On clones...
Oct. 22nd, 2011 03:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
annwfyn“Marni is being unreasonable,” Spencer Cosway said sharply over breakfast with his wife and daughter. “Renewal is meant to be a solution to aging. It is not meant to be a self indulgent way of tweaking yourself. And frankly, she is far too young. How old is she? Thirty four? Frankly, she shouldn’t be looking at renewal for at least another ten to fifteen years.”
“I don’t think you’re being fair,” his wife, Laura, said, as she raised the teapot to pour Spencer another cup of Earl Grey. “Lots of people are renewing in their thirties these days. It’s becoming more and more normal. I think you’re just showing your age, darling.”
Spencer made a sharp snorting noise through his nose.
“Showing my age, am I?” he said. Laura looked unrepentant.
“Yes,” she said as she handed him the cup of tea. “All ninety eight of them. Renewal isn’t the high risk procedure it was when we were young. It’s perfectly safe, and recovery time is getting shorter all the time.”
“But clones aren’t getting any cheaper,” Spencer muttered darkly into his tea. “Andi, are you actually going to eat your breakfast or just make artistic designs with your fork?”
Andi Cosway, who had been miles away, gloomily contemplating a science test that she had truly intended to revise for, blinked at the mention of her name, and slightly guiltily managed to shovel a pile of scrambled egg onto her fork.
Her mother ignored her entirely and continued to address her husband.
“It isn’t,” she said sharply, “as if we can’t afford it.”
“That isn’t the point!” Spencer retorted. “And I don’t think it isn’t as if I’m not very generous to Marni. I give her an allowance, I paid for that, frankly, ridiculous new car of hers, I have helped her through her last three badly thought out business ventures. I think I’ve given her a lot more parental support than she has any right to expect.
“I just draw the line at paying for her to have a totally unnecessary surgical procedure so she can look nineteen again. Not to mention the fact that I’m sure she’ll then expect me to pay for the growth of a new clone, won’t she?”
“Well, of course she will,” Laura said, sipping her tea. “I mean, she only has the one donor clone at the moment and she can’t be expected to do without that. I mean, imagine if something happened; if she were in a car wreck, or were diagnosed with cancer or something. It just doesn’t bear thinking about.”
“Felix Gatsby had cancer last year,” Andi said absent mindedly, returning to pushing egg around her plate. “It wasn’t diagnosed for ages and he had to go through early renewal. It was really weird. He came back with this huge scar across his knee and a load of freckles he hadn’t had before.”
“That’s because someone probably hadn’t looked after his donor clone very well then,” Laura said, her attention going back to her husband. “Now, Spencer, please be reasonable.”
“How am I not being reasonable?” Spencer objected. “I am being reasonable. It is my duty, as a parent, to support my daughters when it comes to all the necessities in life. It is my choice, as a loving father, to help them out when it comes to making sure they have a good quality of life. That is why I paid for Lola to have her baby last year. I spared no expense; I wouldn’t let her go to one of those awful surrogacy farms where they keep the surrogates breeding from twelve to forty, pushing out premature underweight infants to keep the profit margins up; I insisted she go to a very reputable private establishment, I paid for an exhaustive gene profile to make sure she got the exact child she wanted, with a high probability of musical talent; I even paid for a second donor clone, just to be absolutely sure nothing could go wrong. It’s why Andi goes to private school and has both sailing and riding lessons, and it’s why Marni currently lives the lifestyle she does.
“I just do not think it is necessary to never look older than one’s twenties in order to maintain a good quality of life and I object to pandering to Marni’s rampant vanity in this instance.”
“I want to meet my clone,” Andi said, apropos of nothing.
Laura threw her a slightly irritated glance. Laura Cosway was ninety six, and had renewed three times. The body she was now in looked an elegant thirty. Andi was her youngest child, produced at her husband’s insistence. Laura had largely grown bored of motherhood by the time Andi had come along, and as a result tended to leave her youngest to the care of the highly expensive nanny (not a robo-nanny, but a genuine, living, breathing, and vastly overpaid human nanny) and to such attention as her husband liked to throw her way.
Spencer Cosway, on the other hand, was endlessly fond of his youngest daughter and immediately turned his attention to her.
“What’s that, sweetie?” he asked.
“I want to meet my clone,” Andi said. “I mean, I’ve got one, right?”
“Of course you do,” Spencer said affectionately. “Everyone has a clone.”
“So, can I meet her?” Andi asked.
“It, not her,” Laura corrected absent mindedly. “Clones aren’t people. They just look like people.”
Andi frowned. “Why aren’t clones people?”
“They don’t have souls,” Spencer explained. “That is something science can’t make. Only God can do that. It’s how we know that clones aren’t people and why it is OK to have them.”
Andi frowns.
“OK. If a clone isn’t a person, what is it?”
“A clone. A copy of you, made exactly in your image, where all the important bits and pieces that keep you going can be stored, just in case anything goes wrong with you.”
“But nothing is going to go wrong with me!” Andi objected. Her father smiled affectionately.
“We hope not, but sometimes things do go wrong. Do you remember last year, when I was in hospital? That was because my heart stopped working. If I hadn’t had a clone, I would have been very sick, and might have died. But luckily I had made sure I had a spare heart, stored inside my clone, which could just be popped into my body.
“And even if nothing goes wrong, we all get old. But if we grow clones, we can just go to the hospital, and have our brains lifted out, and put into a nice new body, good as new.”
Andi nodded, absorbing this.
“And that is what ‘renewing’ is, right? That is what happened to Felix Gatsby?”
Her father nodded.
“Yes. Because his cancer wasn’t diagnosed until it was very far advanced, it would have been too difficult to just replace the bits that were infected, so they had to lift his brain out and put it in a new body. And that is why his new body looked a bit different. I expect that whoever was running the farm where his clone was being grown had been careless and maybe left his clone out in the sun too long, which is why he had freckles.”
Andi nodded slowly.
“So can I see my clone then?”
“No, darling,” her father said. “You don’t go and see clones. They are kept on a farm where visitors aren’t allowed.”
Andi didn’t ask anything else, but instead absorbed this information silently, peering down at her plate of eggs and salmon. Her parents had begun to talk again, arguing about Marni and whether or not it was reasonable for her to renew already.
At the edges of her vision, Andi was faintly aware of the robo-maid quietly removing the plates and cups. She pushed her plate of half eaten food in the robot’s direction, glad that her parents were too distracted to notice that she hadn’t eaten anything.
She thought about Felix Gatsby’s clone, and the faint and well worn scar on the knee of the body that Felix had been moved into, and the freckles across his nose. Felix had been better at sport when he came back as well, suddenly winning the 100 meters sprint on sport’s day. He had said his legs just seems stretchier.
She thought about her own mother, who had gone through her renewal last year. She remembered how her mother had gone into hospital smelling of expensive perfume and the slightly chemical smell of her favourite face peel, and yet when she had come out, for a little while, she had smelt of vanilla. Andi had never known where that had come from, or when it had gone away.
She thought again about the farm, where these strange not-people existed. They went out in the sun and could get scars and smell of vanilla, but they weren’t people. She wondered what the not-Andi was like. Did she have a tan? Could she run faster than Andi?
Did she know how to paint? Andi was good at painting, although her mother had apparently not paid for artistic talent when having her gene profile built.
Did she like eggs, or did she hate them like Andi did? Or maybe she had no opinion at all, because she was a clone and not a person.
It all felt remarkably strange and very mysterious to Andi.
“I am going to meet my clone,” she said, quietly to herself so no one else would hear. “I am going to find out where she is, and then I am going to go and meet her.”
And that, she later realized, was where it all began.
“I don’t think you’re being fair,” his wife, Laura, said, as she raised the teapot to pour Spencer another cup of Earl Grey. “Lots of people are renewing in their thirties these days. It’s becoming more and more normal. I think you’re just showing your age, darling.”
Spencer made a sharp snorting noise through his nose.
“Showing my age, am I?” he said. Laura looked unrepentant.
“Yes,” she said as she handed him the cup of tea. “All ninety eight of them. Renewal isn’t the high risk procedure it was when we were young. It’s perfectly safe, and recovery time is getting shorter all the time.”
“But clones aren’t getting any cheaper,” Spencer muttered darkly into his tea. “Andi, are you actually going to eat your breakfast or just make artistic designs with your fork?”
Andi Cosway, who had been miles away, gloomily contemplating a science test that she had truly intended to revise for, blinked at the mention of her name, and slightly guiltily managed to shovel a pile of scrambled egg onto her fork.
Her mother ignored her entirely and continued to address her husband.
“It isn’t,” she said sharply, “as if we can’t afford it.”
“That isn’t the point!” Spencer retorted. “And I don’t think it isn’t as if I’m not very generous to Marni. I give her an allowance, I paid for that, frankly, ridiculous new car of hers, I have helped her through her last three badly thought out business ventures. I think I’ve given her a lot more parental support than she has any right to expect.
“I just draw the line at paying for her to have a totally unnecessary surgical procedure so she can look nineteen again. Not to mention the fact that I’m sure she’ll then expect me to pay for the growth of a new clone, won’t she?”
“Well, of course she will,” Laura said, sipping her tea. “I mean, she only has the one donor clone at the moment and she can’t be expected to do without that. I mean, imagine if something happened; if she were in a car wreck, or were diagnosed with cancer or something. It just doesn’t bear thinking about.”
“Felix Gatsby had cancer last year,” Andi said absent mindedly, returning to pushing egg around her plate. “It wasn’t diagnosed for ages and he had to go through early renewal. It was really weird. He came back with this huge scar across his knee and a load of freckles he hadn’t had before.”
“That’s because someone probably hadn’t looked after his donor clone very well then,” Laura said, her attention going back to her husband. “Now, Spencer, please be reasonable.”
“How am I not being reasonable?” Spencer objected. “I am being reasonable. It is my duty, as a parent, to support my daughters when it comes to all the necessities in life. It is my choice, as a loving father, to help them out when it comes to making sure they have a good quality of life. That is why I paid for Lola to have her baby last year. I spared no expense; I wouldn’t let her go to one of those awful surrogacy farms where they keep the surrogates breeding from twelve to forty, pushing out premature underweight infants to keep the profit margins up; I insisted she go to a very reputable private establishment, I paid for an exhaustive gene profile to make sure she got the exact child she wanted, with a high probability of musical talent; I even paid for a second donor clone, just to be absolutely sure nothing could go wrong. It’s why Andi goes to private school and has both sailing and riding lessons, and it’s why Marni currently lives the lifestyle she does.
“I just do not think it is necessary to never look older than one’s twenties in order to maintain a good quality of life and I object to pandering to Marni’s rampant vanity in this instance.”
“I want to meet my clone,” Andi said, apropos of nothing.
Laura threw her a slightly irritated glance. Laura Cosway was ninety six, and had renewed three times. The body she was now in looked an elegant thirty. Andi was her youngest child, produced at her husband’s insistence. Laura had largely grown bored of motherhood by the time Andi had come along, and as a result tended to leave her youngest to the care of the highly expensive nanny (not a robo-nanny, but a genuine, living, breathing, and vastly overpaid human nanny) and to such attention as her husband liked to throw her way.
Spencer Cosway, on the other hand, was endlessly fond of his youngest daughter and immediately turned his attention to her.
“What’s that, sweetie?” he asked.
“I want to meet my clone,” Andi said. “I mean, I’ve got one, right?”
“Of course you do,” Spencer said affectionately. “Everyone has a clone.”
“So, can I meet her?” Andi asked.
“It, not her,” Laura corrected absent mindedly. “Clones aren’t people. They just look like people.”
Andi frowned. “Why aren’t clones people?”
“They don’t have souls,” Spencer explained. “That is something science can’t make. Only God can do that. It’s how we know that clones aren’t people and why it is OK to have them.”
Andi frowns.
“OK. If a clone isn’t a person, what is it?”
“A clone. A copy of you, made exactly in your image, where all the important bits and pieces that keep you going can be stored, just in case anything goes wrong with you.”
“But nothing is going to go wrong with me!” Andi objected. Her father smiled affectionately.
“We hope not, but sometimes things do go wrong. Do you remember last year, when I was in hospital? That was because my heart stopped working. If I hadn’t had a clone, I would have been very sick, and might have died. But luckily I had made sure I had a spare heart, stored inside my clone, which could just be popped into my body.
“And even if nothing goes wrong, we all get old. But if we grow clones, we can just go to the hospital, and have our brains lifted out, and put into a nice new body, good as new.”
Andi nodded, absorbing this.
“And that is what ‘renewing’ is, right? That is what happened to Felix Gatsby?”
Her father nodded.
“Yes. Because his cancer wasn’t diagnosed until it was very far advanced, it would have been too difficult to just replace the bits that were infected, so they had to lift his brain out and put it in a new body. And that is why his new body looked a bit different. I expect that whoever was running the farm where his clone was being grown had been careless and maybe left his clone out in the sun too long, which is why he had freckles.”
Andi nodded slowly.
“So can I see my clone then?”
“No, darling,” her father said. “You don’t go and see clones. They are kept on a farm where visitors aren’t allowed.”
Andi didn’t ask anything else, but instead absorbed this information silently, peering down at her plate of eggs and salmon. Her parents had begun to talk again, arguing about Marni and whether or not it was reasonable for her to renew already.
At the edges of her vision, Andi was faintly aware of the robo-maid quietly removing the plates and cups. She pushed her plate of half eaten food in the robot’s direction, glad that her parents were too distracted to notice that she hadn’t eaten anything.
She thought about Felix Gatsby’s clone, and the faint and well worn scar on the knee of the body that Felix had been moved into, and the freckles across his nose. Felix had been better at sport when he came back as well, suddenly winning the 100 meters sprint on sport’s day. He had said his legs just seems stretchier.
She thought about her own mother, who had gone through her renewal last year. She remembered how her mother had gone into hospital smelling of expensive perfume and the slightly chemical smell of her favourite face peel, and yet when she had come out, for a little while, she had smelt of vanilla. Andi had never known where that had come from, or when it had gone away.
She thought again about the farm, where these strange not-people existed. They went out in the sun and could get scars and smell of vanilla, but they weren’t people. She wondered what the not-Andi was like. Did she have a tan? Could she run faster than Andi?
Did she know how to paint? Andi was good at painting, although her mother had apparently not paid for artistic talent when having her gene profile built.
Did she like eggs, or did she hate them like Andi did? Or maybe she had no opinion at all, because she was a clone and not a person.
It all felt remarkably strange and very mysterious to Andi.
“I am going to meet my clone,” she said, quietly to herself so no one else would hear. “I am going to find out where she is, and then I am going to go and meet her.”
And that, she later realized, was where it all began.
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no subject
Date: 2011-10-22 05:11 pm (UTC)You should write what happens next :-p
no subject
Date: 2011-10-22 05:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-10-22 08:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-10-23 07:46 am (UTC)I also really liked the use of clones in the Vorkosigan saga by Lois McMaster Bujold, although that is obviously pretty hardcore sci-fi.
no subject
Date: 2011-10-23 07:51 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-10-23 07:54 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-10-23 07:57 am (UTC)What sort of thing do you like in radio drama/comedy?
no subject
Date: 2011-10-23 09:36 am (UTC)....I don't know. I tend to listen to documentaries and discussions on radio. But I am pretty flexible. I really like Noel Coward, if you have anything by him at all.
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Date: 2011-10-23 09:44 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-10-24 12:22 pm (UTC)Have you read Michael Marshall Smith's "Spares"?
no subject
Date: 2011-10-24 12:33 pm (UTC)How did having these generic donors stop all illness? How did it stop cancer, for example? There are a limited number of specific conditions which organ donors can help, and lots which aren't, but the reason given for why no one would give up clone based medicine is that everyone was living to 120. How?
Why did no one rebel? Was there really no clone out there who didn't want to stand up and fight? In every other oppressive system through history there have been rebellions - there were rebellions in Auschwitz, slave rebellions on plantations, not to mention a well developed resistance outside those structures to help escapees. Did that not exist? If not, why not? Or was it just not mentioned?
Why did the general public accept this? I mean, we all know people will accept a lot, but what line was spun to make them OK with teenagers being chopped up? That requires social conditioning - the Nazi party had Goebbels and his whole department working flat out for a reason. There has to have been some kind of huge shift in social attitudes that meant people were OK with these clones walking around, going to cafes, looking like people, but then being chopped up. And how did it affect the nurses and doctors working with them?
Can clones reproduce? They shag and there is no real attempt to stop them, so what happens if one gets pregnant? Does she have to have an abortion? Or is the child taken away? What would it's legal status be?
How are the children produced? In artificial wombs? That is a far far bigger leap in medical technology than just using clones. If it is in surrogates are they clones as well? I presume they would have a longer life than the donors - are they a different class of clone? Or normal surrogates? How do they deal with their children being taken away?
The whole thing drove me insane.
no subject
Date: 2011-10-24 12:40 pm (UTC)As for the technical stuff, it didn't really matter to me. It wasn't a hard science fiction story, it was playing with a toy from sci-fi to examine a set of circumstances - acceptance of mortality and our ability to turn a blind eye.