Christ Clone (5 page)

'I can't believe you guys are even considering this.' He spat his words out as he rocked back and forth in his seat. 'Have we really sunk this low? When I joined this organization, I knew we'd be pushing the boundaries of what was right and wrong. I knew we'd be messing with Mother Nature, and I knew we'd be doing things the general public would object to — even though we all know they need us. But this . . . this is totally immoral. Doctor Zudermeister, are you really
that
desperate to get back to the coalface?'

Klaus looked shocked, more because he felt exposed than at the implied insult. 'Mr Schultz, I have no idea what you're talking about!'
He tried to compose himself, but he felt the redness begin to rise in his cheeks and sweat start to bead on the back of his neck.

'Oh come on. It's well known among your staff that you'd rather be doing the experiments than writing about them. Why don't you simply resign from your position instead of coming up with a depraved project like this? It's just fucking . . .'

'Please! Calm down, Raynard,' the chairman interrupted.
'Remember where you are. This is an open forum for us all to discuss this issue.' With Raynard silenced, the chairman continued, 'However,
I think it would be best to conduct this poll in an anonymous manner; that may make it more comfortable for everyone. Could you all please write either for or against on the notepad in front of you and pass it to me. We already know there will be at least one against, don't we, Mr
Schultz?' He smiled at Raynard.

All nine men wrote their votes, turned over their pads, and passed them to the chairman who read out the responses.

'First one is a for,' he said, placing it face-up on the table. 'Second one, for.' He put this on top of the first. 'Third is against.' He placed this face-up beside the other two. Klaus could see it was written in big block capitals and he assumed it was Raynard's. Fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh were all for, and all joined the first pile. 'Eighth is . . .
seems you're not alone, Raynard,' he said as he turned up a second vote against. He put this on top of the other vote, then turned up the final vote. 'Last but not least, another for.

'So we do have a debate on our hands. I guess I knew as soon as
Klaus started talking this wasn't going to be an easy decision. I think we should reconvene this afternoon. We've already heard the case for the proposition from Klaus; Raynard, can you put together a rebuttal by say, four o'clock?'

Raynard nodded slowly. He clearly didn't want to get drawn into a debate.

'Well, thank you Klaus for such a stimulating topic. Gentlemen, if you will all return here at four o'clock, with open minds, we'll try to reach a decision.' The chairman picked up the pads in front of him, tapped them on the table and left the room. The moment the door closed, the conversation in the room resumed with a vengeance.

'So who else is with me on this?' Raynard, his back to Klaus, asked the others.

They shrugged their shoulders in unison and looked at each other.

'So, you're telling me that whoever it is, is happy enough to express their discomfort on paper, but isn't man enough to voice it publicly?'
He shook his head in disgust.

'I believe you're looking for me!'

They all turned to look at Klaus.

'You? What the . . . ? Why?' Raynard's head may have been full of questions, but he couldn't put a sentence together.

'Don't get too excited, Raynard; I have all the same concerns you do, possibly even more . . . I've had more time to think about them.'

'What kind of stunt are you trying to pull?' Raynard hissed. The others took this as their cue to leave.

Klaus waited until the last board member had gone and then offered
Raynard a seat. 'Listen, the whole thing terrifies me. I have very little idea how to go about getting this thing started. Yes, I'm sure — well
I think I am — that we can do the science. But getting the artefact for the source DNA is a real challenge; getting someone to volunteer to be the host mother, that scares me; but all of that pales into insignificance compared to . . .' he paused. 'Let's just say we can pull this off; let's just say for one moment that we manage to produce a clone of a two-thousand-year-old sacred legend — what would we have done? Forced the hand of God and produced the second coming, or resurrected the dead, and repeated or extended the first coming?

'I am also uncertain about what we would do with Jesus here today, in the twenty-first century. I started to think about his life and how he was persecuted; could we change all of that? Could we make his life on earth any different this time?

'Then I started to think about all the questions we could ask him.
It could really change religion, as we know it, bring people together; it could bring religious wars to an end. We could make the most significant contribution the world has ever seen.'

Raynard's eyes began to glaze over as he thought about what Klaus said.

'Listen, I'll leave it with you until later. I know there's a downside, and I am actually hoping you can come up with a strong reason for us not to do this.' Klaus stood up and walked to the door, leaving
Raynard alone.

Mary awoke feeling drowsy and slightly nauseous. She was lying on her back. She blinked quickly as she struggled to rid herself of the remnants of sleep. An overwhelmingly bright whiteness presented itself every time her lids opened, flooding her vision and inciting a throbbing riot in her head. As her blurry vision slowly began to focus, she realized she was looking at the ceiling of a room and fluorescent lights meshed over by shiny silver squares.

A strong smell of disinfectant filled the room and a faint rhythmic beep could be heard. Not ready to raise her head just yet, she let her eyes flick across the ceiling to where it met the white walls. As the throbbing pain in her head subsided, she tried to make sense of what she was looking at — none of it looked familiar. When she tried to sit up, her limbs wouldn't move and her chest felt tight; her head and neck were the only parts of her body she could raise, and she quickly realized she was strapped down.

Lifting her head, she looked around the room registering the things she could recognize. Monitors, high-powered lamps, medicine cabinets, and stainless steel trays covered with what looked like medical instruments. I must be in a hospital, she thought. What's happened to me?

She turned her head to the side. Clear plastic tubes were coming from her arm. Like a computer doing self-diagnosis, she moved muscles in individual parts of her body, checking for signs of pain, hoping she could piece together why she was there. Her arms and shoulders felt fine, back and stomach all pretty good, legs okay. Wait a minute. She stopped when she felt some discomfort from between her legs, not enough to cause any pain but it was the only part of her body that registered anything out of the ordinary.

'Hello, is anyone there?' she spoke quietly, timid and unsure of herself.

'Is anyone there?' The intensity in her voice was building.

'Help! Help me, anyone!' she yelled.

As she yelled, the beeping from the heart monitor picked up its pace. Immediately, the door opened and a man entered the room. He was wearing white doctor's overalls, a stethoscope and a surgical mask covering his face.

'Where am I? What's happening to me? Why am I here? Where are my parents?' The questions seemed to roll out of her mouth one after the other, with plenty more lined up and ready to follow.

'Shhhh Mary, everything will be all right,' the man said. 'You're here because you've had a little accident . . . in fact, your whole family has.'

Her mind was a blur. Accident? What accident? Her eyes flicked from side to side.

'You're very lucky to be alive,' the man continued. 'Don't you remember anything?' His voice was calming and gentle.

'No, no, I don't remember. What happened? Please tell me. Where is my mom — and dad?' She was struggling to remember something
. . . anything.

'I'm afraid you were in a car accident and, well, I'm sorry but your mother and father weren't as lucky as you; they're gone.' He had hold of her hand and was looking to the ground.

Mary began to cry. Gone? What does he mean my parents are — gone? What accident? Where were we going? It doesn't make sense
. . . none of it makes any sense.

'Look, you've had a nasty knock on the head and your memory will be struggling to sort itself out. At the moment, the best thing for you is rest. I'll be back to see you soon.' He hit a drug-dispensing button on a machine beside her bed and started to move away.

She was going to ask a lot of other questions, but they faded along with her consciousness. The doctor closed the door quietly as he left the room.

Later that day Mary regained consciousness once more. As she came out of her sleepy haze, the conversation she'd had with the doctor about the accident immediately bounced back into her head.
What happened? she thought. Why can't I remember? How could they be gone?

She scoured the corners of her mind carefully, picking up and collecting images of her parents. Their comfort and safety, their love and laughter — how could they be dead? Tears started to roll down her face as her loss began to take hold.

The pulse monitor picked up its pace as she started to stress herself, then slowed as she took control and began to search her mind for its most recent memories. She wanted to know what had happened. She wanted to remember the accident.

***

The dirty, yellow bus was filled to capacity as it made its way from
Wendal Park High School. The front few rows housed the more studious and less social pupils while the cooler kids jumped around noisily at the back.

She was sitting halfway back in the bus, trying hard to hide her braces as the smile increased on her face. She laughed when her best friend Tammy told her how Tom had looked at her in class.

'I'm telling you, he so drifts off to some far-off land where you two are married and live happily ever after in a big beautiful house with a white picket fence.' Tammy looked around as she goaded her friend, hoping to get some backup for her teasing. It didn't take long for the girls in front and behind to join in the fun.

Mary secretly enjoyed the attention, and in spite of her embarrassment was really quite sweet on Tom, but there was no way she'd let her friends know it. 'You're terrible, Tammy. He does not like me!'

'How many kids are you gonna have?' came a jibe from behind.

Mary turned and looked at the girl with the mousy brown hair.
'You're in so much trouble, Julie,' she said, hitting the girl's hand. The other girls giggled.

'That's enough from you girls, sit down and behave,' the driver shouted. 'That goes for you lot at the back too!' he snarled.

The girls looked at his stern face in the rear-view mirror and realized he was serious; they sat back in their seats, but continued to whisper and joke among themselves.

Mary looked out of the window; the bus had exited the freeway and was labouring through the streets, catching all the red traffic lights. With every stop came the grinding of the bus gears as the driver forced it into first. He constantly swore under his breath at how badly his day was going.

As the bus approached her stop, Tammy tapped her on the shoulder. 'What'll we do tonight, wanna go to the mall?'

'No, my parents still haven't got over the last time we went.
Anyway, I have to tidy my room, and 'cos Mom and Dad are going to be home late, I have to start dinner as soon as I get in. So I'll call you later tonight, okay?'

She hugged Tammy and got off the bus. As it pulled away she waved to her friends, and then turned to walk home. She ambled slowly down the main road to where her block began. She stopped for a moment, looking down her street. Trees lined the road, standing tall and already shedding some of their leaves; fall was on its way, but she hoped it wouldn't come too soon. Fall brought with it the earlier dark nights, and dark nights meant earlier curfews. What was it with her parents and the dark? Her quiet little suburb never changed; in fact, it never did anything. The smile on her face was followed by a sigh as she wished for more excitement in her life.

As she walked towards her house, she saw a beige van parked outside the Connells' house . . .

***

The increased rhythmic beep coming from the pulse monitor broke into Mary's thoughts. Standing over her at her bedside were the doctor and a nurse.

The military research station built into a hillside south of Moscow was concealed behind blast-proof, gunmetal-grey doors. The dormant-looking facility was accessible only by four-wheel drive across rugged, forested land. Beside the nearest main road a weather-beaten yellow and black sign carried the words, superimposed on the silhouette of an armed soldier, ARMY TRAINING — DO NOT ENTER. As if to emphasize the danger, the notice was peppered with bullet holes. It was meant to deter day trippers and courting couples seeking privacy, though the military had long since moved on. Beside the muddy track leading to the facility were burnt-out shells of trucks and an array of other targets.

The Russian government had always denied the facility's existence.
They wanted to deflect speculation about the development of military clones, or war drones: tactical soldiery, disposable like pawns in a game of chess. Since there would be no families to grieve at their loss
— so the allegations went — such troops could be expended in all manner of warfare and diversionary tactics. At the time the media had jumped all over the story and for a while camped outside the facility's big grey doors, but eventually the lack of activity caused the majority of the press to lose interest, and the hardened few who remained met with unfortunate accidents.

The reality was the military
had
attempted the cloning of drones, but the project was disbanded soon after it was set up. The mass manufacture of war drones had proved far too costly, so instead they had opted for the development of more intelligent espionage drones. The DNA from highly intelligent donors was introduced to physically enhanced embryos in order to create a select group of superspies. Problems, however, arose from incumbent cell memory. The mind of the drone would experience flashbacks that got worse as the subject aged. It seemed the core DNA somehow retained significant memories from the donor's past, and as the drone matured, the flashbacks intensified
— until eventually the drone drove itself mad.

It was, the scientists said, as if you had taken a piece of steel and forged and tempered it to create a coiled spring: the metal would develop a memory of that state. You could pull the steel in any direction, but it always returned to the same coiled-spring state — unless you pulled it until it snapped. With human cells it was the same: somewhere in their make-up, memories were stored, and those memories emerged as time went by. They had tried to isolate which part of the cell stored the images, but to no avail. Every donor had lived his own life and developed his own memories; their power and significance were functions of the life the donor had led.

It emerged through years of tests and trials that the onset of madness could only be delayed by the use of mind-altering drugs and
KGB interrogation techniques to draw forth the stored memories. The information obtained was relayed back to the drone and its internal struggle was alleviated temporarily, but not eliminated.

The interrogation process was simple and had hardly changed since the late 1960s. It began with sleep deprivation, allowing the subject to access the deepest reaches of their mind. Dreaming is part of deep sleep, and whenever rapid eye movement (REM) sleep was achieved, the patient was woken. This sleep deprivation process could only be used for a few days; subjects showed a remarkable degree of mental deterioration in a short period of time
Then the real work began. Two different drug cocktails were administered. First, Sodium Pentothal, or truth serum, in tablet form; its yellow crystals were dissolved in water or alcohol, emitting a slight garlic odour. This short-term anaesthetic inhibited the central nervous system; it lowered the heart rate slightly and depressed the respiration centre. Contrary to popular belief, Sodium Pentothal, in a dose smaller than that needed to cause unconsciousness, made the person more communicative rather than simply obliging them to tell only the truth, and nothing but the truth. It suppressed the inhibitory system
— not the drone's control — so information was freely given but was not always truthful.

The second drug was scopolamine, allegedly used in South America for mind control. This drug was colourless, odourless and tasteless so if necessary it could be ingested without the drone's knowledge. The effects of this drug were phenomenal; the correct dosage resulted in a total loss of will; the subject automatically did as he was told. And afterwards he had no memory of what had occurred.

Dreams, or memories, were then drawn out using a mixture of harsh interrogation and gentle counselling. The interrogation technique used was past life regression therapy, commonly known as PLR, in combination with the psychological approach used in suspect interrogations.
PLR drew the memory to the forefront of the mind while the harsher interrogation focused the thoughts and emotions on the moral aspect of the memory, questioning where it has come from as well as its validity. The combined use of these two techniques was an exhausting process for all involved, and could normally only be safely administered twice a month. But the results were worth the trouble
— at least for the clones' handlers.

***

Dr Viktor Borgoff read his e-mail with trepidation. How did they find my e-mail address? he wondered. He hit the link and went through to the web page. As he read, his interest grew; his facility was more than capable of fulfilling the challenge, although the government would need to be left out of the loop on this one.

He called the heads of departments together and they spent the rest of the day mapping out what would be needed from each of them.

The head of the Memory Data Extraction Department showed the greatest concern. 'Our techniques are unorthodox; they certainly cross
Geneva Convention boundaries. I'm not sure that we should share our methods with the rest of the world,' he said.

Viktor understood the implications, but leading the world in this challenge would put them on the map — maybe they would no longer have to hide out in the hills. 'The global unification of cloning data and techniques would surely be worth that risk,' he said. Everyone present eventually agreed.