An extract from the papers of Professor D. E. Balcass, as provided by Mark Patrick Lynch
Art by Shannon Legler
First Published in Nature Medical Experimentation, 2237, as part of the “Clones In Exploitation” season, later broadcast on the BBC Wireless Services as part of the Christmas Lectures Series in the Public Understanding of Sciences/Social History promotion.
This extract from Professor D. E. Balcass’s study of clones in the common workforce focuses on the strange and troubling uses of Professor Xavier Whitting’s breakthrough in human replication, as recounted by his business partner, a certain Mr Addison-Whitt, whose notoriety is well known in the music business to this day. Although unverifiable in parts, the account does fit the facts as history and popular culture understands them.
Professor Balcass included the account in his papers as a warning about human nature, and how quick it is to exploit others. It is a salutary warning of what might have continued unabated in the general workforce had the Wilberforce 2 anti-exploitation laws not been passed by parliament in 2189.
#
Enough time has now elapsed that I might finally reveal my part in the whole sorry StepFor’d affair. Like the last grains of sand sliding from one bulb of an hourglass to the next, I feel my life slipping away. If I am to give an explanation–or perhaps some would see it as a confession–then it should be here and it should be now, before it is too late and the chance to do so has passed.
From the outset, I would have it known that I was not the sole creator of “the clone bands.” However, I accept that turning the tide of public opinion so late in the day is no easy matter and that blame will be more easily laid at my feet–solely at my feet, if you will forgive the pun–rather than spread among those others involved. It is the way with the masses, and believe me, I should know the masses after I have spent so long exploiting them.
Yet the truth remains that I was not alone in my actions; I was not the only one responsible for what followed. My remaining hope is that people accept this. Perhaps, in time, it will be so.
The whole of what follows will be dispassionately relayed, dictated on my mechanical word-loom with an eye only for detail, neither recrimination nor redemption an aim. Just the truth.
This is my testimony.
#
Toward the middle of one morning in the summer of the resplendent British Empire’s 2042, there arrived at my dwelling a messenger dressed in the most inappropriate guise for one who wished to make a presentation at a gentleman’s door. When I was called to the step, the young fellow–who fell somewhat short of the age of adulthood–enquired if I might be the person in charge of the musical recording publisher Music Box.
I replied that I was and queried his business. As I did so I cast a glance beyond the wraith, noticing a rather dilapidated mechanical horse tethered to the gates of my London townhouse, chewing on a feedbag of coal. I surmised the horse belonged to my visitor, for it appeared both mare and rider were of similar constitution. The young man’s clothes were little more than rags, and his clogs well in need of a shine. He clutched a cap with both grubby fists, and appeared to have been riding hard.
“Well, good sir,” the boy began, running a hand through his wild red hair as if to tame it by so simple an appeal. His skin was pale, and but for the freckles and the light clouds of his eyebrows his face would have been entirely without colour. Yet it held some allure for all of that. “I believe that I have in my possession knowledge that would be of great interest to you. Something, I’m told, concerning the future of the music industry.”
“Really.” Despite his soiled urchin charm, I was ready to throw this insolent young pup, saggy britches and all, back onto his rusting mechanical horse and out of my way, when–and I swear I do not know where this urge came from–I decided against such a course of action and to hear his petition.
“Why, yes, Mister Addison-Whitt. And if you would endeavour to spare just a little of your precious time, I might make an effort to explain.”
“Very well, you have a minute to do so.” The minute was pure whimsy. I plucked it from the air as a beautiful creature passing Knightsbridge might shake free a scented kerchief from a ruffed sleeve.
“Sir, in recent days my uncle”–and here, I must confess, I cannot allow myself to ruin the reputation of one of the finest scientists of recent memory by revealing his name, not in consequence of the proceedings that were to follow; I shall content myself by referring to him only as “X” or “the professor” or “the scientist” from this point in the narrative–”my uncle has developed a technique allowing people to be reproduced entirely through biological mechanisation. In his laboratory, at this very moment, he has created two … I hesitate to call them this, sir, but I have no other word … two ‘persons,’ of an entirely artificial nature. A man and a woman.”
“My word!”
“Yes sir. And I believe, sir, that it is Uncle X’s intention to create more of these people in the near future.”
“But to what purpose does he intend such a thing? And why should it be of concern to me, other of course than as it would be to any citizen of the Empire? I confess, young sir, it baffles me.”
If you are wondering at my gullibility in believing without proof this young man, who had appeared with no firm credentials to his name, then rest assured I was neither slow in the mind nor quick to be taken advantage of. From the moment the lad mentioned his scientist uncle’s name, I had marked the familial resemblance in his features to those of the celebrated relative, whose likeness I had often seen reproduced in the presses of Fleet Street, most notably among the pages of the Times itself.
“I believe, sir, it is upon that matter that he wishes to converse with you,” the lad, whom I would come to learn was named Eugene, said.
I considered this. The famous scientist wanted an audience with me? But to what end? There were many who had sought my patronage before, but a scientist on the brink of new discoveries was something novel.
“He wants to speak with me,” I echoed.
“Yes sir, on account of your past, sir. And your current business.”
I admit, I was intrigued. In my early twenties I enjoyed some success as one of the country’s most popular artists, performing to crowded music halls the nation wide. I used my small talent as a tap-dancer to my credit for a number of years, incorporating simple steps into my performance as I sang. My various compilation recordings on pressed vinyl often included a reference to the dances. One Step Ahead.Swinging Feet.Song and Shuffle. My hunger was not so much for the music as the adoration of the crowd, the need for fame that afflicts so many of the young these days. I believe that empathy I share with today’s youth accounts for part of my current success as a music publisher and svengali.
That aside, I hardly saw how my past as a recording artist might merit a meeting with X, especially on a matter seemingly of scientific discovery. My career in front of an audience had ended decades prior to the arrival of Eugene at my door. If the professor’s aims were in acquiring my services as front man for his operation, then I must decline his offer. I was no use as a propagandist. Besides, I had my music publishing business to run. It made its demands on me, and promoting new artists and finding new monster hits took its toll as I tried to establish a stranglehold in the market.
But a fascination in finding out more of this alleged breakthrough in science did take a hold of me. I was particularly intrigued in case it related to the music industry in particular.
“Very well,” I said. “Tell me more. You have an indefinite extension to your minute, lad.”
Eugene informed me that something incredible had occurred and that the commercial possibilities would speak for themselves. This was all he was allowed to communicate to me at this present moment. He passed me a business card upon which had been written a time and place at which the scientist wished to meet with me. The card also bore X’s name and a strange logo, a thin intertwining of lines similar to a pair of coiled springs.
I assured Eugene I would be there, and pressed a coin in his hand–a shilling that he grasped tightly, his eyes wide at the sum.
He waltzed backwards down the path, delighted by his sudden wealth, stoked his mechanical horse and, instructing the reins and moving the levers, set forth along the road at a brisk trot. A squeal emanated from one of the device’s hind legs as it clopped along the rounded cobbles and out of sight towards Crouch End, and the horse trailed exhaust so thick that even the steel-shred tail could not dissipate it.
I imagine that it will be of no surprise to you that I was bemused by my encounter. Could what the lad said be true? Was it possible that human beings were equally as capable of being replicated by science as … as, say, a mechanical horse?
Pondering this, I stood in thought at my doorway, until the shadow of a dirigible in full sail passed over the street. The temperature dropped by noticeable degrees as I was cast in shade, and I felt a shiver travel the length of my spine. Telling myself it had in it no prescience about the coming meeting to which I had committed myself, I shut the door and retired to my rooms.
#
I rearranged my afternoon appointments so that I could be free for my meeting. At the appointed hour, I took a hansom to the edge of the city and that strange set of environs where the factories and terraces thin and a more rural setting predominates: the first farms and fields living hand in hand with their industrial neighbours, the animals grazing in earshot of the mills beneath the soot clouds of the nation’s engineering might. An odd juxtaposition, yet one clearly satisfactory to the people working and living there.
At times it seems such places so close to the heart of the city are little oases, fountains of our pre-empirical notions and ambitions–a simpler Eden with its snakes cast out and its apples ripening on the branch. Greenery drips here, and the streets are not cobbled but dry tracks of hard-pressed earth, roasting in the summer beneath wizened elms, until the autumn rains naturally muddy them beyond all recognition and to traverse their length is akin to crossing a bog in the mulchy days of that season of mists. But in June, dogs roam and flesh and blood horses are still in use, being ridden upon or pulling carts. A throng of children play on the street amid the dust, no doubt acting scenes from Kipling or Dickens.
My cabbie stopped for directions in a little village that could not have consisted of more than a dozen houses and a Post Office, seeking the little-known lane down which the scientist’s workshop was located. In the shining sun, the metal horses ticked and pinged as they stood still for a moment. A ruddy-faced chap I suspected of being a farmer pointed the driver along a dusty lane squeezed by lush hedgerows, but I judged that his directions were issued with disgruntlement, as though he were doing so in most unwilling fashion.
“Much obliged,” my driver said, and was met with silence.
We set off once more, the driver sure of his route and, after saplings had slapped the cab for a few minutes, cracking against it as we took the sharp turn and headed down the narrow route, we arrived at the scientist’s workshop.
It was a secluded place. Shrubbery all but overran the lane at the end of which the workshop stood, though a glance beyond the trees revealed barley fields tended by casual-workers.
The workshop itself was a converted barn, a yard of dried dirt fronting it, and the building was much in need of repair. I could well believe it a sweathouse in the summer heat, and conversely a freezer in the winter. Chickens clucked around the yard, and a bull was tied by its nose-ring to a thick metal post driven into the ground. The beast was black as night and slick with muscle, and its spoor littered the flattened stalks of hay on which it stood listlessly. I eyed the knotted coil of rope warily, examining it for signs of weakness. Thankfully the bull was not in a mood to test its integrity.
The barn doors were open. A sheet draped across the gap was all that kept the flies out, which I marked as a good thing: given the smell of the bull and its dung, there were many flies at hand; a veritable cloud of them hummed around the animal.
I confess to being shocked. The last I had heard the scientist had been a wealthy man, much admired by his fellows, and he held a seat at one of the old universities. How had he come to be here, lost in the sticks, working in a barn that had been outfitted to house his laboratory? Surely he had better places to unravel the secrets of nature than this; would his experiments not be better conducted within brick university buildings?
It was then, I believe, that I first became aware that others in his profession might frown upon the scientist’s recent experiments, and that he might very well be investigating matters beyond the acceptable bounds. To be reduced to this hovel would indicate a falling out among his peers of enormous magnitude. I couldn’t help but fear along what route his experiments might have taken him.
Replicating human beings …
I paid the driver and watched him leave. Dust kicked up from the yard as the cab disappeared from sight down the lane, the rustle of leaves and clattering branches loud enough to be heard above the horses’ engines. When quiet had taken reign once more and I was left in the yard, alone but for the animals, I found that the unhindered sunlight and heavy, clogged air made themselves known. I was no longer pampered by the cab’s air-conditioning. I removed my hat for a moment, and, mopping my brow with a handkerchief, I carefully stepped around straying chickens and their omnipresent droppings to the concealing canvas flap that curtained the doorway. From beyond I heard the sounds of curses and steam engines being primed.
Straightening my coat and waving away more infernal flies, I raised the veil enough to pass through, though not before examining what the triangle of light revealed in the barn.
Dust motes swam in the air, lazy as seahorses, spiralling in the sunlight. The barn was a mixture of deep shadows and piercing blades of brilliance where the roof had failed. An ageing steam furnace took up the proportions of the back wall, and the sounds it made did not inspire confidence that it would not at any moment erupt and fling its components with deadly force throughout the building. Its drive wheel was making a very odd sound as it pulled a conveyer.
Despite the engine and the heat outside, I was surprised to find the inside of the building pleasantly cool. I had expected temperatures of almost unbearable proportions. As I spied a figure working at a huge vat of glistening fluid in the centre of the room, I stepped within the barn and let the curtain fall closed behind me.
The change in the quality of the light signalled my arrival to the figure, and he raised a hand in greeting. He wore safety goggles and a smooth over-suit that protected him from the fluid. His hands were encased in similarly thick rubber gloves. Moving from the cooking vat–bubbles popped on its surface and steam rose over it like a fogbank clinging to the Thames–the man removed his gloves and goggles and laid them on a table next to the vat. Beneath a shock of red hair were revealed shining blue eyes, the like of which I had seen in the messenger earlier this day.
A broad, yellow-toothed grin, bounded on each side by quite extravagant whiskers, greeted me as the man I had come to meet strode forward. An arm extended flexing fingers to shake my hand.
“Scott Addison-Whitt! You came! You came. Excellent. Eugene said you would.” He turned around at the mention of the lad’s name, as if only just remembering him. “Eugene! Cup of tea for Mister Addison-Whitt.”
A familiar head, copper-topped and possessing the lineage’s blue eyes, appeared around the corner of a door to a custom built office I had not previously noticed. “Yes, sir, Uncle X,” the boy said. Eugene, clearly glad I had come, nodded my way, his face alive with a grin. The door was shut again until the lad reappeared with a blackened kettle heavily laden with water, taking it to heat using the furnace of the steam engine.
“Good, good,” the professor said as he escorted me into the little office. “Come along. This way, this way.”
Closing the door, and thus diminishing the cries of the steam engine somewhat, he showed me to a seat opposite a cluttered desk and sat behind a pile of papers and diagrams, moving them aside to create some space on which to rest his elbows. The room was lit mostly by gaslight. Through panes of frosted glass, looking into the workshop, one could make out moving shadows that I assumed to be the boy Eugene. The professor commenced to explain his reasons for inviting me here, speaking loudly, a habit to which I assumed he had become accustomed from working in the noise of the engines.
“Mister Addison-Whitt, let me not beat about the bush. What I am about to show you has been seen before by only two sets of eyes, my own and my … nephew’s. For the last seven years I have carried out experiments along a new line of enquiry, here in secret, behind closed doors. My former colleagues did not believe what I proposed could be possible, though those that did so objected strongly and succeeded in shutting off the avenues of funding I had been using. I lost my tenure at the university and, due in part to a minor indiscretion with one of the students, could find no other university, not even the most lowly, that was interested in taking up my services.
“For much of the last few years I have been living and experimenting using my own savings … as you can see,” he said wryly, waving a hand behind me to the wall, where two hammocks were slung. I took it that the barn was his living quarters as well as his workshop, and that both he and the boy slept here.
“I see,” I said carefully. “But to what purpose have I been invited? Your nephew suggested you had some replicating device, and that it pertained to music in some way?”
“After much experimenting, and using what I fear are the last of my funds–”
Ah, I thought, my ears pricking at this, I’ll warrant it’s money he’s after.
“–I believe I have unlocked the secret of our species.” His eyes burned with passion, and I could see in them the drive and commitment that had made his name famous in years past. “We are simply coded, Mister Addison-Whitt, and using a concoction of fluids concomitant with those of a woman experiencing a full term pregnancy, I have been able to inject the designs of life into the primordial soup from which many believe we were first seeded. And I have watched those designs grow at a quite astonishing rate.”
I surmised he was referring to the two “persons” the boy Eugene had spoken of, the man and woman. Were they here? I had seen no signs of anyone save for the uncle and his nephew. No other sleeping quarters were in evidence, and only two hammocks occupied the office wall.
“And how long ago is it since you allege you achieved this feat, sir?” I asked.
Quite softly the professor brought his hands together by the tips of their fingers. He met my eyes and said gravely, “Four years.”
I couldn’t help but scoff. Despite his reputation–which had clearly gone to pot these last few years–I now knew he was living a fantasy and had somehow persuaded the youth to partake in it also. I would not have been surprised to find the use of narcotics had played a part also.
“Four years! Why, that is hardly time to have weaned the young from the breast, sir. They could not possibly have grown to adulthood in so short a time.”
The professor looked away from me, running his eyes over the strange spiral drawings that coated the walls. Complex scientific formulae I could not fathom the meaning of were scribbled next to repeated images of the double spiral, which seemed to wrap around itself over and over again, like a pair of rotary staircases leading to the same distant floor but which never met on the way. I recognised the symbol as the one embossed on the professor’s card, handed to me this very morning by Eugene. Here, though, it was rendered from all angles, and it was possible to make out its properties in three dimensions.
When X spoke it was almost as if to himself. His hair was lax behind his ears, and it hung limp and greasy. I wagered it had not been washed in over a week. The fiery passion its colouring lent him seemed to wane, as if he were confronting the gods themselves and had been found wanting. Had his face not been as pale as his nephew’s already and his eyes deep in the folds created by wearing the goggles for so long, I would have stated that he blanched.
I had to strain to hear him when next he spoke.
“Oh no, they’ve grown quickly enough. They’ve done that rightly, for certain.”
There was mystery here. The professor was saddened by something, though I could not tell by what. Guilt, perhaps? Some burden he was carrying and had not yet found a means of relieving?
He met my gaze again, and it was as if he had only just registered I was in the office with him still. For a moment his mind had been elsewhere; but wherever it had been, his wonderful sea blue eyes seemed a little duller for the remembering.
“There was a … complication in the experiment, Mister Addison-Whitt. An unfortunate, unforeseeable complication. Matters went quickly beyond my control.” He shook his head, remembering the fault. “There was an aberration.”
“How so?”
X breathed deeply. The air, squeezed as it rushed through his nostrils, made a thin sound as he inhaled. “I have no words. I can only show you.”
“Very well. Then do so.”
The professor led me from the office to the back of the barn, where we ducked under pipes from a groaning steam engine and made toward a poorly fitting wooden door outlined by ragged streams of light. He put a hand to a small key and turned it. We exited and he guided me to a pigpen that lay just beyond the shade of the barn.
“There,” he said, pointing to the pen without looking in himself. “I could not let them be buried, that was too good for them. Nor could I let them live any longer.” He again shook his head. “This way is better, as if they had never been born. But of course they have, and in so doing altered the course of nature.”
I stared into the pigs’ den, where the huge sows were feasting amid grunts and squeals over the pieces of two human carcasses. A leg was visible, a shapely calf, and over there, to the other side, a coarser torso, its innards being tugged through ribs and breastbone. I saw a half-eaten face, teeth revealed in a death grin. If there was any mercy it was that the eyes had already been devoured. An axe was wedged atop the pen, and it stood caked with browning matter that I knew must have been bright and red and runny very recently.
It was impossible to endure the sight a moment longer. I turned away, lest I was physically ill over the fence and into the pen.
Swallowing back bile and staring only at the barn wall, the images I had just witnessed stark on the insides of my eyes still, I said aghast, “My God, X. What have you done? Did they die? Did you do this? Is it murder? It’s a hanging matter, don’t you see?”
He placed a hand on my shoulder–one I quickly shrugged off. His touch felt as hideous as a leper’s must to a physician. I brought out my handkerchief, glad of its perfume as I pushed it to my nose, and staggered to the barn, where I leaned against its solid frame. I thought then that I would hear those pigs’ squeals in dreams for the rest of my life.
“No. Away with you,” I all but spat as X approached me. I raised a palm to ward him off, as if he were involved in witchcraft and my hand was the Holy Spirit incarnate.
“I did not kill them,” the professor said. “At least not in the way you mean. In other ways, yes, I was responsible for their deaths. But it might have been better if they had never lived. At least this way they are beyond harming anyone else.”
I looked at him standing there in his misery, in his slick rubber suit. The heat was once again making itself known, even here in the lee of the barn’s shade, and a haze wavered the images in the distance. Or was that my senses, shaken still by the sight I had witnessed?
“Why have you brought me here, X? This is not about science. Not about music. Is it money? Is that what you are after? Tell me what you seek and be done.”
I was fearful for my life now. The scientist’s preposterous claims were without proof, save for two bodies devoured in the pigpen. Did he assume they would count in his favour? I wanted to leave the place at once. Yet, for all that I trembled in fear, I was also hungry to learn why he had done such a thing. I will confess that a dark fascination held me in its grip.
He said, “I brought you here, Mister Addison-Whitt, because I am in the process of making more of my creations. The fluids and vats are ready; all I await is the correct injection of human code. I made a mistake in using the pickings of village folk for my earlier experiments. I should have used the blood of a more noble lineage.” Here he smiled. “It has much less of a propensity for violence. The earlier creations grew too swiftly to adulthood. They learned quickly, but also their more base instincts came to the fore, and one day when I was off my guard they left the barn and killed one of the village children. I was aghast, of course. Naturally I was. I had sought to create perfect creatures, yet here before me I had only animals.
“I had considered their intellects might need as quick a handling as their bodies, but while I was quick to administer food and learning, I did not instruct them morally. When they reached the age where their bodies changed, they became more animalistic in their urges, and–I use the term because of what I witnessed–’rutted’ together to satisfy their instincts. The male took the female whenever his desires demanded. I made the mistake of not teaching them empathy, humanity, and respect.
“Rest assured I would not be so foolish in my next attempt.
“I was stricken by the creatures’ actions. They had more wit about them than I thought–to act on their cravings they had sneaked away from the workshop when I had been distracted. Oh, I knew of the danger they could present. I had been wary of them since an earlier incident where only the fact they needed feeding kept me alive. I had been on my guard ever since. But when they eventually returned from their excursion, it was with blood on their hands and a dead child outside the barn door. I confess that the child also went to the pigs. The villagers are suspicious, I’m sure.
“The creatures themselves were by now aging rapidly, and I feared for my latest creation, lest they take him apart, too. Fortunately I was able to hasten the end by feeding them a less nutritious diet than could sustain their bodies. When they passed this morning, and with the boy out of the way, I sent them to the pigs, chopping them to pieces so they might be easier devoured.”
I could not believe what he was saying. All that bloodshed, and yet had I heard him correctly when he said he had created another such being?
“After all of this, you’ve done it once more, X?”
“Oh yes, with infinitely greater success.”
“But what’s become–?” And at once I had my answer, for the barn door opened and there stood Eugene, the youthful image of his “uncle,” politely announcing that the kettle had been heated and that he had prepared the tea for us. My face must have betrayed my revelation, for the professor smiled and nodded.
“Yes,” he said simply.
I whispered, “You used your own blood this time?”
He nodded once more.
I watched Eugene move back inside the barn. He had grown in four years’ time? Less than four years, I supposed, because the bodies in the pigpen were at the stage of adulthood–a man and a woman, I had marked them. Was it possible the boy had aged so quickly?
“How old is he?”
“A little under eighteen months. And already he shows all the curiosity of his biological father. He is bright and quick to learn. His journey to summon you was his first on an auto-horse, the first time he had been into the city. He studied maps and the technique of riding for an hour before he set off with my invitation.”
I was equal parts anger and wonder. “And how do you know this one’s base urges will not find their way to the fore?”
“Undoubtedly they will. But with the reputation of certain houses in London, I’m sure a few visits will cure him of his wants. He’ll be fine, Mister Addison-Whitt. Fine. Come. Let’s return inside, where it’s cooler. I have another matter to talk about with you.”
“But the boy–Eugene?”
“Yes?”
“How does he … how does he feel about his life, about who he is?”
X surveyed the rickety door to the barn, to make sure the lad was not within earshot. He lowered his voice so that only I might hear.
“He does not know. He thinks only that he has inherited a disease from a father he believes deceased, one that accelerates his growth and shortens the span God grants most men. He is a bright lad, but if he suspects, he has not said as much. He knows of my experiments, and thinks them an aid in my quest of finding a cure for him.”
“You are a man without morality yourself, sir. I can see why your first experiment failed in the manner you described.”
Surprisingly, X did not take offence. He even smiled as he explained his position to me. “I am a man of science and investigation, Mister Addison-Whitt. And I would have that delight in discovery continue. It’s why you are here. Come, hear my proposal. And we will soon see how your morals stand against mine.”
#
As I walked away from X’s workshop, the image of the two bodies in the pigpen repeated in my mind’s eye like the stuttering beam of a lighthouse across the choppiest of seas. There were fathomless futures ahead, uncharted oceans of possibilities, and cruel rocks it would be easy to flounder upon. All too simply everything could be holed, lost, and sunk.
I had been unable to look on Eugene in any casual manner again as I sipped the professor’s tea and listened to his proposal. In all aspects, Eugene was every bit as human as I had marked him on my doorstep that morning. It was with all the power of my will that I restrained myself from examining him as a physician might.
X was indeed short on funds, and his need for money had been the prime motivation in contacting me. But his offer was ridiculous; his plan could not possibly succeed. It was with little hesitation that I was able to walk free of his machinations and on to the village, to hail a ride on an omnibus to the nearest railway station and head home without once threatening to renege in my belief that what he had done was, to use his own phrase, an abomination.
But I did not summon the authorities to descend upon the professor’s workshop. Even as the days passed, I could not rid myself of the images I had seen: swirling life kicking in the vat of fluid in the laboratory; the quick smile of the intelligent child who would die within a few years of old age; the look in X’s eyes as he told me of his desire for more discoveries and money; the pigs tearing strips off bodies; and the pictures I had only imagined and thankfully not witnessed, of the two creatures ripping into the village child and leaving it for dead.
At the oddest hours of the day those images would swarm like particularly ferocious bees into my mind, disrupting my thought processes. On more than one occasion, my colleagues pulled me up for not having my mind on my job. They were quite right, of course, for I hadn’t. Like a tongue probing at some fine meat lodged between molars, I could not help but dwell on what the professor had put to me: a way to fund his operations while at once helping my music business flourish.
It was immoral of course, to say the least, and yet what a temptation. A workforce without the basic long-term monetary needs, and all royalties left in my care.
I tried to resist. I urge you to believe that. But the images swirled in my mind, and my business quickly ran into difficulty. I began to think that Providence had a hand in this proposition of the professor’s. It seemed so timely, and could save me from financial ruin …
And so eventually I succumbed and made contact with the professor to talk some more on his proposal.
Reader, here is my confession. I gave him what he needed, the missing components he could not provide himself, as well as the last of my funds. And in doing so, the fate of so many was assured, not least my own.
#
I am fading. The last grains of sand are trickling through the hourglass of my years to complete my life. What terrible things I have done.
Do you believe me? Do you accept, perhaps even understand?
It had never been my idea, you see; only X’s. I merely went along with the notion. If the replicated humans had but a brief life to live, why not let them do so to the full, he argued; have them learn quickly and enjoy the passion and fruits of their labour? A lifetime of a popular singer is brief, defined often in months and “hit” recordings. If they disappear after a year, who is to know what has become of them, or where their money went in the time during and after they were performers?
The professor’s argument had been much more tempting in light of my financial difficulties.
With the introduction of swing-time groups of youth singers–boy bands as they became known–that lifetime of a popular artist seemed even shorter, to dwindle ever faster, and when one band looked the same as another, who cared which was which when the next popular group was introduced? Monster hit followed monster hit, and never mind the singers. As long as they’d enough talent to carry a tune and a glimmer in their eye.
And so came the clone bands, that group of starlets I introduced to the public first as StepFor’d, singing songs that sounded all but the same as each other, performing dance steps they learned after only the briefest instructions. Yes, they caroused, enjoyed their time with the harlots and bumboys who adored them. But they were meteorites, briefly ablaze in the firmament. They grew old quickly. The internal clock the professor had sped up to hurry them to the fine flush of youth could never be slowed.
My Music Box label grew and grew, hit recording followed hit recording, monsters all, and I had wealth beyond avarice.
I am haunted still by the memory of their questioning eyes as they realised their sudden predicament, that terrifying rapidity of age that struck them. But by then, of course, it was too late for them. Not only were their lives drawing to a close, but so too was their time as performers in the popular eye. They had no voice by the time they understood how they had been treated; the passing whim of the public had moved on to others–others the professor and I had created.
My Music Box label grew and grew, hit recording followed hit recording, monsters all, and I had wealth beyond avarice. Bands came and went, cynicism fed the need for more of this low form of popular culture and real musicians faded from the scene–for which, of course, the press blamed me, without ever knowing how correct they were to do so. After StepFor’d had passed their sell-by date, I created another group with the help of the professor, and another, and then another. How many in all, I do not know. Even the professor and I have lost count of their number. That’s for my accountants to worry about.
I suppose I need not state the obvious: why so many of the popular stars I promoted were quick to pick up a song and dance. Nor need I add who the “father” of those clone bands was. The professor had no biological gifts on that front; he had needed me as I had come to need him. Yes, the clones achieved enormous success, and lived their short lives to the full, despite their sudden painful ends. But the professor and I quickly discarded any qualms we might foster in our search for more of what we desired: wealth in my case, and the funds to carry on experimenting in his.
Eugene is long passed, and I suppose that now, after so many years, in a very short time so too will I be. Hence my “confession,” the need to tell all that occurred.
I have done so much, achieved such success, and yet I have watched so many youthful eyes die in faces lined almost overnight, the skin contracting around brittle skulls, lips drawing back, gums failing to hold canines and incisors as hair thins and hearing deteriorates. I have wealth beyond counting, silver and gold, money falling from my pocket, but it has always been the faces that haunt me. The faces all resemble the old man I have come to be, repeated time after time in the dying agonies of my artificial progeny.
Here, so near the end, when I think of the swirling vat and the extraction from my blood that the professor took to create my “children,” it is that greatest of truths that hits home hardest these decades later: a father should not outlive his sons, no matter how many of them there have been.
And believe me when I say, There have been so, so many.
Professor D. E. Balcass (b. 2142) currently holds the position of Emeritus Professor of Social Justice and Science, King’s College, New Oxford. Although he lectures rarely these days, he still takes on the occasional public appearance, most notably in popular media presentations. He is perhaps most famous for his lobbying work on behalf of Clones’ Rights. In Who’s Who, he lists his pastimes as Fishing, Walking, and Dominoes. He was awarded an OBE in the King’s New Year’s Honours List, 2240, for services to science and humanity.
British writer Mark Patrick Lynch’s short stories have appeared in various publications around the world, ranging from Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine to Zahir. On the internet, his work can be found on Daily Science Fiction, Perihelion, and Abyss and Apex. Several of his pieces have received honourable mentions in annual Year’s Best summaries as notable tales of the year. His print book Hour of the Black Wolf is published by Robert Hale Ltd, while What I Wouldn’t Give, a novella, is available for eBook. Don’t be shy: find him at markpatricklynch.blogspot.com, or through his twitter feed @markplynch.
For more information about Shannon Legler, visit her site at http://lendmeyourbones.tumblr.
com.