Clara

Wrote this during a school play

Part one:

I met a man once at a coffee shop. It was a blind date, from a pointless dating app called Fling. The process was simple. It was a simple process, you simply fill out a form, take a picture, and record your voice. Three simple steps to find your true love. And here he was, I could hardly wait. We talked for about three hours, and it was true love that was only told in fairy tales and cheesy teen flicks. About a month later, he proposed. During the short amount of time, we had formed a bound so tight that nothing could separate, so I told him yes. We had a very short marriage service at a local church, and it was official. That was when I realized. My twin sister who died at age seventeen. Her boyfriend was driving her home when there was the accident. She died in the crash, and we never saw the man again. Until now. I had a dream of the accident last night, and I realized that the man I married was the man who killed my my sister.

My sister was my best friend. We were inseparable, and since we looked identical, people could never tell us apart. We shared everything, from middle school crushes to our hatred for geometry. We rarely fought, since we both knew that we would only hurt ourselves by hurting the other, and it got to the point that I felt her pain and she felt mine. The day she died I was waiting for her at our house. Her boyfriend always gave me the creeps, and I was worried for her. Suddenly, I felt a pain so fierce that I screamed and fell to the floor. It felt like my skull was cracked open and I knew what had happened. I drove out in my new car and saw what had happened there. The car was crashed into a ditch. I ran to it and found my sisters dead body in the car. The drivers seat was empty. My husband had ran out. Why would he do that if only because it was not an accident but a murder?

We tried for months to find the man. The car that was crashed was stolen from an elderly woman and there were no fingerprints found in the car. This man that somehow disappears from the face of the earth suddenly shows up on a dating app? How is this possible? This face that I long to kill is the face I fell in love with. How could I forget what he looked like and fell in love with him? Sure, he changed a little, more grown up, and stopped wearing those stupid leather jackets, but other than that, he was still the jerk she knew. How could she marry him without realizing?

The scarier question looms before me: Why would he want to marry me? Did he feel bad about what he had done? Did he come back to have a second chance? Did he go crazy, and think I was her? He might have seen me and thought that I was her, and remembered how much he loved her. He might have seen the app picking us as a sign from God to start over, but I know that that can not be what happened. He must have come back to finish the job. He hated my sister so much that he want to clear the world of people who look like her. He knew that I did not know who he was, and took advantage of that. And now I am trapped with him. I can not give away anything to reveal I have found out. I might be able to stop him from doing what he did to my sister.

The next few weeks I pretend as if nothing as happened. He will never figure out what had happened. I am a good actress. I learned how to pretend I was over my sisters death and was moving on, so pretending I was in love wouldn't be much harder. I will start to take out bits of money from my job until I have enough to start a life without him. Then, I would run away and call the police. I can not now because he must be intercepting all of my calls, and he can track my phone, so going to the police would not work. But once I had enough money, I could run away. I would leave the phone at the house, grab the wedding papers and the case files for my sisters death I keep under our bed and drive my car to the police. Then, I would tell them all that had happened. They would have to believe me, right? They would see the connection and arrest the man and I would live happily ever after. But, there is no proof, is there? What would I tell them, that I had a dream that made me think my husband had killed my wife? They would put me in a hospital, where I would be an easy picking for my husband to come and kill me. It would look like a simple suicide, and I would be dead. The authorities must be left out.

The next option is to play dirty. A little stab in the middle of the night, a little poison in his drink, and he would be gone. That would be simple. But inevitably, the police would come. They would find me guilty, and I would be thrown in jail or killed. That would never work. I can't take the easy route by simply killing him. I would be stooping down to his level, and killing. Why should I feel sad for my sister because she was murdered if I am willing to not feel bad for a man who was murdered? No, I can not bear to take that route either. There is no simple solution to this complex problem.

What can I do? I can not come to the police, I can not kill him, and I certainly can not sit here and do nothing. Should I run away now, without looking back? Then how could I live knowing that my sisters killer was out there, hunting me? No, he would find me, and he could use our marriage to explain it to anyone who would question. I can not do that. I am sitting her alone. I hear a sound of an car pull up. I hear the front door open. I hear the man who has ruined my life as he turns and looks at me, and I see his eyes scan me and his mouth grimace in recognition. This is the end.




Part two:

Why must I clean up other people's messes. The new guy at a job always gets the hard tasks no one wants to do, and killing a bunch of teenage girls is something no one wants to do. But here I am. I have killed one already, working on two. I want to feel bad, but I know it must be done. These girls need to die, but a part of me says something different. All girls should have the right to a happy life full of breaking curfew, kisses in cars, and happy marriages. Girls should have a full life and not be killed by someone. No one should be murdered. But is it fair to say that when we know that the fate of the world depends on the death of these girls?

Working for the government was my childhood dream. I dreamed of secret agents, killing Russian spies and being a millionaire, but dreams shatter. This is my first assignment. What happened is this: Humans were stupid. The government tried to create an AI. It was to bring the age of robots to leave humans to do whatever they wanted. After about ten years of trial and error, they finally created the first working on. It's name was Clara. Clara was a humanlike robot that could act like a human being and follow basic instructions. They shipped them across America and sent people to see how they fit in. Everything was going well until the original Clara started to act up.

She started to talk weirdly. She had forgotten she was a robot and had connected with all of the other robots around America. She started to complain about her migraines and were joint pain that none of us understood. That, was no huge deal compared to what happened after. A few years later, Clara started to turn on humans. It started out as not a huge deal. A few hurtful comments and a sense of pride. But it soon turned into genocide. She thought that she was above all and started to kill people. Now, we have to shut down all other Claras before they kill the entire human race.

And now we are here, and I must kill her. The process was simple. The government made this app called fling. It had people fill out a pointless bio, but what really was important was the picture of them and a voice recording. Then, when we found a match to Clara we would send someone in to kill her. That is me. I found two "sisters" who were a perfect match. I killed the first one easily, but then the guilt swept in. I pretended I loved the second one, we had a fake wedding at a church by an other government worker and I tried to let her have a good life. Once she turned, I would kill her. I want to ket her live her life to the fullest. I go to meeting saying that she doesn't trust me so that I don't have to kill her. I am going home right now. I open the door and see her. Her eyes are strained, and her cheeks are red, and I know the time has come. I take out a gun and shoot her.

Her blood is red. This can't be right. Clara's blood is purple. This isn't true. Did her body start to image itself as a real human. I run over to her and ask her what her name is. "Same as my sister, Amy." Not Clara. She is not Clara. I killed two innocent girls. Two girls who I thought were enemies, that I loved, I killed. What will I do? I can not live like this, my job is over. I messed up. What will happen when everyone finds out. My phone rings; I answer.

"It is too late, Agent. You have failed. Claras around the world have defected. Prepare for a war."