《 Morty Smith 》

Morty woke beneath a ceiling of white light. His eyes opened slowly, adjusting to the brightness until the blurred shapes above him became clear. Smooth panels covered the ceiling, separated by thin metal seams, while small blue lights pulsed along the edges. Somewhere beyond the walls, machinery hummed with a constant, low vibration that travelled through the narrow medical table beneath him. Morty remained still for several seconds, trying to understand where he was. His body felt heavy, his mouth was dry, and his muscles ached as though he had been asleep for a very long time. When he moved his wrists, he discovered that restraints were holding him against the table. They released automatically when he pulled against them, causing him to immediately sit upright and look around. The room was completely unfamiliar. There were no windows, no furniture and nothing that suggested he was somewhere he had ever been before. Transparent tubes disappeared into the walls, mechanical arms hung above several empty platforms, and screens displayed lines of information that meant nothing to him.

Morty looked down at himself. He was wearing a plain grey jumpsuit with a small identification number printed across his chest. He stared at the number for several seconds before trying to remember his own name. The answer came immediately. Morty Smith. He knew that much. Everything surrounding that fact, however, felt uncertain. He searched his mind for his home and saw a suburban house. He could picture a kitchen, a staircase and a bedroom. He could see a family, a school and familiar faces. He remembered laughter, arguments, embarrassment, fear and happiness. For a brief moment, everything seemed completely real. Then the images flickered. The kitchen disappeared. The staircase became indistinct. The faces blurred until he could no longer identify them. Morty blinked and tried again, but the memories refused to remain still. He knew he had memories, yet he couldn't understand why they felt more like images from someone else's life than his own.

The door opened, and three people wearing identical white uniforms entered. They moved with calm efficiency, as though they had performed the same procedure hundreds of times before. One of them approached Morty and scanned the identification number on his clothing. A holographic display appeared above the scanner, showing his genetic information, photograph and identification codes. Morty stared at his own face on the screen. Beneath his name was a designation that made his stomach tighten. Cloning Series. He looked from the screen to the technicians, but none of them reacted to his expression. They simply began disconnecting the equipment surrounding him. Morty stepped away from the table and followed them out of the room, still trying to understand what the information meant.

The corridor outside was enormous. Morty stopped almost immediately when he saw the rooms beyond the glass walls. Inside them were other versions of himself. Some were lying unconscious beneath machines. Others were sitting upright, staring blankly ahead. One was pressing both hands against the glass while another was being examined by technicians. Morty slowly backed away as the scale of what he was seeing became clear. There weren't just a few other versions of him. There were dozens, then hundreds, occupying row after row of identical chambers. Some looked exactly like him, while others had different hairstyles, clothing or slight physical differences. Every face was recognisably his. Morty felt sick as he realised that he was surrounded by people who looked exactly like him.

A technician guided him deeper into the facility. They passed laboratories, medical rooms and enormous storage areas filled with machinery. Everywhere Morty looked, there were more Mortys. Some were being examined, some were being transported and others sat alone in small rooms. Nobody explained anything to him. Eventually, he was brought into a huge archive where shelves stretched from the floor to the ceiling. Thousands of sealed containers filled the room, each labelled with an identification number. Inside them were belongings associated with different clones. There were photographs, clothes, toys, school materials and other personal objects, all carefully preserved as though they belonged to lives that had already ended.

Morty noticed one container bearing his own identification number. He approached it slowly and opened it. Inside was a school notebook, a worn shirt, several small personal objects and a photograph of a family standing together in front of a suburban house. Morty stared at the photograph, and something inside him suddenly shifted. He recognised the people. He remembered them. For several seconds, memories returned with extraordinary force. He remembered waking up in a bedroom, eating meals with his family, going to school, having arguments, laughing with people and experiencing moments of happiness. He remembered being younger. He remembered friendships and romantic feelings. He remembered being frightened and embarrassed. The memories came so quickly that he almost collapsed beneath their weight.

Then they began disappearing.

The kitchen vanished first. Then the bedroom. Then the school. Then individual faces began fading from his mind. Morty desperately tried to hold onto them, but they slipped away regardless of how hard he concentrated. The harder he tried to remember, the faster the images dissolved. Eventually, the people in the photograph no longer felt familiar. Morty continued staring at them, desperately searching for the connection he had felt only moments earlier. Nothing remained except the knowledge that he was supposed to care about them. The truth settled inside him with a weight that felt almost physical. Those memories had never belonged to him. They had been created.

Morty lowered the photograph. His entire childhood had been constructed from artificial memories. Every birthday, every argument, every friendship, every moment of fear and every moment of happiness had been manufactured and placed inside his mind. He had not grown up in the house he remembered. He had not spent years attending the school he remembered. He had not lived through the experiences that had shaped his personality. His mind had simply been given a history so that he would believe he had one. Morty looked at the photograph again, but the people standing inside it were now strangers. He knew they were supposed to be his family, yet there was no genuine history connecting them to him. His chest still hurt when he looked at them, which made everything even more confusing. Even if the memories were artificial, the emotions they had created seemed real.

Morty was eventually transferred to another section of the Citadel. The building was different from the cloning facility. It was larger and less clinical, although it remained sterile and impersonal. Long corridors opened into waiting rooms containing rows of chairs, while large windows overlooked the Citadel outside. A sign identified the facility as a Morty adoption centre. Morty was given a number, a change of clothing and a small bag containing a few basic belongings. Then he was placed among dozens of other Mortys. Some sat alone. Some sat in small groups. Some stared at the floor while others watched through the windows. A few looked frightened, while others seemed strangely hopeful. Morty looked around at all of them and wondered how many had experienced the same revelation about their memories.

The first day passed slowly. People entered the centre and examined the available Mortys. Some looked carefully at them, while others barely paid attention before moving on. Occasionally, a Morty would be selected and taken away. The empty chair would eventually be occupied by another clone. Morty watched this happen repeatedly without understanding where the selected Mortys were going. He began to realise that the building wasn't really a home. It was a place where manufactured people waited for someone else to decide what happened to them.

The second day was quieter. Morty stopped trying to recover his memories. Every attempt left him exhausted, and he had begun to accept that there was nothing to recover. Whenever he tried to reconstruct his childhood, his mind produced fragments that disappeared almost immediately. He could remember emotions more easily than events. Loneliness, fear, embarrassment and affection remained, but he couldn't always identify where those feelings came from. He began wondering whether even his personality had been manufactured. If his memories were artificial, perhaps his nervousness had been programmed. Perhaps his empathy had been programmed. Perhaps even his desire to belong had been placed inside him deliberately. The thought made him feel even more uncertain about who he really was.

On the third day, Morty began watching the other Mortys instead. They were all different. Some were loud and confident, while others were withdrawn and frightened. Some seemed almost completely emotionless. Morty wondered whether they had all been given different memories and personalities. Perhaps there were thousands of versions of him scattered throughout the Citadel, each believing they had lived a different life. The idea made him feel strangely small. He had spent his entire existence believing that being Morty Smith meant something unique, but now he was surrounded by evidence that he could be reproduced again and again.

By the fourth day, Morty had stopped expecting anything to change. He sat near one of the large windows and watched the Citadel outside. The city seemed impossible. Towering structures rose into an artificial sky, transport systems moved between buildings and thousands of lights illuminated the enormous architecture. Mortys walked through the streets alongside countless versions of Ricks. The sight should have been unbelievable, but Morty was beginning to understand that almost nothing was impossible anymore. He watched the people below and wondered where he would fit among them. He had no home to return to, no childhood he could trust and no family he could prove had ever existed. He was simply a clone waiting for someone to decide what happened to him next.

On the fifth day, the doors opened again. Morty barely looked up at first. Someone entered the adoption centre, but he had learned not to pay attention whenever the doors opened. The figure was different from the others, however. He was tall and wore dark clothing. A heavy hood covered his head, casting his face almost entirely into shadow. Only a small portion of his lower face was visible, making his appearance impossible to identify. He didn't stop to examine the other Mortys. He walked directly toward the attendant and waited while information was checked on a handheld device.

Eventually, the attendant looked toward Morty. Morty noticed and glanced behind himself, expecting another person to be standing there. There was nobody. The hooded man began walking toward him. Morty remained seated as the stranger approached. The man stopped several feet away and looked down at him. Morty looked back, trying to see beneath the hood, but the shadows concealed almost everything. There was something unsettling about being examined by someone whose face he couldn't see, yet there was also something strangely reassuring about the fact that this person had actually chosen him.

The man turned toward the exit and began walking. Morty hesitated before standing and following him. They passed through the doors of the adoption centre and entered the corridor beyond. Morty glanced back once through the glass. The waiting room remained visible behind him, filled with rows of Mortys sitting in their chairs. The doors closed, cutting off the view. Morty followed the hooded man through the facility, passing security checkpoints and long metallic corridors. The stranger never spoke, and Morty didn't say anything either. There was nothing he could ask that would make sense. He didn't know who the man was, why he had chosen him or where they were going.

Eventually, the corridors opened into a vast exterior platform. Morty stopped when he saw the Citadel properly for the first time. It stretched across the horizon in every direction. Enormous buildings rose into the artificial sky, their surfaces covered with lights and moving signs. Vehicles travelled along elevated lanes while crowds moved across bridges and platforms. There were Mortys everywhere. Some walked alone, some travelled in groups and others stood beside different versions of Ricks. Morty stared at the city and finally understood its scale. He wasn't simply in a laboratory anymore. He was in a civilisation where people like him were considered ordinary.

The hooded man began descending the steps, and Morty followed. The air outside felt different from the sterile environment of the adoption centre. It was colder and filled with unfamiliar sounds. Machinery, vehicles, distant alarms and thousands of voices blended into one constant noise. Morty walked beside the stranger and looked down at his hands. They were ordinary hands. His heartbeat was real. His body felt real. Whatever had been done to his mind, he was standing here now. That was the only certainty he had.

The hooded man continued forward, leading Morty deeper into the Citadel. Morty followed without knowing where they were going. Behind them, the adoption centre gradually became smaller until it disappeared among the surrounding buildings. Morty didn't look back. There was nothing there for him. No childhood. No genuine family. No memories he could trust. Only an empty room and hundreds of identical versions of himself waiting for someone else's decision.

Ahead was something completely unknown. The hooded stranger remained silent, his face still hidden beneath the dark hood. Morty didn't know his name or his intentions. He didn't know whether the man would be kind or cruel, whether his new life would be better or worse, or whether the stranger had chosen him for a reason that Morty couldn't possibly understand. All he knew was that somebody had finally chosen him.

Morty kept walking beside the stranger through the crowded streets of the Citadel. He carried the small bag he had been given, and everything else he thought belonged to him had been taken away by the truth. His memories were artificial. His childhood had never happened. His family had never existed in the way he remembered them. Yet he was still standing, still breathing and still capable of feeling fear, curiosity and the desperate desire to belong somewhere.

For the first time since waking in the cloning facility, Morty wasn't being watched through glass. He wasn't lying on a medical table. He wasn't sitting in a waiting room while strangers decided his future. He was moving forward, even though he had no idea where the road would take him.

The hooded man continued leading him deeper into the unfamiliar city.

Morty followed.

He had no past he could trust.

No history he could prove.

No idea who he was supposed to become.

But the future was different.

The future hadn't happened yet.

And for the first time, whatever happened next would be something Morty could experience for himself.