Mel sent her a sympathetic look. “They didn’t, but they don’t know that.”
Lena sent her a startled glance. “How can they not know? They can’t--give these creatures memories. They certainly wouldn’t be able to give them the memories of the person they were cloning.”
Mel looked uncomfortable. “The human mind is so programmable it’s downright scary,” she said finally. “It’s done all day, every day, without people even being aware of it.”
Lena smiled with a mixture of disbelief and sadness. “That sounds like something Morris would’ve said.”
“But you didn’t believe it?”
Lena shrugged. “I guess I could see he was right in a way. I just never believed it was like a conspiracy against people.”
“Most of that isn’t a secret conspiracy. It never was. It’s right out in the open. People just don’t see it. It’s the determination of different factions to control people, not a covert operation designed to take over the world. Inthe old days, before half the population of the planet died and most of the food supplies were destroyed, everybody with money and power was fighting over the little people. All day long they were subjected to vids, sound waves, signs--buy this, buy that, you need this. Even the pharmaceutical and medical professions were in on the free-for-all to gobble up the biggest share of the money. Headache? Take this, or this, or this. Stomach ache? Sleepless? Need to stay awake? And on and on until probably three quarters of the population were obsessing about their health or stoned out of their minds because they were told hundreds of times a day that it was all right to take any drug for any problem, because the drugs were going to cure it. And the medical profession invented a catchy phrase--preventive medicine--to get their share of the money. Convincing people that they had to dash to the hospital or doctor’s office all the time, whether there was anything wrong with them or not.”
Lena stared at her frowningly. “That isn’t programming. It’s marketing. It’s good for the economy.”
“Some of it is. Some of it isn’t. Any time people are convinced to buy something they don’t need, don’t really want, can’t use, shouldn’t have, or just to spend money they can’t afford to spend, it isn’t good for them and it isn’t good for the economy. The government just didn’t try to control it like they did everything else because as long as people were spending like maniacs the economy was ‘healthy’.”
“So you’re saying influence is programming?”
“Isn’t it?”
Lena frowned. She didn’t agree with the doctor, but she decided not to argue about it. “I still don’t see what this has to do with clones.”
“Nothing and everything. The same principles I was just talking about can be applied to programming people and have been for centuries. The technique was first developed during the twentieth century--one of the world wars. Basically, if you’re told something enough times you believe it.”
“So--you’re saying they tell the clones about their childhood?”
“As far as we’ve been able to discover, yes.”
Lena frowned. “They couldn’t know everything.”
“They don’t have to. Every day, everywhere you go, throughout your entire life, you’re being watched and recorded. All they have to do is track down the records, and they have the basics to program with. You graduated here, at this time, these people were with you, etc. They feed all of the information they’ve gathered on a specific subject to the clone while the brain is developing, project images they collect into the mind. By the time the thing comes out of the cooker, it thinks it actually experienced all of those things. They’re memories. And, yes, it’s got glitches, but nobody’s memory is perfect either so most of the time people just think ‘faulty memory’.”
It was scary how believable that sounded, how possible. There were things that had happened when she was a child, incidents, that she’d heard about over and over until even she wasn’t sure whether she remembered the incident or just remembered being told about it.
She knew she was Lena, not a clone. She wasn’t so certain anymore, though, if things had happened differently that she would have known.
“Morris was different. I mean, his personality was all wrong. I knew the moment I saw him it wasn’t really Morris.”
“That’s because they didn’t know enough about Morris. He’d spent most of his life underground, off the grid. And the things that happen to people change them. It affects their personality, so if they don’t experience them, they turn out differently. I don’t think they really intended to clone Morris. He wouldn’t go near a clinic, and I can’t figure out how they could’ve gotten his DNA to develop the clone. I think they took him in to question him and....” She broke off when she saw the look on Lena’s face. “Sorry.”
Lena shook her head, fighting back the urge to burst into tears. “I think it would’ve been easier to take if I hadn’t had to look at that thing that looked like him and sounded like him but wasn’t. And the worst of it was that I wasn’t there when he needed me. I didn’t get to tell him bye. One day, he was just gone.”
Mel said nothing, focusing on fiddling with the scanner, which had completed its cycle, to give Lena time to get her emotions under control.
“I know,” she finally said quietly. “It’s like that for all of us. That’s why most of us are here, because someone we loved was replaced.”
Lena lifted her head, staring at Mel as that slowly sank into her mind. “Why would they do that? What could they possibly have to gainby replacing people that were just … ordinary people? Politicians, I could understand. Maybe even executives of powerful corporations but just plain ordinary citizens who have no power?”
“Truthfully? I don’t know. But I’m guessing, control. They need the ordinary people. The whole country rests on the shoulders of the ordinary people. They provide the labor that makes the money, and they spend money to support the economy. You weren’t around during the food riots or the riots that came before that. I wasn’t either, for that matter. But when the gov lost control of the people, they lost the whole country. Everything went down the tubes.
“I think they are replacing politicians--and anybody else in key positions of power, but they’re also replacing anybody that presents any kind of threat at all. Even if the only influence they have is on the people around them. All they have to do is make a little wave, and whoever is behind this makes them disappear.
“But they can’t just eliminate them. People would be in an uproar over that, and, besides, there’s the labor problem. They need laborers.”
Lena stared at the woman, realizing it made a terrible kind of sense and hating the fact that it did. “It was because I noticed Morris and they were afraid I’d start digging?”
“Probably.”
