While Jennifer was walking to work, a dark thought loomed in her head: Is this project betraying everything I have come to believe in?


Jennifer is a leading scientist conducting experiments on cloning. The past six months have been a monumental breakthrough for the research group as they get closer to reaching the final goal; cloning the entire human race. The validation for cloning every human being is to hopefully save more humans, who recently have been dying of infections starting in the limbs of the body. These infections then spread to the rest of the body, resulting in killing the human. If these infections could be detected soon enough where the limbs could be removed before the disease spreads, then the limbs would be replaced and the person could go on living normal life. Every human will be cloned at birth, resulting in their clones being nine months younger than them. Being a leader of the project, Jennifer has been a driving force for the project for the last years, but doubts rears its ugly head every now and then.


Stepping inside her lab, Jennifer put on her white lab coat, pulled her brown hair back into a ponytail, and traded her size 10 running shoes for a pair of white lab shoes. She saw Paul was already working, it seemed as if he never left the lab and was obsessed with the idea of cloning.


“How’s research coming along?” questioned Jennifer.


“Great!” he hollered back, “We could start cloning by next week! Isn’t that just fascinating? We’ve really done it.”


“Oh I’m glad to hear that,” she uttered sarcastically, “maybe one person will be able to live for centuries.”


“That’s coming closer than you can even imagine, with all of our successful tests,” said Paul with too much enthusiasm.


Unfortunately for Jennifer, it was. She can’t decide if she needs to follow her heart or mind; the positives and negatives of both sides are very tempting. Her mind tells her she needs to follow through with the project because it will allow all humans to have easy access of excess limbs or organ transplant, which could result in saving their life. But it is for the cost of another’s life. Her heart tells her it's wrong because the clones only purpose in life is to harvest organs and other useful body material for the person originally cloned from. She knows she has to make up her mind soon, but for now Jennifer carries on with her work.


Looking at the results from the latest test was fantastic, all the clones are still living. Usually, they would live for roughly a month and then die overnight. The first three weeks the clones are in perfect health, but the last week everything in their body declines rapidly, causing them to die. Their oldest clone, six months, is in perfect physical condition and has had no indication of decline; it has been called the “miracle” clone. A special serum (Serum 4) was injected into the “miracle” clone at creation that has allowed it to live farther than one month, the scientist are hoping Serum 4 is the solution they have been looking for. Before, the death of all the clones were a direct result of a malfunction in their reproductive organs. Serum 4 eliminated all reproductive organs in “miracle” clone’s body.


An announcement was made over the intercom:


Since specimen 661 has lived for six months, we will be cloning seven more babies that have just been born today. If specimen 661 lives for one more month and the seven new species also live for seven months, we will release our serum to the public. That is all. Carry on.


Jennifer hates the voice on the intercom, she associates it with a lifeless robot that dictates her life. The government funds and runs the entire lab and test conducted; it makes her skin crawl.


One of the many duties of Jennifer’s job is to help clone the babies, allowing her to see the seven new babies that were born today and be the fundamental building blocks for seven new clones. Walking into the nursery, where the seven new babies lay, wanted to make her throw up, working on this project was becoming less tolerable.


She took the first baby, a female who weighed 5.63 lbs, with bright beautiful blue eyes.


“Looks like you will be replicated into becoming specimen 662,” Jennifer softly whispered. Her lips brushed the soft pink skin of the new born’s ear, “I hope you never hurt yourself severally enough that you will need to take your clone’s life. Even though they never had a life in the first place, us scientists already took that.”


The baby started to cry, but Jennifer still stuck the needle into its chubby little arm, only making things worse. After extracting the DNA from the baby, Jennifer took it into another lab room. She there combined it with harvested embryotic cells. She had done this process so many times she often found herself in machine like state. When she was done she brought the DNA to Paul.


“Oh good, more specimen juice!” Paul said excitedly.


“Do you think what we are doing is right?” Jennifer blurted out.


“What do you mean?” asked Paul with a puzzled look


“Do you think it’s correct, playing The Creator? For the people? I mean the clones will never have a life; they have no purpose in living. Once they are old enough to live alone, we are just going to throw them in a pen and lock them up like cattle. For them their only purpose to live is to die.”


“Jennifer, this is the future,” Paul implied as he approached her, “We have to do this, for the sake of humanity, for the better of our race. Think of this, the human race, one person living for hundreds of years because of our discoveries. All because we created clones, who is not a real humans and have accepted their fate as at just being replacements parts; they will never know any better . This is the brilliant future.”
Paul made logical sense, but Jennifer could not accept it. Fathoming the idea of creating someone whose main purpose in life is to die; her brain could not wrap itself around that idea.


Five months had passed. The new seven clones had lived, along with the “miracle” clone. Jennifer knows she is getting pressed for time on her final decision. Entering the break room, she opens the fridge and fishes out the rest of her lunch she did not finish today.


“I know it will be ready for tomorrow to show the government. Aren’t you so excited?” a voice echoed in the quiet hallway connecting to the break room, “Finally, we reached our goal: being able to clone babies, who survive, therefore proving we can clone the whole human race.” It was Paul’s voice coming down the hallway. He was walking towards the break room while talking to another person. Jennifer wanted to listen in on his conversation without being seen, he was getting dangerously close so she jumped into the closet to hide.


“Are you sure about this Paul?” replied another man. It was Chase, the boss of the company. “I don’t want another failed attempt in front of the Leader, he said next time it happens it’s my head, literally”


“I promise sir. When we show them tomorrow we will be able to clone the next day.” Jennifer’s jaw dropped in horror, she could not believe the words Paul had just spoke; she had run out of time.


The next day Jennifer was pacing outside of the office where the meeting was taking place. Inside that room, the future of mankind was forever being altered, to an unknown realm that had previously believed to be hundreds of years away. She wanted to go in, but instantly became scared when she took a step towards the door. From within she was torn, and could not make sense of the pieces she had.


“Is this ethical?” she questioned herself repeatedly. She had never been one to question ethics; science had always been her guide to life. Lately, she’s been thinking differently though, resulting in making her brain muddled. The thought of playing The Creator, making living organisms and pointing a finger as to when they die, did not sit right with her. The clones would be trapped in another society, ignorant to the better opportunities that the world holds for them. Also, they are not an original, they are a duplicate of someone else, and they never had a chance of having their own life. She could not take this anymore, every cell in her body screamed it was wrong. She had to put an end to this right now and there is only one way.


Grabbing the cold handle of the door sent shivers up her spine, but she pushed these feelings aside. Inside, at the head of the table, sat the Leader of the government. Next to him sat his right hand man and on the left was Jennifer’s boss, Chase. Paul stood at the front of the room, presenting their data. Four bodyguards stood in the room; two at the door and two by the Leader.


“Stop this! You cannot fund cloning or approve of it! How could you possibly believe in something that creates people just to die? It is horrific!” Jennifer screamed at the top of her lungs.


Chase jumped out of his seat and yelled back,


“What are you possibly thinking? This is the future! You of all people must believe this. How can you be questioning now if you pushed for this project from the beginning”


“Why not question?” she fired back at him. “Why do we have to blindly follow in your steps? I’m not a lifeless drone; I have a mind and feelings. If the public knew what we were doing here, they probably feel the same way as I!”


“Are you rejecting everything this project has created?” The Leader piped in, “Destroying every moral you have built upon your belief system and in the process of doing so, rejecting yourself?” he questioned with an edge in his voice.


It took half a second for Jennifer to reply, the Leader had a way of twisting people’s thoughts with words. When she finally answered, her head was held high and her lips did not quiver


“Yes” she replied confidently, “That is exactly what I am saying.”


He then pointed to her said
“Guards, seize her”


They came after her from four different angles, two grabbed her legs and the other two her arms. Being dragged down the hallway she kicked and screamed for freedom, but it was no use. Her outbreak was a direct violation of what the Leader believes (which is against the law, everyone believes and thinks just as the leader does) and now she had to pay. They took her down the hall into gray double doors on the left.


She had never been in this room before, but had heard rumors of it. Just before the doors sucked her in she screamed,


“You cannot suppress people’s beliefs!”


Ten minutes later only the four guards returned. One of the guards had a white lab coat in his hands. It was a women’s, the name tag was blank.