Jawni Rivas, “This Life”
Gather around, boys and girls – as I relay to you the story of why you’re not allowed anywhere near the Gray Building on Pleasant Street. I feel you are finally old enough to know now – but I do warn you, the details get pretty off-putting, disconcerting – even gut-wrenching. But you cannot plug your ears now, little ones. Listen closely, for if you wander too close – it could happen to you.
Your parents probably commanded you from the moment you could play to not play near the big gray building you drove past on your commute to school or weekly trip to the local grocery store. And when you would ask why this was – as any curious child would, and did – they just told you it was dangerous. Deadly, even. But that was it. Even as you badgered, poked, and prodded – they stood firm as stone that you were not allowed to know. No ifs, ands, or buts.
You probably heard the rumors from the neighbor’s kids, whispered between desks, or out on the woodchips at recess – you heard William say that there was a toxic fungus growing in there that would kill on inhale, or Dorothy say that it’s where they take the worst criminals – the ones too evil for prison. Your imagination ran wild with all these ludicrous theories, but one story was whispered above the rest: there was a monster in the Gray Building. This is partially true.
Isaac Trevorson was a kid, much like yourself. He loved to play soccer, eat chocolate-chip ice cream, watch television with his friends, and draw pictures of racecars and dinosaurs. But there was something more interesting about Isaac; his father, Christopher, was a scientist. Christopher worked day and night at the Gray Building, and nobody was allowed to know what he was doing there – not even Isaac.
The Gray Building was also fiercely locked away from society then, much as it is now, but for a much different reason. What we know now is that Dr. Christopher Trevorson was in the process of pioneering the amazing next step in evolution – human cloning. With a simple machine, two tubes on each side on a touch-screen in the middle, the device would start an in-depth scan of your body, inside and out, and perfectly replicate each atom on the other side, creating an exact replica of yourself.
While this was of course an amazing scientific breakthrough, the machine was far, far from being ready for human use. It had only been used on insects and small animals so far, and even those would come out just slightly… Wrong. A hamster would have two more eyes; a monarch butterfly would have a stinger like a bee; a ferret would come out the other side with glowing red fur. This was all part of the process, though. But, there’s a reason you don’t see clones around today – because of what happened to young Isaac.
Isaac, desperate to know what his father was working on that was so secret, finally decided he needed a closer look. While at lunch at school, he squeezed through an opening in the gate, ran off into the parking lot, and crossed to Pleasant Street. He entered the Gray Building, avoiding the swarm of mysterious men much resembling his father’s usual attire of lab coats and dress shoes, a few men he even recognized as his father’s friends, and he found his way – all the way, passed many biohazard signs, to the cloning device.
Tall and imposing in nature the machine stood, with the two large tubes to each side connected by many pipes and wires, all surrounding the screen in the middle. He tapped on the screen, and saw several warnings that nobody may use the machine without the presence of authorized personnel, but Isaac ignored this with a click of each X button. Once he reached a screen asking if he would like to begin the cloning process, and enthusiastically pressed the start button and ran into the tube. The machine began to scan him, making many repetitive bleeps and bloops, and when his father walked in for his usual experiment, tiny mouse in hand, he immediately went to turn off the machine. But it was too late. With a quick look, Dr. Christopher Treverson gazed in horror at what lurked in the other tube. He took a step back, grabbing his son, and running out the room. The last thing Isaac saw in that room was a quick glimpse of something resembling himself, but scaly – or perhaps, almost amphibian – that made a loud, horrifying screech. A screech that felt like the clone was like a human baby, newly born, crying out for a mother that didn’t exist.
After that, the building was closed off. Nobody was allowed to enter again, especially kids like Isaac. You can’t play there because somewhere in that building, there is something. Something resembling a child, but off. Something with a screech so haunting that sometimes I hear it late at night still. There’s another version of me. Locked off, confused, scared, and alone.
But that clone doesn’t have anybody.
And it never can.
