Chapter Five
While my tight muscles relaxed beneath a set of mechanical hands, my thoughts raced, leaving my body soft and submissive and my mind in the opposite condition.
What was going to happen to me? What kind of job or occupation was I qualified for? Where would I live? According to Michael, I was going to make this world better, but how was that possible when I didn’t belong here in the first place?
One thing I did know: I did not want to lead a life of dependency upon anyone or anything except myself. I had to make sure that wasn’t going to happen.
The session finished, RELAX strolled from my room with a fixed, contented smile, and for a moment I envied the piece of machinery with its simple, inane life.
My body churned hot with anger, starting with my cheeks and melting to my torso, forcing me to untie and open the robe RELAX wrapped me in after the massage. Frustration at my predicament turned to rage, and within minutes the front of my hospital gown was damp, not only with rubbing oil, but perspiration.
With a ding, the bedroom door slipped open, and Michael entered. “Good afternoon. I wanted to find out what you thought of your massage.” His smile faded when we made eye contact.
The minute the door slid closed behind him, I shouted, “I don’t care about the massage. I care about what’s going to happen to me, but you never told me. What will I do when I leave this place, and more importantly, when do I get to leave this room?”
“Calm down.” He approached my bed with his arms up and palms facing me. “Now that you’re banded, you’ll be able to leave this room as soon as it’s determined you’re physically ready. And when it comes to your future, we’ve already made arrangements for you to—”
“To what? Become a productive member of society on someone else’s dime?” I sneered.
“That’s not quite how I was going to say it, but yes. You’ll be given free housing, amenities, and many training and career options to choose from.”
“Like what? Apparently paleontologist or museum curator aren’t options, right?”
Michael shook his head as if he knew the word “no” would be too blunt. “But there are other jobs that might interest you.”
“And who’s going to pay for all that?”
“GenH1 is taking care of all of your expenses. We brought you here. It’s our duty to make you comfortable and safe. Besides, you’re a ward of the region until you turn eighteen. We don’t expect you to take care of yourself.”
“What if I don’t want to be a ward of the region?” I asked, straightening my back. “I can take care of myself. I’ll just get a job, and I want to go to college, if it even exists in this world.”
“It exists, but it’s more complicated than that. You don’t under—”
“You’re right. I don’t understand. Explain whatever that may be.”
Michael’s shoulders drooped as he took a seat on the edge of my bed instead of the chair. Something about him was different today. He spoke and moved carefully like he was afraid I would break, and his cadence and his words sounded rehearsed.
It was enough to disrupt my outburst. My crossed arms fell to my sides, and I dropped my head. “I have no family, no friends—no one,” I said in a half whisper.
“Even though I’m your doctor, I’m also your friend.” Michael lifted my right hand from the sheet, taking it in both of his. His hands were warm, soft, and almost twice as large as mine.
I took a deep breath as my heart lurched into a faster beat. “I can handle whatever it is you aren’t telling me.”
He sighed and loosened his grip.
“What’s wrong, Michael?” I leaned toward him and placed my free hand on his shoulder, letting my fingers settle upon the hard muscle that led to his neck.
“There’s nothing wrong. Everything about you is right. It’s the way it’s supposed to be.” What was he talking about? He moved close enough for me to see the yellow specks in his eyes. His lips parted, and I let my palm slide down to his elbow.
“Damn, you’re about to have some visitors.” He glanced at his L-Band, and I pulled away. “I wanted to prepare you for this. They weren’t supposed to come until—” He abruptly put my hand in my lap, gave it a squeeze before he let go, and rose as the hospital door slid open.
Dr. Love entered first, followed by two men wearing tight black uniforms. Michael cleared his throat. “Good afternoon. Um, let’s begin with introductions,” he said as the two men walked toward me. Dr. Love took a seat at my right. “This is Dr. Simon Little. He’s the manager of protocol.”
Dr. Little nodded and raised a coffee cup he held in a small salute. He was a short, large-middled man with enough wrinkles around his eyes and on his neck to place him in his early seventies. “And how are you feeling today, Miss Dannacher?”
“Better. Thank you,” I said, noting the doctor’s L-Band, thick against his wrist.
“And this is Dr. Colin Pickford,” Michael added. “He’s the head of the genetics department. They’re here to help me tell you a little bit more about our world and about your progress here at GenH1.”
Finally. They were probably the men who went beyond Michael’s authority. They took seats in a row along the left side of my bed.
Michael continued. “You already know that six hundred years ago, our world was devastated by an inexorable plague, and over 50 percent of the population perished as a result.”
I nodded and bent my knees, forming a peak of cotton sheets.
“Well, in time, it was discovered that the plague did more than what the experts initially believed. Every woman on the planet became sterile, and women who were pregnant before the plague either died or miscarried.”
I looked at Dr. Love, but she turned her head away from me. “So you’re saying that every woman on the planet at the same point in time was infertile?”
“Yes.” Michael didn’t blink. Now I understood what he’d meant by being scarred.
“But that’s not possible because then none of you would be here.” My voice trembled, followed by my hands and lower lip.
“Cassie”—he leaned forward—“we’ve found other ways to replicate life.”
“Artificial insemination?” I dropped my jaw. “No, wait, that wouldn’t work, right?”
“No, for intrauterine insemination to work, a viable egg is needed.” His eyes shifted to the floor. “There were no viable eggs.”
“Then how…” I scanned the row of faces, all staid and straightforward. They were telling the truth. “Well, you’re definitely not robots.”
“No, no.”
“Then…?”
He straightened his back, inhaled, and ran his palms against the tops of his thighs, the scrape of stiff fabric audible in the dead-silent room.
“Please. Tell me.” The words were thick in my throat as I tilted my head to catch Michael’s gaze. My stomach churned with bile, and I became nauseous.
“We’ve accomplished what was once considered impossible. We’ve succeeded where your world failed. To put it simply, we’re clones.”
A chill bit my lower spine, and I wrapped my arms across my chest as my heartbeat pounded in my ears. As I searched back and forth among them for something that made them different, I consciously controlled my breathing, taking long, slow breaths while the reality of these beings settled in my brain.
But there was nothing unusual. These people were as human as I. An unethical process in my century was now one of success, each person in this world representing a bigger miracle than a biological birth.
Michael, the guy who’d brought me back from death, was the replica of another, something concocted in a lab. He looked away and tapped his foot nervously. It seemed obvious he was embarrassed, if not mortified, by the thought that I knew his secret—their secret. I was one-of-a-kind, of a biological birth, but that did not make me any more human than them.
It only made me a rarity.
I smiled at Michael and his foot tapping ceased.
&nbs
p; “Clones? All of you are clones?” Although stunned at this revelation, I was even more impressed with their technology.
Dr. Pickford folded his hands. He was handsome for a man who was probably in his fifties. He looked how I always imagined my dad—lean but athletic with gray hair that made him appear scholarly instead of old. But there was something about him I didn’t like. Maybe it was the way his lip curled up on one side when he talked. “Yes, Miss Dannacher. We are genetic replicas derived from—”
“I know what a clone is,” I interrupted. “But in my lifetime, it was wrong to clone a human.”
“Our decision was not a matter of ethics, Miss Dannacher, we had no choice.” Dr. Pickford shifted in his seat.
“No choice?” I said, directing my question at Michael.
“Cassie, clones cannot reproduce, and—”
“Why can’t they?” If the clone is an exact replica of its donor and the donor was fertile, the clone should be, too.
“Underdeveloped ovaries.” He shook his head. “We don’t know why this disorder occurs. It’s a congenital defect present in every clone female. They’re all born without eggs.”
There was a soft popping sound as Dr. Love cracked the knuckles of her left hand and proceeded to pick at the cuticle of her pinkie, keeping her eyes from mine.
“That doesn’t make any sense. During my lifetime, cloned animals could reproduce.”
“That’s still true today, but for some reason, it’s different with humans.”
“And what about male clones?” I asked slowly, directing my question toward Dr. Pickford instead of Michael, although Dr. Little answered instead.
“Oh, don’t worry about us, Miss Dannacher,” he chuckled with pride. “Male clones are not defective. Our fertility is intact.”
Infertility does not make a woman defective, I wanted to shout and expected to see Dr. Love doing the same. But she was still focused on her nails.
Michael drew in a long breath and inched away from Dr. Little by shifting to one side of his chair. “And, unfortunately, there’s another issue. We can’t clone an existing clone. The DNA is too unstable and fragmented. Even first generations have problems, such as organ failure. GenH1 performs over one hundred organ replacements a month due to this problem.”
“If all of you are clones, then you’re genetic replicas derived from what?” I asked, bringing my knees closer to my chest as my dizziness increased.
“From our ancestors,” said Dr. Little after a long gulp from his mug. “I can show you if you like?” He nodded and a cowlick on his head flopped downward. “Monitor down.” A thin, gray screen lowered from the ceiling at my left. He tapped on his L-Band until the monitor glowed. “This is a map of our city. The green areas are cemeteries established before 2425.”
Michael added, “Before the plague.”
The doctor selected one of the green areas and enlarged it. The boundary of the cemetery was rectangular, outlined in black, and inside were tiny rows of colored dots. “Each dot represents a grave.” He explained how different colored dots represented tombs with or without workable DNA and those that had already been excavated. “For each yellow dot, the cadaver has not only been recovered and the DNA processed, but the cloned fetus has already been ‘born’ and released to parents.”
My guts clenched. “Born?”
“We use the term loosely. The babies are actually grown in an artificial uterus, so we can monitor them throughout their entire gestation process.”
“Without cloning, humans would have been extinct in less than one hundred years,” Michael said. “There would have been complete chaos and anarchy until the last surviving human died alone, a miserable death. Our forefathers couldn’t let that happen.”
Dr. Little coughed into his fist. “The blue dots represent graves with usable DNA. Some of these graves are being excavated as we speak.” Out of all of the tiny, uniform rows on the screen, only two of them contained blue dots.
“There aren’t very many blue dots left.”
“No, there aren’t.” Dr. Little frowned. “Every cemetery in every city, in every region, has been surveyed and recorded. Now we are systematically going through each graveyard and replicating the number of people needed to replace those who have died each week.”
“Whoa. Talk about population control.”
“Yes, but because of that, our unemployment rate is zero, which means our poverty rate is zero.”
“And this is happening around the world?”
“In all three regions, but our division manages the cloning program for this region.” His gray eyes flashed with pride. I focused my attention on the way he kept his hand in a fist while he gestured, and the sudden rise in his voice at the end of each sentence. Like everyone else I’d met so far, everything about Dr. Pickford was human and unique. It was easy to forget I was having a conversation with clones.
Michael rocked forward in his seat. “Not every country had the technology or the resources to facilitate a program on their own. The world was forced to work together. There’s something very humbling about the inability to procreate.” He continued. “We’re not saying that it was easy. Even though it was the only means of saving the human race, some thought the plague was an act of God, and they didn’t want to do anything to interfere with His plan. Others thought the disease was sent by aliens, so an alien race could take over the planet.”
I wrinkled my nose. “Well, yeah. I wouldn’t want to walk down the street and run into a clone of someone I knew. That would be insane.”
I imagined the clone of my mother on the street, politely stopping as I approached but shaking her head and drawing her eyebrows together, perplexed when I called her “Mom.” My arms prickled, and a chill exploded at the base of my neck.
“Actually, the oldest DNA was used first to avoid just that.”
“And there’s still plenty of DNA left, right?” I asked, looking at the two rows of blue dots on the screen. My stomach tightened even more, and I swallowed hard to clear the lump in my throat. “And if you had to, you could replicate the DNA of just one person to make hundreds of clones, right?”
Dr. Little tapped his thick fingers against the top of his thigh. “Even though we are clones, we still harbor the desire to be an original. One clone from one DNA source, and then break the mold, so to speak. But if we had to, we could make an infinite number of clones from one DNA sample.”
“Then your population problem would be solved, right? I mean, why wouldn’t it be? Just sprinkle them around the world, so they’d be less likely to run into each other.”
“It’s not that easy. It’s becoming more difficult by the day.” Michael interlocked his fingers and set his hands in his lap. “Only one in ten clone embryos survives the first ten days in its synthetic uterus, and only one in five makes it to the second trimester. And when it comes to using the same DNA to produce more than one individual, so far, that hasn’t been possible due to a phenomenon known as Ancestral Memory. When—”
Dr. Little banged his fist against my end table, sending it into a lopsided wobble that didn’t stop until he grabbed it and pulled it upright. I flinched. He glared at Michael, who hung his head.
Ancestral Memory was obviously a hot button, but Michael’s cowed expression kept me from pressing the issue.
“As Dr. Bennett explained,” said Dr. Little after clearing his throat, “embryo stability and survival is one of our biggest setbacks. In fact,” he added as he tapped his L-Band, “this is something you need to see for yourself.”
See for myself? My eyes immediately darted to the ceiling, expecting the monitor to lower, but a ding echoed through my room, and seconds later, a security guard entered with a chair, hovering inches from the floor.
“I-I get to leave my room?” I stuttered as my heart jumped.
“Of course, Miss Dannacher, you’re a patient, not a prisoner,” he chuckled. “You’re not physically ready, but I’ll make this one exception until the time comes when y
ou are.”
Dr. Little stepped back and stood still, holding his coffee mug, while Dr. Love and Michael lifted me from the bed and lowered me into what they called a hoverchair. The chair bobbed with my weight and steadied itself with a hum that grew louder as it rocked. A suck of air from the green cushion held me securely in place.
When I pulled my arm from around Michael’s neck, I tried to catch his eyes, but they were focused on first the floor, and then Dr. Little. Dr. Love didn’t look at me either—only Dr. Pickford did and his upper lip lifted into a smile.
“So, where are we going?” I asked as Dr. Little guided my chair into the hall with a push from one index finger.
“The prenatal ward.”
Honestly, I didn’t care where I went. I was finally out of my room. The milky ceiling burned with light, but I needed more—a window—but every twist and turn resulted in a stark wall with gray doors.
Before I could beg the team to take me to a window first, Dr. Little said, “And here we are, Miss Dannacher.”
My hoverchair steadied itself in front of a door labeled “PNW One.” The door slid open, and as my escorts took a few steps forward, Dr. Little put up his arm and announced, “I’ll do the honors. Wait for us here,” with a sternness that made Michael’s lips tighten.
The rectangular room we entered held long tables that ran parallel to one another, each holding a row of clear, fluid-filled vessels containing an embryo or fetus in various stages of development. A foggy red tube extended from each small being, beginning at the belly button and ending at the machinery mounted below each table, equipment that spun, sucked, and turned.
Some babies were right-side up, some upside down, but all of them were curled with their knees toward their chests, and their tiny hands at their mouths. One was even sucking its thumb. Even the smaller fetuses with translucent skin and Martian-shaped heads, I found adorable.
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