The Freezer (Genesis Endeavor Book 1) Page 7
Jack moved to the sink to wash his hands, but the water spout was only about a quarter inch in diameter and there was no lever. Embarrassed to call again for help he put his hands under the small tube, and to his surprise and glop of jelly like liquid dropped onto his hands. He shrugged, rubbed his hands together as if washing them, and as the jelly sloughed off his hands, it swirled around the sink in the same manner as his urine in the toilet. He shook his hands in the sink and a few remaining jelly beads danced around the sink as they spiraled into the small black hole of a drain. It reminded him of watching water dance on a hot griddle. When he finished, he looked for a way to dry his hands, before realizing they were already dry. “Amazing.” he repeated.
As he began to exit the room, he caught a glimpse of the mirror. It must have been a window, not a mirror, because the man on the other side of the glass was not him. A rush of adrenaline and amazement raced through his body leaving goose bumps over his whole body and the hair on the back of his next standing straight. Knees weak, he turned and stared into the glass. There was no way to describe what he felt when looking at the man staring back at him. It wasn’t him. But it was. As a matter of fact, he had seen this man before, in pictures from his youth. That wasn’t right though. He had never seen this man. This man wasn’t just younger, he was flawless. Since he was fourteen his nose had been slightly crooked, but this man’s nose was perfectly straight. There were no war scars on his face, no pock marks from acne, and his two day beard was a perfect shadow. Although he didn’t have much hair, in fact nearly bald as if freshly shaved with an electric clipper, his hair was uniformly growing everywhere it should be. Jack moved again, to confirm that it wasn’t a window. The movements reflected his own. There was no question this was a mirror. The man in the glass was him: a roughly twenty five year old version of him, only better, with none of the history of his life written on his face.
For the first time, he began to truly believe that they had been telling him the truth. The realization was overwhelming. He spent a few more minutes studying his face, exploring it with his hands. He touched the various parts, making sure they were real flesh and bone. He smiled and admired his perfectly straight teeth, looking for the silver scars of cavities filled over the years. It was no longer a surprise to discover there was only white enamel, no silver.
When he exited the restroom, Teague saw the look of wonder on his face, and smiled. “It is quite cool the first time you see it, isn’t it?” Jack didn’t know if he was referring to the frictionless bowl and sink, or the face. He simply answered with, “Yeah.” Everything that had happened since he woke up yesterday was about as overwhelming as it could be, but oddly enough, all he could think to say was, “I’m no longer ruggedly handsome... does that mean I’m just handsome?” Jack laughed at his own statement mostly because he felt giddy with the discovery and the acceptance that seeing his own face had given him. Teague laughed along mostly because he found the remark amusing.
Teague led him to another room, one with a table and about a dozen chairs. Nobody else occupied the room at that moment, but it was obvious it was a small mess hall or kitchen of some kind. They took seats at the table, and Teague asked if he was hungry. “Ravenous,” he replied. He was fed the same sawdust Jello that he had the previous night, but this time it tasted like apples. Once again, it left him very satisfied, and he reserved any questions about the food until a later date.
* * *
“So,” Teague started off, “shall I continue where I left off last night?”
“Please” Jack said. There was little question in his mind that everything he had been told so far was true. Up until seeing his face in the mirror, he had doubts, reservations, and a desire to look for some other answer that made more sense, something that would put him back in the world he came from. So despite the fact that he had not had the time to process how he really felt about everything, he found himself eager to learn more.
“Okay, I will jump right in then.” Teague stood up and started pacing again. “We left off talking about cloning.” He paused long enough to see Jack nod in acknowledgement. “So, up until about the year 2012, there were scientists around the world who had no reservations about attempting all sorts of cloning experiments with humans.”
Jack shifted uncomfortably in his seat, not sure if the sudden anxiety brought on by the subject was because of his hunger for more information or if it had to do with the sketchy nature of human testing. Teague went on, “At first they created test tube zygotes, er... fertilized eggs that had split a few times,” another pause to confirm he wasn’t talking too far above Jack’s understanding, “and genetically altered them, planted them in the womb, and waited to see the results. Some experiments were a success, and some, well some were not. After a few years, one group was successful in cloning a human. They were able to remove the DNA from the zygote, replace it with complete DNA from a living person, and after nine months, a baby was born.”
“Is that what you did? Grow me inside a test tube then inject me into a woman? Then where have I been growing for the past twenty five years?” Jack interrupted. He knew from Wendy that somehow they sped this up, but he wanted details. It was his nature, probably from his teenage years in the orphanage where the nuns would always tell him that the Devil was in the details. Of course they were referring to his confessions, not experimenting on cloning, but ever since that part of his life he’d figured out that the details were usually where the most important information resided.
Teague didn’t hesitate long. “I’m guessing you had a visitor last night?” The room felt suddenly warmer. The doctor stopped pacing, waiting for an answer.
Jack was a little embarrassed, and a little hesitant to explain the previous night. “I uh… I don’t want to get anyone in trouble, but a woman came into my room last night. She um… enlightened me to the age of my body.” He was not sure how much he should say. If there was some kind of social protocol she had broken, he didn’t want to be party to any trouble it might cause her, particularly given the circumstances.
Amusement was plain on Teague’s face. “Oh don’t look so embarrassed Jack. It is practically a custom these days that one of the women ‘enlightens’ the men on the first night.” Teague started chuckling then shook his head thoughtfully. “Some of the men have even tried it on the women but the results are… less predictable.” This was clearly an inside joke and Jack wasn’t exactly sure what to make of it, and he was more concerned about the nature of last night’s visit to really consider what that meant. “Did you get a name by chance?”
Jack’s hesitation was not lost on the doctor. “Oh, don’t worry, whatever happened last night is very acceptable, even encouraged around here. If you don’t want to say, you don’t have to, we will figure it out soon enough.”
Another hesitation and Jack spilled it. “Wendy, her name is Wendy.” He picked up his glass of water as if signaling that it was time to move on to another conversation, but kept a close eye on Teague’s reaction, hoping he hadn’t really screwed up.
The look of surprise was not what he was expecting. “Really.” It was not a question, more like a statement. “Hmph.” The doctor seemed to be putting something together in his head. He shook it and shrugged, then in explanation said, “She is very… reserved. And shy.”
Jack was taking a sip of water when he said that and almost choked as it went down the wrong tube. He started coughing. Teague looked at him to see if he was all right, and Jack looked away. “I will do my best to explain the women’s behavior as we go here. I think I owe you that one. I hope it was not too embarrassing?”
Still coughing and turning a little red, although whether it was from the cough or from embarrassment he wasn’t sure, Jack exclaimed, “Oh, no! I mean, not in the least. It uh… It was… well, can we talk about something else?”
“Oh certainly, I don’t mean to... well anyway, where was I?” Looking down at his notepad he said, “Oh yes, so they successfully cloned a human
.” He started pacing again. “But, it was just another baby. Genetically it was the same as the host, but it was really just a twin, the only real difference was it was younger than its counterpart. Just because it would grow up to look identical to the parent didn’t mean much, at least financially.”
The doctor didn’t give Jack a chance to ask what he meant. “There was no financial gain in creating a twin of someone, and back then there was only one reason to research anything – money.” The way he said it made it sound like something about the concept was somewhat foreign to him. “For a while it was popular, among the wealthy, to have a child that was an identical twin to one of the parents. But it was never enough to keep the research funded.”
“I’m not quite following you here, Doc, what financial gain did these scientists hope to capitalize on?”
“Well, organ replacement was one of the goals. If you could create a perfect replica of a person, that replica would have organs that were identical to the host. With perfect replicas, transplant was a nearly guaranteed success. If someone’s heart was failing, you could grow a new heart and replace it.”
Jack thought about that for a moment, then said, “I read about heart transplants and how doctors couldn’t do it successfully because the body rejects it as something foreign. I guess if the body thought it was an original part, it wouldn’t reject it.” This was all incredibly interesting, and he was enthralled.
“Not to split hairs, but eventually they were able to use drugs to keep the body from rejecting the new organs, but it was crude and didn’t always work right, so yes, the idea was that if it was already genetically the same as what you had, it would not be rejected.” Teague was on a roll now. “So organ replacement became the driving force behind cloning, but you can’t exactly have a baby just to kill it and take its heart. And even if you could, it would take too long – nine months to give birth, then you would have to grow the child for at least five years before the heart is mature enough to put in another person. Most times, if an organ failed, the person would die relatively quickly. The research did eventually lead to advances in organ replacement, but the moral and scientific boundaries were an insurmountable barrier toward any kind of cloning for parts.
“There was a better reason to research cloning, however. It was perceived as a potential fountain of youth. There were many people in the world who would pay any price for immortality.”
“Immortality? Like living forever? How could cloning make someone live forever?”
“Well, it isn’t like the historical fountain of youth, or the biblical Holy Grail, but think about it. If you had a dictator who didn’t want to give up his power, and he had the means to clone himself, with all his memories, he could rule his domain forever. The same thing goes for super wealthy people. They either wanted to live forever, or if they lost someone, they wanted them back. People with wealth and power assumed they had the right to try their hand at wielding the power of God.”
Jack thought about his wife and daughter for a moment. If I could have them back, memories intact, would I? Even knowing that it was not really them? Now Jack started thinking about philosophy, and another truth struck him. If he died, and was cloned, he is not really the same person, just a copy with all that person’s memories. That is all good and well for the clone, since, as Jack himself could testify, for all intents and purposes that clone thinks he is the original, but the original has to die at some point. “Religion,” Jack said. “What happens to the soul?”
“You are a sharp one Jack. That is exactly the moral dilemma. If the original person dies, and is cloned, did his soul go to heaven or hell, or did it come back to inhabit the body? Furthermore, if that clone has the memories of the original, but not the soul, is it a soulless creature or does it get a new soul? These were questions that the religious authorities had to answer, and they couldn’t. They were lucky though, because they never had to answer. The cloning never got further than making babies with the same genetic material.”
“Wait a minute, then how am I here? What do you mean that it never got further?” Jack was suddenly angry. It had taken him a lot to get to the point where he believed what he was being told. Now the doctor was telling him something different. The idea that this was an elaborate hoax set up by some mentally unstable patients came back to him. This was frustrating and he was about to give Teague a piece of his mind about it. A grim look from Teague stopped the emotional outburst in its tracks and he waited for an answer.
“War. In 2012, war broke out, and for the next hundred years, nobody was worried about cloning humans.” Teague stopped pacing and sat down.
Chapter 12
The news stopped him cold. He knew all about war. He had fought on the front lines in Korea for over two years. He had watched his friends die, and then later, after becoming an officer, he watched soldiers under his command die. Korea wasn’t even a real war. Not on the scale of WWII anyway. Jack served with enlisted men who had fought in the big war. He was just a kid back then, barely sixteen years old and full of piss and vinegar, but he remembered the stories they told. He also remembered the concentration camps. Worst of all, he served a two year tour in Japan, just before going to Korea. He saw first-hand the power of the atom bomb, and the horror of radioactive fallout. In a way, seeing the damage in Japan had helped to make up his mind to re-enlist after his first four years. He figured as long as there were people willing to give up their lives then the leaders of the military wouldn’t have to drop those horrible bombs. Looking back now it was probably very ideological, but he was young, and young people follow their heart.
“Was it nuclear?” It was a simple question, but Jack was holding his breath waiting for an answer. He had lived the last 20 years of his life in a “cold war” with Soviet Russia. A few years ago he had feared, along with the rest of his country, that Russia’s moves to put missiles in Cuba would result in the mutual destruction of both countries, and subsequently the world. Everyone knew that the next big war would be the end of life on earth if nuclear bombs got involved. The idea that people he knew might have been in a nuclear blast was making him sick to his stomach.
“Not at first, but, eventually, yes, bombs were dropped.” Teague stared off into the distance, as if remembering it. That was crazy though, from what he had said this would have taken place some three hundred years ago. Jack knew that there was a lot more to this, but he wasn’t sure he wanted to hear more about it.
“Look Jack, I could spend hours telling you what I know about the war, and later I will, if you want me to, but I need to finish explaining how you came to be here, and we might be a little short on time.” Jack wondered what he meant by that, but he looked up at him and just nodded. Teague got up and started pacing again. He opened his mouth to talk, and just then, two people walked into the room.
* * *
The first one to walk in was a man, about six feet tall with dark, weathered skin and black and gray peppered hair cut pretty short. He looked to be about thirty years old, and he appeared to be in excellent shape, evident by his lean stomach, broad shoulders, and sinewy neck and arms. Jack imagined that if the only diet around here was the odd slop he had been eating, that just about everyone would be lean. The man had a weariness about him that suggested he had already had a long, hard day, despite the early hour. As he walked in to the room, he smiled at Teague, and seeing Jack, he nodded and said, “Well, doc, you haven’t lost your touch. Hi, I’m Charlie, you can call me Chuck. Your name is Jack right?” He had a gravelly voice and his eyes were compassionate, but Jack also saw in them something he had only seen in people that had been in hard battle. He didn’t appear to be focusing on anything in particular, but Jack didn’t think for a second that there wasn’t a detail in the room Chuck hadn’t noticed.
“Yes, nice to meet you Chuck.” He was wearing what could be called military fatigues, and they were rumpled as if he had been in them for a while. Jack was still taking in the new face when he saw the second person co
ming in behind Chuck. The person was not nearly as big, and was wearing greasy coveralls. As she walked into the room, Jack did a double take. The red hair and freckles threw him off, but it was Wendy! The night before he only saw her in the dim bluish light of the monitor next to his bed, and the tint of the light camouflaged the red, so he never saw the freckles and assumed her hair was black or brown. Wendy was not making eye contact but headed right over to sit down next to him. “Uh, Hi.” was all he managed to say to her.
He wasn’t sure she was going to respond at first, she seemed intent about not meeting his eyes. Finally she glanced at him, and smirked. “Hi, Jack, did you sleep well?” Their eyes held for another moment, and then his attention was pulled away when Chuck, opening what must have been a refrigerator and burying his face in it, said, “Jack, care for a brewski?”
Jack looked over and said, “Isn’t it a bit early for that?”
Chuck popped his head out and grinned at him. “Not for me it ain’t.” He pulled out what looked like an old fashioned root beer bottle, with a rubber cap and a wire lever to hold it on. He popped the lever and the bottle made a small pop sound, and a little mist wafted out of the mouth. Chuck took a deep pull, winced a little, and let out a little belch. “Ahhh, nothing like a refreshing drink after a long night of work.” Before Jack could ask any questions, Chuck sat down, looked over at Teague, and said, “So doc, you done playing teacher yet? I’m anxious for some company out there.”
Teague rolled his eyes in irritation and said, “Fuck you, Chuck. For your information Jack here accepted his situation in less than three hours. It took you a damn week!” Jack was surprised at the comment and looked at Chuck both watching for a reaction and wanting to ask him a lot of questions.