Topic
Clones
Multiples of one, with all the philosophical and personal trouble that brings.
Uploading Ken
The barista served Jenny a tired smile. "The usual for you two?" she asked, nodding towards Ken. "For me, sure. For him, um...." Jenny's head rotated towards Ken, but her eyes remained fixed on the barista's pea-green visor. "I'll just take a black Pike," Ken said. He has his…
Someone Else
Suddenly I can feel someone else in the machine--another presence, another dancing pattern in the simulated synapses. Foreign and familiar at the same time. It can only mean one thing: after a decade and a half of uninterrupted neural mapping, of mass-scale solar consumption,…
She Looks So Much Like Sophie
Doesn't she? I guide her tiny fingers to build the playdough fence, copying the real one daddy's building nearby. She giggles at our creation, her emerald eyes sparkling. Just like they always did. My husband was against signing the cloning agreement at Sophie's birth; life…
Please Stop Murdering Grandma
My Dearest Susie, What a delightful surprise to receive your letter in the mail! When my secretary handed it to me, I confess I did not know what to think. You are the first of my granddaughters to ever send me a letter (no, Dear, email does not count), and it simply swelled my…
The Transplant
Music is amazing, isn't it? Just has the power to transport you, to change your mood, to give you energy. Of course I know why you've called me. Actually, no, I don't know why. One of my clones died in an accident--why is that worth a call? Let me get this straight--I didn't…
Replicas
"Why won't you eat dinner," Otto asks. Its electronic voice buzzes from the corner of the dining room where its yellow eyes beam in the darkness. "Aren't you hungry?" Melody gives a sharp nod. She stands in the opposite corner from the bot, a stained teddy bear tucked under her…
Turning the Tide
We decant another batch of clones from the goop. Their route takes them from the cloning chambers through showers, then to uniforms, weaponry, and out to the front. And then the process starts again. We've been doing this long enough that few of us remember how the war started…
Dinners Like We Used To Have
********Editor's Note: Adult language in the story that follows********* The man who isn't my father arrives about an hour before dinner, as he has every Sunday since the funeral. I stand in the hallway, listening to the familiar sound of his knock. My father's knock. But I know…
Second Edition
One day you'll find an eyelash in a small library book, a slight, black curve that's tucked into the margins like some long-forgotten tribute to the intoxicating text. You tap the hair against your finger, pull it close to view. The static of the world glues the intact follicle…
The Living
She took a Canadian one-way and left him with a closet full of her clothes, a cabinet full of her meds, and a wrung-out heart. So he came to us. "Pancreatic cancer," he said. "She wanted a cleaner death. But I still can't stand it." He doesn't have to, not with the number of…
How does she do it?
Dr. Abram steps away from the waist high, rectangular tank. He has checked the readings for the final time. "It is ready," he says. "You can open it as soon as you want." There are twenty identical tanks in the room, individually numbered, a screen on the side of each one…
Layla 8
His face blurred around the edges, features smeared across bone, looms over me. "Your name is Layla," he says. I don't think it is. I pass to another place. I am glass, shattered into seven pieces. Splinters. "Your name is Layla." Layla, Layla, Layla, over and over into my ears.…
Child of Mine
"Hey hon, can you exchange the baby at the clinic after work? The replacement should be done by now." "So soon?" I turned around from the window. Coffee almost spilled from my cup, but I caught it in time. "Yep," she said, struggling with an earring. "It's the slow season, I…
Rejuve
A knock on the door and a small boy slipped into his office. Dr. Adrian Forster (PHD) (MD) (JD) (TM) swore silently, the thread of his thought destroyed. It had been doing that lately. Harder and harder to regain his focus. Brutal once it slipped. "Dr. Forster, sir?" said the…
Double or Nothing
When my copy walked into my bathroom with a pistol drawn, I wasn't even surprised. For one thing, while it'd been disturbing to see an exact copy of me walking around and doing things at first, I'd gotten used to it. That was why I'd had an android made to those specifications,…
Childished
Nyah found the news so shocking she stopped walking. Luisa took several more steps without her until she noticed she was walking alone. "Something wrong?" Luisa asked. "A cull? They're really suggesting they cull the children?" Luisa frowned, the source of the annoyance not…
I Am David's
***Warning. Adult Story. Please only Read if 18+ and Prepared*** One I am David's. This is lesson one. I know it as I float within the jelly womb. I know it before all else. Two I am Gwen. This is lesson two. I know it as I gulp the fluid down my throat, as I absorb each of her…
Grandma Heloise
Grandma's glow-in-the-dark geraniums were harmless and kind of cute. However, the family nominated me to speak to her after she cloned her dead cat, Gerald, three times. Grandma raised me after my parents were killed in a car crash, and I'd always been her favorite grandchild.…
The Day Poppo Came Down to Breakfast, Twice
So I was just sitting slouched down at the kitchen table eating our usual breakfast: scrambled eggs cooked real dry and black bacon bits and charred toast. Mommo was standing at the e-eco-cooker drying more scrambled eggs and shouting up the stairs at Poppo. My older brother…
Insert Line: Goodbye Mom, Goodbye Dad
My bags were already slouched by the front door, when I called out that I was about to leave for my campus, glancing out the window to the ice cream van. Dad came from his office, wearing perpetual calmness on his face, which I had come to love about him. Mom was wiping the…
Clay Soldiers
Bret woke with a piercing pain in his side, the roar of the battlefield still raging in his ears. The ceiling and walls were white. A white curtain hung at his left. A bag pumped liquid into his vein. His ragged breaths burned. The exoskeleton must've pushed through his lung.…
Hope Is a Thing with Rockets
The rocket sat on the launch pad, pointed up and into the dark grey sky. From the bleachers, Marcus Xian watched as he prepared to make history. His clone, a young boy, was up there, asleep in that capsule, waiting like some ancient seed, waiting for an oxygen-rich environment,…
Substituting Fluffy
Ceri slammed the door, shaking the authentic antique wood frame, which meant the situation was worse than Ash had thought. He cringed, worried about making Dad angry, but Dad wouldn't care much about the stupid expensive door once he found out about Fluffy. Their parents were on…
The Experiment
The experiment had been a success. I was staring at my clone, marveling at how different he looked from my self-image. He was a living reflection with new independence and he examined me with the same sense of wonder and bewilderment. My colleagues shared the joy, and I could…
The Whipping Boy
Usually Tyler allowed himself twenty or thirty pages of reading before considering the day truly begun, but he'd had time for no more than three pages when Marta knocked on the library door, took two steps into the room, and said, in the ringing voice she used in the house's…
Flying Matilda
Every time they saw the apparition, it meant more acrobats would die. Someone would spot him: white trunks, white tunic, floating in the vast billowy confines of the Big Top's canvas ceiling. The nearest acrobat would let out a keening, grief-stricken wail. A body would fall,…
Restorative
The 3877th instance of Fingal Reginald Boyd can't believe what he's hearing. He is the first instance of the Boyd-dissociation to be denied reintegration. The skull of his meat puppet, with its landscape of memory and regret, suddenly seems very small. "I'm sorry," 3877 says.…
"You're Heads," She Says. "You're Tails."
As I peer from the window of the third-story lab in Bingham Building, I can just see the other guy crossing the rain-slicked cobblestones of the quad. He's hunched over, defeated. In shock, probably. He has no bags, but he's leaving forever. Everything he owns is on his back or…
Mortless
Simon would not say goodbye this time. He had worked hard enough, sacrificed enough, paid enough, to not say goodbye to his wife ever again. He leaned his head against the glass wall of the pod and stared inside at River's freshly printed body. She looked up at him, smiled and…
Do I Tell Her?
She is sitting in the library, reading. I see her face glowing in the soft light of the magazine. The familiar face I've known every nuance of for the better part of my life. She blinks twice deliberately, turning the page. As she does so, I see the radiance of the screen…
Still Life Through Water Droplets
Brandon wanted to find a woman he could put his arm around and have her shoulder slide into the nook of his armpit. Then he could smell her hair when he pulled her close. Susan's hair had always smelled of coconut and jasmine. He still had a half-full bottle of her shampoo in…
Still Life
Here is Doll at five years old. She's sitting rigid and silent in the closet, hoping Henry and Jakey will forget she's there. They're fighting about her. The gap between the doorframe and the door lets in a sliver of light that bisects her eye. Through the gap, she can see Henry…
Selfless
My name is...John. I am... I have a wife and a daughter. They are visiting me today. Their names-- Alice. And Anna. I can see, sort of. Everything is blurry. I am submerged in a coffin, a clear coffin with green water. There's a tube in my mouth so that I can breath,…
Surprise Party
Sarah pulls into the driveway, and we all start to whisper. The tension and arguments of the day melt away in the heat of the birthday candles being lit. Rover whines from the bedroom and one of us--hard to tell which in the darkened living room--shushes the dog. "Better that…
High Mileage
"So, whatchya think?" Bob Harrison opened his beer and took a sip, a cat-ate-the-canary smile on his face. Sid Chambers felt a twinge of jealousy, but didn't let it show. Instead, he gave a low whistle. "Sweet." "Yep, picked 'er up yesterday. The W-9. Dealer gave me a great…
Seeking Nothing
�Remember that they�re not like you nor I, boy,� Uncle Abraham said, his voice dusty as ash. �They�re not human. Elder Samuel says the soul stays with the original body, and that�s the real reason clones are classified Subhuman.� Sean buttoned his collar and adjusted its two…