Love_Monkey silently moved a chair to the other side of Lily, sat down, and smiled sheepishly as she gazed up at her. Lily smiled back at the girl, remarking to herself how volatile human children were. Back at the groksta, only an hour or two ago, the child had been furious, but her eyes now glistened with adoration.
Lyra felt completely disoriented. With her familiar gone, she felt as though a part of her mind was missing, the part that knew things. She had the unbearable urge to ask questions so she could fully establish her bearings. “Grandfather, about those creatures, the cullers, as you call them, are they-” Her sentence cut off as she nearly jumped from her chair. Six little girls, identical in all ways to Love_Monkey, entered the clearing. All wore the same clothing, differing only in the color of the bow fastened in their long, golden hair.
“They’re cloned!” Lyra gasped. “Grandfather, you cloned your children?”
“Please, just call me doctor,” the man insisted. “And no, cloning human beings is a sin. These are in the likeness of my children and I refer to them as my daughters, but their code is under the legal limit to be considered human; therefore, they are products. Products that I cloned.”
“You have children products? Why? No one creates products in the likeness of children.”
Djoser pinched Lyra under the table. Why is she interrogating him? Doesn’t she know who he is? he wondered.
The doctor curled his bulbous and crooked lips into what Djoser hoped was a smile. “Yes, Lyra. Although technically not a sin, creating immature products is not considered a best practice in my line of work.”
The doctor took a long gulp of his beverage before continuing. “As to your question of why, it is because I could not dream up a better assistant. My bio-daughter, Samantha, was both a joy to work with and an effective wetgineer. She fell victim to the TerriLove virus before she gained immortality and hence was not qualified for resurrection.”
Lily’s forehead wrinkled with concern, and she leaned over to pat the doctor on his shoulder. “I’m so sorry,” she offered. “It must have been tragic to lose a daughter so young.”
The doctor redirected his gaze at Lily, and his grimace widened. “Oh, she was seventy-three years old when she passed. Granted, she was young, but on the bright side, she survived longer than most in my laboratories in the early days. As for these girls,” the doctor said, nodding to the identical children at the table, “these lambs, which is what I call all of my family, I put a clamp on their physiological development at age eleven-you know, before puberty and all that nonsense.” The doctor winked at Lily.
“In addition to their physiology clamp, I also disrupted certain aspects of their overall nervous system development-enough to, in layman’s terms, keep them young at heart as the decades slide by. In this way, I spared my lambs the tragedy of adulthood. Even as their intellectual powers increase through experience, they do not become jaded and unimaginative like the rest of us. As you can imagine, they are exceptional scientists.”
“Daddy, you know we hate it when you talk about us as though we’re not here,” one of the clones complained.
Dr. Monsa ignored her as he took a sip from his nectar ale mug and said, “You see, it was at age eleven that Samantha, my bio-daughter, was at the height of her curiosity, of her unbridled wonder and passion for all that was alive. Unlike any other bio-child I had, she would sit and watch all manner of organisms for hours on end. It did not matter what it was, either. It could be an amoeba through the micro, a beetle scuttling over the ground, the veins of a leaf, the dance of molecules of mitochondria. She would unselfconsciously ponder the reproductive cycle of any creature she found.” The doctor stared off vacantly as though the end of the table was the ocean horizon. “When my little girl was that age, my head was deep into my machines. I wanted to mimic life with software, with zeros and ones. All those years ago, she was the one who first taught me the value of life, that there is no substitute, that life itself is the ultimate technology.”
Dr. Monsa smiled over at the clones now seated in a line spanning one entire side of the table. “These remind me of her,” he said while smiling and nodding. “They remind me of the beauty of nature and her never-ending capacity for wondrous creation.”
The doctor took a long pause. “And this,” he said as he gestured to his ravaged face, “reminds me that new creation is often fueled by destruction. Viruses, bacteria, as well as much larger organisms, don’t always turn out as planned. Worse yet, depending on who’s funding the project, they turn out exactly as planned. When only maimed, I called myself lucky. When not so lucky, I died. I dare say I have been resurrected more times than I care to count.”
“Five times, Daddy,” one daughter offered. “As an immortal, Daddy has the option for resurrection, that is, if resurrection is possible under the circumstances.”
The doctor flipped his hand in the air as though performing a magic trick. “The body is easy enough to mend and bring back to life; it is the mind that is irreplaceable-at least currently. Fortunately for me, my brain tissue has never been damaged beyond repair.”
“I hope I don’t offend you, but I must ask, why don’t you replace your-”
“My face?” The doctor interrupted Lily’s question with a chuckle. “Because it is a hassle, for one thing. Swapping a body is not routine, even for immortals. It is a major ordeal, and there can be complications. Also, and I hope you do not think me petty for saying this, I must admit that I enjoy seeing people’s expressions when they behold me for the first time. For example, I don’t leave my garden often anymore, but when I do, say on business, even other immortals are intimidated. I think it gives me an edge in that I leave a lasting impression. I don’t need the world to enjoy looking at me. I have the love of my lambs, and that is all I require.”
The doctor suddenly threw up his hands and groaned. “And speaking of my lambs! Let me apologize once again for your harrowing welcome. One of my girls, Love_Monkey, whom you already met, messaged ahead that you would be coming. I sent another of my lambs to guide you in safely, but she evidently got distracted. What was it this time?”
Curious_Scourge, the clone D_Light supposed was the one who had given the team the repellant earlier, bent her head slightly. “It was the Gibbon flies-they had transitioned,” she muttered under her breath.
“So typical, Curious!” BoBo, who sat at the far end of the table wearing a purple bow, shook her head disapprovingly.
Dr. Monsa pointed his finger at BoBo. “Don’t chide your sister. I think it’s safe to say you could have done the same thing.”
“No, Daddy, no! Where did the ‘Curious’ come from in ‘Curious_Scourge’?” BoBo raised an eyebrow at the doctor and then back at her sister.
The doctor nearly choked on his mouthful of syrup. “Oh, spare me! Just the other day I sent you to milk the mellowcows, and where did you end up? Three hours watching an Equus caballus #7541 give birth while the rest of us sat and drank water for lunch!”
“Insomuch as I am like my sister, it’s your fault. As you just lectured our guests, you designed us clones to be this way!” BoBo shot back smugly.
“You’re right, I should have known better. I should not have sent any of my daughters. I should have selected another lamb.” As the doctor said this, he pointed a knobby finger at several creatures that stood rigidly at attention at the far end of the clearing. D_Light had been so immersed in the conversation that he had not noticed the newcomers. The sight gave him a start, as one of those assembled had a morass of tubes sticking out from his head and various other parts of his body.