Cloning around…

what happens at the lab may not stay there.

I was in the lab, drifting on and off near sleep, and reflecting on the holograms we were developing. How they might serve mankind well as disposable proxies for humans in vocations such as search and rescue, police work, firefighting, and other risky occupations. How they might even work as effective decoys and facades, even as actual substitutes for SWAT teams, ICE agents, bomb disposal personnel, and other paramilitary purposes. If we could only design them to be more functional and durable by integrating basic robotic frames into them. Like those being developed in our robotics division.

The problem has been that holograms tend to fade when exposed to sunlight or even bright interior light. They become translucent and even disappear in bright conditions of any kind. For this reason, I’ve been formulating a transportable pigmentation process (TPP) to resolve the refraction, reflection, and dispersion of color in tissues that holograms are exposed to during sunlight and other bright conditions.

TPPs that can ideally vary and control exposure in all lighting conditions and redirect all harmful wavelengths to the surrounding environment, thus protecting their realistic shading and shadowing of textures and surfaces, both solid and flexible, and allowing holograms to remain lifelike and visually stable in all potential situations.

This all sounds very complicated and technical because it is. It proved to be the most difficult technical challenge of my chemistry and physics background that I would ever experience in my thirty-five years working at Pacific Tech for the Skunkco Consortium.

Presently, our holograms appear lifelike and accurate enough, and even realistic, but when transported, they always arrive at their destination with a soft and spongy physical feel to them. I once transported a few trial samples to colleagues, as gag gifts. They looked realistic, but upon receipt, the toasters and laptops I sent looked perfectly real, but projected themselves as soft, Grade D, polyurethane foam (even softer than memory foam).

Unfortunately, these items also burst into flame when exposed to temperatures of over 72°F. Skunkco, our corporate sponsor and the foundation for my departmental research grants, took a big hit on its liability insurance.

My wife had nothing but praise for the fifth-generation “clone” we developed for her use a couple of years later. This proxy of her physical, emotional, and mental being was very successful for a time, serving well at faculty affairs and gatherings as a substitute in situations where my wife had always felt like a wallflower.

Unfortunately, after six months in the service of this beta-clone, I received a letter of reprimand due to her clone’s inappropriate activities in an upstairs bedroom at a frat party. Apparently, it somehow “jelled out” beneath an uninformed postdoc, while performing unscheduled duties which it was not programmed for, ruining everything from the sheets through to the box springs and below.

That poor student is still recovering at a campus-funded mental health institute. I later heard that the hostess of that party had to change the carpet in the affected room, only to find beautiful antique hand-laid hard oak and walnut herringbone floors underneath, which she soon had professionally refinished. It raised the value of the already overvalued home overlooking Arroyo Seco by more than ten thousand dollars after the owner of the sponsored frat house brought in an appraiser for further investigation

So it seems that this single incident of this one clone jelling out was not a total loss. The poor kid, however, who melted or jelled down atop my wife’s doppelganger, pretty much freaked out and went into some sort of deep neural-rooted shock. It was only by good fortune that campus security was patrolling near the party and handled the matter with their usual professional dispatch. The Skunko Board of Directors sent the poor kid a card full of goodwill wishes and hopes that he gets well fast. For a speedy recovery (which is still pending). The Pacific Tech Board of Trustees offered him a one-semester scholarship should he ever return to his research.

Unfortunately, none of that has yet to transpire as the boy remains under life support in a catatonic coma. I hear tell that his parents still visit him regularly, holding his hand, and relating stories of old times to the unrecieving youth.

Two months after that party, I received encouragement from the board at Skunco in the form of a ‘black text,’ congratulating me for my recent leaps in clone innovations, including longer stability and increased longevity.

I also garnered a ten-year extension to my grant, supporting continued research with funding towards my pigmentation and cloning development. And, would I please accept this support and a substantial bonus, which they will be happy to match towards my favorite charities.

I’m pretty sure that I, with the help of my daughter and her clones, can milk this project for generations to come.

would you like more in this vein, they do exist… somewhere.

-dp-

12-1-25

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