211 Years Ago
September 25, 2282
My children, we have come so far within God’s world. We have taken the Earth He has given us. We have taken Luna and made her our home. Through science, He has given us multiple gifts.
Unfortunately, the Adversary gives us temptations through science as well. The snake is the one who developed medicines to stop pregnancy and kill the Lord’s unborn. The snake lies, and the snake whispers. And the snake is the one who gave us cloning. Because who else better to spread the word of the Adversary than an army of soulless?
People have asked me. The Luna News Network has asked me. On Earth, CNN has asked me. Some of you, bless you, have asked me. And I will tell anyone the same thing I have told all of you: When a man dies, his soul goes to be with God, or the Adversary. If the man returns, do you think God gives the soul back? Of course not. And the snake is not likely to give up his ill-gotten gains. Those who return as clones are without souls, without the guidance of God.
Countless challenge me! Debate rages! Are they legally human? Can they inherit from themselves? Is killing one murder? And it’s an unpopular stance, but I believe it is not murder to remove from this world a man or woman who is not a child of God, whose soul cannot ascend.
[Pause for protests to die down]
The greatest gift is that of sacrifice. Christ gave his life for us. A clone would never sacrifice; it means nothing because the next day they can wake up and do it all over again. Nothing has meaning when you are a clone. Not love, not death, not life.
The Lord says Thou Shalt Not Kill, not Thou Shalt Not Murder, so no, I am not suggesting you create a clone hunting army. But if you meet a man who tells you he is a clone, pity him. Know you are staring into the eyes of a soulless man. Do not listen to his arguments about anything, because he is not arguing from a place of morality. He has no place in God’s heaven. Even worse than the amoral, the non-believers, the breakers of the Ten Commandments, is the clone, for the soulless’s actions stem from a place neither good nor evil. They stem from a place we don’t even know yet, and that is what scares me the most.
Father Gunter Orman stopped writing and sat back in his chair, sighing. His office was simple, as simple as any of the buildings on Luna could be. Unlike the monks who embraced poverty on Earth, Gunter had to accept the luxuries of colony life, or die. His walls were made of bricks that were a fusion of plastic and moon dust, using plentiful material up here, but outrageously expensive on Earth. The walls were a light gray, since he had refused paint to brighten it up. His furnishings were simple, bed and desk made from Luna resources except for his wooden desk chair, which had been a gift from his grandparents on Earth. His church was fancier than he’d like; the Vatican had spent a great deal to bring God’s glory to Luna, even shipping stained glass to the moon. It couldn’t catch the sunlight the way glass would on Earth, but it was a nice gesture.
Gunter judged his phrasing on his sermon. Everyone knew his stance on cloning, but he hadn’t made it an actual homily yet. The cardinals back home would be upset, he knew. Pope Beatrice I was severely anti-cloning, but even she hadn’t gone as far as to suggest it wasn’t a sin to kill them.
It was hard to live so far from the governing body of the church. He had only visited Earth three times in his life, each time a dizzying physical hardship because of the gravitational strain on his Luna-born body. He had seen the Vatican in its opulence and met the governing cardinals. They vetted carefully the priests who took their message to Luna, as they were far from the church’s control. But Gunter was different; he had been born on Luna, understood the people there, and was the first to enter the virtual seminary set up by missionaries. He had become more and more radical as his years had gone by, and he was due a visit from a cardinal soon. He expected this visit would end with gentle encouragement to retire.
But before that day came, he would leave his mark.
He wasn’t ready to retire. He could preach on this subject until his death if he needed to. He had stated his opinions on clones quite frankly; it went beyond good and evil into a place that was gray, and that scared him badly.
His office door opened behind him. “Mother Rosalind, is that you?” he asked without looking up from his terminal. “Can I ask you to check some spelling for me?”
He heard a chuckle, and then blinding pain exploded on the back of his head. Then nothing.
It had been Mother Rosalind. That was the thing that shocked him for years afterward: It had been Mother Rosalind who had chuckled behind him, and then hit him. His second in command, a priestess from Earth who had learned under him, and was becoming his greatest confidante. A clone plant.
He woke in a windowless lab, strapped to a cot. He struggled ineffectually, and nearly vomited from the pain on the back of his head. His fair hair felt wet. “Where—?” he managed to mumble.
“You’re in one of the cloning labs,” Mother Rosalind said. She was out of her habit now and dressed in white pants and a red blouse, as per the latest Luna fashion, for all her Earth-born stocky proportions. In street clothes, her brown skin wasn’t so stark as it was against the light habit, and she looked much younger; Gunter guessed she must be about thirty-five. If this was her first life, of course.
“Do you even have a soul?” he whispered, and she didn’t answer.
She was talking to a tall man of Earth Indian descent, with a few generations on Luna making his bone length long. He towered over her as they whispered together, and Orman thought he heard the man chastise her for injuring him. “He could have brain damage from that concussion,” he said in the lilting accent of northern Luna, where most Southeast Asian–descended people settled.
“He’s taller than I am,” she said. “I didn’t want to fight him.”
“No excuse. You’re younger and stronger. I will have to examine him to make sure he is well enough to do the mindmap.”
“Careful. He’ll fight you,” she said. “And he’s awake.”
The man leaned over Gunter, smiling. “Hello Father Orman. How are you feeling?”
Gunter closed his eyes and began muttering the Hail Mary.
His eyes flew open again when he felt hands on his head. He squirmed in revulsion at first, and fear second as the hands slipped a copper band over his head. The room seemed to tip and spin as he struggled, and his head felt as if it were on fire. He turned his head to the side and vomited all over the man.
Shaking and breaking out in a cold sweat, Gunter was unable to continue to fight the man tightening the band on his head. It quickly warmed to his skin. “This won’t hurt, just taking your vitals,” the man said, apparently not noticing the vomit on him.
Gunter tried to speak but nothing could come out. His head swam, and as the band warmed past body temperature, he began remembering his life vividly, growing up on Luna, his first communion, the pain and wonder of visiting Earth for the first time, the day he was appointed to the only Catholic church on Luna.
He drifted in and out of consciousness. He was pretty sure they drugged him, since he no longer felt pain.
The sins came roaring back as well, the small thefts he did as a child, the sharp words that hurt people he loved, and the times his sermons had pushed someone toward something less than holy, when his intentions had been so pure. A bright spot of shame flared as he remembered the time he had gotten drunk in seminary and had fornicated with a friend bound for priestesshood. It had been her idea, “Just to make sure we know what we’re giving up,” but admittedly he hadn’t argued much.
“Vitals.” It was a lie, he realized with a start. This wasn’t a device that took his vitals, they were taking his mindmap, trying to copy his very being, but releasing his soul. He tried to struggle again, the hair on the back of his head feeling thick and matted. Vertigo seized him and he dry-heaved, which only made the memories more vivid, the shameful ones seeming louder than the good ones.
His last thought before he passed out was gratitude that the encroaching darkness might mean death.
It was the absence of pain that made his eyes fly open some time later.
The chronic pain of the elderly was something everyone accepted as a fact of life. Waking with your lower or upper back throbbing, having your joints greet you loudly once you stood for the first time in the morning, and other maladies of getting old. Gunter had heard it was worse on Earth, with the increased gravity, but he figured he had it bad enough as is.
Only now he woke feeling good. Strong. His hands flew to the back of his head, expecting to find a bandage, but he only felt thick hair. He traced his face, finding no wrinkles, and the backs of his hands were pale white with no age spots.
He wondered briefly what the sound was in the room until he realized the high-pitched whine, the sound of an animal in a trap, was himself.
He flailed and fell off his bed, hitting the tiled floor in a way that would have broken his hip a day ago. He was naked, and saw that his whole body was young and strong.
They did it, I can’t believe they did it, they will burn for this, burn for it, oh Lord, what have I done to displease You?
Rosalind interrupted his panic by opening the door. He pushed himself away from her, against the cot, covering his genitals and avoiding her eyes.
She gave him a sour look. “Please. It’s not like I haven’t seen it all before, many times,” she said.
His outrage that she, a priestess, had seen a man intimately, rose briefly before he remembered that she was a sham. For all he knew, she could have been having carnal experiences while she was posing as a chaste member of the church.
For his own modesty, he didn’t move his right hand, but reached up with his left and pulled the thin sheet from the bed to cover his lower half.
Rosalind yanked the sheet off the bed and dropped it on him, dismissing his shame. “Whatever. You’ll get used to it. You’ll need time to acclimate to your first waking. How do you feel?”
“You’ll die for this,” he whispered. “Murderer, soul slayer, abomination.”
“Careful how you throw those words around, Gunter. Every word you sling against clones, you’re slinging against yourself,” she said. “Can’t you see now? I didn’t slay your soul; you’re just like you were before, only with a younger body.”
“How could you do this to me? I supported you! I invited you into my church!” he asked.
“All the while you were calling my kind abominations,” she said coldly. She took a chair from the table and sat down. “Anytime I started to develop any warm feelings of friendship toward you, you helped dampen them by telling me how I’m a soulless freak.”
Adrenaline flared in his chest like fireworks. Dear God, he had forgotten what such strength felt like. “What do you think is going to happen now? You want me to stand up and say, Hello, I’m a clone priest and clones are not soulless, and God Himself approves!”
“That’s a start,” she said. “Think, if you’re the first head of a church to welcome clones into the fold, you will have parishioners for centuries, tithing and supporting. Most clones are savvy with money and build wealth to support themselves through their lives. That’s what the church wants, right? Tithing?”
“You think this is about money? You killed me for money?”
“Oh, unclench, Gunter. You’ve been to the Vatican; of course it’s all about money. Clone money is the same color as anyone else’s. They figured it out when they finally accepted women and queers and”—she gasped, mimicking an outraged priest—“a queer woman like me. Now they can figure it out again. But we need your anecdotal evidence to support us.”
“I won’t do it,” he said. “I will expose you.”
She sighed. “Gunter, cloning you is not the only plan my organization has for you. You could help us now, or help us later, but you will end up helping us.”
“I’ll die first!”
She leaned forward, all warmth gone from her face. “Then we will clone you again. We can do this all day.”
“Then do it,” he said, standing up and dropping the sheet. “I won’t break.”
She stood. “You don’t know the first thing about clone technology, do you?” she asked.
“What do you mean?”
“Never mind. Dinner will be served in an hour.” She reached into her bag. “In the meantime, I brought you some reading material.” She produced View from the Vat, the first memoir of the successful entrepreneur clone, Sallie Mignon. “See the story from another point of view. I hope you change your mind. The alternative won’t be pretty.”