On the extreme opposite side of the religious fence stood the growing cult spawned by Gabrielle Burns. Her journal, now a holy relic, described how she believed the archangel Gabriel had charged her to save the human race by killing the first human clone. If she failed as savior, all humanity would perish. The “Gabrielites” believed that her two failed assassination attempts demonstrated that God had decided to spare Adam-2 and instead destroy everyone for their acceptance of cloning. They therefore no longer called for my destruction, but prepared themselves for the end times that my presence would visit upon the earth.
There were other monumental social developments underway. While much of conservative America adamantly opposed cloning, many liberals decried what they considered a far more damaging development. What had begun as medicinal gene therapy to cure serious defects in embryos was gradually transforming into wholesale manipulation of the genes. Several years ago, some wealthier parents began picking out their child’s gender, eye color, hair color, and height. Now they could start choosing better looks, nice teeth, a genial disposition, strong immune systems and, naturally, greater intelligence for their babies-to-be. Initially only the rich could afford such perks, increasing their advantages over the lower and middle classes. And even now the greatest enhancements can only be had by the wealthy.
Although most conservatives had initially opposed such procedures on moral and religious grounds, much of that opposition was eventually whittled away as powerful and affluent pundits spoke out in favor of genetic manipulation. They argued it was a moral imperative to provide the best possible start for your children, God wanted humanity to constantly improve ourselves and therefore gave us these tools with which to do it, other countries would do it and we needed to follow suit to maintain a competitive edge, it would be un-American to stifle the freedom of parents to develop their children as they saw fit, and the crazy liberals shouldn’t be allowed to determine whether or not our children were smart.
By 2040 the first intelligence-enhanced babies were being born. Within a few months new private schools were already being prepared for them. Although safe, effective, and relatively inexpensive memory-boosting “smart pills” were already on the market, the genetically enhanced brain would always be steps above a non-enhanced one and would get a bigger boost from the smart pills. It began to look as if babies like Lily and I had been born a few years too early.
The entertainment industry hopped on the cloning and gene-enhancement bandwagon. The story of the years between my birth and my mom’s murder was quickly made into a movie, and another even more popular one came out about the life and death of Gabrielle Burns, infusing the Gabrielites with thousands more converts. Then there were the several cloning-related series bombarding homes including such classics as C-Father Knows Best, sitcoms like The Addams-2 Family and Welcome Back, Adam, the cheesy new soap operas As the Brave New World Turns and Two Lives to Live, a serio-comedic take-off of the old police drama Adam-12, and the action series The Clone Ranger for which I had coloring books, action figures, and a lunchbox.
Pet cloning had been going on for decades, but it was seeing a similar resurgence as the ability to clone mammals became more routine and less expensive. Lyle, as you might have guessed, was not exactly a big “pets” person, although I’d have loved one during that time of my life. Anything to get away from my great-grandfather and Lily-2. By the time she turned four, I was beginning to feel increasingly uncomfortable playing with her. She always wanted to re-create scenes that Lily-1 had told her about in letters, like when they went on their first real date to see Sleepless in Seattle. It was awkward to treat Lily like a kid sister when she was always trying to kiss me on the mouth.
“Like before,” she said to me, showing me Grandma Lily’s letter about their first romantic kiss when Lily-1 was sixteen and Adam-1 was twenty-two. She knew every detail of Adam and Lily’s courtship. It would be many more years before I would read my clone-father’s brief summary of his “romance” of Lily. Beginning with Lily’s ninth birthday party, he gave the daughter of Ingeneuity’s CEO a white lily whenever he visited. Lily was immediately won over, and Lyle encouraged him to keep wooing her.
“She seems only really happy when she knows you’re coming over,” Lyle told me. “But I hope you’re serious.” He tapped me on the shoulder a couple times with his pipe. “I’d be extremely upset if you ever hurt her.”
I guess it was the kind of thing any lovingly protective father might say, but stated with his usual calm severity that always made me uncomfortable.
“Oh, yes sir,” I answered, “I’m very serious.” And I was. I was then. When I was eighteen, working for Ingeneuity was all I cared about. I would’ve dated a garbage disposal.
On Lily’s eighteenth birthday they made love for the first time. Six weeks later Adam became the oldest date at her prom, with Lily graduating from high school and Adam completing his doctorate in bioengineering soon after. About that same time it grew clear that the night of their first union had also seen the zygotic union of their two gametes. As Adam had hoped. They were hurriedly married on June 5, 1999, and their daughter was born seven months and one day later. They named her Sarah.
*
Lily-2 started playing Helen Reddy’s rendition of Delta Dawn as it indicated in Lily-1’s letter, and then she puckered up for her first romantic kiss from me.
“But it says here we have to wait till you’re sixteen,” I noted scientifically.
“No we don’t!” she insisted.
I turned off the music and shrugged. “That’s what it says, Lily. I’m sorry.” I smiled sympathetically, said the years would go quickly, and made a small excuse to go back to my room.
Which was really Adam-1’s. But I slowly learned how to function in that bedroom. I pretended to ignore most of Adam-1’s photos and personal items. Unable to block them without assistance, I hid my c-father’s things behind holograms. I immersed myself in holo-books, played the new homnivision games, and inserted myself into homnivision movies, interacting inside new and old films. Within those I could perform the heroic acts of Indiana Jones, Luke Skywalker, and Harry Potter, at times changing events through my actions. I saved Old Yeller, the father in The Lion King, and Bambi’s mother. Once I played the homnivision version of the film Gabrielle intending to modify the outcome by coming to my mom’s rescue. But like my character in the movie, I ran away.
I hid my cowardice inside my e-journal to my future clone, telling him not to worry about being the same as Adam-1 and me, and not to follow orders from Lyle. I guess I was asking him to have the courage we lacked. I didn’t include the fact that I believed Lyle killed my mother, figuring I’d add that after Lyle was dead. Although the e-journal was encrypted, there seemed too much risk in including such information. If Lyle ever found out for certain that I knew he’d murdered my mom, I would surely be next.
Sometimes I’d v-chat with other clones, but I always hid behind an avatar. I didn’t want them to see that they were talking to the first of their kind. Other times I’d create a hologram from a picture of our old dining room or my old bedroom that would make me feel like I was back in my mom’s home. There I daydreamed about Mom and Evelyn and Jack. And about killing Lyle.
I plotted my revenge thousands of times in countless different ways. Could I pull it off as perfectly as Lyle had pulled off my mother’s murder? Would I be able to kill him at all? I felt small, intimidated, and inferior every time he was around. Where would I ever find the courage to murder him?
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The first nightmare came a couple years later, soon after my tenth birthday. The media had just interviewed me about my life, my health, and how I was doing in school. They wanted to see if I was a normal, healthy boy, or if I was going wrong in some way. No doubt many anxious parents of clones were watching as well, as they knew I could well be the proverbial canary in the mineshaft. Fortunately, I was physically fine.
My mind was
another matter. After a couple years, the strain of living in my c-father’s shrine while being raised by my mother’s murderer and living with the young girl who thought she was my wife had begun to take its toll. My sense of self-worth was zero, my sense of self-loathing overwhelming. I had no friends, not even in the virtual schools.
Then there were all those photos of Adam-1 at practically every age, scattered throughout the house. I could see myself turning into the images in the pictures at nine and ten years old, and I could assume that, as the years continued to flow by, I’d eventually look like all the photos of Adam-1 when he was older. I could see myself in the future, and I was him.
I found myself wondering if I was wrong to fight against becoming my c-father. I had his DNA, and I owed my entire existence to him. In a real sense, I could be him. My imaginings of his life could be authentic memories imparted from a soul we both shared.
And then there was the most compelling argument of all. Trying to have a separate identity was difficult. Maybe it was difficult because I was fighting against my soul’s true nature.
I’d still want to kill Lyle for what he did to my mother, but I wouldn’t have to fight Adam-1 every day for my identity. Becoming rich and powerful would be a snap – simply a matter of assuming a position of importance at USCS, which the board of directors had already assured. And the photos promised that Lily-2 was destined to grow into a stunningly attractive woman. It wasn’t like I’d have to work that hard to woo her. We were already married.
As I let such ideas fester in my head, life grew easier. Only when I thought of my mother did an inner voice tug at me. Begging me to be my own person. Live a life I really wanted to live. The card Adam-1 gave me for my tenth birthday amplified that voice. No longer a sentimental hologram having me sit on his lap. Now it was just letters like this:
Hello Adam,
And congratulations! Ten years old. Double digits. When I was ten I saw the San Diego Padres win the National League pennant. Unfortunately, I was already an orphan. Let’s be sure to hug Mom after you read this.
This is a big year, and I know it’s going to be a great one for us. I need you to start reading some beginner books on biology and chemistry, and I’ve taken the liberty of compiling some notes and experiments for you to go over. You’ll find it as fascinating as I did, and the earlier you start laying the foundation the better. With any luck, we’ll find a way to live forever without cloning before your life is over, and then we won’t have to worry about being cloned and losing all those memories from our past lives like we did this time. The power to give us, and the rest of humanity, the remarkable gift of immortality is in our hands. An exciting chapter in that quest begins now!
– A
Adam-1 had never spoken for both of us so much, or given me such specific instructions. It was written with an easy, familial style, but he was telling me what to do with my life in no uncertain terms. For the first time the thought crossed my mind – what would Adam-1 do if I disobeyed him?
Three nights later I had my first encounter with a nightmare that would haunt me for the next forty years of my life.
I found myself standing in an old, snow-dusted cemetery late at night. Stars glittered through the branches of tall, dead trees, and moonlight reflected brightly off the snow. In front of me was an ornate headstone with an epitaph that read “Adam Silva Elwell, Beloved Husband, Father, and Clone-Father (June 12, 1974 – June 5, 2033).” Lyle didn’t want to remind me that Adam-1 was dead, but Mom had taken me to his grave once, and the dream grave resembled the real stone except this one was bigger and the whole “Clone-Father” thing wasn’t on the original.
Another notable difference was that this grave was open.
I peered over the edge, sure I’d see my grandfather’s casket. Instead I saw myself – a ten-year-old boy peering over the edge of a grave pit. It unnerved me, but I couldn’t back away. Instead I waved. The image waved back. That shook me up even more. What a stupid way to see if it was a reflection. For my next test, I crouched and quickly stood back up. The image did the same thing. It was definitely me. In fact, I could even see the wooden outline of the mirror. I relaxed a little. Until the image waved again, this time of its own accord.
I froze with fear, but that fear dissipated when the figure welcomingly stretched his hand out to me. I thought of Evelyn’s father holding her hand, and of the father who had saved me from the witch in a more distant dream. He wanted to be my loving father after all. One who would also feel the loss of my mom, whom he had loved as much as I did. And a father who would stand by me and protect me from Lyle.
I jumped feet first into the shadowed hole, trying to land on the wooden frame of the mirror, but the edge was narrower than I thought. My feet hit the glass, which cracked. The hands of the mirror image lurched toward the cracks, grabbing my feet. I was being yanked down into the mirror before I could fully comprehend the betrayal.
A frantic struggle ensued between my mirror image and me. He managed to get on top of my chest. I struck him in the nose, and it shattered off like glass, revealing a hole with a bit of skull showing around it. For a moment I thought I had an advantage, assuming the rest of his body could be easily shattered. But before I could act, the image grabbed a shard of mirror and stabbed through my hand, pinning it to the dirt floor. He climbed out of the mirror and out of the pit. I yelled, but I heard nothing. I pounded on the mirror that trapped me, but I couldn’t break it. I searched for a way through it like a fly on a windowpane, but the invisible barrier was solid.
Adam-1 stared back down at me from where I’d stood a minute before. He was older now – the same age as he was in pictures taken not long before he died. His stare was passionless and grim. Great-Grandpa Lyle walked up beside him. He had a deep, disapproving frown on his face. Finally Grandma Lily appeared on the other side of Adam-1. She leaned against my c-father and smiled in a way that made my blood run colder than it already was. Both Adam-1 and Lyle began shoveling dirt onto the mirror, each shovelful landing with the same thud I heard when Lyle threw dirt on my mother’s coffin. The last thing I could see was my grandpa’s stony face. He saw me looking back at him and threw in another pile of dirt. I was in darkness.
That’s when I woke. In the darkness, I imagined all those photos of Adam-1 staring down at me in my bed as the Adam in my dream stared down at me in my grave. I pulled the covers over my head and didn’t sleep again that night. Scared of myself.
In the years that followed, everything about the dream remained exactly the same except that as I got older, so did my mirror reflection.
***
As the months went by, I found myself fighting less and less to stay separate from Adam-1, while at the same time liking myself as a person less and less. Adam-1 was winning the battle of wills. It became increasingly rare for me to fight for my individuality. Whenever I realized this, it frightened me. Frightening me even more, Lyle appeared to be far more pleased with me.
I jumped when his hand patted me on the shoulder. “Good boy,” he said, picking up my e-reader and nodding. “This is a great intro on genetics.”
I nodded. Lyle played with the screen for a few seconds, then placed it back down in front of me.
“Keep it up, Adam. You’re turning out just fine,” he said, patting me again. Almost looking proud.
As he walked away, I turned back to my reader. Although the same book was on the screen, it was now a version with Adam-1’s notations.
On December 20, 2044, as I sat in bed looking at a framed photo of my mom on the third anniversary of her murder, I grew determined to end my downward spiral. Killing Lyle would break me away from my c-father and avenge my mother at the same time.
It was time to implement the murder plot I’d daydreamed about for years.
I had to do it before I lost what little fight was still lingering within me.
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I couldn’t orchestrate the kind of ruse Lyle had used t
o kill my mother. There was nobody to frame. Nor was I willing to get caught. I was the only one who knew Lyle’s evil heart, and I wasn’t going to have the entire world condemn me – the first human clone – for killing his own great-grandfather in cold blood. Ever since my mother’s funeral, I’d had the desire to prove the anti-cloners wrong by being seen as an upstanding citizen. Murdering my great-grandfather would disgrace my mother, myself, and perhaps all clones. And it could convince even the non-fanatics that I was indeed the Antichrist.
That left me only two options: Lyle had to die either by accident or suicide.
I dreamt up many accidents: falling down the stairs or off the balcony, drowning in the bathtub, electrocution in the bathtub. But they were all either too complicated, too hard to conceal, or not fatal enough. His death had to be absolutely certain.
That left suicide. A gunshot to the head by a large caliber gun would suffice.
I couldn’t arrange it at Lyle’s house. Lyle had a live-in butler and maid, and I couldn’t risk those variables. It would have to be at the cabin in the Sequoias. In the cabin’s master bedroom, Lyle kept a 9 mm. semi-automatic pistol that he carefully cleaned in the living room whenever we visited. When not cleaning it, he kept it in a locked drawer of his antique nightstand. I assumed that the key was somewhere nearby in case he needed to get the gun in the middle of the night. I found it in a slit in his mattress near the headboard. The gun wasn’t loaded, but the ammunition was hidden under a false floor in the same drawer. The gun’s handgrip had built-in fingertip sensors so only he could fire it.
I took a photo of the gun in the drawer and used it to help me find information on the web. There were instructions on how to load the magazine into the handgrip and how to take the safety off. As I suspected, the sensors on the handle detected fingerprints, and there was no override unless he authorized it. Which meant I had to get Lyle to hold the gun while the trigger was pulled. No problem, since this was going to be a suicide.