It hadn’t helped matters that the federal government, mired in its endless bureaucratic quagmire, failed to pass any meaningful legislation on the subject. The optics of voting for legislation declaring that decorated US veterans were not human beings proved to be political suicide. Not a single bill ever came to a vote. That left it to the states to decide for themselves. The first states to pass anti-cloning laws—Illinois, Massachusetts, Georgia among them—simply banned the procedure outright. In the years that followed, other states went further and further as though competing in a national purity test for the mantle of most anti-clone, stripping clones of personhood entirely and straining the limits of the Full Faith and Credit Clause of the Constitution in a way that hadn’t been seen since before the Civil War. The rest of the world had taken varying positions on the issue, with the European Union passing a sweeping moratorium on human cloning while China, Korea, and Japan began developing cloning programs of their own. If the rumors were to be believed, the Saudi royal family paid Palingenesis a fortune to maintain its own private cloning clinic in Riyadh.
“Would it surprise you to learn that most of that first generation is gone now?” Gaddis asked.
“Gone? Gone how?”
“The vast majority took their own lives. Those that didn’t were ravaged by addiction and depression. And a disheartening number has simply disappeared from the face of the earth. We have no idea where they are now.”
“What happened?” Con asked in disbelief. This part of the story she hadn’t heard.
“What happened was they were clones. Once they were done serving their country, our government abandoned them. The nation abandoned them. No effort was made to smooth their transition into a world that didn’t know they existed. The project was so highly classified that even their own families didn’t know the truth. Once the media broke the story, it tore those families apart.”
“I had no idea,” she said, appetite finally gone.
“No one does, because it’s gone largely unreported. It’s not in the national interest to dredge it up. The only time we care about veterans is at ball games.” Gaddis emptied the last of the bottle into his glass.
“Jesus,” Con said quietly even as she felt her anger rise. “And knowing all that, you decided to offer cloning to the general public anyway?”
“Yes, I did,” Gaddis answered, taken aback by her challenge. If he thought confessing his sins was the key to her good side, he was in for a rude awakening.
“Why? What the hell were you thinking?”
“I wish there was a nobler answer, but I’m a businessman. I was thinking there was a lot of money to be made. Abigail wanted to hit pause, discuss the ramifications, but there wasn’t time for that. Once the media got ahold of the story, I knew I had to move decisively or risk having everything we’d built washed away in the tide of public opinion. I honestly thought that once we overcame their primitivistic skepticism, we’d be able to convince Americans of all the good Palingenesis was doing. We cheat death. Literally. It’s been mankind’s dream since we left our caves, and Palingenesis made it a reality.” Gaddis stopped himself, embarrassed by his own fervor. “You have to understand, in those days, I was evangelical about cloning. I was wrong as I could be.”
That surprised her. She didn’t take him for a man prone to admitting to mistakes. “So what changed your mind?”
“The plane crash,” he answered simply. “Cynthia and I both died. She always supported my work but never had any desire to have a clone herself. So when I was revived at Palingenesis, I was alone. Disoriented. In denial. Sound familiar?”
“Yeah, very.”
“I founded Palingenesis, but I didn’t understand what it meant to be a clone. I thought I did. I thought I empathized, but I was too in love with its potential. I couldn’t see the toll that being a clone took on our clients as anything but an acceptable trade-off. It took dying for me to see how unethical it all was.”
“Unethical? So, what . . . you don’t think clones are people now?”
Gaddis shook his head. “No, nothing like that. Of course we’re people. I’ve also had plenty of time to consider that question, believe me. It was the one thing I wasn’t wrong about when I woke up five years ago.”
“So clones are people, but you’re against cloning? How does that work?”
“How long have you been a clone? Two days now? How are you enjoying the experience so far?” he asked rhetorically.