Swans and Klons (7 page)

In 2270, eminent biologist Panna Ash Franziska invented the groundbreaking genetic manipulation that creates Klons. Until that time, humans in Society were forced to degrade themselves by doing manual labor. In those distant days, not only did humans toil in lowly jobs that did not spark personal growth, such as food preparation, transportation, child care, and manual labor, but humans were also expected to clean their own clothes and dwellings. As a result, they were unable to reach their full human potential, and only a few selected humans were able to fulfill themselves with music, writing, acting, visual art, and the other lively arts. Furthermore, as oil reserves declined, it became impossible to use the labor-saving, energy-intensive devices which were prevalent at that time, such as automobiles, dishwashers, and washing machines. Women of Society were spending more and more time carrying out meaningless activities of daily life.

Klons are truly a new species of mammal. They are created in the Hatchery alongside human Hatchlings. They are specially engineered to have superior strength and endurance to humans, but at the same time they lack the intelligence, emotional development, and sense of self that are the hallmark of being human. Although Klons are taken from the same 300 Jeepie Types as we humans, scientists have used molecular technology to alter their fundamental essence. Klons’ frontal cortices are not as developed as those of humans, and thus advanced concepts remain beyond them. Their psychological makeups are also not as robust as that of humans, and so they must sometimes be given treatment. Although there are many hilarious edfotunement series about Klons being mistaken for humans, in reality, this could never occur. All Klons have identifying chips embedded in their abdomens. Klons are the perfect complement to humans, and we believe our two species will be forever entwined in an unending chain of myrtle.

In Society, we practice thelytoky and are no longer subjected to pregnancies, childbirth, and their attendant dangers. All our Hatchlings are decanted in a safe, clean Hatchery. In Society, our children are raised in dormitories by Klons who have been given the highest training.

Sadly, in the neighboring Land of the Barbarous Ones, it was fringe lunatics who were replicated rather than the cream of humanity. The benighted women there continue to engage in the outdated practices of pregnancy and childbirth. They have chosen to implant human embryos into their uterus organs, forgoing all the benefits derived from gestation in a tank. The Barbarous Ones form unhealthy attachments to their young, smothering them with individual attention and not allowing them to enjoy dormitory life. The Barbarous Ones have no Klons and are thus doomed to a primitive life of incessant exertion. Their most repulsive practice is that they also create Cretinous Male embryos and implant them into their uterus organs, so that their land is peopled by drooling, hairy Cretinous Males. Because of Society’s commitment to peace and the Golden Rule, we ignore our savage neighbors. The Fence between Society and the Land of the Barbarous Ones ensures our continuing tranquility and freedom from care.

There was more, but Rubric clicked off the screen. The last time she had read this text, she had been a bit overwhelmed by the information density. Now, she found it completely lacking. It didn’t really explain anything about the Klons.

The door opened and Salmon Jo came in, clutching a huge tray of apples. Her expression now was calm and clear. Rubric could see that the uncertainty had left Salmon Jo.

“It would take me a month to eat all those apples!”

“We might need them,” Salmon Jo replied obscurely.

“Let’s go talk to Panna Lobe,” Rubric said. “That’s what you’re supposed to do when you have problems, right?”

“Okay,” Salmon Jo said. “But we can’t tell her we were at the Hatchery last night, or that I looked at Panna Tensility’s handheld screen. I don’t want to get in trouble.”

“Of course not,” Rubric said. “Am I a thicko?”

Walking across the green, pretty campus, Rubric felt like she was in a dream. A Klon was loading a reel mower onto the back of an electric cart, and the sweet fragrance of freshly clipped grass hung in the air. There was a Klon pushing a cart full of laundry. Rubric stared at the woman, trying to see if she looked human or not. Her posture seemed different from the students and teachers surrounding her. Was that how you could tell if someone was human? One moment, Rubric would think,
That Klon just looks totally different, I can’t define it, but there’s just something about her that makes her not a real person.
The next moment, that difference would vanish, and Rubric felt like she was staring at a Panna who was unaccountably pushing a laundry cart. She didn’t know anymore what was all in her head and what was real.

Panna Lobe greeted them warmly and asked her Klon to serve them tea. It felt reassuring to sit in her dowdy office with the dark wood paneling. The Panna sat in a plush overstuffed chair that smelled faintly of cedar and listened seriously to all they had to say. Their story didn’t make a lot of sense with all the key elements left out. In the end, she just shook her head.

“Girls, what you’re saying is not possible. It’s inconceivable that the Doctors would perpetrate such an outrageous fraud on Society. Salmon Jo, you’re bright, but that doesn’t mean you can understand everything that goes on at the Hatchery. The scientists are not required to reveal all their secrets to you. You must know that Klons are specially engineered to have superior strength and endurance, but they lack our intelligence and emotional development. Rubric, you need to harness your powerful imagination to create something good, not a veruckt story like this. Only the combination of the two of you could come up with something like this! Come back and see me again next week.”

They left dispirited.

“I wanted to believe her,” Rubric said. “She talked, but she didn’t say anything. She said the same thing I read in a text, almost word for word. You’re right about this, Salmon Jo. I think you know better. I can’t explain it, but I just know you’re right. I feel it in my bones.”

“I trust your bones,” Salmon Jo said and put her arm around Rubric. Rubric drew comfort from the weight of Salmon Jo’s arm.

Chapter Nine

Just because the fabric of Rubric’s universe had been ripped apart was no reason for her to quit her regular routine. In fact, that was all she had to cling to. The world that she had believed in didn’t exist, so what was she supposed to do with herself all day? Go to Stencil Pavlina’s as she usually did.

Stencil Pavlina wanted to teach her to make a plaster cast of a clay object. “I learned this from my mentor, and now I want to teach it to you,” Stencil Pavlina said, her voice throbbing with emotion. “This will be the first step in our collaboration. You see how this mentorship is an undying myrtle chain, passed down through all the generations, keeping art alive.”

Rubric really didn’t care about the undying myrtle chain. She was just happy to have something to keep her hands busy. Yesterday she had made a simple clay swan. The next step was making an emollient out of beeswax and olive oil. “Of course, your Klons will make this for you, but you have to be able to teach them how,” Stencil Pavlina instructed. Rubric imagined this process was like cooking because it involved shredding, heating, and mixing. When it was ready, they slathered the emollient onto the clay swan. Rubric wondered how Stencil Pavlina would be able to make the final product grisly and depressing. Stencil Pavlina instructed Rubric to divide the mold with little walls, so they could cast one half at a time.

The best part so far was mixing the plaster. You had to sift calcium sulfate, a white powder, into a bucket of water. Then stir it up until it was a milkshake-like consistency. Rubric liked mixing the squishy plaster. It felt good in her hands. She had never done any activity like this before. Again, Stencil Pavlina reminded her that Klons would do this work for her, but she had to know how to teach them.

“You won’t have more than one Klon at first when you move out of the dorm,” Stencil Pavlina continued, warming to her subject. “If you think about it, the plaster objects you make are sort of like the Klons themselves. They’re terribly similar to the clay original. But they don’t have the same level of detail.”

Rubric had noticed people saying weird stuff like this all the time lately. It made her wonder if everyone unconsciously knew the truth, and they had to keep saying things to perpetuate their self-deception.

She was trying so hard to suppress this thought that she accidentally blurted out another one. “Wow, if the original clay objects are so much better, why don’t you make a series of clay objects instead of making all this plaster stuff?”

It came out sounding awfully snarky.

Without missing a beat, Stencil Pavlina said, “Gerda, slap her.”

The Gerda who was closer to Rubric—there was no confusion about who was meant to do it—reached out and slapped Rubric’s face. It stung, and it felt as though a hand was still on her cheek, even after Gerda returned to her bucket of plaster. Tiny clumps of plaster were stuck to Rubric’s cheek. It confused Rubric how quickly they had ganged up on her, without stopping the flow of work. Gerda was pouring, pouring expressionlessly.

Rubric whirled to Stencil Pavlina. “Why did you do that?”

“Don’t ask me why I’m not making something,” Stencil Pavlina said. “I won’t abide it.”

“You don’t slap people!” She couldn’t believe she had to explain this to a Panna.

“Look, Rubric, I know when you’re a teenager there’s only the Golden Rule,” Stencil Pavlina said. “But in the real world, you have to treat people a certain way, or they’ll punish you. So you can’t act like a thicko young snot nose all the time. Once you leave the dorm, you’re part of Society, and you have to know your place.”

Her place? “I’ll show you my place,” Rubric said and slapped Stencil Pavlina back. Apparently she did it pretty hard because Stencil Pavlina’s head snapped back, and there was a wet plaster handprint on her face.

Stencil Pavlina’s eyes flashed. “You can’t slap
me
,” she told Rubric. “You are supposed to slap my Klon!”

“Weird, weird, weird,” Rubric declared. “You know what? You are veruckt.”

“Gerda, throw a tantrum,” Panna Stencil Pavlina ordered.

The other Gerda, the one who hadn’t slapped Rubric, threw down the cloth she was using to rub emollient on the bird. “
Waah!
” she cried and stamped her feet. She balled her hands into fists and shook them at Rubric. “
Waah!
”

Rubric was startled at how genuine the Klon’s dictated emotions seemed to be. The other Gerda just watched, slowly stirring the plaster so it wouldn’t thicken and harden. Was the stirring Gerda smiling ever so slightly? Rubric’s eyes darted back and forth from stirring Gerda to tantruming Gerda. Finally, she returned her gaze to Stencil Pavlina. She had often seen humans ask Klons to act out their emotions for them on edfotunement. She had believed it was in poor taste, but it had never before struck her as insane.

“I’m not impressed at all,” she said.

To her surprise, Stencil Pavlina smiled a little crooked smile. “No?” she said. “Neither would I have been at your age. Gerda, that’s enough.”

Gerda stopped screaming and stamping.

“Why don’t you take the rest of the day off?” Stencil Pavlina said. “We’ll make a fresh start tomorrow. We must not stain our artistic bond with this unpleasantness.”

Rubric nodded. Being around Pannas who didn’t know the truth was stressing her out. She would go spend some time with someone who always made her feel better. She would visit her Nanny Klon.

Chapter Ten

Rubric knocked on the wall beside the doorway to Nanny Klon’s room. She was trying hard to treat Klons like the humans they were. Humans had doors to their rooms, and you wouldn’t go in without knocking.

“My pet!” Nanny Klon said. Her wide face crinkled into a smile.

“Can I come in, Bloom?” Rubric asked.

Nanny Klon seemed surprised at being called by her name. “Of course,” she said. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong,” said Rubric. Lies, lies. “Only I was going to bring you some peppermint oil and I forgot.” She felt guilty. That’s all she felt these days.

“Oh, what a sweet thought,” said Nanny Klon. “What’s that expression? I walked a thousand klicks and presented a feather as a gift.”

“I’ve often heard that expression, but it makes no sense,” Rubric said.

“I can explain that to you,” Nanny Klon said. “When I was training to be a Nanny Klon, I learned hundreds of folktales from human history. You don’t know until you’re assigned, you see, what age child you’ll be working for. So I might have been with little girls only five years old, and in that case I would need to tell them lots of stories. As it is, I need to know a lot about how to help resolve disputes and counsel people on the affairs of the heart.”

“Would you tell me the story, Bloom?” Rubric asked, sitting down with Nanny Klon on the bed. “My Nanny Klon when I was small used to tell me stories.”

“Certainly,” said Nanny Klon. She began to tell her story, smoothing back the hair from Rubric’s forehead. “Once, long ago, there was a young Panna who wanted to pay her respects to the supreme Doctor of her Society. So she got two beautiful swans and put them in two wicker baskets and began a journey of one thousand klicks. On the way, the swans got all dusty and rumpled from being locked up in those wicker baskets so long. Since the young Panna had almost reached the castle where the Doctor lived, she wished to make them more clean and presentable. Just before she arrived at the palace, she came to a lovely lake with reflecting waters. She decided to wash the swans in the lake. But those ungrateful swans! Do you know what they did?”

“They flew off,” Rubric said. “Obviously. That’s what I would do too. I think the Panna was a bit of a thicko not to foresee that.”

“Girls of your Jeepie Type are always so judgmental,” Nanny Klon said fondly. “You’re right, though. The swans flew off. And the poor young Panna was left with nothing but a handful of white feathers.”