Spending time together makes it easier. It helps to recognize yourself in her.”
She suppressed a grimace but nodded. “Let’s go to the park.”
The child seized Miya’s thin sun-spotted hand with both of her pudgy smooth ones and pulled her out the front doors.
“Slow down! Please!”
The girl slowed, but her pace remained impatient. Each step stuttered, she was barely holding back.
The playground was just across the street and the girl made straight for the monkey bars. This time it was Miya who gripped tighter, pulling her to a halt.
“Shall we start at the swings? It’s a little safer.”
The small sweaty palm slipped from her grasp. “No. I need to try to make it all the way across,” the girl said. Her tone brooked little argument.
Miya hovered anxiously. How in the world had she been given care of this creature? There was no chance she was strong enough to catch Little Miya should she slip. And they would both be hurt.
Risk of injury aside, Miya held her hands out as if trying to generate a protective force field. The girl skipped up the play structure steps and jumped to seize the first rung. Her fingers couldn’t fully encircle the bar.
Little Miya swung to each new bar like an erratic monkey. Agile and athletic, yes, but with zero precision.
She made it to rung two.
Three.
Four.
Reaching for five, she slipped to the ground with a heavy thud.
Miya rushed forward.
“Are you hurt?” she said, hands still held out and vacillating uselessly in the air.
Those dark eyes met hers, glistening. A few tears fell.
“My knee hurts,” she wailed.
Miya looked down to the scuffed knee, oozing red blood.
“Shit,” Miya said. Then she gasped, clamping a hand over her mouth. “Sorry.”
“What does shit mean?” Little Miya asked, distracted.
“It’s – it’s a bad word adults use when things don’t go their way,” Miya said.
“Grown-ups have tantrums too?”
Miya laughed out loud. “Yes we do.”
Little Miya laughed too. She probably did not understand the joke entirely, but laughed regardless as children tend to do when learning.
“Shall we go back and clean up your knee?” Miya asked.
The girl shook her head. Those glistening eyes had dried into a steely black. “I want to try again.”
This time, Miya let her hands drop to her sides. She only watched, feeling a mix of emotions. She felt awe: she could not recall ever being so brave as a child. And she felt an acute sense of alienation.
This little girl was a stranger to Miya.
Little Miya did not make it across the monkey bars once. But she did not seem bothered by her shortcoming. Eventually she simply became too tired to try again.
Despite herself, Miya felt a surge of shame on the little girl’s behalf.
The two of them moved on to the swing set. Little Miya refused to be pushed, and pumped her short legs vigorously to get going. At that same age, Miya would stay as close to solid ground as possible, even when other kids pushed higher and higher in competition.
Even now, she idly scuffed at the pebbled ground, her feet never taking off.
Leading up to this day, Miya had been certain that she would not want to know much about this girl. She had been reassured by her Experience Managers that feelings of uncertainty were quite normal. But she hadn’t expected to be sitting side by side on a swing set with the source of those feelings. It framed her choice in startling immediacy.
“Miya,” she said, then paused. She took a breath. “Miya, what do you know about what will happen today?”
“You are the reason I was born,” Little Miya said, matter of fact. “Today I get to give you the greatest gift anyone could ever give to another person.”
It sounded like she was reading straight out of an Extend brochure.
“How do you feel about it?” Miya asked.
She glanced sideways and caught the furrow of black eyebrows under bangs. Uncertain. “It’s a good thing.”
“You’re right, Miya – it is a gift. It’s a wonderful gift. But I don’t want to know how you think you are supposed to feel. I’d like to know how you really feel.”
There was a period of confused silence.
Miya probed further. “Can you tell me the first feeling you had waking up this morning?”
She had to lean in to catch the quiet response: “Scared.”
All morning, Miya had been trying to recognize herself in this small carbon copy.
She remembered now. Remembered talking to a social worker on the day her mother had died, decades earlier. The social worker has asked what she was feeling. The circumstances were different, but the feeling rang true: “I’m sacred,” she had said.
What had Miya to show for her life? Maybe that was still the right question, but her answer had been entirely wrong.
She stood, and gripped the grimy chain links of Little Miya’s swing until it was still. She kneeled to reach eye level.
“A long time ago,” she started slowly, as if working out the words as they were spoken. “I used to be just like you. I think I used to be brave. But something very sad happened – my mother was sick. And she died. It made me less brave. You don’t have a mother either, do you?”
The girl’s black bob swayed back and forth as she shook her head. No.
“Let’s fix that.” Miya stood, and held out her hand. The girl’s small hand really did fit perfectly into her own.