The Book of Adam: Autobiography of the First Human Clone, Page 2

  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.

  Table of Contents

  3

  My clone-father had asked that I be named Adam, and my mother followed his wishes. Instead of Adam Silva Elwell, I was christened Adam Michael Elwell-2 – the “Michael” for Adam-1’s father and the “-2” to indicate I was the second person to use the DNA. But while everyone else called me Adam or Adam-2, Mom always called me Michael or Mikey.

  I don’t remember the tempestuous night of my birth captured on the holovideo found in my Grandma Lily’s belongings. The night that protestors cursed my existence while the rest of the world watched uneasily as news footage of the first human clone was broadcast, finally giving the monstrosity a face. But a face that looked less like Frankenstein’s monster and more like the Gerber baby.

  Nor do I remember a time when I didn’t know that I was the clone of the man I considered my grandfather. Grandmother Lily and Great-Grandfather Lyle talked about him all the time, often comparing me to him physically or in little habits I had like not wanting to get my hands dirty at the beach. Grandmother Lily visited almost every day, forcing herself between my toys and me, or clutching me to her body. Great-Grandfather Lyle never touched me except to perch me on his knee every now and then. He always seemed to be examining me, and I felt self-conscious whenever he was around. Mom rescued me as often as she could from both of them. I counted on her for that. More than I realized.

  Each birthday there were letters and holocards from my late grandfather congratulating me on another year, telling me that he knew I was making him proud and that he hoped I was being a good boy for Sarah. As I grew older the handwritten letters, videos and holovideos would give me far more information about him and glimpses into his life, but during my early childhood they gave me only the feeling that Grandpa Adam was the nice man whose holographic ghost I would sit in the lap of while he wished me a happy birthday, and whose genes (whatever those were) had made my life possible, and that this gave us a connection that was very special in some peculiar way.

  I never had any reason to think there was anything special about myself in the eyes of the rest of the world. Mom didn’t watch the news much while I was awake. I did go to the doctors for tests and checkups every few days, but I assumed this was normal. The street I grew up on was a small, secluded court in an old section of La Jolla, and the few neighbors we met often stared at me but rarely said anything, and exchanged nothing but pleasantries with my mother. And by the time I was four years old, dozens of more clones were born and the media only cared about me when my birthday rolled around. Thus, when I began to form lasting memories, I was not recognized in public. People recognized my mother first and then realized who I must be.

  My mom never did go to jail. A jury sentenced her to one year’s probation for her part in the illegal cloning. She left her job in child counseling to spend time with her new baby. Her inheritance from my clone-father assured her a lifetime of financial security, so she began working from home, volunteering for the United Nation’s UNICEF program, but mostly just playing with me, teaching me, and saving me from Lily and Lyle.

  *

  Even as my mother’s trial was going on, others had begun challenging the constitutionality of the anti-cloning legislation. A few atheists claimed that a cloning ban deprived them of the only sort of afterlife they could hope to have, and was therefore an infringement on their basic rights of life, liberty, and happiness – not to mention their freedom of religion, as their “religion” required them to be able to clone in order to reach their afterlife. A few new religious sects, including Christian offshoots, followed the same reasoning, arguing that cloning was the resurrection or reincarnation that their religions had been expecting, and they hadn’t realized till now that God or the spirit world would use human methods to resurrect or reincarnate the dead.

  Those were intriguing cases that were initially defeated in 2034 and 2035. Several requests from death row inmates to be cloned were quickly thrown out as well. But in early 2036 the landmark cloning case began winding its way up through the courts.

  Shannon Smith had captured the hearts of Christians, Jews, and Muslims in 2034, during the midst of the terrible Mideast War. More than three million were already dead, inc
luding almost 200,000 civilian Americans murdered in a string of terrorist attacks. The escalation to nuclear war seemed as inevitable as it must have felt during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Ten-year-old Shannon wrote to Iran’s ayatollah, asking him if he wanted to kill all Christians and Jews, and saying she hoped everybody would stop fighting and live with each other in peace.

  She was invited to Tehran for an audience with the ayatollah and then Jerusalem with the Israeli prime minister. The media and the people were fascinated by the sweet, adorable girl, and the video of her playing together with Iranian and Jewish children helped galvanize the public of all warring countries to reject vengeance and come back from the brink, giving political cover to leaders to end the war.

  On August 25, 2035, an obsessive fan kidnapped Shannon, drove her up into the mountains east of Salt Lake, and strangled her. The New York Times called her the last casualty of the Mideast War.

  Her parents claimed that they had the right to have another child using Shannon’s DNA. Not allowing Shannon to be cloned would perpetuate the murderer’s deed, and her parents deserved access to full reparation. In extenuating circumstances, the mother’s health problems left her body with no viable eggs, and the parents claimed that Shannon had expressed an interest in eventually being cloned when she saw Adam-2 in the news.

  In a shocking 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court agreed with the parents. They told Congress that, as it stood, the anti-cloning law was an unconstitutional restriction on reproductive rights, recommending that cloning be allowed in cases where the original person was dead or in the case of couples who couldn’t reproduce naturally. A defiant Congress tried to pass an anti-cloning constitutional amendment, but the Senate failed to get the two-thirds majority by three votes. Lyle Gardener had powerful friends.

  USCS worked their cloning magic on Shannon Smith and more than twenty others before Shannon-2 was born in November 2037. That year and the next saw a rash of new cloned births, all performed through USCS whose competitors were still behind in the race to commercialize the process. For most people, I was old news.

  The Smiths lived in Salt Lake City, but they flew down to La Jolla for the cloning procedure and returned a few months after Shannon-2’s birth to meet our family. I had recently turned four, and their visit was one of my strongest memories from that period of my life. They told me that she was only the second cloned child. I still didn’t completely understand what being a clone meant or how it made us special from everyone else, but it was the first clue that in some way I was considered a unique person in the world.

  The adults holotaped the historic meeting, took a lot of pictures and chatted, and I marveled at this tiny visitor who grasped her tiny fingers around mine as I bent over her carriage. We were destined to meet a couple more times at special functions as we grew up, and eventually became long-distance friends as adults. She also would join me as one of the members of the Genetics and Cloning Board.

  “What was grandpa like?” I asked the morning after the Smiths left.

  My mother smiled as she continued buttoning up my shirt, getting me ready for church. “Well, like all people, he had his good and his bad. He was really depressed when his mommy died. He was only seven, just three years older than you are now. Then your Great-Grandpa Michael died too, and your grandpa was really sad and lonely.”

  I put my hand on my mom’s shoulder as I stepped into my shoes. “But you still liked him, right?”

  “Oh, yes,” she answered, smiling as she tied my shoes. “I loved him. Whenever I was sad, he’d always try to make me happy. He loved me a lot.” Finished tying my shoes, she playfully held both my feet down so I couldn’t move. “He told me I reminded him of how much fun life was when he was your age. And that’s one reason why I want you to be whoever you want to be, and not just try to be who your grandpa was. I think he may have wanted you to live the life he started before his mommy and daddy died. So if you grow up to be whatever you want, you’ll end up making you both happy. Okay?”

  I nodded, though I don’t remember fully understanding.

  That night I dreamt my first dream about my c-father. I was ensnared in the clutches of an ugly, cackling witch who had chased me through the rooms of Disneyland’s Haunted Mansion. Her fingernails grew into long, curling claws and closed around me like a cage.

  “I’ve got you now, Adam! And you’ll be with me here forever,” she said, and cackled again.

  “He isn’t yours to keep,” my clone-father said from behind her.

  She turned on him and hissed like a cat. “He’s mine! I’ve caught him!”

  “Take me instead!” he responded, another Disneyland fragment from their staging of Beauty and the Beast.

  She grinned hungrily, released me and snatched Adam-1 in her tangled claws.

  “Run away,” he ordered.

  “Daddy!” I called, reaching out to him. “I won’t leave you!”

  He frowned at me. “This is my home. Not yours.”

  And so I awoke with mixed feelings, thankful he’d saved me, disappointed he had sent me away. It was the first time I remember wanting a dad.

  The next time I opened my birthday letters from my Grandpa or sat in his holographic lap, I did it with new eagerness. I sensed that, even though he’d never met me, he cared for me and wanted to protect me.

  Shortly thereafter I had my first brush with death.

  Table of Contents

  4

  There hadn’t been an attempt on my mother’s life since her pregnancy, and with us out of the limelight there seemed little reason to believe we were still in danger. But no one realized that Gabrielle Burns was still obsessed with us, stalking us, as she had the night of my birth.

  She had dreamed of being a mother since she was old enough to play house, but Gabrielle suffered a miscarriage eight months into her first pregnancy. Complications left her barren. A few years later her husband divorced her, promptly married his mistress, and they had a child together.

  Gabrielle became involved in a fundamentalist church where she formed the Cassandra Society, a group named after her unborn daughter, that lobbied and railed against the evils of abortion, extra-marital sex, birth control, artificial wombs and any sort of human intervention in the miracle of life.

  She claimed that when she heard the first human clone was going to be born, her namesake, the Archangel Gabriel, told her that a great mission had been granted her. Cloning would doom mankind if she didn’t stop it. Humans would seek eternal life through their own means, forever trapping their souls in new bodies, never allowing those souls to reach God. Therefore, God was sending her to save humanity from itself.

  Her first step was to send several urgent letters to Sarah warning her of the evil the clone would visit upon humanity. As March approached and it became clear that the clone would be born despite her warnings, Gabrielle changed tactics. First was a death threat. When that went unheeded, one of Gabrielle’s followers in her Cassandra Society posed as a nurse and tried to get into Sarah’s room with a silver knife. Nobody tied the attempt to Gabrielle until later.

  That first attempt was foiled on March 5. Six days later, as news footage revealed, Gabrielle stood silently outside the hospital in the pouring rain as the devil baby was delivered. She did not join her colleagues and like-minded protestors who were screaming that doom was being born in the soulless child, for she knew it was a waste of breath. Gabriel had come to her that night in a flash of lightning and peal of thunder, bearing a message that the evil would be unleashed, and it would be protected by demons for four years, four months, and four days.

  At the end of the time of his protection, the hand of God would scatter the demons, and Gabrielle was to strike down the Whore of Babylon and her unholy spawn. Her reward would be to become the Bride of Christ, and she would give birth to the child she had long desired – to the triumphant Christ Child himself.

  The long-awaited four years, four months, and four days did not come soon enough for Gab
rielle. A couple months before the appointed day, my mother and I met her in a park. While sitting on a bench feeding the birds on a Sunday afternoon, we were approached by a lanky, redheaded woman wearing a white dress. Her narrow face was mostly nondescript but for her large, dark eyes. The stranger asked if she could join us. Mom courteously encouraged her, and she sat next to me.

  “You two look so familiar,” she said after watching the birds peck at our bread for a while.

  Mom nodded. “I’m Sarah, and this is Adam.”

  “Oh yes, of course!” she said with such false surprise that Mom wordlessly asked me to get off the bench and stand in front of her. “My name is Gabrielle. I’m about to be a mother too, you know. Isn’t it a wonderful thing, being a mother?”

  “Yes it is,” Sarah replied, grabbing me from behind and tickling me. “Especially when you’ve got such a great kid!”

  The woman frowned but then managed a faint smile. “Well, you’re all dressed up, aren’t you? Did you just come from church?”

  “Uh-huh,” Mom responded. “We go to a Unitarian church. The minister there invited us while most were condemning us.”

  “How nice for you. The Unitarians are very tolerant, aren’t they.”

  It wasn’t a question, and Mom didn’t answer. Her eye had caught one of the stranger’s hands, which was clasped around something she couldn’t make out. But it had her attention.

  “So many people are not that tolerant,” Gabrielle continued. “You never know what they’re going to do. They can take such a small thing as cloning and make it sound like it’s the end of the world.”