Chapter 5 (Flashback)
She would look peaceful, occluding the fact that inside she feels like she is peering over the edge of a cliff and slowly losing her footing.
The main waiting area of the Epigenetics Research Institute is an atrium with two-story windows that are framed by trees and that overlook acres of grass. It sits on a hill that slopes away from the windows and gradually fades into playing fields and tennis courts. Camila sits in a chair with a view out the large windows. Beyond the fields and courts, she can see the Romanesque buildings that punctuate the green and make up the living facility where the clones are raised. She notices that the whole scene looks like an impressionist painting, and she momentarily moves outside of herself and sees herself as part of the painting as well: a young pregnant woman looking through a window at a pristine little world. She looks peaceful, which occludes the fact that inside she feels like she is peering over the edge of a cliff and slowly losing her footing. The vision makes Camila wonder if all idyllic scenes share the same secret of covering up darkness hiding just beneath the surface.
Camila’s name is called and she is taken by a nurse down a hall and into an office. The room looks like it is out of a design catalog. On the left is an expansive yet minimalistic desk made of light wood with matching chairs situated in front of it; behind it are floor-to-ceiling shelves decorated neatly with medical journals and framed articles. Just as in the atrium, the room is filled with light that has been filtered through the leaves of the trees outside. The space is beautiful, but it could be anyone’s. There are no personal photos or trinkets. Everything is tan or white or light gray, other than a large plant in the corner next to the windows. Camila finds a seat in one of the chairs sitting in front of the desk. Being 8 months pregnant, it is getting harder and harder to sit. Sitting ends up being more of a squat for three quarters of the journey and then a free fall down to whatever surface for the last quarter. The height and depth of the chair together with the fullness of the cushions conspire so that Camila’s feet just barely leave the ground when she leans back. She decides to inch forward and lean to the side instead so that her feet can remain planted on the ground. She doesn’t want to look like a pregnant child, although a few people have told her that at nineteen, that is exactly what she is. As she sits and looks around the room, Camila’s eyes are drawn back to the plant. She notices that one or two of the edges of the large leaves are dried and browning. As silly as it is to be comforted by a plant, it is the only other thing in the building — besides Camila herself — that appears to be imperfect.
A woman in a navy suit comes in and shakes Camila’s hand, insisting that Camila stay seated upon seeing Camila’s pregnant frame. The woman has sleek, black chin-length hair and her eyes are framed by tortoise shell glasses that look stylishly, intentionally large for her face. She is the model that goes with the office in the catalog. She introduces herself as Olivia Parsons, one of the Program Coordinators for the Human Cloning Program. They exchange niceties and Olivia places the file in her hands onto the desk. It contains the paperwork that Camila has come to sign to become a part of the Human Cloning Program. The stack of papers is nearly a half an inch thick. Olivia sits down and looks up at Elena. “Don’t be intimidated. There are a lot of legal bases the Institute has to cover, especially since you are opting to have your son cloned as well, but most of it isn’t stuff you even need to worry about.”
Maybe it isn’t stuff she has to worry about, but Camila nonetheless wants to understand more about how it all works, particularly with her son. She starts to ask but Olivia is already anticipating her question.
“Parents have the power to make medical decisions for their children so long as those decisions are made in the child’s best interest,” Olivia says. “Once your son reaches 15 years of age, he will start making some decisions for himself. Once he turns 18, all program-related decisions will be his. I’m assuming you want you and your son to participate in the program so that you can get twice the money to help raise him, correct?”
It feels like hot liquid is being poured up Camila’s neck, flowing against gravity and making its way from her chest to her ears. What Olivia said is correct, but hearing it out loud makes it sound dirty and immoral. She swallows, trying to push the shame back down. “Yes, that’s correct.”
Olivia assures her then that she is acting in her son’s best interest. She goes on to remind Camila that her and her son’s participation in the program is helping humankind. “The Human Cloning Program exists to help medical professionals better understand the interaction between nature, nurture, and environment, so that they can treat people more effectively. Having people willing to clone themselves is a crucial aspect to the program being a success. It really is a generous thing you’re doing.” Camila has read all the pamphlets so she already knows all of this, at least on an academic level. She also knows that the program’s design is key in making the whole thing morally passable, and therefore why it is able to exist at all. In the HCP, the clones are not poked and prodded and experimented on; on the contrary, they are treated like million dollar race horses, every aspect of their lives optimized to set them up for physical, mental, emotional, and economic success. They are the control subjects, and it is the people in the real world, the genome donors like herself, who are the test subjects, receiving randomized “treatments” of abusive parents, homes in food deserts, and schools that pass them onto the next grade despite them never really learning fractions or the difference between ‘your’ and ‘you’re’; they are the ones having accidental pregnancies and dropping out of college and entering controversial programs that their parents don’t approve of, just to find ways to make ends meet.
Olivia flips through the stack of papers, walking Camila through each page and indicating where she needs to sign, date, and initial. They move quickly through the paperwork about Camila being cloned. Most of it is about how data is collected and how the exchange of data and money works. Camila is informed that she will have regular medical checkups and fill out monthly questionnaires in exchange for regular checks; the more data she’s willing to give, the more money she can make. If she drops out of the program, she will be required to pay back all the money she has made from the program up to that point. “Don’t worry, there are clauses to allow participants to get out of the program in cases of catastrophic personal injury and that sort of thing.” Camila hears herself say ‘okay’ even though Olivia’s casual mention of ‘catastrophic personal injury’ serves only to make her feel more like a cog in a machine than she already did.
Next comes the section about the cloning of family members. Hidden inside the stack of papers is a pamphlet titled “Family Units and Family Peers” that Olivia hands to Camila. “Has anyone spoken with you about how clones from the same nuclear family are raised?” Olivia asks.
Camila shakes her head. “No, no one has.” Olivia tells Camila that she is going to sneak out and get them both some water and instructs Camila to read through the pamphlet while she’s away. Olivia gets up and leaves Camila alone again in the large office. Camila shifts in the chair, trying to find a comfortable way to sit, though every position seems to press on her bladder in a different way. She starts reading the pamphlet. She learns that clones of people from the same nuclear family are always raised together as siblings, or “family peers,” even if the individuals being cloned are parents and children. “This is done to avoid incest, as research has shown that individuals who are raised together in the first six years of life are far less likely to develop sexual attraction to each other than those who are not.” The pamphlet goes on to say that nuclear family members are also required to be cloned at the same time to facilitate being raised together, which means that the clones in a family unit are always within a few weeks of age of each other.
After reading through the pamphlet, Camila sits back and takes a deep breath, trying to digest what she just read. She can feel her heart beating harder in her chest at realizing that there is so much more to what she’s doing than she had thought through. She hadn’t considered what might happen if two clones from the same family fell in love. Olivia comes back into the office holding two bottles of water. She asks Camila if she has any questions as she unscrews the top of one of the water bottles and hands it to Camila. Camila takes the water but immediately sets it down. She is too distracted by what she just read to be bothered with thirst. She would probably have a million questions if she were just given a few more minutes to process everything, but the one to pop out is, “Do they know?”
“Can you be a bit more specific? Does who know what?” Olivia asks.
Camila realizes she didn’t actually say half of the words she was thinking. “Will the clones know they are clones? And will they know they are clones of family members?”
Olivia pauses. “Eventually.” She takes a long drink of water, draining half the bottle. “We’ve started calling it Origin Day, the day they find everything out. We’ll treat it like a formal rite of passage so that it’s something they look forward to.” This actually sounds nice, but before Camila can think anything else, Olivia flips to the next page in the stack of papers. The next chunk of papers are about her son’s rights and how they differ from hers. “Given the different levels of consent between adults who enroll in the HCP and children who are enrolled by their parents, your son will be allowed to withdraw from the program without penalty at age 18. At that point, he will be able to decide if he wants to continue being a part of the program, and if he does he will sign a contract like the one you signed for yourself today.”
“And what about the clones? Will they ever get to opt out?” Camila asks.
“They will have that opportunity at 18 as well, although just as we do with genome donors, we will incentivize their continued participation. After all, that’s the only way for the program to succeed long term.”
Camila is relieved to hear this but Olivia’s callous use of the word ‘incentivize’ does not escape her. Of course. The clones are cogs, too. Before she knows it, everything is signed and Camila has legally bound herself and her unborn son to the Epigenetics Research Institute. As she walks out of the building and back through the lobby atrium, she looks out the large two-story windows once again. The sun has shifted and the sunlight coming through the trees is now adding pattern to the otherwise uniform expanse of grass outside. The buildings in the distance remind Camila that the clones will be raised in a beautiful environment, under excellent care, with every detail of their lives thought through. She tries to ignore the guilt that hangs itself on each of her justifications and repeats to herself that she is doing a good thing.
Looking out, Camila notices that the grounds of the Compound look like a college campus, not so different from the one she spent the past two years at — and the one she’s now abandoning. She feels a pain in her chest like someone is stepping on her heart. She’s going to miss it so much. She’s going to miss her classes and the professors who make her think; she’s going to miss the late night dorm hangs, when everyone comes back from their parties and eats pizza in the hall; she’s going to miss snuggling with Simon in her twin bed. More than anything, she’s going to miss feeling like she’s getting closer to a bright future ahead of her. She tries to tells herself that Simon will help with the baby, that she’ll go back to school and finish her degree… but deep down, she already knows none of it is true. Things had changed between her and Simon. He had grown distant, and the guy who was once her rock, her anchor, seemed to be lost at sea. Even when she saw him now, which was rarely, she felt like she couldn’t reach him. She tried calling him before the appointment earlier. She let it ring and ring and ring, until finally, she heard a voice on the other end saying that the mailbox was full.