Futuristic Sci-Fi Book Series With Human Cloning
The ReLife Project by C.M. Dancha
Series excerpt
Fifteen hours later, Claude Ekstrom and Rollie Sweats sat in the company cafeteria wondering why their animal testing was a bust. It had been a tough night filled with a few successes but plenty of failures. Rollie massaged his brow with his right hand, hoping to calm his splitting headache. The coffee he drank wasn't helping either. He promised himself to bring a container of whiskey to the next 'all-nighter' to either help celebrate or drown his sorrows.
Of the twelve animals they replicated, only five turned out physically sound. They had all their limbs and the internal organs were correctly positioned. There were no apparent maladies or disfigurements. Also, the five survivors appeared to be acting the same as non-cloned animals of the same genus.
The evaluation of their mental capacity was a guess based on a couple of hours of observation by Claude and Rollie. These animals, which consisted of two mice, one small dog, and two frogs, seemed alert and responsive to external stimulus. They over-ate just like their non-cloned counterparts. A brain scan of each revealed waves like those found in the same non-cloned species. Unfortunately, these observations and tests didn't guarantee the cloned brains were functioning properly. Until they could communicate with cloned animals or humans, the two scientists had no way of confirming the accuracy and functionality of replicated brains. Based on the pathetic results of the first round of cloning, the idea of communicating with a replicant seemed far in the future.
The seven animals who did not clone correctly were monstrosities. To refer to them as mutants or freaks was a compliment rather than a slur. Rollie could still see the twisted, deformed bodies of these pitiful victims. But what scared the crap out of him was the perverse expressions on their faces. If eyes were truly the windows to the soul, these things somehow knew they were hideous and not meant to live.
Fortunately, most of them died within an hour of being taken out of the CR47 incubator. The one which survived beyond an hour cried and writhed in terrible pain. It looked at Claude and Rollie with pleading eyes wishing to be shown mercy. Finally, Claude couldn't take anymore and put the pitiful thing out of its misery.
Only five of the seven failures were autopsied. Rollie and Claude realized examining every creature was a waste of time. There were no noticeable similarities in their deformities. The few external limbs and internal organs which appeared to be normal were not similar from one to another. Rollie was hoping the failed clones would show the same deformities in part or whole. Similarities among the failures might have revealed a clue about why some cloned replicants were a success and others were a disaster.
Simply touching the failures during autopsy gave Rollie the willies. He and Claude wasted no time and completed each examination within fifteen minutes. If they wanted to spend more time examining the bodies, they could review the autopsy videos later. Rollie couldn't wait to dispose of the bodies in the combustion chamber designed to incinerate hazardous waste.
The five successful clones were now critical to understanding if cloning in the CR47 could be done with a high rate of success. These five animals needed to be analyzed and evaluated thoroughly. If there was a common denominator among them which guaranteed successful cloning, it needed to be found. There had to be a common link between these clones which the seven unsuccessful clones did not have. Until it could be found, Rollie was hesitant to move ahead with more testing. He didn't think he could tolerate seeing more deformed and mutated animals.
"Claude, can you take the mice home and keep an eye on them? I'll take the puppy and frogs to my place."
"What do you want me to do with the mice?"
"Well first, take two other mice from the lab so you have two clones and two non-clones. Treat all four the same. Feed them the same food in the same proportions and at the same time. Put their cages side by side. Watch their behavior and put a recorder on the cages. Think of some tests you can put all four mice through. Maybe create a maze and see if the cloned mice can negotiate it as well as the non-cloned mice. Be creative, Claude, and use your imagination. There must be several tests you can think of to determine if all four mice act the same. Oh, by the way, mark the mice on their bellies so you don't get them mixed up."
"That sounds easy enough, Rollie. What are you going to do with your clones?"
"I'm not sure what I can do with the frogs, but I'll think of some tests to put the puppy through. I grew up with a bunch of dogs in the neighborhood, so I have a good idea of how to train a dog and determine its intelligence. One of the things we definitely have to focus on is the clone's ability to remember."
"What do you mean, Rollie?"
"It's critical to know if the clone can remember what it learns each day. In other words, does it have a memory? Let me give you an example. Let's say one of your cloned mice learns how to negotiate the maze and lowers his average time to five minutes. Then, you stop the maze test for a week before resuming it. Does the same mouse remember how to get through the maze in five minutes? Or, does he have to relearn the intricacies of the maze to get back to the five-minute speed?"
"Okay, that sounds reasonable. What else do we need to do?"
"For the next few days, we need to go through the autopsy results and analyze the blood, fluids and tissue samples. We need to run comparative tests on the chromosomes and DNA for all the clones. Bottom line is that we need to look at everything. We need to explain why some clones were successful and others were, well, you saw what they were."
Rollie paused for a minute to take another drink of coffee. After collecting his thoughts, he spoke. "Claude, if we're going to play God, we better be damn sure we know what we're doing because I don't have the stomach for any more results like tonight."
Before Claude could say anything, Rollie spotted Raul Hakala enter the cafeteria and look his way. He gave Rollie a half wave, went to the coffee dispenser for a cup and then walked over to the where Rollie and Claude were sitting.
"Oh, shit! Claude, don't look now but Raul, the security director, is heading over to our table. Let me do the talking, okay?"
"He's all yours, Rollie."
"Well, I didn't expect to find you two here this morning. Especially on your day off."
Raul sat down and began adding a sweet creamer to his coffee.
"Hi, Raul. Do you know Claude Ekstrom?"
Raul leaned over the table and shook Claude's hand. "Pleased to meet you, Claude. You have a popular last name."
Claude didn't know how to take Raul's remark. Rollie knew he was either kidding or wanted to see if he could get a rise out of Claude. Either way, the remark was of no importance. Claude kept his mouth shut and ignored the security director's comment.
"Funny, Raul. To answer your question, Claude and I were here all night working on the ReLife project. What are you doing here so bright and early?"
"One of my agents is sick so I thought I'd fill in for him." Raul's lie sounded plausible. And it was unlikely that Rollie would waste time trying to verify his story.
Neither man was going to admit what they were doing at Phoenvartis on a day the company was closed. Raul wasn't going to say that he came in to look for abuses in the ReLife project. And Rollie left out that he and Claude spent the entire night using a supposedly inoperable CR47 cloning machine.
For the next thirty minutes, the three men sat in the cafeteria discussing sports, women, family and any other subject they could wring a few laughs and thoughtful remarks from. As much as Raul tried, he couldn't get Rollie or Claude to open-up about their late-night vigil. Their silence would make his job of getting to the bottom of the ReLife project a little harder. But he was glad they kept quiet about highly confidential information.
"Well guys, I have to get home and get some sleep. Raul, it was a pleasure meeting you and I'm sure I'll run into you more in the future."
"The pleasure was all mine, Claude. Say hello to your uncle for me."
Claude stopped shaking Raul's hand at the mention of his uncle and gave Raul a questioning stare.
"Yeah, sure. No problem. See you guys later." Claude turned and walked out of the cafeteria. On his way to the lab to get the mice, he wondered why Raul would make such an odd comment about saying hello to his uncle. Did he think his uncle was a close friend? As far as Claude knew, Raul reported directly to his uncle which gave him more access to the man than himself. When Claude got to his office, he was too tired to worry anymore about Raul. If he remembered, he would ask Rollie in a day or two what Raul was trying to do with the comment about Klaus. Otherwise, screw Raul.
"Claude was pretty quiet this morning, Rollie. I heard he was a loud-mouth, ego-filled dink. He sure didn't act that way this morning."
"Claude is a good guy when you get to know him, Raul. Plus, I worked him hard last night. I'm sure he's really tired like I am."
Not to be denied, Raul tried one last time to discover what Rollie and Claude were doing during the night. "Did you guys make any progress on ReLife last night?"
Rollie wanted to either laugh at Raul's question or tell him to knock off the bullshit. The repetitive questions about ReLife and their all-night vigil plus the wisecrack about saying hello to Klaus made it obvious he was digging for something. If he had to guess, Rollie put his money on Klaus instructing Raul to find out why the ReLife project was stuck in place.
Rollie made a mental note to himself to talk with Claude about Raul. Claude had to understand they now had a bloodhound on their trail. They would have to be extra sneaky and cautious from this point forward.
"Raul, I think we made some progress last night. We spent most of the time evaluating our progress thus far and laying out the best course of action for pushing the ReLife project ahead. You know, just scientist type stuff."
Raul gave Rollie credit for coming up with such a noncommittal, ambiguous answer. He was good at making nothing sound so important. With or without Rollie's help he would get to the bottom of the ReLife project one way or another.
"Well, I know you guys will figure things out soon. Hey, are we going to meet for dinner tonight?"
"Yeah, I'm glad you reminded me. Let's meet at the Raven's Lair at 7 p.m. I need to get a good nap this afternoon, so I won't bore you to death at dinner. Do you know where the Raven's Lair is?"
"I do. They've got great food. I'll meet you there at seven bells. Go home and get some sleep, buddy."
Raul patted Rollie on the back a couple of times as the two men left the cafeteria. Once in the main hallway, they went opposite directions. Rollie needed to get the puppy and frogs before going home. Raul's first stop was the monitoring central station to review recordings and look for unusual access code activity.
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