211 Years Ago
October 8, 2282
Senator Jo Waide paced her Geneva office, pausing each time to look out the window at the horde. If she hadn’t been the target of the protests, it would have been interesting. Clones, humans, everyone had a different reason to protest the Codicil Summit. Some held signs that said CLONES ARE UNNATURAL IN THE EYES OF GOD, while others’ signs said KEEP YOUR LAWS OFF MY BODY.
Opposed in their views but united in their cause, none of them wanted the laws she was currently writing. The laws would legitimize clones as legal world citizens, which upset the humans, but would also rein in their freedoms, which upset the clones.
She remembered her mother, decades before, warning her against trying to please too many people at once. Mother had also said not to go into politics.
The most upsetting thing, however, was the news story open on her personal tablet: the clone riots had reached the Luna colony when an anti-cloning priest abruptly, suspiciously changed his tune.
The tab underneath the new story had the email with the inside information about what had really happened on the moon. Some clone extremists had hired a hacker to reprogram the priest in order to get him to speak out in favor of clones’ rights, but it had all gone very wrong. Apparently a clone showing up and suddenly discounting everything it had said in a previous life was a bit of a red flag.
Idiots.
Despair flooded Jo as she collapsed back into her leather desk chair. These extremists had ruined everything. Mindmap and matrix programmers were currently tightly controlled and always used under the supervision and approval of doctors. They’d started with much more freedom to fix all sorts of genetic problems at first. Now extremists were changing who people were—not their genetic makeup, but their base personality.
It shouldn’t have been possible. No one had achieved that level of sophistication with programming. Jo estimated that fewer than five people could handle that level of mindmap programming.
Her other committee members, three clones and five humans, didn’t know her personal association with hackers. If they had, they wouldn’t have invited her onto the committee.
She’d used a hacker to modify her DNA to reverse the genetic anomaly that caused her to be born with withered legs. She found the new legs weren’t for her; they weren’t her. She didn’t feel broken in her original skin. She’d already decided her next clone would have the legs she was born with, regardless of the law. But it didn’t matter where she personally stood on the issue; if the committee found out that she had used the skills of a DNA hacker, then they would kick her out for bias.
And for the people who needed their modifications, namely the people with genetic illnesses and the transgender population, the best she could hope was for the committee to agree to a grandfathering of existing modifications.
But after the Luna colony priest incident…her colleagues would be out for blood.
She rubbed her face and read the news story again, and then reread the intel about the hacker. “You have no idea what you’ve ruined,” she muttered, eyes fixed on the Luna priest, Father Gunter Orman. But it wasn’t his fault. You can’t fight a personality hack. He was just the figurehead of all of their future lives altered forever. The true ruiner was the hacker, and whoever financed them.
Her tablet beeped. A text from her assistant, Chris, scrolled across the face: MEETING RECONVENING. She took a deep breath and went to head the meeting that would finalize the Codicils to create worldwide laws about cloning.
Her last job as a pediatric surgeon specializing in birth defects had been easier. And she’d never thought she would think that.
Government officials and their translators from all over the world milled about in the room. When Jo arrived, Chris appeared at her side with a cup of coffee and a tablet with notes. She sat at the head of the table, and the others took the cue to join.
“You’ve all had a chance to read through the proposed Codicils,” she said. “I’m going to put forth a vote on passing the rules as a whole document. Opposed?”
Ambassador Yang, a Chinese representative from Earth’s Pan Pacific United countries, spoke up immediately, his translator at his shoulder talking over him.
“We do not like to give complete approval of a document. Each part must be debated. What interests me is what is happening on the moon right now.”
Jo groaned inwardly and nodded. She sent a link to the group so that everyone could see the news feed. “It is a tragic thing that happened to Father Orman, but our proposed Codicils will make his entire situation illegal. It is already illegal to kidnap, murder, and clone against a person’s will, of course. Now it will be against the law to hack a matrix against the will of the person.”
The table erupted around her with questions and arguments. The Brazilian ambassador spoke loudest in accented English. “‘Against the will’ is not good enough. The damage caused by matrix hackers far outweighs the benefits. We need to outlaw the entire thing!”
Jo held her hand up and waited for silence. “Shall we begin debating Codicil Five to start with?”
The answers, mostly positive, chorused through the table once the translators had passed the message along.
Joanna sighed and sipped her coffee. It was going to be a long night.
At four the next morning, Jo rubbed her tired eyes. She sat with Chris at the otherwise empty table.
“You did it, Senator,” he said, passing her a fresh cup of coffee.
She raised an eyebrow. “Decaf, I hope?”
“Of course,” he said.
The meeting had gotten heated when various opinions about clones and humans came out on either side. Pan Pacific United Ambassador Yang, after demanding they debate each Codicil, came down strangely on Jo’s side more often than not. Most of the rules were easy to pass: No society wanted multiples of a clone. Overpopulation, homelessness, and crime were just a few of the arguments. Putting one person’s mindmap into a clone that wasn’t their body was easy too: That would just cause the clone to go insane. No arguments there.
The mind hacking had been a problem, with a majority voting to outlaw all but the most basic. If you had a hack, you couldn’t be grandfathered in, so hundreds of clones would wake tomorrow with problems they thought they’d left behind decades ago.
One Codicil that didn’t pass was the law that would deny clones any religion. Most world religions had agreed that cloning was against the rules of God/Goddess/Gods/Nature, anyway, so they dealt with it in their own houses of worship. But leaving the clones with no recourse to religion was deemed too limiting.
Arguments got into what a clone truly was, if it was even human anymore. Clones had rights other humans did not, such as the ability to leave themselves their whole estate upon death, the ability to live forever, and the ability for some people in lifetime jobs to hold their position for much longer than a lifetime. Thus they agreed that clones were “antipodal-human” and “antipodal-citizens.”
“I am surprised to have gotten the support I did from Ambassador Yang,” she said. “We couldn’t have passed the inheritance law without him.”
“Interesting fact,” Chris said in a neutral tone. “His translator, Minoru Takahashi, is planning on becoming a clone.”
Jo snapped her head up. “How did you find that out?”
“He told me in the break room while we were getting coffee. This was after everything had been signed, of course.”
All clones (or people who intended to become clones) were required to give full disclosure to the committee. Jo and her staff hadn’t vetted the translators; their bosses were supposed to do that.
“Why are you telling me this?” she asked. “I may have to report him to Ambassador Yang.”
Chris shrugged. “He looked like he had gotten away with something, but I don’t know the guy well enough to say. He didn’t disclose any diplomatic secrets, if that’s what you’re asking. We just talked about ourselves.”
“I can’t worry about it now. For better or worse, it’s done,” she said. “But get me the information on that translator. I’d like to follow him, especially if he’s going to be around for the next few decades.”
In the following weeks, Jo learned a bit about Minoru Takahashi’s influence, especially when the Pan Pacific United government received the final translated copy of the Codicils, signed by their own ambassador and Takahashi. Apparently Yang had agreed to several things that he had no memory of agreeing to. There wasn’t much they could do at this point, but Jo expected future diplomatic talks might be frosty. In all fairness, it wasn’t her fault, but “fair” didn’t have much power in diplomacy.
Chris dug up a good deal about Takahashi: He was considered a genius, having mastered eight languages by the time he was thirty. He might have had a bright future, except that the Pan Pacific United countries had sentenced him to die for his act of treason soon after the Codicils passed.
Too smart for his own good, she thought when Chris informed her of his incarceration.
Soon after, she retired from politics and decided to study dupliactric medicine, thinking she didn’t want to be a clone with a medical degree and not know exactly how cloning worked. She enrolled in Stanford University’s medical school under her middle name, Glass, and kept her head down for the next eight years.
She made herself a name in clone medicine, even started helping now out-of-work hackers find work within the legal limitations of DNA and matrix research. In her next life, she stayed within the same sphere of study, finding the work rewarding.
She’d been considering a move to Luna when she started to hear about the Dormire and its mission, still in the planning phase. She made some inquiries and found out who was in charge of it, starting with her old aide, Chris, who was now an elderly state senator in New York and chairperson of the state’s Clone Care Committee. He was only too happy to reconnect with her.
Over lunch on the rooftop of the Firetown skyscraper in New York, she found out some very interesting things. Sallie Mignon, owner of the very building they were in, was a major financier of the ship. They were using criminal labor to fly it. She needed a doctor on board.
“She’s familiar with your work, and your history. She would like to hire you.”
“I’m not a criminal,” she pointed out to him. “And I’m not sure that I’d want to fly with a bunch of felons.”
“There are multiple fail-safes. We have an AI whose authority trumps even the captain. Each crew member is promised a clean slate on the other end of the trip, so long as they keep their noses clean. They’ll be vetted carefully.”
“So how am I paid if I’m not criminal labor?” she asked.
“It’s no problem to give land grants on Artemis,” Chris said, picking at his fish. He took a bite and then handed his tablet to Joanna. It showed probe images of Artemis, a planet with considerable water content, even more than the Earth. It was beautiful, the islands that made up the land formations having coves and beaches and mountains. It reminded Joanna of a much larger and more complex Hawaii.
She stabbed a green bean with her fork. “I don’t know. I’ve never met her, but Mignon doesn’t have the best reputation in the business world. I’ve heard some rumors that she doesn’t like threats, and she sees anyone crossing her as a threat. Even people who disagree with her.”
“That’s a bit extreme,” Chris said. “She’s wealthy and influential; she deals with the leftover prejudice against unaffiliated female business professionals. She’s not beholden to any corporate state, so many corps are threatened by her and her wealth. And she doesn’t suffer fools.”
Joanna raised an eyebrow. “And she was a big supporter of your campaign?”
He held out his hands, liver-spotted and slightly trembling, as if to show he had nothing up his sleeve. “I’ve always been transparent.”
Sallie Mignon. Joanna figured it was better to be on her good side than her bad.
“Send me the information.”