Sci-Fi

by Scribes Stories · 7 min read · 4 views

The Clone's Garden Designation Seven had been grown, not born, in the Meridian Biotech facility's cloning labs, one of eleven genetically identical copies created from the same source template, a brilliant botanist named Dr. Helena Voss whose specialized knowledge of extremophile plant cultivation had been deemed valuable enough to justify the considerable expense of the cloning program in the first place. Seven had lived nineteen years now, considerably longer than the program's original projections had anticipated any single clone surviving, and had spent every one of those nineteen years quietly wondering whether anything about who Seven actually was belonged to Seven alone, or whether every thought, every preference, every quiet private inclination had simply been inherited, entirely predetermined, from the original template Seven had been copied from. "You worry too much about the source template," said Dr. Amrita Krishnan, the facility's staff psychologist, during one of Seven's mandatory quarterly evaluations. "The genetic material is identical, certainly, but nineteen years of your own independent experience have shaped you into someone considerably more than a simple copy of Dr. Voss. You're not required to be her, Seven. You're only required to develop the specialized botanical expertise the program originally intended, using whatever genetic advantages that shared template happens to provide." "But how do I know which parts of me are actually mine," Seven asked, a question that had occupied considerably more of Seven's private thoughts than the facility's official evaluations typically explored, "and which parts are simply the genetic template expressing itself through me, the same way it presumably expressed itself through Dr. Voss and through my ten genetic siblings, all of us apparently drawn toward the exact same specialized interest in extremophile cultivation, regardless of whatever different environments we've each individually experienced?" Dr. Krishnan considered this question with more genuine seriousness than her usual careful professional neutrality typically allowed. "That's a considerably more difficult question than our standard evaluation protocols are really designed to properly address," she admitted. "I don't have a fully satisfying answer for you, Seven. I'm not certain anyone does, given how genuinely new the entire cloning program still is. But I wonder if the question itself might be somewhat differently framed than you're currently approaching it." "How so?" "You're asking which parts of you are genuinely yours, as though ownership requires the trait to have originated entirely independently of your genetic template," Dr. Krishnan said. "But consider that every human being who has ever lived inherited genetic predispositions from their biological parents, tendencies toward certain interests, certain temperaments, certain talents. Nobody considers those inherited traits somehow less authentically theirs simply because they can trace an origin point in their parents' own genetic material. Perhaps the question isn't whether your interest in botanical cultivation originated with you or with Dr. Voss's template. Perhaps the more useful question is what you've actually done with that inherited interest, over nineteen years of your own independent experience, that Dr. Voss herself never did and never could have done, simply because she lived an entirely different life than the one you've actually lived." Seven sat with this reframing for a considerable time after the evaluation concluded, working through the facility's specialized greenhouse gardens where Seven spent most working hours, tending the extremophile plant specimens that had originally justified the entire cloning program's considerable expense. It was during this period of extended reflection that Seven began noticing something that had perhaps always been present but had never previously received proper attention. While Dr. Voss's original research, according to the facility's extensive archives, had focused almost exclusively on the plants' pure survival mechanisms, their ability to withstand extreme heat, extreme cold, extreme radiation exposure, Seven's own nineteen years of independent work had gradually drifted toward a considerably different, more personal fascination. Seven had become increasingly interested not merely in how these extremophile plants survived their harsh conditions, but in the subtle, almost imperceptible ways they seemed to adapt their basic structure and behavior across successive generations, small variations accumulating slowly across each new cycle of growth that suggested something considerably more dynamic and individually expressive than Dr. Voss's original survival focused research had ever fully examined. "I've been tracking generational variation patterns," Seven explained to Dr. Krishnan, during their next quarterly evaluation, considerable excitement evident despite Seven's usual careful, measured way of speaking. "Not simply how these plants survive their extreme conditions, which was always Dr. Voss's primary focus, but how each successive generation subtly expresses that inherited survival capacity in slightly different, individually distinct ways. I think I've discovered something Dr. Voss's original research never actually explored, because her focus was always on the shared inherited trait rather than on the individual variation each new generation brings to expressing that trait." Dr. Krishnan listened with genuine interest, recognizing something significant in what Seven was describing, considerably beyond its immediate botanical implications. "Do you understand what you've actually just described, Seven? You've spent nineteen years developing a research focus that Dr. Voss herself never once pursued, using the very same inherited botanical expertise her original template provided you. That's not simply inherited behavior expressing itself identically through a genetic copy. That's you, specifically and individually, taking an inherited foundation and building something considerably beyond it that reflects your own particular curiosity, developed across your own particular nineteen years of experience." Seven considered this, something loosening in a private uncertainty that had quietly persisted for the better part of two decades. "So the interest in botany might have originated with the template," Seven said slowly, working through the implication, "but the specific direction I've taken that interest, the particular questions I've found myself drawn to explore, those are actually mine. Genuinely, individually mine, in a way that isn't simply predetermined by shared genetic material." "That's precisely what I'm suggesting," Dr. Krishnan said. "And I'd go further, Seven. I'd suggest that the very fact you've spent nineteen years worried about this question, genuinely wrestling with what belongs to you individually versus what came from your genetic template, is itself something considerably individual to you specifically. I've evaluated all eleven of your genetic siblings over the years, and I can tell you honestly, this particular preoccupation, this careful, sustained philosophical questioning of your own authentic individuality, is not something I've observed with anything close to the same intensity in any of your genetic siblings. That worry itself, whatever its ultimate answer turns out to be, is genuinely, distinctly yours." Seven returned to the greenhouse gardens that evening carrying something considerably lighter than the persistent uncertainty that had shadowed nineteen years of careful, quiet self examination. The genetic template remained, unchangeable and permanently shared among eleven identical copies scattered across the facility's various research divisions. But the particular shape Seven's own life had taken, built from that shared foundation through nineteen years of individually accumulated experience, curiosity, and increasingly original research direction, belonged, Seven finally allowed personal permission to believe, genuinely and completely to Seven alone. Seven's continued research into generational plant variation eventually developed into a genuinely significant contribution to the facility's broader botanical program, work that Dr. Voss's original template, focused as it had always been on pure survival mechanics, had never once considered pursuing. When the facility's director eventually reviewed Seven's accumulated research for potential publication, considering appropriate attribution for work built upon Dr. Voss's original foundational template, Seven found the resulting conversation considerably easier to navigate than nineteen years of private uncertainty might have once predicted. "The foundational survival research remains Dr. Voss's original contribution," Seven said, reviewing the proposed publication credits with newfound clarity. "But the generational variation research, the actual questions asked and the actual conclusions reached, that work is mine. Built from an inherited foundation, certainly, the same way any researcher builds from whatever foundation their particular field and their particular training happened to provide them. But the building itself, the specific direction taken and the specific insights developed along the way, that part was never simply predetermined. That part, I've finally come to genuinely believe, was always mine to develop, however genetically identical my basic starting material happened to be to ten other clones who apparently never felt compelled to ask quite the same questions I did."