Interview with a Clone Chapter 11

Interview with a Clone

Chapter 11

By Mary E. Gerdt

2012 all rights reserved

Dolphin’s Point Lab, Bermuda 2064

Alice carefully packed up boxes of her mother’s books.
They could not be left out now that the weather turned hot again. The better ones were
to be donated to the Smithsonian Complex. They would be catalogued and restored. Many were
one of a kind. The books had a special feeling to Alice, a connection to the things her mother loved dearly, her work, her devotion, her global understanding, her scientific and ethical principles. Alice combed the books for understanding, insight, and looking for answers. How to clone, was it anywhere there, in those pages? She never found the answers,

Why, she thought. Why did her mother want to create an Alice? What were Susan Wolf’s parents like? Who were they? Alice’s Grandparents? Or were they her parents? Is a clone on genealogy like a side shoot?

Alice and the books were bound to fray and come apart, threatening emergence of the truth and the preservation of cloning technology. All of Susan’s cloning books had been seized by “authorities” shortly after her death. Alice thought all had been seized.

A paper fell to the floor in front of Alice. She drew a breath. She must have missed something. She paused before picking up the folded paper, amber in color.

“Alice” written on the front.

She tucked the paper into her briefcase and would open it later, when the time was right,
when she could handle it. She knew it was a letter from her Mom, posthumously, a message
Alice knew would be a doozey.

She went out on the beach for a few minutes, "Take a deep breath..." she heard her mother say.
She looked around. No one. Her mother was gone, who was that?
The hypnotic sounds of the waves and her level of exhaustion put her to sleep in moments.

When she woke up, she instinctively clutched her briefcase, hoping not to lose the message, from beyond.
All was there. She was relieved.
Then she remembered the idea, the idea she just had, while sleeping a deep cat nap.
It was a great idea, a grand idea, a must do, simple crazy sounding idea.
She scribbled,
"The clone tapes", on paper to remind herself, and then she left the beach
for her bed, some food, and a much longer sleep.