The Book of Adam: Autobiography of the First Human Clone

  Many of them wrote in their suicide notes that they didn’t want to be cloned again. In 2049, one set of parents defied their clone-child’s wishes, and a new religious group sued on behalf of the dead child, asserting that all people had the basic right to stop their DNA from being cloned. The parents argued that the suicidal clone had an untreated chemical imbalance in the brain that made him more inclined to depression. Since his c-father lacked the imbalance, and the c-father had wanted to be cloned, it would be wrong to not allow the c-father to be cloned again. In other words, they argued that you couldn’t stop a person’s clone line because of one bad apple. In what would set a major legal precedent, the courts ruled that as long as the next child was cloned from the DNA of the original and not the c-child who committed suicide, the parents could have another clone.

  In a story that received even more media attention that year, a polygamist cult was uncovered in southern Utah in which a self-proclaimed messiah named Jacob Young was having his clone implanted in all the female members of childbearing age. He claimed that the genetic material was Christ’s, left there when Jesus had visited North America, and therefore the cloning was legal since the human form of Jesus had once been dead. In a twist to the classic Boys From Brazil story, they wanted to make hundreds of these “Clones of Christ” who would then go out and prepare the world for the end days.

  However, the government proved that the clones’ DNA matched Jacob’s, and Jacob was still alive, therefore making his cloning of himself illegal. And even if the DNA of Jesus just happened to be the same as Jacob’s, it was illegal to have more than one clone of yourself living at any time whether or not the original had died.

  The jury rejected the defense’s arguments. Mr. Young was jailed, most of his forty-seven clones became wards of the state, and cloning clinics received new, stricter regulations to try to stop such abuses before they occurred.

  ***

  2049 was a big year for me. I had turned fifteen and would be starting my internship at USCS in the fall. Lyle-2 was an affectionate and rambunctious three year old who didn’t seem at all like his predecessor. Lily-2 was ten, hanging on me as much as possible, but practically never touching Lyle, revering the young clone of her father with god-like awe. A god that she both respected and feared. But the way she averted her eyes and lowered her voice to a hesitant whisper whenever she talked to him, I sensed mostly fear.

  “Give Lyle a hug,” Aunt Louise told her when Lyle reached out to her on his third birthday, his eyes wide and full of adoration for what must have seemed like his older sister.

  Instead she held both of his hands and shook them a little, managing a quick smile and whispering a “Happy Birthday” before letting go and leaning into me.

  Young Lyle frowned, still reaching out for her. I extricated myself from Lily and picked him up.

  “Happy Birthday, Lyle!” I said, bouncing him a little.

  He draped an arm around my neck and laughed, but soon he was looking back at Lily, his thumb in his mouth, not smiling at all.

  “La-La,” he called, his attempt at pronouncing Lily, reaching out again.

  She didn’t look at him. He gave up. I bobbed him up and down a couple times to try to cheer him, but he only looked at the ground until Aunt Louise distracted him with some presents. He opened them, but he didn’t smile the rest of the party, and he never went too long without a glance toward La-La who never met his eyes.

  Table of Contents

  25

  That summer Lyle was old enough to be somewhat self-sufficient, and Louise thought it would be nice to go up to my family cabin in the redwoods for a month-long vacation before I started my internship.

  It was during that summer in the cabin that I received a v-chat request from an old friend. It had been almost eight years since our last encounter at my mother’s funeral. Over half our lives had gone by, but I would have recognized his face even without his identity tag. The last time I’d seen that face, it had turned away from me.

  “Jack?” I asked.

  “How are you, Adam?” He sounded as if he honestly cared.

  I shrugged. “Well, I’m…um…I’m surprised.”

  He laughed, and we both loosened up a little.

  “I’m really sorry about your mom. I should have said so at the funeral.”

  “No,” I said, shaking my head. “I should have apologized for your parents, and for everyone else who died at your church.”

  “It was your church, too, and you had as much right to attend it as I did. You should never blame yourself for what that suicide bomber did.”

  I thanked him without conviction. “So what led to this?”

  “Well, I’m working on a book about clones and religion, and I wanted to talk with you.”

  “I thought I was the writer,” I said.

  “Oh good, you’re still writing stories?”

  “No.” Actually, I hadn’t written since my mother died except as required by school. That wasn’t one of the priorities my c-father outlined in his birthday letters.

  “Oh,” Jack said after it became clear I wasn’t going to add an explanation. “Well, can we get together sometime?”

  I told him I was up in the redwoods and that I’d be there a couple more weeks, and he made arrangements to come up. We shook hands when he arrived, and I took him on a tour of the big trees.

  I’d been up there at least three or four times a year since my birth, but seeing them through Jack’s eyes filled me with new awe. The towering woods made me feel small and vulnerable, but also somehow comforted. The aroma of the ancient forest was saturated with tranquility and immortality. It was little wonder my c-father spent virtually all his free time here, or that this was the place Lyle had first discussed with him his plan to escape death.

  “What led you to write this book?” We sat on a couple of large rocks in the shade of an especially thick pocket of redwoods.

  “A search for inner peace,” he said. He held up and studied the compact, egg-sized pinecone of a giant sequoia.

  “How will this help?”

  Jack carefully set the pinecone down. “Christianity and cloning have affected my life more than anything. They took away my parents and challenged my beliefs. I need to reconcile them.” He shrugged. “And I think you’re the key.”

  I nodded stiffly, and then let him begin recording us with his cell.

  “Why do you think cloning is okay?” he asked.

  I was silent for a moment, and a little anxious about being recorded. “I guess, well, for one obvious reason – I wouldn’t be here without it. But also because I believe in individual freedom and that people should be able to do just about anything they want unless it hurts someone else.” The latter was my mother’s sentiment, and I had embraced the concept.

  “Even if it goes against what God wants?”

  “Yes, if you believe in religious freedom. I don’t want people telling me what I can and can’t do just because it’s against their particular religious beliefs. And anyway, God never says anything about it in the Bible. He tells us to be fruitful and multiply, and cloning is just another way to do that.”

  “It’s not a natural way to do it.”

  I felt my blood pressure rise a bit. “A C-section isn’t natural. Are we sinning when we do that, saving premature babies or the woman’s life? And what about artificial insemination, or allowing barren women to have children through artificial wombs, or all the other fertility treatments? Do you think Louise Brown and all the test tube babies that came after her are unnatural freaks?”

  Jack shrugged. “Well no, but isn’t cloning different? You’re replaying a DNA that God only intended to use once.”

  “But you don’t know that! Where does the Bible say that God only wanted our genes to be used once? Maybe God made it medically possible just so that we would do it.”

  I thought it was a good argument, especially since Jack’s father had said something to that effect, but Jack was unimpresse
d. “I doubt it,” he said, as if the reason was so obvious it didn’t need clarification.

  “But why do you doubt it?” I demanded, wondering if meeting Jack had been a bad idea. It was hard not to be passionate and defensive about the science that had made my life possible. “God already allows our bodies to make DNA copies naturally through identical twins, so he must not mind there being two or more people with the same DNA, and they’re even more alike than my c-father and me. I have some mitochondrial DNA from my mom, and I was raised under very different conditions. If it’s okay for natural copies of DNA to be made, than why not clones?”

  “Well, maybe because clones aren’t natural copies. It might be giving people too much power over something that should be entrusted to God.”

  “But God doesn’t set such limits in the Bible.” Mom had spent plenty of time explaining why people were wrong to oppose cloning on Biblical grounds, and those Bible studies had stuck. “He initiated life, and then he told us that we are supposed to keep creating new life. And he makes it clear that it’s okay to use the benefits of medicine in Ecclesiasticus when he says, ‘Honor physicians for their services; for the Lord created them.’ In other words, those skills and their benefits are given to us by God himself.”

  Jack shook his head. “But you’re carrying it too far. People shouldn’t be manmade. By manipulating ourselves, we’re turning our backs on what makes us human. The result could be the end of humanity itself.”

  “Does that mean doctors shouldn’t be genetically correcting sickle-cell anemia or Down syndrome? Are the children spared from such maladies less human because we tinkered with them? Or should we leave them as naturally screwed up as God made them?”

  “That’s a good point,” he said with his frustrating calmness. “But you have to admit that having your DNA born again is not as medically necessary as gene therapy on critically ill fetuses. God already gave your genes a chance at existence.”

  “But my existence is still dependent on God because God gave the physicians the skills they used to make my life possible.”

  “That argument would mean anything mankind can create is okay with God.”

  “If it doesn’t contradict any of his other laws, then why not? How would we know?” I challenged him.

  “I guess only by searching our hearts.”

  “So you mean your heart is telling you that God would have preferred that I’d never existed, and both you and God would rather I not be alive?”

  Jack was silent. His line of reasoning had brought him there. It would have meant his parents and friends who had perished in the church bombing would still be alive. As he later explained to me, it was the conclusion he had been subconsciously yearning for. But upon finding it, he found he didn’t like it, and he changed the subject.

  “Do you have a soul?” he asked.

  “How can you tell?” I wanted to know as much as he did, and for some reason I thought Jack might know better than I.

  “Yeah, I was afraid you might ask that. I guess, do you feel like you have an inner voice inside that is separate from the physical functioning of your body?”

  “I think so. I hardly ever think of myself as my physical body. I just think of myself as me.”

  “You may be sharing the soul of your c-father.”

  “Do identical twins share a soul because one is a genetic copy of the other?”

  “Of course not.”

  “But you think I have my c-father’s soul?”

  He looked into my eyes – the windows to the soul – for a long time.

  “No sir,” he finally answered. “I think you have your very own soul.”

  But did I really? I was beginning to wonder.

  We stopped talking about the moral implications of cloning. We reminisced about old times and people we used to know at church and at school. I had hoped he’d been in contact with Evelyn, but he said he never saw her again after the bombing. According to Mrs. Slater, Evelyn’s widowed mother moved in with relatives elsewhere in San Diego County.

  In the end, his visit was therapeutic. My mother’s funeral left me with bitterness, and I hadn’t spoken at length with a religious person on a non-antagonistic basis since we last parted. We had our differences on the issue, but differences based on respectful disagreement rather than hatred. I began to once again accept that religious people could be against cloning but not against me. His book, Clones and Christianity, confirmed this. He argued that clones were no different than non-clones, and that whether or not you considered cloning a sin, the clones should not be judged on how they came to be born. Coming from the son of a Christian minister who died for his acceptance of clones, and a person who was planning to follow in his father’s footsteps in the ministry, gave his voice a sentimental audience.

  We stayed close friends throughout high school and college, during which he became a theology major and a religious advocate for acceptance of clones while not encouraging cloning itself. I’d later encourage his nomination to the Genetics and Cloning Board. A nomination that would save my life.

  Table of Contents

  26

  My family and I went back to La Jolla at the end of the summer, and I prepared to start my internship at USCS. The night before my first day at work, I dreamt that as I walked down an office hallway, something hit my head. I looked down, expecting a pebble like the one that had hit me in second grade. Instead it was the small vial of sleeping tonic. As I stood looking at it, another vial hit me in the head, then another. I turned my head to see all the people in the office throwing vials at me. I started to run, but someone yanked me back by the hand. It was young Evelyn in her wedding dress from Winter Wonderland.

  “You said you weren’t going to run anymore,” she said.

  I nodded, picked up a handful of the vials from the floor, and flung them back at my tormenters. They scattered, leaving a deserted hallway. I turned to thank Evelyn, but she was gone too.

  I awoke that morning feeling confident and charged, and that’s how I felt when I arrived there Monday after school. Nobody threw anything at me – except for some forms and bound reports that they wanted me to print, scan, or shred. For the first year they had me doing only clerical stuff and basic data entry in the lab.

  Many of the older employees had once worked under my c-father. They said my c-father made them believe the war against mortality was possible. Their war had been waged on many fronts – everything from cryonics (freezing the dead, then still an unpopular choice because there was little chance of being brought back to life intact) to nanotechnology (microscopic nanobots working to create an artificial immune system in the body) to battling cellular degeneration by slowing or stopping the destruction of telomeres that protect dividing cells. The latter technique kept proving elusive, and back then the other two were just distant pipe dreams.

  Not that Ingeneuity and U.S. Cloning Systems weren’t successful. In the early 21st century they became the leaders in gene therapy and were at the forefront of stem cell research, artificial organs, and organ-cloning technology. Donors slowly became a thing of the past as new organs were created or grown from a patient’s own cells and enhanced to be more effective than the original.

  According to my c-father’s journal, despite the few victories and many frustrations of his research, Adam enjoyed his work. Most weeks he put in more than ninety hours at the lab as he rose from supervisor of the Therapeutic Cloning Division at Ingeneuity to the CEO of the newly created USCS. The success of the company during his tenure, topped off by his achievement with the underground human cloning division, and then becoming the first beneficiary of that project, assured him a mythical status among his co-workers – people who now treated me with something near the reverence I’d seen Lily treat Lyle-2, making me feel uncomfortable.

  But the newer employees just thought it was pretty cool to have the first human clone, the c-child of the company’s former CEO, working as their assistant. They were fun to work with, and one of the
m gave me my office nickname. The first time I was caught running a print job, a co-worker named Michael Heinz called me “Copy Boy,” and everyone thought it was hilarious. People still call me “Copy Boy” to this day.

  As high school progressed, USCS gave me more complicated duties ranging from proofing and editing reports to re-testing lab experiments. My senior year was devoted to assisting the medical scientists’ work on the artificial immune system that my c-father had encouraged me to pursue. Exciting progress was being made, and by 2052, the old pipedream of manmade nanobots were actually unclogging arteries and dismantling malignant tumors in mice.

  I turned eighteen on March 11 of that year. The media came by the house for my big birthday, and we were quite a hit. Aunt Louise was quick to introduce them to her cloned pets and show them around her brightly colored glass forest (which would have been hard to miss even without the tour). Thirteen-year-old Lily-2 was stuck to my side every minute they were there, as if she wanted to make sure the world knew that we were as married as our c-parents. Lyle-2, who had recently turned six, was growing into a moody boy – especially around me. Three years earlier he had hugged me and called me his big brother, but by five he rarely talked to me and never allowed me to touch him. I became convinced that his birthday letters from Lyle-1 were the cause, telling young Lyle to distance himself from me. I hoped it wasn’t me subconsciously rejecting him as the clone of Lyle-1, but sometimes, as his face began to more closely resemble the man he’d been cloned from, I did catch myself feeling repulsed by him for no apparent reason.

  The crowning event of the birthday party was the presentation of Adam-1’s personal, handwritten journal. It had sat in a safe deposit box for his clone’s eighteenth birthday, and I’d been eager to read it since early childhood. A reporter asked if she could take a look at it when I was finished, but I told her that I had to see what deep, dark secrets it held.