Prologue:
‘I looked around me, my heart pumping faster than it should be. The world around me seems to be different, the smell of the air and dust from the sky, the feel of the air and heat on my skin, the taste of foods and feelings of people I’d once loved and me. I feel broken inside, something inside has been taken away from me, it feels so wrong and I am confused, scared and I have no idea what is happening to me. The world has made me look like an ant, surrounded by the harsh bonds of immortality and death. It seems to be clearer to my eyes, but the clearer it gets, the more questions I need heeded. How did I get to be here? Why was I made? What purpose do I have in life? Why do I have such vivid memories? So vivid and real, it feels like it came from another person. I am an abomination of God, as told by the protesters who bombarded me when I walked out of the building unsteadily and into my new and different life. I feel incomplete, soulless, I don’t feel human. I look at the faces of the two people who have already sealed my fate with their eyes and taunting tones. They were surrounding me now, their eyes imagining cruel and harmful images of what to do to me. My eyes close as I feel the sharp of the laser penetrate my skin, my world and purpose ripped apart by my very existence. I feel myself falling and falling until there is nothing but blackness...’
Chapter One: The beginning
The world is a very big place. Technology has been around since the dawn of time began, and here we are, still advancing to more and greater findings that are being discovered every single day. Advances in technology have led to many diseases and conditions being cured. We can now create living organs without having to wait for a transplant and the waiting list for transplant patients has long been abolished. One question has haunted us since before we could even think. Can we live forever? Can we find a way to prolong our existence in this world? Can you make the impossible, possible?
For many years now, scientists have been experimenting on embryos, studying them, noting them down, copying them, trying to recreate the same genetic material as the original copy.
The process is called ‘recombinant DNA technology’ or in other words, DNA cloning. It is a process that transfers a DNA fragment of a living organism into a foreign host cell. Even though the technology has been around since the 1970’s, technology has advanced so much that you don’t need to do reproductive cloning anymore (remember Dolly the Sheep?). Scientist’s can now created skins, organs and a human body which is given birth by surrogates (which is top secret, so even I don’t know that much).
It has been sixty-three years since the world proscribed human cloning. The Government disapproved of the human cloning laws because it was unethical and unnatural, and too much life was being wasted and killed for one little purpose.
Immortality.
You would think that the majority of people in this world would want to live forever and would do anything they can to make that happen. I was wrong.
Protestors from both sides of this conflict rallied all over the world because of this new found law. It is the world of 2070, and even though cloning was abolished, scientists still practiced illegitimately worldwide in secluded places where they could not be traced. One genetic lab in fact, was doing illegal experimentations right here in my hometown. For my own safety, I will not say where I live. Even though the genetic lab was known to the public, they had found a loophole in the government’s law to bypass the abolished cloning experiments. I once thought that living in the world 2070 would be futuristic, flying cars, robots walking all over the place. I was wrong again. The world is still a dog eat dog place, although certain animals I’d once read about such as the Polar Bear and Panda Bear have long been extinct.
I’d read about Charles Darwin once. His theory of evolution instituted that every single life have evolved over time from certain common ancestors. Humans being evolved from Primates, who in simple terms, got smarter and technological in time.
We didn’t know of course, but we could tell the lab was a special place, surrounded by guards at the very steps of its grand entrance and thick marble building; they were trying to perfect what no one else had done.
After years of research and fatally vile experimentations, the Bio-tech Lab created the so called Perfect Clone, one with no imperfections at all, or so they thought...
My best friend, a man named Edmond Caviezel died due to a weak heart, his corpse buried in the cemetery next to his grandfather, six feet below the ground, resting in peace.
What everyone didn’t know was that scientists were trying to cheat death. Time and time again they tried and failed, but persistence encouraged them to try and find a way to live forever. They worked day and night, working they like have never worked before, studying and taking notes so much, that soon they made a copy, they finally made a living clone.
He was like Edmond in so many ways. He would walk the same, speak with the same cheerful tone, he even looked just like Edmond. Even though I was his only friend, he was still lonely, I could see it in his eyes; I could hear it in the tone of his voice, I could feel it from the touch of his fingers. He felt isolated from the world, an alien. He couldn’t even make friends with anyone, not now that everyone knew the real Edmond had died two years previously. Even I became an outsider, people scoffed at me, wondering at how I could be friends with this abomination. I will tell you two words. Pity and love.
A clone has no rights; they can’t have their own identity and they can’t even have their very own life without being ridiculed and leered at. There is a prejudice in the world against clones because they were not considered as humans; they are copies of people, replacements which is why there is fear worldwide. They are afraid humanity will be overtaken by copies of themselves after they die, walking the Earth soulless and alive with their memories intact. Churches all over the world rallied together, against this piece of horror. They say clones don’t have a soul, which are apparently the indication of a devil worshipper or ‘The Devil’s Work’.
To be continued...(I wrote more, but I'm showing this bit first.)
Tell me what you guys think, and how I can improve. Any comment is greatly appreciated. :)
