Swans and Klons

by Nora Olsen

  Salmon Jo looked troubled. “No process like that could exist. By the time the Hatchling humans are decanted, they are as developed as a human newborn can be and are therefore human. Even if there was a way to reverse development and stunt a human into a Klon, that would be totally unethical. Anyway, Klons are specially engineered to have certain strengths, like the ability to work harder than a human, and weaknesses, like not being as intelligent or emotionally evolved as humans. You can’t do all that with a shot. It has to be done while they’re fetuses in tanks.”

  Rubric threw up her hands. “You just showed me how the fetuses in the tanks are all the same, and now you’re saying they can’t be the same. And you’re supposed to be the logical one! You’re as thicko as a Klon.”

  Salmon Jo licked her lips. “Your theory, veruckt as it seems to be, is the only one that fits the facts.” She went into the biggest hexagonal area. After a moment, Rubric followed her. Salmon Jo was rooting through a desk, pulling out handheld screens.

  “Is this your desk?” Rubric asked. It seemed too big and with too much equipment for just an academy student being mentored.

  “No, it’s Panna Tensility’s. As far as I can tell, she’s the smartest one here and knows the most about everything.”

  Now Rubric was truly shocked. Salmon Jo ought not to go through other people’s property. “The Golden Rule—” she said helplessly.

  “The cause of science is a higher rule,” Salmon Jo muttered. She was looking at a handheld screen, paging through its documents.

  Higher rule, rubbish, Rubric thought. Salmon Jo was just a snoop.

  “No, I can’t understand it,” Salmon Jo said. Her voice cracked in the middle of the sentence. “This doesn’t make sense.”

  “Let me see,” Rubric said. Salmon Jo showed it to her. But the screen only showed a spreadsheet that was a meaningless jumble to her. How could a spreadsheet make anyone so upset?

  “This shows when the fetuses are designated Klon or human,” Salmon Jo said. “According to this, it’s not any time when they’re in the tank. The Doctors designate the freshly decanted Hatchlings to be human or Klon when they examine them, in their first minutes of life.”

  “So what’s the secret process that makes some of them Klon?” Rubric asked. She didn’t have a good feeling about this.

  Salmon Jo clicked through other documents for a long time. Finally, she said, “It seems to be that the Doctors put either a blue tag or white tag on the Hatchling’s toe. If they get a white tag, they’re human. Blue tags are for Klons.”

  Her words felt like a slap. Rubric gasped.

  “So there’s no difference between humans and Klons?” Rubric asked. She had a curious feeling, as if she were floating just above her own skin.

  “Except for the tag,” Salmon Jo said.

  Rubric stared into Salmon Jo’s amber eyes. Salmon Jo looked as troubled as Rubric felt.

  “There must be another explanation,” Salmon Jo said. “Something we’re not thinking of.”

  But she couldn’t come up with one.

  After a while, Rubric said, “We better get back to the dorms. I don’t want to get caught in here.”

  On the way back to the dorm, Rubric had a funny feeling. She didn’t even know how to name it. It was something akin to unease. Disquiet. Rubric felt as if all her trustfulness had been washed away. Their nighttime adventure now seemed much worse than just sneaking into the Hatchery.

  Chapter Eight

  Rubric stayed over in Salmon Jo’s room in Maroon Dorm. Rubric thought she would never fall asleep. But she must have, at some point, because she woke up to Salmon Jo shaking her.

  “I’m going to the refectory,” Salmon Jo was telling her. “Do you want me to bring you something to eat?”

  “Some fruit,” Rubric said thickly, still half asleep.

  “I’ve been awake for hours, thinking. I’m sure now that Klons and humans are the same. It’s the only thing that makes sense.”

  This woke Rubric up like a bucket of cold water being dumped on her head.

  “But they’re not like us! They’re thicko and less self-aware and don’t have complex emotions. We can see their primitive—” Rubric faltered and fell silent. She couldn’t think of any actual examples to support her case.

  “I think we just see them as less than human because we’re told to see that,” Salmon Jo said. “Maybe they are not as smart because they don’t grow up the same way as us. Or maybe they are as smart. What is smart, anyway?”

  “We can’t jump to conclusions,” Rubric protested. “We could have misinterpreted the whole thing. Maybe there’s one piece of evidence we don’t know about that explains everything.”

  “What does it mean to be human anyway? I’m not sure anymore what a human is,” Salmon Jo said. Her thin, muscular body was vibrating with tension like the string of a musical instrument.

  “I do,” Rubric said crossly. “I’m a human, and so are you. You’re just making it too complicated.”

  “I don’t know,” Salmon Jo said. “I don’t know.” She repeated herself three or four more times as she fastened her running shoes. “I’ll get you some fruit. I just don’t know.”

  Rubric was left alone with her thoughts. Suddenly she couldn’t stand lying in bed anymore. She got up and dressed in yesterday’s clothes. She tried to think of everything she knew about why Klons were Klons and how they got that way. It seemed she didn’t know anything, no more than she knew why the sky was blue.

  She took her handheld screen out of her cloak pocket and sat down at Salmon Jo’s desk. She looked up Klons hatched and origins of Klons and how Klons not humans. All the results were simple texts for children, with lots of graphics but little content. The information was scanty and repetitive. Over and over, she read:

  Klons are engineered to be different.

  Klons are so different from humans.

  Klons are engineered to complement us.

  Nothing explained how they were different or how they were engineered. Finally, she found a more advanced text, one she remembered reading a few years ago for academy. It had no graphics and was a history of Society. She read:

  During the Gendered Period of human history, male humans conspired together to subjugate the females and institute a system known as patriarchy, where males were in control. Because of their hormonal and neurological differences, males were typically brutal, non-nurturing, and emotionally underdeveloped, and had poor social skills. These hormonal differences also caused males to wage war, a violent conflict between societies that led to countless deaths and injuries, and poor quality of life.

  Women were forced to imitate animals in order to reproduce. Like other mammals, when a male and a Panna shared a sexual experience, the Panna might become pregnant, meaning she would grow a fetus inside her own body, inside the uterus organ (now vestigial in women of Society). Humans were unable to control the timing of these pregnancies. The only way to further the human race was to share sexual experiences with men, so no matter how distasteful this was, the majority of women continued to do so. The females excreted their Hatchlings, which they called babies or infants, through a painful and dangerous process known as childbirth. Many women suffered serious injuries or even death during childbirth. In addition, in most cases women were forced to be the sole caregivers for their own young, leading to exhaustion, depression, and an unhealthy bond between mother and child.

  The advent of Cretinous Males took the world by surprise. In 2043, the world first took note of the afflictions visited on male children, although the problem may have manifested prior to that. There is still no satisfactory explanation for the advent of the Cretinous Males, although leading theories of the day focused on the possible effects of environmental toxins on DNA. It seems the Cretinous Males suffered from a mitochondrial disorder, causing every cell in their body to have trouble producing energy, leading to both mental and physical problems. The last specimen of a non-Cretinous Male, Chien-Yeh Hwang, died in
2149, living out his final years in a combination folk museum and laboratory habitat.

  The loss of male humans has only led to evolutionary improvement. In the twenty-second century, Doctors perfected the form of SCNT (Somatic Cell Nuclear Transfer) that is still used today, thus ensuring the survival of our species. And so Society was created. Panna Charity Navrilova was the lead scientist on this breakthrough, and she has been immortalized by having her DNA included in our three hundred Jeepie Types. All humans alive today are genetic copies of extraordinarily healthy, notable, and well-adjusted women. Three hundred women were chosen to be the Jeepie Types that all humans in Society are replicated from. Each Jeepie Type is intelligent, thoughtful, kind, creative, and beautiful in its own way. We can all be proud of who we are. We have made war and conflict things of the past. In Society, we use discussion to solve problems and look to our Doctors for leadership.

  In 2270, eminent biologist Panna Ash Franziska invented the groundbreaking genetic manipulation that creates Klons. Until that time, humans in Society were forced to degrade themselves by doing manual labor. In those distant days, not only did humans toil in lowly jobs that did not spark personal growth, such as food preparation, transportation, child care, and manual labor, but humans were also expected to clean their own clothes and dwellings. As a result, they were unable to reach their full human potential, and only a few selected humans were able to fulfill themselves with music, writing, acting, visual art, and the other lively arts. Furthermore, as oil reserves declined, it became impossible to use the labor-saving, energy-intensive devices which were prevalent at that time, such as automobiles, dishwashers, and washing machines. Women of Society were spending more and more time carrying out meaningless activities of daily life.

  Klons are truly a new species of mammal. They are created in the Hatchery alongside human Hatchlings. They are specially engineered to have superior strength and endurance to humans, but at the same time they lack the intelligence, emotional development, and sense of self that are the hallmark of being human. Although Klons are taken from the same 300 Jeepie Types as we humans, scientists have used molecular technology to alter their fundamental essence. Klons’ frontal cortices are not as developed as those of humans, and thus advanced concepts remain beyond them. Their psychological makeups are also not as robust as that of humans, and so they must sometimes be given treatment. Although there are many hilarious edfotunement series about Klons being mistaken for humans, in reality, this could never occur. All Klons have identifying chips embedded in their abdomens. Klons are the perfect complement to humans, and we believe our two species will be forever entwined in an unending chain of myrtle.

  In Society, we practice thelytoky and are no longer subjected to pregnancies, childbirth, and their attendant dangers. All our Hatchlings are decanted in a safe, clean Hatchery. In Society, our children are raised in dormitories by Klons who have been given the highest training.

  Sadly, in the neighboring Land of the Barbarous Ones, it was fringe lunatics who were replicated rather than the cream of humanity. The benighted women there continue to engage in the outdated practices of pregnancy and childbirth. They have chosen to implant human embryos into their uterus organs, forgoing all the benefits derived from gestation in a tank. The Barbarous Ones form unhealthy attachments to their young, smothering them with individual attention and not allowing them to enjoy dormitory life. The Barbarous Ones have no Klons and are thus doomed to a primitive life of incessant exertion. Their most repulsive practice is that they also create Cretinous Male embryos and implant them into their uterus organs, so that their land is peopled by drooling, hairy Cretinous Males. Because of Society’s commitment to peace and the Golden Rule, we ignore our savage neighbors. The Fence between Society and the Land of the Barbarous Ones ensures our continuing tranquility and freedom from care.

  There was more, but Rubric clicked off the screen. The last time she had read this text, she had been a bit overwhelmed by the information density. Now, she found it completely lacking. It didn’t really explain anything about the Klons.

  The door opened and Salmon Jo came in, clutching a huge tray of apples. Her expression now was calm and clear. Rubric could see that the uncertainty had left Salmon Jo.

  “It would take me a month to eat all those apples!”

  “We might need them,” Salmon Jo replied obscurely.

  “Let’s go talk to Panna Lobe,” Rubric said. “That’s what you’re supposed to do when you have problems, right?”

  “Okay,” Salmon Jo said. “But we can’t tell her we were at the Hatchery last night, or that I looked at Panna Tensility’s handheld screen. I don’t want to get in trouble.”

  “Of course not,” Rubric said. “Am I a thicko?”

  Walking across the green, pretty campus, Rubric felt like she was in a dream. A Klon was loading a reel mower onto the back of an electric cart, and the sweet fragrance of freshly clipped grass hung in the air. There was a Klon pushing a cart full of laundry. Rubric stared at the woman, trying to see if she looked human or not. Her posture seemed different from the students and teachers surrounding her. Was that how you could tell if someone was human? One moment, Rubric would think, That Klon just looks totally different, I can’t define it, but there’s just something about her that makes her not a real person. The next moment, that difference would vanish, and Rubric felt like she was staring at a Panna who was unaccountably pushing a laundry cart. She didn’t know anymore what was all in her head and what was real.

  Panna Lobe greeted them warmly and asked her Klon to serve them tea. It felt reassuring to sit in her dowdy office with the dark wood paneling. The Panna sat in a plush overstuffed chair that smelled faintly of cedar and listened seriously to all they had to say. Their story didn’t make a lot of sense with all the key elements left out. In the end, she just shook her head.

  “Girls, what you’re saying is not possible. It’s inconceivable that the Doctors would perpetrate such an outrageous fraud on Society. Salmon Jo, you’re bright, but that doesn’t mean you can understand everything that goes on at the Hatchery. The scientists are not required to reveal all their secrets to you. You must know that Klons are specially engineered to have superior strength and endurance, but they lack our intelligence and emotional development. Rubric, you need to harness your powerful imagination to create something good, not a veruckt story like this. Only the combination of the two of you could come up with something like this! Come back and see me again next week.”

  They left dispirited.

  “I wanted to believe her,” Rubric said. “She talked, but she didn’t say anything. She said the same thing I read in a text, almost word for word. You’re right about this, Salmon Jo. I think you know better. I can’t explain it, but I just know you’re right. I feel it in my bones.”

  “I trust your bones,” Salmon Jo said and put her arm around Rubric. Rubric drew comfort from the weight of Salmon Jo’s arm.

  Chapter Nine

  Just because the fabric of Rubric’s universe had been ripped apart was no reason for her to quit her regular routine. In fact, that was all she had to cling to. The world that she had believed in didn’t exist, so what was she supposed to do with herself all day? Go to Stencil Pavlina’s as she usually did.

  Stencil Pavlina wanted to teach her to make a plaster cast of a clay object. “I learned this from my mentor, and now I want to teach it to you,” Stencil Pavlina said, her voice throbbing with emotion. “This will be the first step in our collaboration. You see how this mentorship is an undying myrtle chain, passed down through all the generations, keeping art alive.”

  Rubric really didn’t care about the undying myrtle chain. She was just happy to have something to keep her hands busy. Yesterday she had made a simple clay swan. The next step was making an emollient out of beeswax and olive oil. “Of course, your Klons will make this for you, but you have to be able to teach them how,” Stencil Pavlina instructed. Rubric imagined this process was like cooking beca
use it involved shredding, heating, and mixing. When it was ready, they slathered the emollient onto the clay swan. Rubric wondered how Stencil Pavlina would be able to make the final product grisly and depressing. Stencil Pavlina instructed Rubric to divide the mold with little walls, so they could cast one half at a time.

  The best part so far was mixing the plaster. You had to sift calcium sulfate, a white powder, into a bucket of water. Then stir it up until it was a milkshake-like consistency. Rubric liked mixing the squishy plaster. It felt good in her hands. She had never done any activity like this before. Again, Stencil Pavlina reminded her that Klons would do this work for her, but she had to know how to teach them.

  “You won’t have more than one Klon at first when you move out of the dorm,” Stencil Pavlina continued, warming to her subject. “If you think about it, the plaster objects you make are sort of like the Klons themselves. They’re terribly similar to the clay original. But they don’t have the same level of detail.”

  Rubric had noticed people saying weird stuff like this all the time lately. It made her wonder if everyone unconsciously knew the truth, and they had to keep saying things to perpetuate their self-deception.

  She was trying so hard to suppress this thought that she accidentally blurted out another one. “Wow, if the original clay objects are so much better, why don’t you make a series of clay objects instead of making all this plaster stuff?”

  It came out sounding awfully snarky.

  Without missing a beat, Stencil Pavlina said, “Gerda, slap her.”

  The Gerda who was closer to Rubric—there was no confusion about who was meant to do it—reached out and slapped Rubric’s face. It stung, and it felt as though a hand was still on her cheek, even after Gerda returned to her bucket of plaster. Tiny clumps of plaster were stuck to Rubric’s cheek. It confused Rubric how quickly they had ganged up on her, without stopping the flow of work. Gerda was pouring, pouring expressionlessly.