Fafila suppressed the urge to flinch as her husband slammed his crystal wine glass against the tabletop. If she could keep her expression and body language calm, this latest tantrum might blow over with her person unscathed.
“You’re supposed to be so brilliant, Fafila. How is it that someone as smart as you’re supposed to be can’t keep track of time?”
“Apologies, husband. The microcentrifuge was malfunctioning.”
The other end of the long dining table seemed a kilometer away as she forced her steps to a measured grace. Hurrying was not appropriate for the wife of the son of the director. No matter how late she was or how urgent the situation, she was expected to always remember her position.
“Did I demote you to equipment maintenance? I don’t remember demoting you, Dr. de Leon.” Crystal-clear blue eyes tinged with malice and mockery met hers as he took a sip from his cracked wine glass.
One of the blank-faced servers who saw to the needs of the Egidio household pulled out her chair as she approached. She’d get neither pity nor scorn from the servers if plates and cutlery started flying. The staff all knew their place as well. That place was one of invisible, silent service.
“You!” Dominic Egidio II, son of the director of Geneacorp and heir to everything, turned his cold gaze on the server. “Get me a new wine glass. This one is defective. And dismiss whoever set the table with this shabby old thing.”
The server bowed and hurried forward, replacing and refilling the glass with practiced efficiency. Deferential service always soothed Dom’s temper. Fafila took a dainty sip of her own wine and observed as the petulant frown melted from her husband’s handsome face.
Dom loved having an excuse to dismiss a server. Since he couldn’t tell them apart, he never noticed that the serving staff remained the same despite all his supposed dismissals. As a new bride, Fafila had once tried to intervene behind the scenes. The house manager’s face had softened a fraction as he replied.
“Don’t worry, madam. Raul has been replaced by his cousin Raul.”
Raul, polishing silver at the other end of the butler’s pantry, gave her a slight bow before returning to his task.
“I see. The family resemblance is uncanny.”
“Indeed, madam.”
“So!” Dom’s bark brought her back to the present. “Will you need a budget increase to deal with your broken thingamajig? If so, I’m not sure we can replace it this quarter.” He turned his attention back to her end of the table, temper rising in his face once again.
The dining room door opened, saving her. Her father-in-law bustled in. “Dom my boy. Sorry to keep you waiting. So rude of me, and look, Fafila is here on time for a change. But you mustn’t tease her for arriving late. Profits from her lab have made our share prices soar!”
“Indeed? That is good news. Fafila is my treasure in so many ways, Father. I can never thank you enough for acquiring her for me.”
“Now, now, Junior. Fafila’s not an acquisition. She’s a valued partner. She’s our lead scientist and your wife.” The senior Dominic settled into eating, then paused mid-bite. “What’s this about broken equipment? Fafila must have the finest equipment at all times. I’ll fire that fool Munio if he’s ordered defective equipment.”
“We should fire him anyhow,” Dom added. “Fafila deserves the best, as you say, and I can’t see how that ugly old troll can be the best.”
“What say you, Fafila? Shall we get you new equipment and a new senior lab manager?”
“No indeed. The machine needed only a quick reset, and as for Munio, I am used to him. Training a new lab manager at this stage would disrupt everything.”
“Well, we don’t want that!” her father-in-law exclaimed. “Don’t make a mess of Fafila’s lab, Junior. Our partners are most eager to see the fruits of the research. I’m not getting any younger despite the geriatric treatments. This idea of a young, fresh body to dump one’s thoughts into grows on me every day. And if she had a young new body, I could convince your mother to leave her room.”
The rest of the dinner conversation swept on without her. Father and son argued everything from quarterly profits to sports scores with booming cordiality. Her father-in-law didn’t glance at her when she excused herself, but Dom watched as she slipped from the room. It was a bad sign of a long night ahead.
At dawn, Munio found Fafila in her lab, nursing a headache and a black eye. Her comfort was a cup of steaming hot tea.
“The first clone is grown and ready for a transfer attempt,” Munio said as he joined her at her workbench. His kind gray eyes skimmed over her injured face. He let out a sigh.
“Don’t.”
“It’s not right. You deserve better.”
“I can’t stand pity. And you also deserve better. Gene therapy for your spine. Geriatric treatments.”
Munio ran a hand through his graying hair. “I’m not as decrepit as all that. Next, you’ll be asking me to retire.”
Fafila grasped his hand next to her data pad on the workbench.
“I can’t do this work without you. And even if that weren’t true,” she hurried to add, “you must know how much you mean to me.”
He gave her a wry smile as he rescued his hand from hers. “It’s like you want to get me killed by your jealous husband. As if a worn-out old man like me could be any threat to his marriage.”
The rest of the lab staff started trickling in. When the full team was assembled, they gathered in the vat room with their first volunteer. Today was the day.
The process worked on canines, birds, and other assorted animals. But would it work on humans? And could humans could endure the process with their sanity intact?
Two of the dogs had chewed off their own tails after transfer, and one bird had pecked her mate to death.
A skinny convict volunteer shivered next to the transfer bed. He had a history of only petty crimes, stealing to survive. He was a dock worker, but an unlucky equipment failure had amputated his right arm below the elbow.
For someone of higher social standing, a reattachment and therapy would have made him whole again. This guy got a pass to the hospital without his severed limb and a quick dismissal when it became obvious that he couldn’t do his job without it.
“Are you ready? Any last-minute concerns?” Fafila asked the convict. One of the technicians gave her a frown as if to say, ‘Don’t scare off the lab rat.’
“Nawh. If it works, I get my arm back and a nice lump of credits. If it doesn’t, well. I guess I’ll be missing special desert night in lock-up.” He climbed up onto the transfer bed and lay back, his gaunt face serene.
In another bed lay his exact genetic duplicate minus a few minor flaws plus a complete set of limbs. With no higher brain function, the clone looked comatose. The plan was to stop all the clone’s brain functions and then transfer the all electrical activity of the original body’s brain into the clone to restart it.
They had already made a holographic copy of the original brain’s memory matrix and imprinted it on the clone brain. If it didn’t work, it was theoretically possible that they would be able to revive the host body. That this attempt at a fail-safe had never worked in the animal subjects was something that the team never discussed.
Fafila watched, heart in her throat as the host body twitched and seized while its neurological activity was drained away into the clone’s body. The process, which she had timed down to the microsecond, seemed to stretch into forever. Then the donor body went still. The clone opened his eyes.
“Sorry folks. I don’t think it worked. Same old me, am I right?”
“Try your new hand,” Munio replied.
The convict gasped as he curled and uncurled his new right hand on his brand-new body. Tears leaked from his eyes as he shook with sobs. The psychologists hurried in and took him away. Now all Fafila could do was wait while they waited to see if the process held and if their subject retained both his personality and memories as they hoped.
“I feel like that mad scientist of the old stories,” Fafila mused as she and Munio finished off a bottle of sparkling wine. “Dr. Dracula?”
“Frankenstein, I believe.” His triumphant grin was almost too intimate to bear.
“A pity. It’s not as alliterative.” Fafila found her courage and cleared her throat. “Ed. I have something to show you.”
“It must be serious if you’re calling me Ed. Though I wish you would call me Ed every day.” He ducked his head, grin fading. “Forgive an old fool. It’s the wine talking.”
She was too nervous to smile, so she settled for taking his hand and leading him through the deserted lab to the decommissioned first lab. Fafila keyed in the triple code required for entrance, then paused.
“You might hate me forever after this, so I’m taking what could be my only chance.” Before she could overthink it, she leaned in and kissed him. His surprised lips tasted like home, but he pulled away after only a brief taste.
“I’m blaming that on the wine as well, Fafila. Though if I were younger and a better man… but no. As it stands, I have nothing to offer.”
“And I have this to offer.” She tugged on his hand into the old lab where a dark form lay shrouded in the darkness.
The lab lights came on with blinding abruptness.
“Dear wife. You are so predictable, but I expected you sooner. Later, I will correct you for keeping me waiting.” Dom stepped forward and grabbed her wrist, yanking her away from Munio and toward a different set of beds. He turned the lights on over the bed with his free hand, revealing himself.
“Ever since I figured out that your project was going to work, I made my techs work overtime on this whenever you were out of the lab.” Dom’s fingers dug into her wrist. “I might as well get something of my own out of all this time and money my father invested in you.”
Fafila examined the clone on the bed. It was Dominic, but better. Taller, better fat-to-muscle ratio and the little quirk in the bridge of his nose smoothed out. Dom’s techs had done surprisingly good work.
“But wait, there’s more!”
He marched her back to the first set of beds and turned on the lights. Inside was her clone of Eduard Munio, but ruined. His childhood spinal deformity was exaggerated, and his age was increased by at least a decade. Behind them, Ed stepped back with a sharp intake of breath.
“I couldn’t have you giving him a pretty new body and not give anything to me, your loving husband.” His nails dug even deeper into the soft underside of her wrist. “So you transfer me, right now, to my fabulous new body and that old fool of yours into his. And maybe, just maybe, I’ll let you both live afterward.”
“We don’t even know if the process is reliable. It’s early days, Director Egidio,” Ed said.
“Coward. Of course it works. I saw that convict. He’s fine. Better than fine. I’ll go first so that you can help Fafila. And then, if I don’t break her pretty, useless neck when I wake up, I’ll make sure that you get into your new body.” Dom looked down at the twisted, pitiful clone again. “Such that it is.”
He let go and hurried over to the bed that was mated to his clone, stretching out with a self-satisfied smirk. “And don’t even think of trying anything funny. You’ll wish it was me killing you if you hurt me in any way. The techs I hired and put on your team know I’m in here.”
“Right.” Fafila closed the cover on the bed. “You know you’ll be sedated?”
“I know everything. Get on with it.”
As soon as the sedation cycle commenced, she turned back to Ed. “I need you to get in the other bed now.”
His face was blank with despair. “Or we make a run for it while he’s out.”
“Do you trust me?”
“Of course.”
She grabbed his hands and kissed him again. “Then get in the bed.”
As soon as his sedation cycle was underway, she started working. She had a lot to do in a very short period. There was even less guarantee that what she planned would work. It might end like those poor dogs who chewed off their new tails. Or worse.
It was true Frankenstein stuff. She shuddered as she switched wires and reprogrammed. The door lock pinged several times, but she had the foresight to change the passcode and keep out Dom’s traitorous assistants.
Some hours later, the first bed chimed its finishing alarm.
“How do you feel?” She whispered, her face centimeters from his.
“Somewhere between having been run over by a large transport and being reborn brand new. Interesting. How is Director Egidio?”
The lab door flew open as the techs finally managed to get security to override her personal lock codes.
“Ed. Please don’t hate me. It was the only way.”
“Director Egidio, are you well? Dr. de Leon locked us all out!” Rafaella, Fafila’s least favorite of Dom’s lab hires, rushed forward to hip-check Fafila away from Dom’s bed.
“I am well, Rafaella. Everything went as planned, more or less.” Dom’s eyes met hers over Rafaella’s shoulder. When he looked at her again, his gaze was full of relief and resignation.
“Fifi! Get over here! What’s wrong with me?” A howl sounded from the other bed.
Rafaella walked over and put a hand on a hip. “Nothing’s wrong with you, Dr Munio. Your outsides match your insides better now.”
“Fifi, you fool. I’m not Munio. I’m Dom! Your Dom!”
Rafaella swiveled back to stare at Fafila and Dom. Fafila gave her own best casual shrug.
“We know not every subject will make it through the process and remain sane. It seems Dr. Munio is suffering from the delusion that he’s the director’s son. A shame. He was my best assistant. Now, who knows if we will be able to do any more transfers, especially considering how this turned out.”
More technicians rushed in, and soon Eduard Munio was on his way to the psych ward for analysis and observation. Dom was shifted to a regular observation room.
It was some time before Fafila was through filling out incident reports, cremating host bodies, and getting her more trusted techs to do a final sweep of the lab. Finally, she crept to Dom’s bedside.
“Well, this is a conundrum. How will I ever remember who I’m supposed to be? And won’t our colleagues discover what you did? The ones we hired aren’t as dimwitted as poor Rafaella. Or should I call her Fifi?” Dom quirked an eyebrow at her with an expression that was pure Ed Munio.
“You should call her Fifi. And keep up Dom’s, I mean your, adulterous relationship with her for at least another couple of weeks.” Fafila grimaced at the thought.
“As to discovery, I didn’t only switch you. I gave the other clone a scrambled version of your memory matrix and Dom’s matrix. When they scan him, it will all look like some terrible error. And they won’t scan you because you’re the director’s son. You won’t let them.”
“And so I steal another younger man’s life. Just like that.”
“He would have killed us both.”
“I know. But that doesn’t mean we won’t have to live with the weight of your choice.”
New Dom’s eyes were too wise and sad for someone of his age and general life outlook. Fafila could only hope that people would attribute it to the strain of the procedure and knowledge of how close he had come to madness. Rafaella was already bragging about how she had got her Dom a new body right under the nose of “that witch of a wife of his”.
Rafaella found she was dismissed a few weeks later.
Junior Director Dominic Egidio apparently had a major change of heart after what Geneacorp referred to as “The Incident”. Afterward, he was often found in the lab, in the company of his brilliant and lovely wife, Dr. Fafila de Leon.
Though everyone in the lab missed the august and brilliant presence of Dr. Eduard Munio, this new Dom wasn’t a half-bad replacement. The Senior Director Egidio was thrilled at the improvement in his son, both physical and mental.
Dr. Munio passed away a few months later, insisting to his last breath that he was Dominic Egidio Junior and that his wife had stolen his body.
Geneacorp decided to suspend the clone body transfer program and focus its efforts on direct genetic manipulation of fetuses instead.
