Chapter 17
Albany, Homeland
"You know Accura, you'd think that in the year 2215, garbage wouldn't stink anymore," Mark said.
Accura just shook his head. A guy who was clearly a clone walked by them as they collected the garbage for the City. You could just tell a clone when you saw them. Clones were just too perfect looking. It was like they were trying to hide something sinister in all that perfection. Besides, why would the clone, or anyone else, be out in the dark looking through trash?”
"Hey Mark,” Accura said, under his breath, "Maybe that perfect guy over there will come over here and show us how dumping this crap into the truck is supposed to be done. I ought to say something to him."
Mark said, "No, Accura. Bad idea. You want to get in trouble with the smurf Sensitivity Compliance Officers?"
"Well. . .I hate the SCOs and the clones. They can all just to take a flying. . ."
"Why? The clones never asked to be born? Just like you and me. Why do you hate them?"
"Why hate them?! They take all of the decent jobs! Because of them, none of us non-engineered clods are ever treated like anything other than like this stinkin’ garbage!" Accura slammed the aluminum garbage can into the side of the truck. Neighborhood dogs started barking. The can had a big gash in it. "I’m sick of it! You'd think we were some kind of mutants or something!"
Mark said, "To the clones, we are some kind of freaks. But the clones are born and raised to make things better. And we regular people don't have to do all of the high-stress work anymore. Anyways, if they didn’t raise the clones, our population would decrease down to nothing. “
Accura said, “You really drank the Kool-Aid, didn’t ya? That is just a bunch of smurf propaganda! Well I got the real news on my device last night about a ‘corrective action’ by the UCA. Here, take a look:”
The Homeland Universal Cloning Authority (UCA) is planning to cull one of their clone strains. Each strain could mean hundreds of healthy individuals would have to be exterminated. Those of the clone strain who were being rejected, were only rejected because after testing, it was found that they had potential susceptibility to certain viral infections. This mass annihilation of humans is not unprecedented. In fact, it is not all that uncommon. But the UCA does not make a habit out of airing their dirty business in public, so we are leaking this information to the public.
Clones are supposedly raised to serve mankind. At least that is the story after they came to terms with the idea that raising a clone army was ineffective, as the clones lacked the requisite emotional intelligence for warfare. Since clones are created now for the betterment of man, the indoctrination and common accepted thinking among cloning advocates, is that many of them must forfeit their lives for the betterment of all. The idea of terminating their lives is not thought of as apprehensible, but in fact, just a normal requisite part of the process.
Obeying the UCA's operating procedures is an indoctrinated creed among the clones. Those of this most recently condemned series are girls of about ten years of age. About 250 girls, all identical looking, share the same DNA.
Now, after a decade of "feeding them out"; the UCA contract with the Homeland government is null and void. So the less than perfect innocent children are scheduled to be “culled”. It is believed that these defective individuals will be rounded up from the UCA, which is their nurturing contractor, and pushed into a very large grinder. Their young bodies will be processed into animal feed protein. We are the Anonymous Concerned Objectionists.
Mark asked Accura, “How do we know that message is true?”
“Do you doubt it?”
Throughout the last two centuries, the value placed on human life had decreased with the same speed that interest in religion had been on the decline.
Mark said, "That's horrible that they are exterminating clones, just because they are susceptible to some disease they might never get. I guess it is for the good of future generations of clones though. In the long run, it will help us."
"You kill me," Accura said. "Do you really think the clones are making the world so perfect? Who is to say what is right or wrong? You know what your problem is? You are too nice."
"What's really wrong with being nice? Don't you feel a little sorry for those people?"
"Just because you are nice, does not mean you are good. And no, those clones are just artificial. We are the real people. We do the work. We end up handling the problems, or at least living with their stupid ideas. We sweat and bleed and die. Don't you ever forget it. The clones should have never been given the vote. Now there are so many of them, they blindly vote how they are told to vote by the UCA, and never lose an election!"
Clones were given the right to vote in the Clone Suffrage Amendment to the Homeland Constitution.
Of all the serious issues that they discussed, Mark was the most sensitive about Accura’s comment about his niceness and couldn’t quit thinking about it. In those days, being too nice could be thought of as a derogatory slam. Mark wondered if he was really too nice? Should being too nice even possible? Then he started fretting over the fact that he was being overly sensitive about the comment.
Mark tolerated his garbage disposal job. The hours and working conditions were less than ideal. On the bad side, he really didn't like working with Accura that much and hearing his radical opinions. The pay was fair, but some days the conditions were hard to stomach. Sad to say, Accura was more right than wrong.
What if he would have had the same opinion of his job as Accura? What if he started hating slinging foul garbage cans as much as Accura? What if someday he hated getting up so early in the morning and smelling rotting garbage as much as Accura did? What if he wanted to do something else in the future, he thought? "Okay Accura, I'll give it to you that it does seem a little unfair that you can't even apply for a better job."
"Seems unfair? You're not even scratching the surface, garbage man."
Mark said, "I don't care what you say. The clones don't have it so good. What do you think? Those recalled clones just show up to the UCA and show their ID and then all by themselves, just hop into the grinder?"
"I don't really care if they turned out a bad batch. We really messed up when we left the clones totally take over the country. As far as I am concerned, they can recall all of them."
Mark thought; that will never happen. The clones would always be around now.
A huge segment of the population doing skilled jobs was made up of clones. Society would collapse if they were not around. There was no unified opposition among the poorly educated freeborn to cloning. Now many of the thoroughly indoctrinated, freely conceived individuals (FCI), even considered their own DNA to be "junk". This public opinion was a result of "top scholars". Educated FCI individuals were at the forefront of proclaiming their own FCI DNA to be junk. Yet, those scholars did not fight their way to the front of the line to hop into a grinder. They were too important to Homeland society to do that.
Mark had spent his lifetime rationalizing clone cullings. Usually it was one clone at a time, though. Yet there was a little ember of something going on deep within Mark’s consciousness. Mark wondered how could he think about his own petty situation in his pod, or group marriage, and his job, when there were going to be hundreds of ten year olds sent to the grinder? In what universe could this mass extermination be acceptable? It was too horrible to be real. No one seemed to care. Like him, they rationalized it all away. It was like, if you couldn't see them, then it supposedly didn't happen. But what could one guy do about it?
Mark mentally argued with himself, using the arguments of the day; if the clone children died, so what? They would just make more. Was the rest of Homeland society like Accura? Believing that the clones were some kind of synthetic humans who were "recyclable"? Weren’t all humans just water and some minerals that became something else after they died?
Yet something moved Mark to compassion for the girls. He thought about his own motivation. What makes something wrong or right? Where does it come from? Where does good and evil come from? It’s like we are born with the knowledge of it. Everyone had some kind of reason for what they did, but how was anyone supposed to know what was right when their agendas were in conflict? Yet Mark was now determined that he would to do something about what he thought of as an injustice. The first thing he did was to sign up for the newsfeed from the Anonymous Concerned Objectionist, the one who posted the news about the culling.