by Brian Parker
“Excuse me?” Dr. Jones exclaimed.
“The woman I want you to talk to is a clone.” I’ll just leave that turd right there, see how she reacts.
“A clone? I could lose my license if I provided any services to a—”
“What is it about everyone in the medical field refusing to help?” I burst out. I was sick of this shit. “You people are—”
“Whoa! Stop right there, Detective. Have you ever heard the phrase you’ll attract more flies with honey than vinegar?”
“Yeah, sure. So?”
“You can’t always go around acting like a jerk and expect people to bend over backward for you,” she stated. “The problem with clones is there’s an official directive from the US Surgeon General that states they are not human. As such, clones are not to receive any type of primary care nor acute or chronic care from a medical professional. Anyone who knowingly violates this directive is subject to harsh federal penalties and pressure will be placed on the state to suspend their license to practice.”
Dr. Jones took a deep breath before continuing. “Clones are authorized to be seen by veterinarians, but there are plenty of issues with that line of thought since a vet doesn’t study human anatomy and like it or not, these things are the same as us in every aspect.”
“Why does the federal government have such a problem with clones?” I wondered aloud.
“Because they don’t know how to handle them. They’re technically human in every way except they weren’t grown inside a woman—wait, that’s not correct. They’ve implanted cloned embryos into women’s uteruses before, so I guess the real argument is who’s responsible for them. They aren’t natural humans, so what rights do we afford them? Once we start protecting them under the law, then the next step would be allowing them to participate in elections so they could vote for candidates who support their kind. Can you imagine how easily an election could be rigged if someone cranked out a few hundred thousand clones, all programmed to vote a certain way?”
“That’s an interesting theory, Doc. That’s probably the closest to the truth about why the government refuses to protect them that I’ve heard so far.” It was a lot to think about, but I could do the thinking tomorrow while I sat at my kitchen table.
“So, are you going to speak to her or not?” I asked.
“Yeah. I’ll talk to your clone—off the books, of course.”
“Of course. And thank you. That seems to be the general attitude when it comes to anything clone-related. People need to see them and understand what they are before they disregard them completely,” I added.
How can the medical profession completely disregard a human in need of help? I wondered.
Because of outside pressure, I answered myself. Politicians are worried about the influx of like-minded voters. That scares them. Then I had a thought about the clones. Sure, they all start the same, but from the moment they’re “born,” they have free will. Doesn’t that free will cause each clone to act differently?
“Where are you?” Dr. Jones asked.
I gave her the address to the warehouse in Easytown and she said she could be there in twenty minutes.
“Oh, and Doc?” I asked before she hung up.
“Yes?”
“Do you think you could bring an old pair of clothes? She’s about your size, but she’s naked as an alley cat.”
“Of course. I’ve got a big bag of clothes that was going to get picked up by a donation droid in a few days. I’ll get a few things out of there.”
“Thanks, Doc.”
I hung up the phone and ignored a message from Andi; something about coordinating a space at a women’s shelter. That was step five or six, after the clone’s immediate medical and mental health needs.
“Is the doctor coming?” a woman’s voice interrupted my thoughts.
“Huh? Oh, yeah. Doc Wellington will be here in a few minutes.”
“Is he nice…like you?”
I laughed hard at the question. “I ain’t nice, lady. I’m a mean son of a bitch.”
“No you’re not. You’re taking me to a doctor—and you haven’t hit me yet. You gave me your coat; you’re a nice man.”
It angered me that her metric for somebody being nice was not hitting her and giving her a jacket to keep warm. What kind of world do we live in?
“Look, lady—do you have a name?”
She shrugged again. “I don’t remember. They always called me Fucktoy, so that must be my name.”
“No, it’s not,” I countered, exhaling forcefully. “That’s not a nice name.”
I thought for a minute, staring at her wavy auburn hair and green eyes. Who was the person she was cloned after? Was she local? If I’d brought my fingerprint scanner, I could have easily found out, but it was in the Jeep with the rest of my gear. Although, did it really matter who she was? Maybe. Maybe not.
“What do you think about Lucy?”
She shook her head. “No. I don’t know why, but that name makes me think of someone mean.”
Ghost memories from the donor.
“Hmm, okay. Do you like Sadie?”
“I don’t know her. She sounds important.”
“Never mind,” I sighed. “From now on, your name is Sadie.”
“Detective,” the drone’s voice came over my earpiece.
“Excuse me,” I told Sadie and touched my earpiece. “Yeah?”
“A vehicle registered to Dr. Douglas Wellington is on site with a single occupant. Am I authorized to detain?”
“No! I’m coming out to bring him in. There will be another doctor, Jasmin Jones, in a few minutes. Let her in also.”
“Understood.”
“Sadie, I need to go get the doctor. I’ll be right back, okay?”
“Don’t leave me with…” She gestured toward the stacks of bodies.
Goddammit! How could I be so insensitive? I need to get her out of this room.
“Alright, come with me,” I said, gesturing toward the door. “I didn’t mean for you to stay in there. Sorry.”
She moved awkwardly through the door that I held open for her. “It’s fine,” she replied.
I gritted my teeth. Normally when a woman said it was fine, they meant things were not fine, but I didn’t know if Sadie had the mental capacity for that kind of duplicitous speech. I doubted she’d ever had the opportunity to sharpen her witty banter.
The woman limped out into the main room and stopped. She began to shake when she saw the cage. I didn’t know whether it was from rage or fear.
I slid up beside her. “Hey, it’s okay. You’re safe now.”
“Are you sure?” She looked up at me, tears welling around the corners of her eyes.
“Yeah, I’m sure,” I answered as I guided her by the shoulders around the cage to the stairs I’d come up earlier. “Let’s go downstairs. There are medical supplies that the doctor can use.”
“Hello?” a voice called up the stairwell as we descended.
Shit. The old man’s faster than I thought.
“We’re coming down, Doc. Sadie just needs a little bit of time to make it down the stairs.” I glanced at her; she did her best to negotiate the steps, each one a jarring impact on her battered body.
“I can probably carry you down if you need help.”
She stopped once again. “No, thank you. I want to do this on my own.”
I respected her wishes and followed along beside her as she made her way down. When we reached the bottom, Dr. Wellington had already set up a table with a blanket and his medical kit was open on one end.
“Thank you for coming, Doc.”
The old man regarded me solemnly for a moment. The whites of his eyes were yellowed with age and his light gray hair stood out in stark contrast to his dark brown skin. Then his gaze went past me to where Sadie stood a few steps behind me.
“I do this and the debt is paid, Forrest,” he stated without breaking away from the clone.
“Wiped clean,” I promise
d.
“Will anyone ever find out that I helped to patch her up?”
“No. It’s totally off the books.”
“What about that drone watchdog you’ve got? You gonna wipe its memory?”
“It’s a police drone. I don’t have access to that. I’ll make sure that you’re not connected to this though.”
He seemed to consider it a moment and then, “Alright, young lady. Can you lie down on the table here? I’ll patch you up and try to make you better.”
While she got on the table, Dr. Wellington said, “Why don’t you make yourself useful, Forrest, and find me a clean bucket and water. I need to wash away the dried blood to see what I’m working with.”
I went in search of a source for water and something to hold it in. It didn’t take long to locate the janitor’s closet that held a sink, but finding a clean container took a little longer. I had to settle for a large bottle of hand soap that I dumped down the drain and washed out.
When I returned, the doctor had Sadie’s feet up on the table. “Er, um… Excuse me, Doc. I’ve got your water and a sponge.”
“Throw the sponge away. There’s no telling what these animals did with it. I’ll use bandages to wipe away the blood.” He turned back to Sadie. “You can put your legs down, sweetheart.”
He glanced at me and said, “I don’t know if it’s medically possible for a human clone to become pregnant through intercourse, but it’d be best if we gave her a heavy dose of Mifepristone—which I’ve got in my bag here—and then you or someone else will need to administer Misoprostol.”
“Wait,” I said, holding up my hands. “What is Mifewhatever and Meesoprosle?”
Doc Wellington pulled a bottle of pills from his bag and took off the lid. “Here, swallow this.”
Sadie did as directed and put the pill in her mouth. She tried to swallow, but without water, it didn’t go down. “Ugh!” she coughed, spitting the pill on the floor. “That tastes gross.”
The old man sighed and shook out another pill. Then he got a bottle of water from his bag. “Here, now, swallow the pill with a drink of water.”
“No way. That was—”
“Just do it,” he ordered.
She complied, her face contorting into odd expressions as she worked the pill down her throat.
“Good job, Sadie.” He looked over at me. “I gave her Mifepristone, commonly called the morning after pill. Misoprostol is a drug that’s inserted into the vagina and causes the uterus to contract. The combination of the two will cause an abortion in human females. Clones? I’m not sure.”
He pulled out a tablet and scribbled on it before ripping it off and handing it to me. “Take this to any drug store and they’ll give you the Misoprostol. There’ll be instructions in the box about how to administer it. Her other injuries seem superficial—painful, but not life-threatening. I’ll get her cleaned up and she should be ready to go in ten or fifteen minutes.”
“That sounds good, Doc. Thanks again.”
“Don’t thank me. Just remember that I never saw your clone. If anyone asks, you needed help, and the prescription is for your girlfriend, not her. Okay?”
“Yeah. I—”
“Detective,” the drone’s voice interrupted me in my ear.
“What is it, One Six Four?”
“A vehicle registered to Dr. Jasmin Jones is on site with a single occupant. Am I authorized to detain?”
“No.” Geez, what is it with this drone wanting to detain everyone? “I told you earlier to let her enter the facility.”
“Doc, I’ve got a psychologist coming down to talk to Sadie. I’m going to go outside and bring her in.”
“That’s fine, take your time.” He’d already bent to the task of washing the blood away from the clone’s body. “I’ll be done when I’m done.”
I went outside and walked toward the back of the building where a pair of headlights crept slowly down the drive. Doc Jones’ BMW stopped twenty feet from the warehouse and I was surprised to see one of the back doors open. Even though the odds of ever driving my Jeep manually were astronomically low, I still sat up front in case I needed to take over if the computer crapped out. Apparently, she didn’t have the same type of control issues that I did.
“Zach,” she acknowledged and waved her hand at the building. “You sure do know how to impress a girl.”
“Thanks for coming out, Doc. I know this wasn’t how you wanted to spend your night.”
“On the contrary, Detective. I’m excited to speak to a clone in a clinical role. This is unprecedented. Too bad I won’t be able to tell anyone about it.”
“Come on. I’ll take you inside and introduce you to Sadie.”
“Sadie? Is she a clone from the Wild West?”
“It was just a name that came to me, so I asked her if she liked it. It was better than what the creeps who owned this place called her.”
“Do I want to know?”
“No, you don’t. The MD examining her right now gave her the morning after pill and I have to give her another drug tomorrow to make sure she isn’t pregnant.”
“Can clones get pregnant?” Dr. Jones asked.
“No clue. The doc doesn’t know either, but he said he wanted to do it, just in case."
“Certainly seems prudent. So, you said ‘suspected rape’ earlier. It’s confirmed, then?”
I spent the next couple of minutes filling her in about the case, from the three clones we’d found in the compactor, through my meeting with Voodoo and ending with the discovery of the eight bodies inside and the cage where the gamblers watched and likely participated.
“That’s disgusting,” she stated.
“Just another day on the streets in Easytown.”
I pulled open the door to the administrative building and stood aside for Jasmine to enter before me. From behind, I saw her head swivel slowly from side to side, taking in the offices.
“This isn’t the bad part,” I muttered. “Let’s go upstairs first while Doc Wellington finishes up and you can see the cage.”
“I’m not interested in seeing any bodies, Zach.”
“You won’t. They’re all wrapped up, ready to go into the next trashcan.”
When we went upstairs, she took in the cage and the torture instruments. I could see that it was a lot for her to process.
“Wow,” Dr. Jones said, placing her hand over her heart. “This is tough. It looks like they took a page right out of Slavery 101 from the eighteenth century and brought it right back here to New Orleans.”
I didn’t really know what to say. How do I, as a white male, comment on the city’s history with slavery to a black woman? I couldn’t say anything without coming off as a total jackass, so I held my tongue and let her take her time.
“These people are sick. Clones or not, they still have emotions, and they can feel pain.”
I nodded. Not much else I could do.
“Alright. I’m ready to talk to Sadie now.”
We went back down the stairs. Dr Wellington stood outside the door and Sadie stared out the window toward the street. I wondered if she’d ever had a window to look out of since she’d been “born.”
“She’s all patched up,” Wellington stated. “As I thought, most of them are minor and nonlife-threatening. She should be fine as long as she doesn’t have internal injuries that I can’t see.”
“Detective—”
“Holy shit, One Six Four,” I muttered into my microphone. “What is it now?”
“A vehicle registered to Mr. Joseph Kleer is on site with three occupants. Am I authorized to detain?”
“Kleer? That’s the fucker that Voodoo said bought all the clones,” I stated. If I could get this guy, I may have a chance to end the entire investigation right here.
“Yes, detain him,” I ordered.
“Andi, give me the details on Joseph Kleer.”
“Joseph Kleer is a white male, five foot eleven and approximately two hundred twelve pounds,” she repl
ied. “He works at Carryall International, a company that manufactures exoskeletons for industrial use. He is not legally married and has no children. He spends an average of one-point-six hours per day online gambling and thirty-seven minutes on social media sites. His last online purchase was for a three-gallon tub of personal lubricant. He orders meal delivery two-point-seven times a week, predominantly pizza or Chinese takeout. In the last—”
“That’s enough,” I said. He didn’t seem to have a record, or that would have been the first thing Andi told me. If I hadn’t cut her off, she would have gone into every detail that was publicly available on the perp.
“Dr. Jones, I’m going to go outside and talk to Mr. Kleer. According to Thomas Ladeaux, he’s the one behind the torture tourism ring.”
TEN: TUESDAY
I walked through the warehouse and out the side door into a standoff between drone One Six Four and the three men from the car it reported as inbound a few minutes earlier. They stood foolishly behind the open doors of their car, thinking they would offer them protection against the drone. I ducked back inside the doorway quickly.
I’d seen the police drones in action and was nearly cut in half by one up close at the Puss ’n Boots when it was protecting me. A few days later, I’d seen several of them tear into a massive crowd of people when their programming got hacked. The standard police drone was equipped with twin 5.56mm miniguns that would tear Kleer’s car to shreds.
“Put down your weapons,” I shouted, around the edge of the door.
“You ain’t stealin’ our product, man!”
“I’m a cop, New Orleans PD. Put your weapons down!”
“What are you doing here?” a different male asked.
“I’m investigating an illegal gambling ring. Which one of you is Joseph Kleer?”
“Shut up! Nobody tell that pig nothing,” the second person yelled.
“What product are you afraid I’m going to steal?” I asked. “Are you dealing drugs out of this place?”
“No, man,” the first guy replied. “I just meant—”
“Shut up, Hector!” one of them said. “You got a warrant to be on our property, cop?”
“You got a permit for those guns?” I countered.
