ick
A short story
by
Gary Weston
Copyright 2013 Gary Weston
For an audio version of this story, combined with, Eyes, Oceans of Death, Tin Man, and the full length book, Death Flight, click the link. Over five hours of spine tinglers, in “a little bit creepy” as read by the author!
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At Mouldypile Manor
Sir Charles Wynstanton-Thornycroft was alone. A hater of people in general, he wasn't particularly bothered about being alone. What annoyed him however, was the fact that none of his overpaid minions considered their grossly inflated salaries enough to be willing to stay the weekend and ensure he was alright. If nothing else, money should buy at least the pretence of loyalty. But by seven o'clock on Friday evening, they had all made their excuses and left him. Even that sycophantic toady Arkwright. Some lame excuse about his daughters wedding that weekend.
Sir Charles wasn't actually going to be alone completely all weekend. His nurse, Margaret Spindler would spend two hours each day with him, manipulating his feeble limbs, emptying his bags, washing him and checking his pale body for bed-sores. All without a smile or a kind word. It was all about business, with Spindler. And of course there were Sue and Barry Featherstone, from the village. Brother and sister, Barry tending the lawns and Sue making him his meals and cleaning. At least little Sue had a pleasant smile hiding her disgust for him, and she was always chattering about what was happening in Mucklowe.
It amazed him just how much gossip a hamlet with a population a little over three hundred could create. He was quite convinced she made most of it up. For reasons he couldn't fathom, Sue didn't bother him. She was paid the least out of all of the hangers on, and yet she made an effort to be pleasant to him.
To be fair, Mouldypile Manor was short staffed by at least ten full and part-time employees. And it wasn't down to any penny-pinching meanness or lack of available workers from the village. The number of employees was down to the bone not for fiscal reasons, but because the place held secrets. Sue Featherstone and Nurse Spindler were the only two allowed in the house, other than the scientists and doctors working on the project. Neither the maid nor the nurse knew about the project, which was just as well, because if they happened accidentally to stumble on the secrets, both of them would probably have to...disappear.
So, Sir Charles was propped up in his bed, one which could rise up into the sitting position at the press of a button. His whole world was controlled by a series of buttons. His bedroom, white and stark, had cost three million to automate. At least it would have done, if the company making the modifications hadn't been one of his own. Many of the features were not even available to the general public, barely off the prototype stage. But those gadgets and toys were not the secrets. They were merely to help make his miserable existence bearable. That they would eventually contribute to his billions one day, was to him, merely a bonus.
No. The secret of Mouldypile Manor lay beyond the false wall. Neither the maid nor the nurse realised that the wall was false. To them, it was just a wall. Nothing more. But behind that false wall, so perfectly crafted to be indistinguishable to the rest of the sterile room, was the real secret of the manor.
Sir Charles pressed a button on his control unit, and the bed rolled over towards the wall, stopping just one foot away from it. Another button, and the wall slid away. Nine and a half million pounds worth of the finest scientific instrumentation sourced from around the globe, conceived and constructed by his own companies, and assembled in his specially created secret laboratory by his most senior and trusted employees. Hefty bonuses secured their discretion. And here in the tank was the result of their endeavours. His new body. Cloned from his own stem cells, it was a perfect physical specimen. He was staring at a twenty year old version of himself. It had aged at nearly one year per three weeks.
Growing the body was the easy part. Illegal, but relatively straight forward. It was all about nutrients, temperature, electronic monitoring and stimulation and being cared for by the three of the finest minds in the Western world. Professor Matthew Arkwright, for all his grovelling, was a world leader in genetic engineering. A natural but unhealthy paranoia and strange insecurity for one so eminent, made him easy for Sir Charles to manipulate. Character weaknesses were aspects of individual personalities to be exploited and he was a master of that. It had contributed significantly to his wealth.
Not from a wealthy family by any means, he had used his intellect to make his fortune. Before he had left university, his place being secured by a scholarship, he had invested his way to his third million and surrounded himself with many useful contacts and acquaintances. No one ever got close enough to him to call him their friend. Being an only child, he never seemed to develop the ability to make friends, and to him, people were all about being used as stepping stones to get what he wanted. He always made sure that anyone he used was always well compensated.
By the time he was fifty, owning more companies than any other individual in the country, and a personal fortune well in excess of a billion pounds, he was knighted for his services to commerce and industry. Shortly after, he purchased Mouldypile Manor, from the fifth Lord of Mucklowe, declining the opportunity to buy the title from the impoverished Lord. He sold off most of the estate to a neighbouring farmer, keeping the eight acres of landscaped gardens.
He was, by and large content with his lot, with little interest in sex or attaining a partner of any gender, making his business empire his mistress. Nine years on and a fortune in excess of two and a half billion, he was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. The rapid rate of decline astonished those who knew him and the doctors who did what they could for him. With no cure for the disease, he invested tens of millions in trying to find a cure. Nothing worked, although stem cell technology offered the most promise, but probably not in his lifetime. That's when he met Arkwright. An advocate for cloning, Arkwright had tried to turn opinion to the side of advancing the science, to little avail.
To Sir Charles, no problem was insurmountable with enough money to throw at it. Arkwright saw two main issues. Creating the clone and developing the embryo without a female to incubate it. There were ways to develop the embryo without that, however, although the science was still at the ground-breaking stage. Arkwright was certain it could be done. It was the second issue that was likely to put the idea completely out of reach.
What would be the point of cloning Sir Charles in the first place? All that would result in would be an exact facsimile of himself. The creation would still be an individual. Transposing memory and personalities was still too far in the future, even if it was ever likely to be possible. There were only two options. Removal of the heads and grafting Sir Charles's head onto the clone, or exchanging brains. Even decades ago the head swap had been tried with a monkey, and the monkey had survived for a few days. Medical science had moved on by leaps and bounds, so the brain transplant was considered doable.
Then it came down to ethics and morals. Was destroying the healthy brain of the clone murder? This had been debated for many years to no satisfactory conclusion. And could a medical team be 'bought'?. That, Sir Charles had argued, came down to the money aspect and it wasn't hard for him to find more than enough money to 'buy' a top team. Arkwright was personally unconcerned about the ethics. He just wanted a chance to prove the science, and of course to become hugely wealthy from Sir Charles.
The laboratory was created, as was the clone. They knew they were pushing the very boundaries of science. Sir Charles had prepared and signed an exonerating statement to be used if he didn't survive the surgery, which Arkwright gave him a realistic five percent chance at best. Considering the alternatives, it was still an acceptable risk. It would take eightee
n months to fully develop the clone and prepare for the operation.
And now they were nearly ready. Just a few more weeks, and his brain would be in that perfect body with a handsome young face to show the world. So what if he didn't survive? His rapidly degenerating body wouldn't survive much longer, anyway. At least not in any way he wanted to live in it. He didn't want to die. He had no death wish. But what was the point of life without any quality? And there in the tank was the answer, beautiful with those eyes closed, the clear blue eyes of the young. But this body was better than any twenty year old man who spent his time drinking, getting stoned and spending half his time getting cleaned up from one sexually transmitted disease after the other. No. This body was pure, unsullied by toxins and debauchery.
But this young man would know the touch of beautiful women. The finest of the wealthy and privileged in the top circles. He'd had a long time to think about this as he lay in bed; the ineffective painkillers doing nothing to ease the pain. He had known very few women in his adult life. One sorry psychiatrist had dared to suggest his wealth building and business growing were merely to compensate for his sexual inadequacies. His retort