I’ll let you decide.
In 1997, Ian Wilmut created a media storm when he successfully cloned a sheep he named Dolly. Since then, everything from mice to goats and cats to cattle have been cloned. Today, second, third, and fourth generation clones of cattle feed in the same cattle yards. The economic potential for this technology is obvious. If you have a bull with a particularly desirable characteristic, you don’t have to lose that trait when the animal dies. By cloning him, you can keep his genetic line alive forever.
In my science fiction book The Clone Paradox, the first in The Ark Project series. I explore the potential ramifications of human cloning. Here is part of a scene in which one of the main characters enters the Genesis Room where the children are cloned and wrestles with the implications.
JADE SLIPPED INTO the Genesis Room. The lights were low, and the motherless wombs glowed an eerie green color. Infants wriggled and kicked in the transparent membrane sacks. Tubes flowing with red liquid that must have been blood stretched to a long row of dialysis machines with blinking red lights.
The tubes carried in nutrients and oxygen and carried away the waste to be removed in the dialysis machines. Row after row of the motherless wombs filled the vast space. There must have been two or three thousand at least, and they were all in different stages of development.
Jade checked the cameras’ positions and peeked in to make sure no one was about. Then she strode into the shadows of the line of dialysis machines where the cameras would not be able to see her. It was best that no one knew she came here. It had become a sanctuary for her on restless nights when she couldn’t sleep.
She slipped her hand into her pocket and touched the little DWJ that Birch had given her just to make sure it was still there and running. She had clicked it on when she left her room. It was partly their discussion with Willow and Kaiden that troubled her. She desperately wanted to do the right thing, but how did one know what that was? By what criteria did one measure it? Though she knew TAP had bigger plans, she hadn’t been surprised to learn that she was a clone. She’d figured that out years ago, which led her to discover the Genesis Room. All of the missions she had undertaken were supposed to be about protecting clones like herself from extermination.
The quiet purr of electric motors covered any noises her boots made on the tiled floor. A caretaker was taking a reading at one of the machines, and Jade flattened herself against the warm dialysis unit until she finished and moved on.
Only two caretakers would be on staff this late at night. It was the best time to come. Jade found him swimming in a motherless womb about halfway down aisle seven. The plaque at the base of the glass bubble had a number and a strange triangular shape. Jade had seen ones like it on the necks of the other female clones in the common showers when she was training. She knew she had one and had heard that all TAP personnel had been tattooed with these triangles, but she didn’t know what it meant.
A number. That’s all this baby boy was to TAP. But he had nut-brown skin like her own and was developing a nice mop of black hair. It was plain to see that he was a Native American like her. She was sure of it. Cloning itself wasn’t the problem for her. It was this—a child cut off from his ancestors and from the land that should have nurtured him—the way she had been cut off from her grandfather and the land her people once occupied.
Scraps of memory and language were all that remained—that and the feel of her grandfather’s arms about her. The soft touch of his breath against her ear. “You are the last daughter of our people,” he said. “You must survive.”
Maybe Willow was right. Maybe this sense of aloneness, this lack of belonging, was the true-crime of TAP. Still, maybe cloning could bring her people back. Maybe it was the only way they could have a future. The baby’s hand waved in the water, and a lump rose in her throat. What was his name? Who were his people?
She raised her hand to rest it against the glass. It was warm. A longing to hold the child erupted into her chest, and she jerked her hand away. What was she doing? This didn’t help.
Her team had been her family in TAP, but after the last mission where they had been sent to eliminate an entire family, she had requested another transfer to a transport and security team, thinking she could protect better by guarding the clones used for the experiments, rather than murdering innocent people whose only crime was to disagree with cloning or some other TAP program.
Then, she found herself on the first mission sent to kidnap a senator, and she had witnessed Kaiden risking his life to save that child. That’s what TAP should be about, protecting and nurturing, not kidnapping. She had finally found a leader she could follow in TAP—someone she could respect.
The quiet slap of running boots on tile drew her attention, and she whirled around, swinging the rifle she always carried to the front. Caretakers didn’t run in the Genesis Room.”
Pick up a copy of The Clone Paradox on Amazon or snag an audiobook on Audible. The audiobook is narrated by the amazing Rico Gayle. You can get a sneak peak here. Just scroll all the way to the bottom and click the play button.
Cheers,
James