August 25, 4006
Hey everyone,
Less eventful update this time.
Been a pretty standard few days. Started laying the groundwork for my newest project today. But I definitely still think I need more advanced materials from the city. Dan’s request to visit is seeming more and more plausible. With the amount he’s made selling his paintings I could probably fund the whole project 3x over!
Still, there’s the issue of the clones. Worried that my presence in that city is unwelcome. I’ll have to think on it for a couple more days, because materials are running low on my end. I haven’t really spoken to even ONE of the clones since they left.
Well- I mean technically that’s a lie. The four of us did have one weird interaction recently. One of my clones actually visited us! He’s one of the mixtures. Y’know… the ones that have like, 50% Dan DNA, 50% me, etc.
…And he was weeeeeird.
He brought this really disturbing home movie he made of the four of us screaming. It was visceral. One of the weirdest things I’ve ever seen. Dan was very disturbed and kicked him out.
The clones in general are a really interesting case. An unexpected result. The machine was never built to mix two entities into a new being, just to perfectly recreate existing ones. But because the four of us were in the duplication chamber at the same time, it spliced and mixed DNA samples in differing denominations.
That means you end up with clones where some features from Stove, others from Isaac, some from Dan, and some from me are all mixed together. Even weirder was how some developed unique genetic mutations! One Dan clone came out missing his eyes. There was a couple clones with hair—none of us have hair!
Another interesting case is how the machine is built to age the body of the clone to match the age of the subject. In some cases, the cloning machine either wildly overshot the age or wildly undershot it. Being developed in tubes, myself and the others never got to “age”. We grew up in a tube. We were held in stasis because the earth’s climate was still changing and adapting to allow life after the asteroids wiped out most of it.
But the clones? They came straight out the machine, so it was very strange seeing clones that represent what we could have looked like if we had “grown up.” Especially the Dan clone that was just him but old. It felt weird seeing someone you know’s future appearance laid out right in front of you.
Sometimes I think a lot about that. What it would have been like to grow up, y’know?
I woke up suddenly one day as an adult. But from what I’ve researched about the humans, they got to physically grow! They changed, developed, and evolved. I never really got that chance. I don’t even know if my body is capable of development at the same rate of a human. There’s so much that’s untested. I’ve been conscious for a year and there’s been no noticeable change in my age.
Maybe the bags under my eyes are more pronounced, but I just attribute it to a lack of sleep.
I wonder what it would have been like if I had gotten to experience childhood…?
But hey. I’ve gotta just focus on the cards I’ve been dealt. Talk soon,
Chris.