Never underestimate a clone ...

Wake up. You need to wake up ...

The voice was insistent in my mind. And yet everything that involved me was deeper darkness. I didn't want to wake up at all. The darkness was welcoming and took away the pain that enveloped me.

You need to wake up. Before he comes back. The most urgent repairs already guarantee that your body can withstand that the connection to the life support mechanism can be disconnected.

Life? Since when was that life? I thought furiously, and with shaking fingers I angrily ripped the tubes in my arms.

My whole body ached and throbbed miserably.

But what life support? What were they talking about, good God?

I opened my eyes with a low moan of pain, aware that even to breathe horrible stings made breathing difficult.

Where am I?

The mothership is already in the quadrant of the Blue planet. If you expect any chance to escape, it will be much easier with him inspecting the troops.

Mothership? The latest events were a confusing whirlwind that brought distorted and pained images. I just want to die or maybe be quiet until this agony goes away. And I won't close my eyes. That black, furious look that stares at me gives me chills. I finally wake up on the hard, cold ground, shivering. Something horrible happened to me. I know this from the marks I can see on my arms and the perforations on my wrists. The throat hurts to swallow the saliva. And the thirst ... God! I could die from a sip of water ...

What happened?

Fear finally takes wing in my imagination when I realize that only a thin sheet covers my nakedness. I don't want to remember what happened here. I can't remember or I'm going to freak out. I want to go home. I want to ... Tears slowly fill my eyes wishing desperately that Zorack was around.

You need to react ... Get up ...

Who are you?

There is a compulsory appeal in that voice that speaks in my mind. It had taken a while, but finally, I was crazy and hearing voices. An insane laugh threatens to control me as I lean against the cold metal walls and struggle to breathe. My body does not seem to obey any will of mine at that moment. And the urgency to get out of there dominates me then.

The door opens in a metallic hiss that makes my skin crawl as I fight the dizziness by quickly closing my eyes. The image of an immaculately white room with tables and benches appeared before me and opened my eyes in a cold sweat.

Something horrible happened here and I won't even remember it. I can't remember. One-step and then another ... It was foolish to try to escape like this, barely able to stand, but I moved forward slowly and walking as my body could in spite of the pain.

At any moment they would find me maybe. The idea is not encouraging. I'm sure I got hit by a runaway truck. Those things were going to arrive at any moment and lock me up again in that cold, frightening cell ... Panic begins to wave a welcome to my despair. It won't be like that or get away from there.

Zorack's words return very slowly to my mind. He never talked much about N'Tirlay. I know that even against his will he was part of the hybridization experiments they were doing in that place. I take a deep breath with the certainty that my body protests in silence and with the certainty that the least attempt to inhale more deeply seems to cut me inside. And I close my eyes again, fighting miserable weakness.

Everything around me disappears in that instant. The bed is soft and the arms that wrap me warm and strong. I need to talk to Zorack. The caresses between us are just heating up ... sooner or later it will end up happening ... I don't take any contraceptives and I very much doubt that he knows what a condom is. And it makes me freeze ... The family always comments on how one of my cousins ​​got pregnant before she was eighteen. Ane was the only person who cared about me there. I miss her so much since she left town.

Do you know the care I need to keep this skin healthy and without any damage? Do you have any idea how important this shell is to me?

-Please do not. Please ...- my voice is weak and I cover my ears without wanting to remember.

Or maybe it satisfies me as I like your blood.

I don't intend to waste our black oil on guinea pigs like you. It is a small incentive for you to stay clear and enjoy everything I intend to do.

You sadistic bastard ...

I'm really going to freak out any minute. I can feel it.

The lighted corridors and that blinding white light ... My head starts to throb again and stronger. Something inside me seems to agree with the insistent voice that encourages me to move forward ... Him ?! I can't remember anything except those scary black eyes.

... it seems that I overdosed, you bitch. Forgot where you are? There is no Zorack around here. You will never approach him again ... I will kill you if you dare to approach what belongs to me ...

This did not happen. It's just a goddamn nightmare! My strengths disappeared and my whole body protested ...

-Please do not...

You leave that laboratory dead today.

Prepare the machines. This unfortunate plague damaged the skin I use. You know the importance of keeping it preserved and intact. If there is any advantage to using humans, it's how easily we can regenerate their bodies. Take care that your wounds are healed and that your memory ...

I am shaking without being able to free myself from the tremors that drown me in the darkness of my nightmares ... I am afraid ...

There were tubes and needles. They were stuck in my veins and the feeling was not very pleasant. The body pains finally requested my presence back in the world of the living.

I groaned low. Intravenous medication? But for what? They were injecting some kind of drug into my system ...

Everything there was unpleasant.

Where am I, good God? In fact, how long have I been here?

What happened?

What did she remember? The military base ... and the vision of a very different version of the best friend. She looked around the place, even more astonished. Was it a laboratory? The benches with medical and unknown instruments brought chills as he tried to stand up and stayed behind when moving forward, experiencing his first steps as a child. One after another and slowly ... until she was paralyzed.

It was a vision of horrors. Like science classes in the school lab. The professor explained the theories of genetics. Science was her favourite discipline. Perhaps one day she could go beyond curious reading and become a scientist. They were bold dreams.

A clone was an exact copy of a plant or animal, with all the genetic characteristics of the original, including the defects. There were scientists who believed that every cell in our body had information to make a living thing. Congress had previously banned human cloning in five states. Republican congressmen considered the practice of morally indefensible and scientifically unhealthy.

Gene cloning. Farther away there was a huge amount of glass containers stuck in machines and tubes with what looked like embryos ... and they moved. Produce a genetically identical copy from a differentiated somatic cell? They were small living forms that resembled developing fetuses outside a mother's womb. Only there was a terrible detail. They were nothing like a human fetus.

Reproductive cloning was prohibited by law because there was no guarantee that babies generated through it would be well-formed. In therapeutic cloning, however, tissues were obtained in test tubes. No one had really tried to clone someone else. The nucleus of an adult cell, containing all the genetic information necessary for the "construction" of an organism, was placed inside an egg with a nucleus, in turn, previously plucked. Hundreds of eggs would be needed for a single birth, and obtaining human eggs in that amount was a complicated and painful process for women.

-My God! I do not believe that! - Angel spoke quietly numbly.

There were also setbacks such as gigantism, the body's defence system was too weak and premature ageing for those fetuses to take revenge. The problem was always reprogramming. Normal cells would need to communicate the inherited genetic material to the embryo. What could it mean for the man when science changed nature so significantly?

They were organisms that would originate artificially, but that would continue to exist biologically through reproduction and evolution.

It was more or less like this: you died, but did we bring you back? Angel was stunned. Artificial cloning produced organisms far more identical than the natural process of forming twin twins. It was very evident that a clone of mine will always be another. In the psychological field, the differences would be even more striking - each body will always perceive the world of different spatial and temporal coordinates. Was it immortality through cloning? Absurd!

A clone could develop quite a different personality. But that clone isn't you yet, because it's just the body. So it would come from the science of neurocomputing. Work on how to read and how to decipher everything in a brain: your memory, your personality, everything. Perhaps the computer connected to the adult clone ... So could you, before you die, discharge memory and personality in a younger clone of yourself? And that would not be a technology that would come in a century or two. It was too early.

Scientists speculated on therapeutic cloning, stem cells would never be introduced into any uterus. The DNA taken from an adult donor cell would be introduced into an "empty" egg, but after a few divisions, the stem cells would be directed in the laboratory to make tissues identical to those of the donor, tissues that would never be rejected by him.

Cloning will make it possible to remove DNA from a skin cell of someone who has a genetic disease), insert it into an "empty" egg and produce stem cells in the laboratory, which could be grafted into the spinal cord, to replace lost neurons, or in the musculature, to recompose, for example, muscles weakened by dystrophy.

It was the man wanting to play God! It was to eliminate and discard human lives, even if these, as in the case of embryos, were in the early stage of development. Under religious principles, what would be most important? A family man who suffered a heart attack? Or a cluster of cells created in a test tube?

Stem cells could become any other type of cell in the human body. For that reason, cloned embryos could, in theory, provide material to regenerate tissues with organ problems.

I widened my eyes at the largest of the glass containers that looked like a monstrous test tube with the terrifying sight inside. The creature inside moved with indecisive reflexes as her hand touched the glass lighter than a feather.

It was my image in that liquid, connected to tubes and needles by the body. God! It was ... it was ...

There didn't seem to be any kind of artificial intelligence creating living beings. A machine would never take the place of a human. There were bleak predictions about computers from 2029. They should have all the intellectual and emotional capabilities of humans. It was a useful, beneficial and totally disastrous technology.

Artificial intelligence was only at the beginning and spread all around us, in the virtual assistants of our smartphones and other networks. Could humanity evolve to the point of creating those things? There had to be lively and intelligent ways of controlling those machines.

The creature inside the glass tube looked asleep as if everything around him was indifferent. Angel's eyes followed the body in an almost fetal position ... The skin didn't look so human. It didn't look so human.

"This is just a goddamn nightmare!"

Fear was finally beginning to dominate my body. My legs were shaking without balance. Serotonin and adrenaline ... They ran through my blood bringing boiling chaos as I looked around the lab.

-Is anyone there? I shouted at the top of my lungs. - Open the damn door! I want to leave!

There was a more sudden movement in that huge test tube. I realized that when I turned my face, eyes wide and in terror at the image of my clone.

They were bright, red, evil eyes.

I screamed until the last breath left, running for the door, clenched fists crashing into crazy cold metal.

How do you get out of that damn place?