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Auto-Play

by Elise LeSage

 

Maybe it started when I took on that second job, that internship. Or maybe it began much earlier, some fairytale-like fate. At any rate, I think it happened slowly. Too much coffee and late-night screentime. Too many meals replaced by mouthfuls of raisins and white bread. I choked, once, in my apartment. Roommate out — partying, probably — so I was alone. I stood there, raisin halfway down my throat. Eyes watering, fingers wrapped around my neck as if someone were there to help, thinking not yet not yet not yet.

---

I’ve always wanted to be an illustrator, an artist. As a child, the dream came easy. Artist, lofty and concrete as doctor or astronaut. My drawing skills got me as far as undergrad, where I earned accolades, sparkling workshop reviews, and praise from professors. Then, I graduated, and my luck ran out.

I used to feel an oily, searing disdain each time I encountered a greeting card illustration or mobile app mascot, enraged by the ungrateful artist behind each image. The world was full, it seemed, of people working my job, living my life, while I was left behind in the dust.

These days, I only have time to draw when I’m behind the register at Evergreen Gifts, a kitsch shop outside Seattle’s Pike Place Market. I sketch on sticky notes between ringing up artisanal candles and shirts that say things like BIGFOOT SAYS ‘SUP and GRUNGE, PLEASE.

My manager, Puneet, complains every time he catches me doodling. “Save it for the MOMA,” he’ll say, swatting my hand. There are, after all, a dozen other things to do: vacuuming, dusting, folding, tucking in tags. I’m paid to maintain, Puneet often reminds me, not to create.

I can’t argue with that.

The last time we had this exchange, I was drawing an amalgamation of our merchandise — candles, keychains, children’s toys — all rolled into one sleek design.

“This is our ticket out of here, Puneet,” I said when I felt him lurking over my shoulder. “A super-product. We can patent it. The customers will never want for anything again.”

“You have no sense for business, Kayla.” He shook his head.

On the bus ride home, I counted all the cars that cost more than what I’ve earned in the last few years. Six, ten, eighteen. At a stoplight, a woman in an Audi applied lipstick. She was familiar in a way that made my skin buzz. It was jarring, watching her. She was too far to make out in earnest, but something about her profile — the posture? the chin? — made me feel, feel . . .

Before I could put my finger on it, the Audi pulled away. On the sidewalk, a man was pissing straight into the gutter. Our eyes met for a moment. He waved.

---

That night, I busied myself with an online UX course as my roommate’s snoring leaked through the wall. I met her in college. Back then, our circles ran close enough that we called each other friends. In time, though, our relationship has bloomed into a mutual and courteous hate.

She’ll shoot me passive-aggressive texts like: Hey Kayla :) Would you mind clearing your dishes off the counter? I might want to cook this week.

To which I’ll respond with equal decorum: Soon!! Rlly busy today.

Still, putting up with her is worth the cushy rent. Her dad owns the apartment building. Wild horses couldn’t drag me away.

The UX course, anyway, was a recent develop; a node in my endless quest to make something of myself. At that point, I was applying for dozens of design jobs per month, racking up Google certs, cold-messaging artists on LinkedIn — nothing moved the dial. Hopeless.

In bed, I glanced at the time on my laptop. 2:37 a.m. I rubbed my eyes, half-delirious as I read the discussion board prompt: How would you use the principal of scarcity to boost engagement on your client’s retail site?

In life, there are always winners and losers, I typed. Haves and have-nots. We need websites that aren’t afraid to show users what’s at stake. If you don’t buy this product, you’re an idiot. Filth. I yawned. Also, maybe show a discount timer on-screen.

> Looove this! So agree! a classmate responded, to my surprise, almost right away. Let’s talk soon?

I moused over their tiny profile icon. A woman, maybe; hair long and pale.

Talk now? I typed back.

>Hahaha. Not now. EST here :)

I stretched, shut my laptop, and fell into a dank, shallow sleep. My dreams were like rabbits: horny and quick, numerous and indistinct.

---

Her name was Julip, the classmate, and she had a job for me.

I shot her furtive emails throughout my shift at Evergreen, discovering that she worked for some sort of start-up called Zow. She said they were looking for a web and graphic designer, someone who could chip in part-time. The pay wouldn’t be great, at first, but if I showed promise, there’d be “a real potential for growth.”

When she asked me if we could meet via video chat, I wrote back: when?

“Heeeya!” Julip smiled when I opened the Zoom window, waving with only her fingertips. She had a septum piercing and was at least three years younger than me. The interview itself was standard fare: we walked through my resume, my hopes for the future, my “biggest professional weaknesses.” When Julip explained Zow’s mission, I pretended to understand.

“At Zow, we work under some pretty tight deadlines,” she said. “That’s why we’re looking for a real team player, someone who can deliver on projects at a moment’s notice. Does that sound like you?”

I unmuted myself. “Yes.” I realized that Julip was waiting for me to continue. “In college, I picked up projects like that all the time. Like, uh, in the print-making club. We’d have to design posters for these parties — not, like parties-parties.” I laughed. Julip’s eyes were already glazed over. “But — but, I love deadlines. They help me be the best version of myself.”

“Love that!” Julip said. “We have a real ‘work-hard, play-hard’ mentality here. Which, totally leads me to my next question!” She smiled. She had a jeweled stud in her teeth. “What is your work philosophy?”

“Pretty much that. I like to work hard. Then, I like to relax.”

“What are your hobbies?” Her tone implied that there were right and wrong answers to this question.

“I like climbing,” I lied. It seemed more impressive than admitting to the listless hours that filled my free time. The Youtube videos, the Reddit threads, the half-finished manicures.

“Oh, cool! Indoor or outdoor?”

“Indoor,” I said. It seemed easier to lie about.

“Top roping or bouldering?”

She had to be kidding. I dug my index nail across my thumb until the skin was sore. “Both.”

“Impressive!” She stopped a moment to shuffle something off-screen. “Well, Kayla, it was so super meeting you. You’ll hear from us soon, okay?”

I nodded. After we said our goodbyes, I cracked all my knuckles, slumping back in my office chair. Hear from us soon. Soon.

 I spent the next several hours on my laptop, alternating between Reddit, the UX course, and my email inbox, which I refreshed over and over. Around dusk, my phone buzzed. I sprang to it, heart pounding, but it was only a text from my roommate. Have u been eating my leftovers?? She asked.

---

At Evergreen, I arranged a shipment of oak-infused chocolate bars into ziggurats as Puneet plugged away at a loud mobile game.

“Are you winning?” I asked.

“Brain exercises,” he mumbled. “Play ten minutes each day to raise your IQ exponentially.” His phone made a sound like a balloon popping. Something on-screen said yippee. “I’m ten points ahead of my cousin.”

“IQ points?”

He laughed.

I rolled one of the chocolate bars between my fingertips. “The customers have been asking me how these taste,” I lied, “and I don’t know what to tell them.”

“You want free candy,” Puneet said.

“I want to provide accurate customer service.”

Puneet sighed through his nostrils. “You bought one yesterday. I rang you up. You want to taste the chocolates? Eat what you already have.”

“What are you talking about?” I paused in my ziggurat construction. “I didn’t buy any chocolate.”

“You did. After you clocked off.”

“I went home after I clocked off.”

Puneet stared at me, head tilted. He seemed about to say something when his phone began to whine like an infant. He snatched it up and began tapping furiously, muttering, “Shit, shit, shit.”

---

When Zow got back to me with an internship offer, I felt good for about twenty minutes. Then, I felt sick. The onboarding tasks I was to complete by 8 a.m EST ranged from tedious to daunting. I read through them once, twice, before shutting my laptop and putting on my shoes.

At the grocery store, I filled my cart with foods I knew I wouldn’t have the energy to prepare. Chicken breast. Spinach. Gnocchi. I also bought a box of green hair dye. The model looked a little like me, but more sprite-like. Carefree.

The dye-job was sloppy. I ruined two bath towels and greened the base of my neck. When all was said and done — hair dried, styled, eyeliner on — I looked grotesque. The green was lurid, popsicle-bright. Worse, it highlighted each of the pimples lurking under the surface skin. Color theory. Contrast. Rookie mistake.

I sulked to the kitchen. My roommate was stooped over the table, eating Thai food from a Styrofoam box. “Wow, Kayla!” she cocked her head. “Your hair.”

“Thanks,” I said.

The gnocchi was flesh-like in its vacuum-sealed package. I ate it in bed, uncooked, as I cycled through each of Zow’s onboarding tasks. The sun was up already by the time I turned everything in. I shut my eyes. Considered sleeping. Instead, I propped my phone against my pillow and let hours of Dr. Phil clips auto-play. I may or may not have been dreaming when a woman with claw-like cheekbones and prolapsed lips confessed her addiction to cosmetic surgery. “It can’t be undone,” she cried. “It’s forever, forever.”

The light through my window was stark by the time I rose to my feet, stirred by my roommate’s loud singing.

In the mirror above my dresser, an angry, green-haired woman chewed her lip. It took a moment for me to recognize her as my own reflection.

---

At Evergreen, Puneet joked about the circles under my eyes. “Out late again?” he asked. “Par-ty girl; par-ty girl. How many hearts did you break?” The cadence with which he spoke made his words sound like a reference I didn’t get.

I laughed. “Not as many as you, Puneet! Ladies’ man!” I elbowed him in the shoulder, surprised by my own feigned energy.

The weather was shit that day, a wind-chilled drizzle. The people that came in only to avoid the damp were merciless in their crumpling of our neatly-folded t-shirts. I imagined confronting them before Dr. Phil’s audience.

Even children know to pick up after themselves, I’d say to an eruption of applause. The customers would bury their faces in their sleeves, weeping.

It cleared up around one. I pretended to Clorox the already-clean register while a woman tried on hoodies by the body mirror. The back of her head reminded me, somehow, of my mother. The posture, maybe, or the slope of her neck.

“Is this a joke?” She spun around, waving the hoodie.

In my grogginess, it took me a moment to notice she had my face. She was me, I mean — or almost me. Her hair was brown still, and she was about 10% more attractive — skin clearer, arms toned — but, otherwise, we were twins.

“These pink ones were on clearance last week,” she went on, impatient. “How does something go from clearance to normal price? How does that happen?”

“I don’t know,” I answered.

She turned in a huff, returned the hoodie to its rack — courteous — and walked away. No recognition.

I scanned the store for Puneet, for someone else who could bear witness to this anomaly, but I was alone on the floor.

Before the woman left, I called out, “What’s your name?” unable to think up another way to broach contact.

She didn’t answer. I watched her leave. Outside, the asphalt was steaming.

---

Plenty of people on Reddit, it turned out, had experience with clones. At home, I skimmed through dozens of threads with titles like Are my twin (16 M) and I clones? and Did Nazis clone Hitler??? and I look EXACTLY like Salma Hayek.

For a while, I lingered on a r/offmychest post titled I found my doppelganger and am going to kill it.

It was the pronoun, I think, that caught my interest. The it. Not a person, but a thing.

The Redditor detailed each of his run-ins with his clone, who, at first, only lingered in the background — a grocery store line, a crowded theater — but, over time, became bolder.

It’s calling my wife, he wrote. It stole my car, twice. It’s spending time with my kids. Trying to replace me. I don’t know what to tell the police.

He went on: There’s this ancient Welsh creature called the Dwblcroen, or “skin double.” It was said that, if a member of a village failed to perform his communal duties, the Dwblcroen would replace or “bwyta” (“consume”) him. If you see your double out there, remember: You must FIGHT BACK. The world CANNOT carry both of you.

In a new tab, I searched Welsh legend clone. Little relevance. I tried Dwblcroen. No results. I shut my laptop. The Redditor was full of shit.

---

For a while, I forgot about her, the other me. The encounter had been a fluke, I told myself. An illusion, a byproduct of the sleep deprivation I was suffering from every night.

My tasks at Zow were taking longer than anticipated. Still, thinking of the potential for growth Julip had mentioned, I often lowballed my hours when submitting my timesheet. This was an opportunity, I reminded myself. I had to prove my worth.

On the last day of my first two weeks, I got home from Evergreen around six and cracked open my laptop. Julip had sent several emails which, to my eyes, made little sense:

ATTN: Kayla. We need you to jargon a 550×1,200 px jargon with jargon-jargon compatibility. MUST open on mobile browser, so please jargonize HTML. Do you know HTML?

I rubbed my eyelids, hoping each email would disappear. My stomach gurgled, empty, but eating felt like procrastination.

Sure, I shot back. When do you want this finished by?

Minutes later, Julip responded: Tomorrow would be great :)

Puneet hadn’t scheduled me the next day, so I let myself indulge in the white noise of old talk show clips as I untangled my to-do list. They inspired me, I reasoned. Adjusting the bevel of a BUY NOW button, I listened to a 1990s Oprah chat with a legless snowboarder. If he could accomplish such great feats, surely, I could wrap up my projects before midnight.

Turns out, I couldn’t. It was nearly three a.m. by the time I shut my laptop, pulling my duvet over my head. My thoughts became sluggish and indulgent. I pictured myself sitting down for an Aesthetica interview wherein I drank black coffee and wore a sheer, glittering turtleneck. My breasts looked fantastic.

What surprises me, my interviewer said, is the cohesiveness of your oeuvre. Every piece is like a signature: authentic, distinct.

I woke up to a weight on my mattress. On the foot of my bed, my roommate was chewing a ham sandwich over a paper plate. “Hey girl.” She wrinkled her nose as she grinned. “Sorry, did I wake you? It’s, like, noon, so I figured you’d be, you know, up and at’m.”

“Jessica.” I pulled the covers up to my chin. “What the fuck.”

“Sorry.” She swallowed a bite of sandwich. “But I’ve got to go to work in a bit, and I wanted to have like, a talk with you? Not to freak you out! But it’s kind of serious?”

“Yeah.” I rubbed my eyes. “Okay; what?”

“So I made this friend recently, and she and I get along so, so well. And she’s actually looking for a room in March? And you know how your lease is ending? Not that I want you to be homeless, but.”

I sat up. “You’re kicking me out?”

“Oh my God, never!” She looked offended. “If you wanted to start searching for another room, though, well.” She shrugged, then smiled.

I coughed wetly into my blanket. I tried to sound genuine as I asked her: “But, could we still be friends?”

---

A quick, damp wind shot through Capitol Hill. My nose dribbled. My fingers stung, stiff. Waiting for the bus, I ran my teeth over the white skim of bacteria on my tongue. I hadn’t eaten since lunch the day before: two spoonfuls of peanut butter and a box of Raisinettes. I hadn’t had a glass of water since — well.

I checked the bus schedule — ten minutes to spare, thirty if I didn’t mind being late to Evergreen — then ducked into a nearby coffee place. Their tap water sat in a frosted glass pitcher, lemon-infused and mercifully free. I downed two glasses while eyeing the wall of for-sale prints. They all seemed to be by the same artist: the linework was thick, clean. The scenes they depicted — dive bar bathrooms and makeup-strewn vanities — had a familiar sort of intimacy.

That bleak, envy-sick-feeling was starting to bubble in my stomach again. I filled another glass. Chewed and swallowed a lemon seed.

“Kay-ay Holsten,” someone said from behind me.

I turned. A teenage barista was beaming at me.

“It’s . . . Kayla,” I awkwardly corrected.

The barista cocked their head. “Hm?”

“My name; it’s Kayla. Kayla Holsten. Do we,” I asked, “know each other?”

“Oh!” They laughed. “I meant, the artist?” The barista pointed to the business cards stacked below the prints. I picked one up. Sure enough, there it was in sleek, baby-pink Garamond: K.A. Holsten, Illustrator. “That’s so funny, though. Are you related?”

---

At work, I toyed with the business card as our new hire, Peter, organized the dog sweaters. K.A.’s website didn’t include any photos of her face. It did, however, showcase row after row of revoltingly impressive portfolio pieces. Restaurant murals. Editorial spreads. A glossy comic book about climate change.

“Kayla!” Puneet called. “Let Peter take register. A new shipment came in.”

I trudged to the office, where Puneet sat at his desk, clicking through a digital catalogue of kitchenware. UPS boxes crowded the floor. I grabbed a boxcutter. The clothes I unpacked had a sharp, synthetic smell that made me sneeze.

“You sick?” Puneet asked.

I shook my head, unfurling a t-shirt with a cartoon beaver on its chest. Dam straight! the caption said.

“Where do you get these?” I asked. “They’re terrible.”

Puneet was scrolling through a gallery of toasters. “Customers like them.”

I pushed a hanger through the sleeves. “I could design something better.”

“Don’t dream it,” he mumbled. “Do it.”

I sliced another box open. Sneezed again.

“You sure you aren’t sick?” Puneet glanced back.“I’m fine.”

“You look sick.”

“I’m fine.”

“And if you get me sick — or Peter — then what? We close the store down?”

My phone buzzed. I checked it on instinct. Another email from Julip. Hey rockstar! Can you take a rush job? Tight timeline, but this would look GREAT on your performance review.

“Kayla.” Puneet had swiveled his office chair to face me. I slid my phone back in my pocket. He grimaced. “Why don’t you take the rest of the day off? Go rest. You seem . . . unlike yourself.”

My cheeks flushed. I felt like a kid who’d been caught passing notes. A day off. I couldn’t afford a day off. “But,” I sat back on my heels. “The pay. I, I’m sorry, I . . .”

Puneet waved a hand. “On me. Just rest, Kayla. See a doctor, maybe. I don’t know what you’ve been doing at home, but lately you’ve . . .”

He said more, but I was preoccupied by the sobs rising in my throat. I cried — embarrassingly — right there on the office floor. I was touched by his generosity — or else enfeebled by my bad sleep schedule, I’m not sure which.

Puneet stood. For a moment, I thought that he was going to hug me. Instead, he opened the breakroom door. “Take your nametag off before you cross the floor, alright? I don’t want customers to see you like this.”

Outside, the wind chilled my damp cheeks. It was dusk. Pike Place was crowded with families and shoppers and couples on dates — people with purpose. People like K.A. Holsten.

I sat by the Sound. Watching the water slush below, I fiddled with her business card again. Folded it. Unfolded. Used its firm, sharp corners to clean my fingernails. Ripped it in half — once, twice, again and again. Soon, the card was confetti I sprinkled over the water, ritual-esque. This is the end, I thought with all the conviction I could muster. It’s my turn, now. I stood.

In the still, grey sheen of the water, my reflection was tired, but softer than I’d grown to expect. When I smiled, it only seemed a little out of place.

It was dark by the time I arrived at my apartment. I threw my coat on the couch and checked my phone. Fifteen unread emails. Two overdue assignments in my UX class. My stomach groaned. I grabbed my bag of spinach, eating fistfuls on my way to my room.

I opened the door. There was a woman standing by my window. Back turned. I watched her brush a wave of brown hair over her shoulder. My brown hair. I swallowed, frozen.

“Oh!” She — it — spun around. Smiled with my face. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you! Your roomie, Jessica, and I were just hanging out. She’s picking up dinner. Did you,” it cocked its head, “want me to text her? We only put in two bibimbap orders.”

My fingers were closed around the doorknob. I squeezed it as if it could protect me, waffling for something to say. Came up blank.

“Pretty view.” The double ran its finger along my windowsill. “I heard you might be moving out soon.”

At first, I could only shake my head. “. . . I’m not,” I managed finally.

As it crossed my room, the double took in a long, meditative breath, smoothing my blankets before sitting on my bed. “Kayla, right? Jessica has told me all about you. She says that, in college, you used to be an artist.” The double seemed to wait for me to answer. I didn’t.

“What are you doing here?” I asked.

“Jessica and I are getting . . .”

“No, I meant — What are you . . . What are you . . . ?”

The double patted the empty space on my bed. Like a dog, I sat. I let it rub my knee with its smooth, manicured hand. It smelled of cucumber and salon shampoo.

It sighed, half-smiling. “I wish we could all be friends!”

“But we can’t,” I said. “Because you want to replace me.”

“Replace you? No. I mean.” Its laughter was like a piccolo. “Look at how you live! Less of a replacement and more of . . . an update.” The double smiled graciously. “I’m just here to ensure that I — we — leave the best possible impact on the world. Don’t you want that? To leave an impact?”

“I do. I’ve been trying,” I said. My voice came out soft. “I’ve been trying . . .”

“And I can see that!” It pouted. “You’ve been trying so, so hard. But you don’t need to anymore. You can rest.”

For a moment, we sat in silence as the double pet my spine in soft, wide circles. My eyelids were heavy. I was already half-slumped by the time it told me to lie down.

“You deserve to not feel tired anymore,” the double went on, fluffing my pillow. “You deserve peace.”

I shut my eyes. The double’s touch was rhythmic, soothing, like a train ride. It was right; I was tired. Drained. Spent. It wasn’t hard to let my thoughts dissolve into the usual fantasies, coiling from one ruined dream to the next. Here, I sat down for TV interviews. There, I opened galleries. I gave lectures. I toured nationally — no, fuck it, internationally. I stayed up past midnight working, for once, not on some gig, but out of passion, giving myself to something that loved me back. I was esteemed. Noticed. I was myself. In every vision, I was myself.

I sat up. The double startled when I yanked it by the shoulders and pinned it to the bed. I was careful to hold its arms down, to dig my knees into its chest, even as it screeched. I grabbed the pillow, smooshing it against the double’s face. It writhed, legs pounding. It clawed at my wrists. I pressed the pillow down, and down, as my own breath grew labored, then thin. Choking. I was choking.

---

Host Commentary

…aaaaand welcome back. That was “Auto-Play” by Elise LeSage, and if you enjoyed that then check out PseudoPod episode 852, Every Body Depicted Is Exploited, from 2023; and after that, go to eliselesage.com to find more fiction writing under the, um, Fiction Writing link.

Well, that one was uncomfortable listening for me. The feeling that my life is slipping away from me before I’ve had a chance to have any of the impact I might have hoped, before I’ve been able to really do what I want to do with my one brief flash of consciousness in a very long universal existence, that I’m wasting my time when I have no idea how much time I have left (except for an uncomfortable suspicion it’s less than half, now)… it’s something that’s haunting me, of late, as I continue to be exhausted by my weeks and achieve little with my weekends except recovery, all in service to the Great Capitalist Coercion.

Funnily enough, I watched the Backrooms film yesterday, and that’s built around pretty much the same theme of being stuck in the same patterns and failing to achieve anything you ever hoped for (though Elise’s story predates it by two or three years, of course). Point is: I suspect I am far from the only one feeling this certain way, right now. We are all exhausted.

One of the most pernicious myths in Western culture, so foundational it’s barely even acknowledged but instead taken for granted, is the bloody Protestant work ethic, particularly in its latter-day manifestation. The idea that great effort will result in great reward has been twisted and turned until now, no reward ought be given except in exchange for effort, alongside the definition of “reward” being lowered and lowered until it includes concepts such as “shelter” and “basic nutritional necessities”, let alone anything enjoyable in life. We have been tricked into thinking anyone who gets something without having sacrificed themselves upon the altar of labour is somehow “cheating” and do not deserve things such as food, warmth, clothing, basic survival etc. etc., regardless of how circumstance or disability might impact on that.

You never really see an honest discussion about whether CEOs put in 614 times the effort of their workers, though, do you. Seems improbable, if you ask me. Some might even say “mathematically and physically impossible”. Guess that makes me a Marxist or something.

Maybe it’s because we’ve lived with the damnable idea long enough that the corollary has become accepted as truth, too—that someone evidencing great rewards must have earned it through great efforts, rather than, say, exploitation, or the remarkable foresight to be born into legacy wealth. How stupid of the rest of us not to use that one simple trick.

Problem is, once you get caught in the survival trap, you get caught living in the future. “It’ll be better next week once I’ve got past this project,” leads straight into “better next summer once we have that new starter” into “better in a couple of years when I can get that promotion” into the next thing and the next thing and then into standing there with naught in your wrinkled hands but dust, wondering what happened to it all?

It’s so easy to just limp along, allow yourself to be led by the carrot for fear of the stick. Sometimes the only way to change your path is with a shock large enough to jump you off the tracks, and force you to re-evaluate. Force you to act, even: I mean, I’m sat here right now fully aware of what’s going on, but do I have the energy to do anything about it?

But I suppose I ought to—need to—before I end up having to choke out my own doppelganger.