2

As he’d been the CEO of the widely known U.S. Cloning Systems, the largest subsidiary of Lyle Gardener’s Ingeneuity, Adam’s murder received some press. But it was nothing compared to the commotion over Adam’s rebirth when it was announced six months later. Sarah’s pregnancy was made public January 2, 2034 in a news conference that began with a low buzz (reporters figured USCS had made another boring, minor medical breakthrough) and quickly erupted into a firestorm that blazed among satellites, televisions, cell phones, computer screens, and every radio tower on the planet.

It wasn’t the first time such an announcement had been made. In 2004 the Raelians claimed to have cloned dozens of children, and by 2034 several more supposedly successful human cloning attempts had been proclaimed – none of which had been scientifically verified. But the world knew this announcement was different. U.S. Cloning Systems was a giant in its field, the organization most capable of pulling off such an achievement.

Two months of chaos followed. Politicians convened from recess early to argue and spout off sound bites. There were calls for more intensive government oversight of all companies dabbling in the science of cloning. Religious leaders invited the largest protests, some demanding that the company be shut down, the executives jailed, the mother jailed, and the baby taken away so that it would never know it was a clone.

Then came the next big revelation. One of the obstetricians let slip that my mother was a virgin.

Post-Mary virgin births had been documented going back to at least 1994 thanks to artificial insemination, and none of those births had resulted in a devil so far as anyone could prove. But for some, the new development made it clearer than ever that the Antichrist was on his way, mocking the original Virgin Birth. Others assumed my mom was a lesbian, stoking the homophobic fear that this was the beginning of a social revolution in which homosexuals would breed through cloning and propagate an unnatural family structure that would decimate life as we know it.

My mother attracted more attention than the baby she was carrying. Her doctors and USCS were largely successful in keeping the press and public physically away from her, but she did answer what questions she could via USCS spokespeople.

As for whether she was gay, she stated that her virginity was due to a fear of sexual intimacy stemming from a childhood incident, but that she had no problem with people believing she was gay. She simply found their bigotry sad and cruel, and she was grateful that she didn’t share it.

In response to the question of her fetus being the Antichrist, she said that it was only a clone created with her father’s DNA, which had been fused into her egg, mingling it with traces of her mitochondrial DNA. This made it even less clone-like than an identical twin, and unlikely to carry any genetic material from Satan.

Asked if she felt the endeavor bordered on incest, she answered that in her opinion it would only have been incest if her egg hadn’t been artificially inseminated.

And finally, as to why she had broken the law against human cloning, she replied that, although she personally was not interested in being cloned, she was of a mind that if she wasn’t hurting someone physically or financially, then no true crime had been committed. Thus she didn’t condone the anti-cloning law, which she felt was another example of government over-involvement in the lives of its constituents. More importantly, it was what her father wanted, and if she hadn’t been willing to deliver his clone, he would have used an artificial womb. And unlike her critics, she wanted his clone to start with as normal a beginning as possible.

Within weeks, criminal charges were filed against USCS and Sarah Elwell for violating anti-cloning legislation. There were even attempts to file lawsuits against me, claiming that Adam Elwell-1 had broken the law and that, as Adam Elwell’s clone, I should be held accountable as the same person.

Cooler heads prevailed. The courts ruled that I was a separate person and therefore not legally responsible for the sins of my clone-father. Although, it turns out, that was merely the tip of the legal iceberg. What rights and assets carried over? Was it now possible to take it with you? Questions over inheritance claims and more would require decades to iron out and, indeed, occasionally new cloning issues continue to crop up and befuddle my colleagues and I on the Genetics and Cloning Board.

Regarding USCS, they made it out of the courts relatively unscathed. As has often been the case, the well-connected corporate executives were never brought to justice. Lyle Gardener, a good friend of the administration and congressional power brokers, escaped all culpability by arguing he knew nothing about the secret experiments until he was told of the pregnancy. The company paid a small fine and was opened up to federal oversight, but the oversight proved to be lax to the point of insignificance.

The only fervor that didn’t mostly subside was that of some religious critics. One group tried to get a court to order my termination, claiming that to not do so would violate the anti-cloning laws. But the courts shied away from forced abortion. A couple other self-proclaimed pro-life supporters suggested I be executed immediately after birth, suggesting that I was not a child of God, did not have a soul, and therefore lacked humanity’s right to life.

Several people were eager to end my mother’s life as well, and USCS hired bodyguards for her. They proved helpful. There were two known attempts on her life before I was born.

The murder attempts and threats were played up by the media, eventually garnering sympathy from the majority of the population who began to see the anti-cloners as the extremists. Thanks to those few fanatics, the paradigm shift that USCS had hoped for was underway ahead of schedule. Which I guess is why a couple of those demonstrators out there on the dark and stormy night of my birth were there to welcome me into the world.

Genetics and Cloning (GC) Board: A bioethics committee established in 2038 to assist the president on issues pertaining to cloning and genetic enhancements.