was when I studied her body thoroughly, like a good explorer should study a newly discovered land, mapping out every crease and checking out every nook and cranny.
She was beautifully built, like one of those ancient statues that we saw on our trip. Maybe an ancestor of hers indeed modeled for a statue. Mia's family had Mediterranean roots which was the reason why we went to Italy in the first place. She wanted to see the old country.
We had a perfect honeymoon wandering through dusty, narrow streets, eating in small trattorias and getting drunk-with love more than wine. Ah, the crisp taste of new wine! And the mouthwatering smell of roasting fish, the blindingly bright sunlight reflecting off the azure sea as our boat was gliding through the waves!
I wish I could remember every single moment of those days and nights, but the memories are evaporating with every passing year.
Thirty years. Thirty years have passed. Thirty agonizingly long and indescribably lonely years. I have given my whole life to one purpose only-and now Mia is lying in the glass incubator right in front of me.
I have spent many sleepless nights devising this GENIE: Genetic & ENcephalic Information Emboditor. The miracle maker. The machine that will bring back my lost happiness.
When Mia was gone, I couldn't imagine how I would live without her. There could be no 'without her'. When I saw her mangled body, I was blind with tears and fury. That wasn't fair! She was young and pretty and eight weeks pregnant with our first child... She shouldn't have died!
It was nobody's fault, just bad luck. She was coming back to San Francisco when her car got crushed in a rockslide. It didn't matter that there were other casualties, dozens of them, in fact. In California earthquakes are a part of life and casualties are to be expected. But not Mia! She couldn't become some damn casualty, another name on coroner's report, another number in goddamned statistics!
I shut my eyes tightly, pushing the tears back. My palms hurt where the fingernails have dug into the skin. I exhale slowly and unclench my fists.
It's over now. I've reached my goal. My dream is coming true.
For thirty years the grim determination spurred me on. I worked day and night to learn everything there was to learn about cloning-and then surpassed all my teachers. I'm the first one to create not a stupid clone, but a perfect living image.
Cloning is simple: take a cell, extract the nucleus, insert it into an ovum and grow the ovum into an embryo. Then let nature take its course and a baby is born-a genetic copy of its progenitor. But the similarity is only skin deep: that baby is a brand new human being, a genetic twin with its own personality. And if the ovum was taken from a stranger, then, strictly speaking, it isn't even a twin. The DNA molecules in the nucleus are not the only thing to match when making a human replica. A human being is a lot more than her set of genes.
I have attempted something entirely different. Not just genetic cloning, but the complete replication. A carbon copy of the body: genes, mitochondrial DNA and everything else on the physiological level, plus the contents of the brain-memories, knowledge, skills, habits and thoughts. I've invented a way to read the memory patterns stored in the brain-at the price of slicing the brain up. But Mia's brain was frozen anyway and it couldn't hurt her.
The second part of the job is to 'implant' another brain with the memories. Of course, I can't tell what those memories are even though a computer can represent the data in a graphic form. None of those abstract shapes on the screen makes any sense to anyone until it's interpreted by a living brain-the brain identical to the original one. This part is still untested, for my experiments on animals couldn't unambiguously separate the implanted knowledge from instincts and spontaneous behavior. But if all goes according to plan, Mia will be able to remember at least something of her life. She will be able to walk and talk, for she will wake up as an adult.
This was another major breakthrough in my research. I don't want a helpless infant on my hands. I've lost a wife, not a baby-and I want her back. Just the way she was.
And I've done it! Or at least so it looks on the outside...
I let my gaze wander over her naked body. Three years ago I personally took the frozen tissues out of the freezer, extracted a nucleus from a skin cell and inserted it into one of Mia's own ovums. For three years I watched this single cell divide and grow: first into an embryo, then a fetus and finally an infant. But she wasn't born after nine months. She stayed in the incubator and kept growing at the same amazing rate: in just two years she has turned into an adult woman about twenty years old. She looks exactly like I remember her even though thirty years have passed...
This thought suddenly makes me shudder.
Even if everything goes well and Mia remembers me, she will remember me being thirty years younger!
My goodness, I've never thought about this before! I had no time to think about this before? I was too busy making a new Mia. And in the meantime I've turned fifty-five. I'm a heavy balding man with a wrinkled face, puffy eyes and thick glasses. I'm more fit to be her father than her husband...
Will she still love me?
And will this person really be my Mia? The body is her genetic copy and the brain is implanted with her memories, but is this enough? Is it really her body and her memories? What will she think when she finds out what happened to her? Shall I even tell her the truth? Or will it be too much of a shock for her?
Somehow I've never asked these questions before. But now I desperately need the answers! Last night I initiated the winding down procedure. In the next hour or so Mia should wake up-as if from ordinary sleep.
I stare helplessly at the beautiful young woman lying in the incubator. She suddenly looks a stranger to me and for the first time in the three years I see her clearly.
This is not my Mia. It's my Galatea...
The thought is piercing like a shaft of sunlight suddenly bursting into a deep cave. For thirty years my mind was clouded by the darkness of desperation, but now my thinking is crystal clear.
For thirty years I have refused to face the reality. I've lost the most precious thing in the world and didn't want to admit the loss. So I shut my eyes and worked myself half to death and have created a... doll.
Mia died... She has been dead for thirty years. And there's no way to bring her back.
Damned fool, what a damned fool I was!
Just like all the other idiots I believed that a human being is a mere sum of her parts. Make the exactly same parts, put them in the exactly same order and-presto!-you've got the exactly same human.
But no, you haven't. For we are not machines that can be replaced, not independent entities to be plucked out of existence or put back in at someone's discretion.
We are fibres of the very fabric of the Universe. We are all intertwined with each other through a web of relationships, memories, feelings and even chance encounters. By living our lives we weave the tapestry of the humankind, the tapestry of the whole Universe. There are our parents, from whom we have come, and our children, who have come from us. There are our loved ones who become a part of us and to whom we give a part of ourselves. There are friends who share our joys and sorrows. There are neighbours, classmates, colleagues and just strangers who all come into our lives and leave their trace. We are connected to everyone we meet and to lots of other people we've never met.
But this poor girl is all alone, totally unconnected to any other human being. She doesn't even have a mother for she has come not from a womb, but from an incubator. Things she will remember about her life will be lies for it wasn't her life. She's not the person who scraped her knee while riding a bike for the first time; she's not the one who brought home a stray cat, not the one who had a crush on the boy next door, not the one who spent that unforgettable week with me on a tiny uninhabited island lost somewhere in the Mediterranean.
She will remember all those things, but they didn't happen to her. They happened to somebody else-to the real Mia. And the real Mia died thirty years ago...
Oh my God, wh
at have I done? Poor girl, how could I be so cruel to bring her into this world? How could I be so dumb not to realise a very simple truth?
Once a fibre is torn, it can not be made whole again. Nor can it be replaced with another fibre. Our death leaves a gaping hole in the very fabric of the Universe. We can never even hope to mend the whole Universe, can we?
A searing pain makes me clutch my chest. It feels like my heart is being ripped out.
It was all in vain? All my toil, all my hardships, all the sleepless nights-it was all in vain?
I'm like a treasure seeker who has searched for a lost treasure, found the place it was buried in, dug a deep hole and broken the rotten lid off the ancient trunk-only to find it empty. I've been chasing a mirage.
A sharp, convulsive breath through the clenched teeth fails to bring any air into my lungs. My chest is tightly squeezed, as if gripped in a vice.
For thirty years I refused to feel the pain of my loss. Now it has suddenly come upon me, like an avalanche, crushing me under its weight.
Mia is gone... Mia is dead... She will be no more... My sweet beautiful Mia...
A half groan, half whimper escapes my throat. Hot tears are welling up and stinging my eyes.
What an idiot I was! How could I betray her, how could I insult her memory by making a doll to take Mia's place in my heart? Nothing can bring my Mia back. And nobody
aNgel and Other Stories Page 2
