Michael McCraw watched the workers through the office building windows. From his perch in the Georgian oak tree the workers he spied on could have been mistaken for any of the others in the same building, but with time differences became clear. The workers on the third floor that Michael observed had a uniformity, a sameness to them, from their red ties to the regularity in which they worked. Perhaps most importantly, though, when five o’clock rolled around and the other floors’ employees began tricking out to their cars in the parking lot, while none of the employees on the third floor did.
As light began to fade, Timothy gripped his rope and flashlight and considered his next action. His pondering was interrupted by a voice below that said, “What are you doing up there?”
Michael followed the question down, seeing a man at the base of the tree that couldn’t have been more different than himself; he was tall with skin like a blackened copper, eyes so white that they stood out in the dark, the irises like hard marbles. He knew the man, Stephen Thornfield, and Stephen knew McCraw. So rather than equivocating, Michael asked, “Can I see him?”
“Which one?”
“He was my grandfather.”
Thornfield shook his head with an impatience that suggested he was tired of having this conversation. “J.H. McGraw was your great-great-great-great grandfather. And none of the biologicals in that office are him.”
“This isn’t fair.”
“Neither was your ancestor owning and exploiting my ancestors. And you having to pay for their crimes wouldn’t be either. So here we are.” Prepared to protect his property, Thornfield took out the heavy flashlight he carried and gestured for McCraw to get out of the tree. “Now get out of there before I have to call the police.”
Michael put away his own flashlight to have his hands free for his descent. On the way down, he said, “Can I at least speak to him?”
With his feet flat on the ground, Michael turned to face Thornfield, who pushed the blunt end of his flashlight into the other man’s chest. “Wouldn’t do you any good anyhow. The clone template built from J.H. McGraw was modified – the somatic progeny don’t have freewill like you or I understand it. And he doesn’t have any of your ancestor’s memories.” Thornfield finished pushing McCraw into the tree. “They wouldn’t know you from Adam.”
“They know you.”
“Because my family owns the genetic stock for McGraw and your other slave-owning ancestors and will for the next 213 years. They are genetically programmed to be deferential to me and my kin.”
Michael looked up at the third floor of the building as the lights went out and the warm glow of the clones’ suspension pods came on. “This is monstrous.”
“It’s the law.”
“Isn’t there another way we can solve this?”
“There might have been. But it’s too late now.”
See the author’s published work here.
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