29

 Those four years passed all too quickly. By 2057, I’d graduated from UCSD and was halfway through the MBA program at the University of San Diego. The MBA was meant to help me move up quickly through the management of U.S. Cloning Systems where I then worked as a project manager. Meanwhile, my semi-celebrity status, Sociology degree, and unmatched experience at being a clone helped me get on the Genetics and Cloning Board (GC Board) where we debated the various legal, social, and biological ramifications of cloning.

More than one million people worldwide were being cloned each year, in spite of only marginal decreases of infant mortality and mutation rates. The solution wouldn’t be easy. Few of the problems were interdependent, where finding a single solution would solve a large percentage of the defects. Nevertheless, the GC Board pressured the acting CEO of U.S. Cloning Systems to begin shifting more company resources toward fixing those problems. Most of all it was a moral issue, but it also made good sense from a long-range business perspective. The fewer risks, the more the public would embrace the concept and the additional confidence they would have in having themselves or loved ones cloned.

We also began developing educational materials for social workers and child psychologists. As I’d experienced firsthand, many families pressured clones to continue the lives of their c-parents. While I had resisted the pressure for a while, I had failed and was often severely depressed over my failure.

The more I talked to younger clones and worked with psychologists and other experts on the subject, the more I began to understand some of what I’d gone through. Pressure and anxiety came from bigotry by anti-cloners. Then there were the parents who didn’t want the clones. An “ugly stepchild” syndrome emerged wherein the clones were not loved as much as the parents’ biological children, and often were raised purely out of duty to a deceased relative whom the couple might not have liked much to begin with. And often c-parents, through letters and holovideos, created even more strain on the clone than did the surviving family members. Making things even more challenging, many suicidal young people felt that their life was not their own, and that the person they were really killing was the c-parent whom they hated.

What it should have done was re-planted the seed of doubt about my own life path. Although I liked Lily and was flattered by her complete infatuation, I wasn’t in love with her. I didn’t even crave her company. Our home life would be satisfactory at best. But then, considering my past failures, a satisfactory life was the best I deserved. Not a bad consolation prize for someone who couldn’t avenge his mother when handed the chance by the murderer himself.

Speaking of the devil, Lyle-2 answered Aunt Louise’s door. I was picking up Lily-2 to celebrate the weekend of her eighteenth birthday at the cabin in the redwoods. Lyle-2 was eleven. He grew more aloof and made me uneasier every time I saw him. He had begun studying me as I remembered Lyle-1 studying me during my childhood. He didn’t invite me in.

“Well, hello sir,” I said cheerily.

His eyes searched me up and down, his lips as warm and friendly as a microscope slide.

“I’m here to pick up Lily.”

“I know,” he said. “You have to.”

I forced a laugh. “What do you mean? I want to.”

“No, you don’t. But you have to.”

He still hadn’t moved out of the doorway.

“Excuse me,” I replied, and pushed my way past the little asshole. It was becoming ever clearer that Lyle-2 would never like or trust me. There was no need to waste my time trying to be polite.

Lily walked down the stairs wearing a head-turning tank top. Her face glowed with anticipation. The wait would be over in a few hours. We kissed while the little asshole studied us from the other side of the room.

“Lyle,” Louise called as she wandered into the room, “can you go get my purse out of my room?”

He gave an annoyed shrug and headed upstairs.

“We’ve got money,” I told her.

“Well I hope so, because I wasn’t going to give you any.”

“What do you need from your purse?” I asked, grinning at her. She was almost ninety, but seemed young for her age – especially for someone who had refused an artificial immune system.

Louise paused, placing a finger on her chin. “Well, I don’t know yet. I just sent him away on a pretext, dear. But don’t worry, I’ll think of something before he gets back.”

I laughed and gave her a hug. Pierre-2 lumbered up for a hug as well. He was growing extremely geriatric and would pass away the following year, but he could still jump on you like a puppy when you first arrived. A little pawing at my ankle told me that Blue-3 had come to see us off as well. I scratched her under the chin, and she purred. Somehow, getting purrs out of a mentally enhanced cat seemed an even richer reward than usual.

“Okay, you’ve met everyone. Now go have a great time, you two!”

Growing up I had always thought Aunt Louise was clueless and lost in her own little world of glass flowers. But as I grew older I was beginning to believe she knew exactly what was going on. She just didn’t want anyone else to know she knew.

I grabbed Lily’s bags and we got on our way. A few hours later we arrived at the cabin. A white lily lay on the bed. Around the stem of the lily was a ring. Her eyes zeroed in on it, and she slipped the ring off the stem and onto her finger, admiring it and fixing me with an enormous, satisfied grin. She held the flower to her nose as she walked up to me. Her other hand took my wrist and slid it under her tank top, pressing it against her bra-less left breast. I caught my breath, feeling both excited and uneasy.

“Do you need a glass of wine first?” I asked.

She didn’t.

As she pulled me toward the bed, my free hand fumbled for the condoms in the overnight bag. The rest would be unpacked later. 

*** 

Later that evening, I dreamt I was in a lush garden late at night. I could hear crickets, and I think there were stars overhead. But I was also vaguely aware that the tropical plants and flowers were all made of glass. A lamb was nuzzling my arm. Its company somehow comforted me.

“Adam, where are you?” came a voice. I recognized it as a line from the Book of Genesis just before God punished Adam and Eve for eating the forbidden fruit. Was it God speaking to me? Was he about to level his curse of Death upon me? I was afraid, but couldn’t seem to resist answering.

“We are over here,” I replied.

“Why are there so many of you?” demanded the voice.

“I gave myself a second chance because I didn’t think you would,” I answered.

“You gave yourself a second chance?”

I wasn’t sure how to respond. Suddenly an unseen but powerful force plucked me from my hiding place in the garden.

“Don’t screw it up this time!” the invisible force shouted, and dropped me back into the garden, shattering some of the glass plants.

“I don’t know what to do,” I said.

“Save the lamb,” it replied, now from far off.

I glanced down to see that the lamb was safe, but there was blood all over its wool.

“I killed it!” a voice proclaimed behind me.

Lily-2 stood there, her hands awash in blood, one of them gripping a shard from a broken glass flower.

“It’ll be better this way,” she said. “It would have ruined our wedding.”

My eyes went back to the dying lamb. It was now wearing a wedding dress. I held it in my arms and began to cry, and that’s when I awoke feeling sick to my stomach.

When Lily reached for me in the morning, in my mind I saw her bloody hands. I recoiled. She gave me a look of shock, and I apologized, explaining that I was half asleep. She was still put off by it for a while, and we didn’t make love again until that night. Which was all right with me.

We drove back to San Diego four days later, and in the car Lily inquired as nonchalantly as possible whether we would be getting married that summer. I said that I wanted to finish my MBA first. Going to school part time while working full time would put my graduation date in May of 2059, so we could tentatively plan on getting married the following summer. Which would buy me two more years.

“Why do we have to wait until you finish school?” she asked.

“Because I’m so busy right now. I don’t want to get married until I can be a proper husband.”

It was the only thing I could come up with at the time.