Digger Newman twisted the line of yarn around the last small, wooden stake hammered into the ground and stood back to gauge the effectiveness of his efforts. “What do you think, Lester? Did we get our corners square?”
Lester set down his shovel and squinted at the string marking where the first posts would be set for the pagoda to accompany the church’s planned garden. “Looks square, but let me measure the angles with my tape.” Lester whistled at his calculations. “Dead on, Digger. Doubt we could’ve gotten much closer with a laser square.”
Digger smiled. “And how do you think we did, Gus?”
The clone hardly peeked at Digger’s efforts. “I’m sure you did well, Mr. Newman.”
Lester grinned at the clone. The tall, wide-shouldered Gus was one of the first clones to be acquired by the Risen Moon, one of the last the Company produced. Like that Gus clone who had failed to safely jump across Mr. Moon’s four-hundred foot divide, the Gus who worked alongside Lester and Digger that morning digging holes for the pagoda’s future posts possessed the two, blue rings circling his right eye that in a previous era branded him as product and property. Lester knew that particular Gus had only given Digger the answer the clone thought the man hoped to hear. That Gus was an original model, and it was not in its composition to question and verify. Yet Lester was happy that Digger had asked for that clone’s opinion all the same, for many among the Risen Moon considered it a good omen to receive a Gus clone’s blessing at the start of any labor.
“Are you sure you don’t want a pair of gloves, Lester?” Digger asked as his protected hands lifted his shovel from the ground.
Lester shook his head. “Nope. The clones don’t wear gloves when they work. Their labor has turned their hands calloused and hard. I’ll do the same no matter the blisters. Just think it’s a way to bond with our divine, clone brothers.”
“I admire you for trying,” Digger replied.
Lester’s hands already blistered and bled. His muscles already burned, and they had only dug holes for the first two of the pagoda’s eventual eight posts. But the discomfort could not dent Lester’s spirits, who felt so pleased to be sharing in the labor of the clone brothers, who felt so proud to have accepted the tattoo of the blue circles around his right eye a month before to proclaim his solidarity with the Gus clone and his faith to the Risen Moon. Both man and clone would bear the marks of the brand upon their faces when the new garden bloomed behind their warehouse, temple home.
Digger paused after tossing a few shovel-loads of dirt into a wheelbarrow. “Hey, do you know any good work songs, Lester?”
“Singing might be just the thing to distract me from my sore back, but can’t say I know any good work songs.”
Digger looked to the Gus clone who was intently filling his wheelbarrow. “How about you, Gus?’
Gus stammered. “I don’t understand what you’re asking for, Mr. Newman.”
“We’ll just have to make one up of our own,” and Lester winced as he spit into his blistered hand.
Lester hummed as his mind stretched for words to provide company for their labor. He thought of the day he had entered the temple’s golden tank and experienced the divine memory in company of his brother clones and fellow worshippers. He soul still soared to recall the afternoon he barged into the temple and promised to do all he could so that the Gus clones could multiply and spread the divine memory throughout the land. He swore his devotion to the cause, and that was as well a means of pledging his loyalty to Marlene, who awaited him on the other side of a leap into the beyond. Lester cried when he walked out of the temple’s golden tank, baptized a new man prepared to accept the clones’ brand around his right eye. He would never forget how his new family embraced him.
No one had asked Lester to provide the temple with all the data stored in his briefcase. No one had asked him to give to the church his registrar’s tools. Lester had demanded that the temple accept those gifts in exchange for that divine memory given so freely to him.
“I can’t help but notice how your hand is bleeding, Mr. Ferris,” the Gus clone never slowed down in his shoveling as he spoke. “Perhaps it would be for the best if you took a small break.”
“You’re still digging,” Lester answered.
“But I am a clone. Digging is what I was made to do.”
“All the more reason I must learn, Gus.”
The church of the Risen Moon remained so young. No thick, black tome had yet been assembled to share their temple’s teachings. When some future priest or scholar lifted the pen to scribe the eventual first page of their holy book, Lester hoped the scribe would begin with a tale concerning man’s challenge to keep pace with the children he crafted in his own image. Everyone knew the clones were healthier and stronger, but few realized, or willingly admitted, how the clone learned so much more quickly than man. Perhaps it was because the clones were never gifted with a childhood. Perhaps it was because the tendrils and axons that fired within the clone brain were, like their clone muscles, so much more robust than humankind’s. The clone learned languages in days. The clone mastered any kind of motor skill within hours. There was no machine a clone seemed incapable of ruling within minutes.
Lester suspected the Company never realized the splendor of those clone creations they ushered into the world. Lester though the Company never gave itself enough credit, and in the end, Lester thought such was the Company’s saddest mistake.
“I think I have a start to a song, Lester.”
“Don’t keep my muscles waiting.”
“Well don’t laugh, but here it is,” and Digger inhaled a deep breath and growled his labor song’s first line. “Mold. Mold. Dig and Mold.”
“That’s it?”
Digger winked. “That’s it.”
Lester giggled. “It’ll do. It’s more than anything I’ve got.”
Thus Lester and Digger chanted their silly work song. They had tossed a few shovel loads of dirt more into the wheelbarrow when Gus surprised them still another time. Gus paused in his work to listen to the men’s melody before carefully timing his entrance and adding his baritone voice into theirs.
“Mold. Mold. Dig and Mold. Mold. Mold. Dig and Mold.”