49

By 2070, thirty-six years after my birth, almost a third of all Americans who died were having themselves cloned. The shrinking band of anti-cloners pointed to the troubling statistic that although the overall birthrate had risen during that period, the birthrate of non-clones had dropped almost every year. As a population, we were indeed giving ourselves new lives at the expense of other possible lives with original genetic sequences.

The Genetics and Cloning Board rarely had to make contentious decisions anymore, as all major and most minor legal issues regarding clones had been dealt with, and the majority seemed satisfied with the results, although Congress and state governments would at times overrule us on issues depending on the political winds.

Thorniest of all was the idea of publicly financing cloning among the poor. Only a couple states were providing this by 2070, though several charity groups had grown up around it. Those charities were mostly religious organizations that believed cloning was the afterlife. The largest of these, The Resurrectionists, was a quickly growing Christian denomination whose central tenant held that Christ had envisioned cloning as the path by which human beings would be restored to their bodies. They believed that the soul of the original was attached to its future clones. Their efforts to recruit me failed, but I did contribute to their efforts for the poor since church membership was not required for people to receive money from their foundation.

Then there were those problems that couldn’t be legislated away. On the medical side, Ingeneuity had made enormous gains in reducing the mortality rate and reining in genetic abnormalities, but there was still so much we didn’t understand and were unable to completely cure.

The suicide rate remained far too high – more than five times the rate of non-clones. Society had mostly become numb to the suicides over the past two decades, and in the end it took a personality everyone had heard of to shake up the debate anew.

Cooper Jones had been one of the most popular basketball players of his generation – the “five-foot-twelve” surprise star nicknamed “Too-Small Jones” who barely made the draft and went on to set multiple scoring records. His underdog story and charming personality made him a celebrity whether or not you wanted the Bulls to win. His death in 2054 from a rock-climbing accident shook us all.

On November 14, 2070, young Cooper Jones-2 killed himself after not making the first string of his freshman high school basketball team. He begged in his suicide holovideo for his DNA not to be cloned again.

The entire world grieved and searched for an answer to the tragedy. More than fifty thousand turned out for his funeral in Chicago – clones and non-clones. I was one of the speakers, officially sent as the GC Board representative, and in choking words I apologized for our failure to all clones who had ended their lives prematurely. We should have tried harder to let them know they were loved as individuals and had no reason to hold themselves up to the accomplishments or failures of their clone-parents. And if the GC Board had delivered better materials and classes to the counselors, parents, and the clones themselves, then we could have saved thousands of lives.

The day after the funeral, the tragedy was compounded. The coach who had made the decision to put Cooper Jones-2 into the second string was barraged by verbal attacks, phone calls, v-mails, and letters blaming him for the death. The vicious onslaught and outpouring of grief in the media led to yet another senseless suicide. In his note, the coach apologized to Cooper Jones-2, Cooper’s family, and all who grieved for them, and explained that at the time he thought it would have been unfair to cut a deserving student from the lineup to put Jones in, but in retrospect he wished he had done so.

The apology was scoffed at by some for dismissing Cooper Jones-2 as undeserving. That was, of course, the reason Cooper had been put in the second string, but even those who recognized the fact thought it tasteless to say so after Cooper’s suicide.

I simply thought he was trying to explain himself at a moment of supreme depression, and I was disgusted by those who suggested that some justice had been done through the coach’s suicide.

We stayed in Chicago a few more days and attended Coach Bill Ballard’s funeral. I was afraid I’d say something in anger that I’d regret, and asked the more diplomatic and levelheaded Jack to speak in my place.

He did speak. Jack talked about Bill’s life and accomplishments, and said he was devastated at the tragedy of Coach Ballard’s death. But that he was also deeply saddened at the cruelty of those who unfairly attacked him with such viciousness – “especially those who, rather than feel guilt after his suicide, instead amplified their vitriol and rejoiced in the tragedy they provoked. This is the ugliness that will undo us.” 

* 

The funerals had a strong effect on Cain. He changed his Little League uniform number to Cooper-2’s and wore a black armband.

It all had a powerful effect on me as well. One week after my return to San Diego, I resigned as chairman of the GC Board and took a smaller, less visible position. With my encouragement, Jack Lewis took over the chairmanship. I was sure someone with his background in psychology and counseling of clones would be better able to spearhead a program to rescue clones from the suffocating tensions that lead them to suicide.

It was a lot to put on him, but Jack was determined to try, promptly beginning the ambitious I’m Okay, We’re Okay program that overhauled our literature and pushed the government into writing a bill that would require all c-parents and clone guardians to attend a class based on that literature. There was much opposition to compulsory education, but Jack struck while the iron was hot, and the legislation squeaked through. The significant drop in clone suicides following the implementation of his program proved he knew what he was doing.

Unfortunately, another funeral was soon to follow. 

* 

On November 22, 2070, at the age of 102, Aunt Louise was taken to a hospital, and then to a hospice. The illness was one we could have easily remedied. Advanced heart disease. Even at her age, and even without AIS, an artificial heart transplant would have been no more risky than an appendectomy was a hundred years before.

I sat at the side of her bed, holding her right hand in both of mine. “Let me save you.”

“No thank you,” she said.

“Please.”

“I’m tired, Adam.”

I fingered one of her favorite glass flowers that she had taken with her to the hospice. Her room was full of them. “I thought you enjoyed your life.”

A silent frown spread down her face.

“No?” I asked.

“I love you and Evelyn and Lily and Cain.” She pointed weakly to a bouquet of daisies that Lyle had sent. “And Lyle. Blue and Pierre, and my gardens. But this world’s a shadow. A shadow with pain. I want to see what’s next.”

“What if there’s nothing?”

She smiled gently. “Then I’ll welcome the quiet.”

I wasn’t ready to give up. “I could have you cloned. I’d raise her.”

“You’re a sweet boy, Adam,” she said, patting my hand like I was a young child. “I was happy to help raise you.”

“But you won’t let me clone you?”

She shook her head. “No. I don’t want to do it again.”

Aunt Louise reached out to a glass lily.

“We did what we could,” I said. “Lily’s not your fault.”

“It’s all my fault,” she said as she turned and buried the side of her face in the pillow.

“No it’s not. You tried to keep both Lilys away from him.”

“That’s not what I mean,” she said, closing her eyes.

“Lyle-2’s to blame,” I said, looking at the lilies. “You tried your best—”

“I’m not talking about Lyle-2.” Her damp, century-old eyes fixed me with an emotion I’d never seen in Aunt Louise. That I never thought I’d see. Anger. “I’m talking about the first one.”

I saw Lyle’s grinning face as the gun lay in front of me that Christmas morning. “What about him?”

“I should have said something when he shot Mom and Dad.” Her weak breath rattled in her throat. “But all I did was ask for a drink of water.”

I bowed my head and ground my teeth. Aunt Louise had asked him for water, pretending not to know he had murdered their parents. I had begged him for comfort, pretending not to know he’d killed my mother.

“You were four years old,” I told her. “You were scared. It’s not your fault.” I thought about telling her that I, too, had cowered to the murderer to save myself. But I never did. “Let me save you.”

She placed her hand on top of mine and closed her eyes peacefully. “No,” she said. “No more.”

“No more what?”

“Glasses of water.” 

*** 

Aunt Louise died later that night.

Lyle was in charge of the funeral arrangements. We weren’t invited.

She remembered me in her will. It seemed she didn’t want her beloved pets being raised by Lyle, and she hoped I’d take them into my home along with a few of her “oldest, most favorite glass flowers.” I readily agreed, somewhat grateful I didn’t have to take her whole garden. But I would have done it. 

Evelyn and Cain joined me in a small private memorial service, placing a photo of Aunt Louise sitting happily amongst her glass forest, the silver-framed portrait surrounded by several of her oldest, most favorite glass flowers.