Ocean of Storms

by Christopher Mari

  “What does he mean?” Soong whispered.

  “Please understand, it is almost as difficult for me to explain this paradox as it is for you to hear it. Perhaps you will better understand what I am telling you if you better understand what I am,” said Joshua. “By your definition, I am not a human being. More specifically, I am a clone. A genetically engineered specimen flawless in design. But the seeds of what I am, what your world will become, were sown in your time.”

  Joshua took a step toward the center of the bridge, looking very much like a professor about to lecture his class. His eyes, however, never left their direction. He appeared to be looking right at them, which Donovan knew had to be impossible. A prerecorded message couldn’t possibly know where its viewers would eventually be standing. As an experiment, Donovan stood up and crossed the room. Joshua’s gaze suddenly shifted back and forth between his position and that of Zell and Soong’s, just the way a speaker would shift his gaze back and forth before an assembly. He walked back toward his seat, and Joshua’s eyes followed him. The hologram—if that’s what he was—almost seemed to be waiting for him to stop fidgeting.

  “At this point, I will ask our ship to adjust the life-support system to raise the temperature. Once this is done, you should be able to remove your helmets.”

  Okay, so the damn thing’s not sentient, Donovan thought as he cautiously removed his helmet, remembering that they had already asked the ship’s computer to raise the temperature. Soong and Zell followed suit, carefully sniffing the air. The temperature was still on the cool side, but it was well above freezing. If they needed to, they knew they could remove their space suits and walk around in their coveralls.

  Joshua returned his gaze to them. “Now that you’re ready, we can begin. Rather than having to explain what is to come, it was decided that you should be shown your future. In order to achieve this, your cerebral cortex was probed and the proper images implanted. This is something that is quite common in our time, but for your brains, the experience will no doubt be . . . disorienting.”

  And with that, reality washed away from them.

  They see their world. Not an image of their world hanging in the blackness of space. Not as snapshots or sounds. But their entire world, all at once, every corner of it, as it exists here and at this moment. Their senses flood with an unyielding array of sights and sounds and smells and tastes. They’re in crowded city streets and on dusty village roads, atop mountains and in valleys, sailing on the ocean and roaring at supersonic speed across the skies. And they aren’t just in places; they’re also surrounded by images and events indicative of their times. There’s a double helix, and now here’s a partial map of the human genome. Suddenly they’re on a farm with Dolly the sheep, the first mammal cloned from an adult cell, created at the end of the twentieth century. Other images and sensations quickly replace the ones they’re witnessing—stem cells and in vitro fertilization, sonograms of children in the womb, researchers working in laboratories, filling vials, peering through microscopes, holding test tubes to the light.

  Their minds are being bombarded as well, almost as if they’re living each of these moments in an instant.

  “This is your world today.” Joshua’s voice resonates in their minds. “A world on the brink of discovery. But it is also our world as well. Our genesis, if you will. Your race is about to embark on a series of what you will consider to be miraculous discoveries—from things as simple as parents choosing the sex of their children to the development of stem-cell research that will unlock the cures for a whole host of diseases. Our history records show that in your early twenty-first century, there was considerable debate about the ethical uses of this new technology. Some feared that researchers were ‘playing God’ by manipulating human genes. Others claimed that religious and ethical taboos were preventing your political leaders from grasping the true benefits of genetic engineering.” Joshua looks at the floor wistfully. “These debates will soon wash away.”

  More experiences now. Their time again as historical playback. Smoke rises up into an image of a bright-blue sky, now covering what had been the entire breadth of the ceiling. The effect is disconcerting; the sky and surrounding village seem to go on for miles. To their senses they are standing in the center of a village in what they assume to be the Middle East. Their noses find in the air the sickening smell of burning rubber, the stench of human decay. Their ears are filled with the sounds of mourning as survivors of this attack scurry around them to find loved ones. And now all around them are corpses—women clutching their dead children to their breasts, men collapsed in doorways and on dusty streets. All of the bodies look strangled, ruined. The Iraqi poison gas attacks on the Kurds, Donovan realizes.

  They’re in a crowded Japanese street. Hundreds of Japanese men and women are fleeing a subway station, their mouths covered with handkerchiefs and shirts. The scientists flinch as this terrified mob runs toward them and then through them, disappearing as quickly as they had appeared. The three move from scene to scene with wrenching speed. Suddenly they’re standing in deserts with mushroom clouds exploding overhead; they’re running with hazmat teams in full gear as they enter office buildings; they’re postal employees sorting mail in respirator masks and latex gloves; they’re soldiers in gas masks—and always the smell of death, of so many, many bodies, hangs in their nostrils.

  “Terrorism,” Joshua mutters as he materializes in the center of this swirling mass of death and carnage. “The great scourge of your age. And more than simple terrorism”—here the images shift to familiar scenes of car bombs in Israel and Iraq and Northern Ireland, of the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center crumbling into dust—“but chemical and biological terrorism of a kind you have only begun to witness. Soon attacks will come in such unimagined ways and cause so much death and destruction that the populace at large will forget its qualms about the manipulation of human genetics. The public will soon demand protection from chemical, biological, and nuclear attacks. Funded by government grants, researchers around the world will join forces in a global effort to cure or lessen the effects of smallpox, ricin, mustard gas, anthrax, nuclear radiation, and the like. And more remarkably, the gene-therapy cures will come with stunning frequency. The world will rejoice in the knowledge that many of the most insidious forms of terrorists attacks will be a thing of the past.”

  Happy voices now. An electric thrill fills the air. And around them a cacophony of overlapping images of scientists and politicians, doctors and nurses, scholars and ordinary people from all walks of life praising the work of researchers and geneticists. Donovan and the others marvel at the sight of so many familiar faces, eminent people of their era, talking about things that haven’t happened yet. These events might well be in the future, but it’s their world they’re seeing, their time.

  Joshua’s voice rises over the din of conflicting sounds. “Terrorism would not end soon. There would still be deaths—too many deaths—from more conventional means of attack. But terrorism would be dealt a crippling blow, as its perpetrators realized that it could not evolve into more hideous forms. And the human race would come to understand the remarkable benefits of genetic engineering—as your corporations would soon realize.”

  Donovan’s mind explodes with thoughts, images, feelings—all not his own. He’s drifting down a river of rationality, each obstacle in his path being overcome by sheer force of nature. Or perhaps force of will. With this new technology, humanity has been given a new choice. And making the choice is as inevitable as taking a step, as likely as all the previous choices had been. In the twentieth century, more and more people gained the freedom to choose what type of education they would receive, what types of jobs they wanted to apply for, what neighborhoods they wanted their children to grow up in. Even now, in his own century, Donovan could see how new technologies would allow them to improve their overall health and well-being in unimagined ways. He understands the choice being made implicitly, though not as Alan Donovan. He views the wo
rld of his time as Joshua would and is ashamed.

  No, he thinks as he fights to retain his identity, I’m Alan Donovan. I’m a man, and I’m alive here and now. I’m thirty-five years old. I’ve been sick. I’ve known pain. I had my appendix removed when I was twelve. I have scar tissue on my lungs from pneumonia. I’m imperfect. I’m human.

  More images now, coming faster and faster. Scenes of congressional committees and laboratories, of people discussing issues, working, acting. Scenes of mass immunizations, of people lining up in hospitals and clinics to receive vaccines. Now scenes of people in wheelchairs walking, of men and women and children smiling and leaving hospitals. Elapsed-time images of cancer cells shrinking, of severed nerve cells growing, of lives again and again given a second chance.

  This is what genetic engineering gave to your race. Donovan hears Joshua’s voice ringing in a far corner of his mind. How much like his own it sounds now. The ability to prolong and improve your lives from the very moment of conception. Once geneticists were able to unravel the coding of human DNA, they could target specific defective genes and either eliminate or repair them. Does your family have a gene for heart disease? In your near future, that gene can be repaired as easily as replacing a defective part in a clock. And why stop at curing diseases and preventing chemical and biological attacks through mass inoculations? Why not remake humanity itself better, smarter, stronger, more beautiful? It was, as one chairman of an American genetics conglomerate put it, “a market waiting to be exploited.”

  They are moving into the middle of the century now, 2040 or so. They’re in an endless room filled with bodies. But the smells surrounding them are not of death and decay but the antiseptic aroma of a medical facility. Surrounding them are lengthy rows of headless bodies attached to life-support machines, each monitored by technicians with electronic notepads. Kept alive by artificial means, these bodies exist solely for the purposes of organ harvesting, medical testing, and the collection of raw material for further genetic testing. Though such clones do not exist in Donovan’s era, he finds these clones to be strangely primitive. And somehow he also knows that these early clones open up entirely new fields of medicine.

  In an instant, they are whisked into an operating room—white, clean, bright. Doctors are attaching cloned legs and hearts to patients. They’re in a medical laboratory. The clones are being shot up with drugs, their DNA sequences manipulated in an effort to accelerate the development of vaccines.

  It only makes sense, Donovan realizes. It’s inevitable that we will cure cancer, AIDS, all the great scourges of our age. And it’s just as inevitable that, for people who could afford to, gene therapy and cloning will be used to improve appearance and overall health.

  It’s October 2042. They’re in the streets of New York around Times Square, the LED lights illuminating angry faces. Protesters swirl around them, marching with signs declaring “Clone Rights.” In another moment they’re in the midst of another demonstration, this time with people carrying signs for “Human Rights” on the Mall in Washington, DC. And now the smell of incense fills their nostrils as they stand in a church, listening to a priest condemn the sin of vanity and beg his congregation to think of the importance of the next life. And now there’s the taste of disinfectants in their mouths again as they walk through a hospital, looking at withered, haggard people dying in their beds. And now they’re in a living room with a family watching a news broadcaster talking about the widening health-care gap between rich and poor in the United Kingdom.

  It’s the middle of the century now. A new world order is emerging. Those able and willing to have their own clones grown and maintained throughout their lives do so. Those with ethical reservations or without the means to grow their own clones do not. And between them, those fighting for the civil rights of clones, people lobbying for better, more ethical treatment of clones. They argue that it’s a violation of basic human rights to grow headless clones solely for medical purposes, and propose adding higher consciousness to the basic matrix.

  Donovan’s thoughts fly like leaves in a hurricane.

  But no one’s listening. And why should they? There’s too much money being made in making headless clones for the privileged to have genetic corporations legislated out of existence. Separate societies are emerging, with the ethical, religious, and poor on one end and the rich and powerful on the other. By the early 2060s, the disparity between the two groups has grown so great that many countries are on the brink of civil war.

  They see images of riots in the streets, of buildings burning and police descending on mobs with sophisticated laser-like stun guns, of assassinations and explosions and chaos. A man holding a placard is trampled to death. A doctor entering a cloning center is knifed by a waiting mob. Building after building explodes, debris descending like a man-made snowstorm.

  They’re in government offices now. Politicians are bickering with one another around tables. All of the rooms smell of sweaty panic and fear. Their rule teetering on the brink of overthrow, the lawmakers begin to act. Political realities force countries to fall into line like dominoes. Universal health care is granted to all citizens, thereby pacifying a large portion of the population by allowing the poor access to cloning privileges around the world.

  August 31, 2072. A special session of Congress has been called to pass the first clone-rights bill in the United States. The bill bans the creation of headless clones in favor of clones with full intelligence. Whoever wishes to create a clone, either of themselves or a deceased loved one, is allowed to do so. Within a decade, the clones are working and living so closely with ordinary humans that most people cannot tell the difference.

  More laboratories. Medical techniques are being perfected; organs are being cloned without needing to create headless bodies. Yet, at the same time, the need for cloning human body parts or organs is diminishing as the human beings with the means to do so are reaching unparalleled levels of physical and mental perfection in utero. These new genetically perfect humans have come to be known as the Purebreds. Both they and the clones are generally doing jobs better and more efficiently than most ordinary humans, an ever-shrinking portion of the population growing more and more marginalized in the new societal hierarchy by clinging to an outmoded definition of humanity.

  It’s 2092. They are surrounded by people, almost impossibly beautiful people, doing even more impossible things. A man is running a mile in under two minutes. A female scientist is demonstrating a new type of fusion energy. A doctor is administering a new childhood vaccine to an infant. A baseball player is heading for home plate, having broken the single-season home run record of one hundred and sixty-five. Astronauts are inside their spaceship, zooming out to Pluto at one-half light speed. And among them, not a single human being untouched by genetic manipulation.

  Why shouldn’t we be at the top of every field? Why shouldn’t we be the greatest scientists, doctors, professors, financiers? Weren’t we bred for this? Weren’t our bodies designed to exceed what you thought was the peak of human perfection? Isn’t it only logical that only Purebreds and clones win all of the Nobel Prizes, break sports records, reinvigorate your stale scientific pursuits? Weren’t we designed to dominate?

  Weren’t we designed to rule?

  January 2101. They are in a crowd, shivering against a cold gust as they stand on the steps of the Capitol in Washington, DC. The first clone is being sworn in as president of the United States. His vice president is a Purebred.

  Clones and Purebreds now make up almost two-thirds of the population, thinks Donovan, now completely seeing the world through Joshua’s eyes. The Purebreds are used to harvesting DNA and genetic material for further experimentation. We are what humanity has always striven to become. We’re greater than the sum of our frailties and weaknesses. We’re no longer bound by them. We’re Purebreds. We’re clones. I am a clone. I have lived for fifty-five years and have not yet lived even a quarter of my life span. I have strength and endurance and intelligence. I am e
mbarrassed by what our race once was. It’s good that we have moved beyond what we were. It’s good that we wiped them out so long ago. It’s good that we’ve destroyed every last vestige—

  Destroyed? the part of him that is still Alan Donovan questions. His voice rises inside his mind, shouting at Joshua. What has become of the human race?

  By 2150, a distinct underclass of nongenetically engineered, noncloned humans emerges. Unable to compete with the upper classes, they are forced into menial labor jobs across the solar system, willing to do anything to survive. The Purebreds and clones, however, do nothing to help the original humans’ status, seeing them more and more as a distinct—and inferior—race.

  The last war between the Purebreds and clones and the original humans occurs in 2230. The conflict begins with an attempt by the human population to rise up against its masters.

  The battle is swift. Those humans not killed are banished from our society, relocated beyond the borders of our cities to areas without light, shelter, or adequate food or water. We call these places the Shadow Territories.

  The stench of these lands fills Donovan with equal parts revulsion and pity. He walks among sick and dying humans, feeling the crunch of dirt, gravel, and bones beneath his feet. Men and women and children huddle together beside garbage heaps, burning whatever they can for warmth, their skin thin and slack on their prominent bones. Some of the men hunt whatever wild game is available with crude bows and arrows or spears. Others agree to work in labor camps on the Moon, mining minerals, or on Jupiter’s moon Europa, where water is a central export. Years pass, but human hardship never does—more squalor, more disease, more war, more death. He is standing in a blasted-out house. Rotting timbers lay strewn about. Pictures are scattered and broken. He bends down to pick up what seems to be a doll’s head and realizes that it is a child’s skull.