A Cell Divides
This is Monsaka as it was; before the Cells, myself among them, turned
it into a cemetery.
I seized and laid seige to Monsaka with all the other Cells.
But then, suddenly, I stopped. I didn't want to keep killing; I didn't
want to be a
soldier. I was tired of death, and disgusted with it. None of the
other Cells felt this; they went on killing, every single one of the
thousands upon thousands of the original man, who lived on some island in
Hawaii in perfect splendor, having done his bit for the
war.
I haven't told anyone, but I think it was the child. I think it was
looking up past someone I'd just killed, and seeing a small little
Japanese girl toddle across the war zone. A tiny toddler with the long,
straight black hair of the Japanese - and the blue eyes of the Americans.
If I had been any closer,
I would
have
killed her myself with no remorse.
She was Japanese.
It was my
job;
what I
was bred to do.
But standing
there, and watching another Cell do the job instead, was a different
experience. Watching him, watching ME, kill that child - it changed
something inside me.
A clone cannot differ from the original, or from the copies of the
original; that is the way it has always
been.
Until now.
I dropped from sight,
disappeared from the field
of battle and sought refuge. I didn't think my absence would be noticed;
not among so many copies of myself. I first went to the Hawaiian
dwelling of the original whom all us Cells were copied from. But he was
the same as them; he did not understand me. Even worse, he called the
Beyonders' attention to my situation.
I am now a wanted
man:
- I am a danger to the Beyonders'
control. If a clone engineered for a certain purpose is allowed to refuse
to serve, then it paves the way for more refusals.
- More importantly,
the cloneologists wish to dissect me; to examine and me and to see just
how a clone can suddenly become so different from the
others identical to him. A force of nature? Some biological
catastrophe?
I must admit a certain curiosity as to the reason.
But to
tell
the
truth,
I do not want to know.
Last Modified: 5/2/98
Wendy Elizabeth Kemp