Two of a Kind

by Fong-Wai (Maggie) Chen

 

Two of a Kind

She glanced at the digital clock and it turned 3:13am. It began to snow lightly outside and as she gazed out the window, she wondered why she was up at such an ungodly hour. Work: that was the reason. Even though she worked hard continuously, her work would take hours and hours. She barely had a life, let alone friends. ‘Things would be so much easier if I had a clone,’ she thought to herself. ‘That way, I would have two of me and I’d be able to do the same amount of work in half the time. Then I would have time to do other things!’

It was 6:30am.
“Honey, are you ready yet? I have already dressed John and we’re all ready to go,” Ethan said.
“Yeah, yeah. I’m coming. I’ll be down in a second,” Sarah replied.
Ethan picked John up, placed him in the backseat, and buckled his seatbelt. The couple got into the car and began driving.
“Man, it snowed a lot last night. Looks like at least three inches,” Ethan said.
“Yeah, it really did. Drive slower, h--” Sarah began cautioning her husband as the car began to skid out of control. The car continued to skid as her husband tried his best to regain control.

6:50 am. The hospital was already flooded with patients who had accidents due to the snow. Doctors rushed from one room to another, checking on patients and diagnosing others. The emergency doors opened and a little boy on a stretcher rolled past the front desk. Blood had stained the little boy’s shirt and the bandages wrapped around his head were soaked as well. The EMTs pushed the stretcher as doctors swarmed around.
“The victim here is a seven year old Caucasian male. His parents’ car skid out of control at forty-five miles an hour and they slammed into a tree from the side. Unfortunately, the boy was sitting in that side of the car. He has major head trauma and has been unconscious since we arrived at the scene. His breathing is slightly irregular and there is a massive loss of blood. The parents are being checked out as we speak but they only sustained minor injuries,” the EMT reported.
The little boy was rushed into the emergency room.

8:00am. After intensive surgery, the boy was officially declared dead. The surgeons who tried to save his life approached the parents with a blank face. They have given grave news so often that their sympathy became routine.
“I am sorry to inform you, Mr. and Mrs. Stevens, but your son passed away. We did everything that was in our power and although he gave a good fight, we lost him. I’m very sorry. Please accept our condolences,” the surgeon stated. He immediately turned around and left the crying couple.

9:00am. She sat down at her desk and let out a long sigh. It was another day of work, another day of dealing with her co-workers. She was lucky that she had a job. Most of the other twenty year olds she knew were still looking for one so she should be grateful. But should she be grateful that her company works her like a dog?

The clock struck ten. The couple stayed in the hospital to be with their son for one last time. Sarah cried without rest and Ethan consoled his wife; he did not cry in front of her—he needed to be strong. But unbeknownst to his wife, he cried more that day than he ever did in his entire life.

10:00am.
“Honey, are you ready yet?” Ethan asked.
“Yeah, yeah. I’m coming. I’ll be down in a second,” Sarah replied. She came down the stairs wearing a black dress and a black hat. Like her husband, she looked tired and worn. They seemed as if they had aged ten years but only one month had passed since that day.
“We’re going to be late, dear,” Ethan sighed.

11:00am. Amy walked into the clinic and immediately cringed at the sterility of the entire place. Fluorescent lights decorated the ceilings and white walls exposed themselves under the harsh lighting. It even smelled like a hospital—the smell of air freshener was detected but it did not successfully cover up the smell of chemicals which permeated the air.

Noon. The couple walked into the funeral parlor and was immediately greeted by family and friends. The sea of black overwhelmed Sarah, who immediately burst into tears. Ethan once again consoled his wife as the funeral began.

1:00pm.
“Here are the pamphlets with information and let me describe the details,” the doctor said. “First, you will have to sign the paperwork so that we have your consent on file. Then all we have to do is take a cell from you, remove the DNA of that cell, and fuse it with an egg cell. This cell will then be implanted into a surrogate mother (unless you are willing to give birth to your clone) and will develop into an embryo. In nine months, a baby who is your genetic clone (that is, will be genetically identical to you), will be born. However, the entire process may need to be done more than once. The technique is still being perfected but as of now, it takes time. There is a high chance that hundreds of embryos will need to be implanted before one successfully comes to full term. In addition, the clone may LOOK like you, but since it will be brought up in a different environment, it will not act like you or be similar to you in any way besides genetically. And finally, I will assure you that this will be in complete confidence, especially since human cloning is illegal here. Do not worry because I am the best doctor in the field of human cloning and I can clone from even the most infinitesimal amount of DNA. Now Amy, are you sure you want to go through with this procedure?” Dr. Ramon asked.

5:00pm.
“Doctor, we are here because we have heard that only you offer this type of…procedure and that you are the best at it. We are quite desperate, as we have told you our story. I hope you can help us,” Ethan said.
A year had passed and the couple heard about a doctor who could successfully clone a human being.
“I knew these would come in handy some day,” Sarah said, bringing out a lock of hair and a few teeth that belonged to John.

8:00pm.
Amy cradled the baby in her arms and watched her fall asleep. The likeness of the baby to herself when she was a baby was uncanny. At that moment, Amy began to feel a bit uneasy.

1:00pm. Fourteen years passed by and Amy watched her daughter grow. Over the years, Emma had grown larger than her peers; she was the tallest girl in her school and she even surpassed the height of most of the boys her age. Emma had also begun to look older than the rest of her friends. And to add to these weird anomalies, Emma had also begun to complain about pain around her joints.
“Doctor, can you please explain why these things are happening to Emma? She is only fifteen but she looks like she’s in her late twenties,” Amy said with concern.
“Well, I hoped this would not happen but this is not uncommon in clones. You see, her chromosomes are older than she is. And it’s quite possible that her telomeres are much shorter than other kids her age. Telomeres are tiny strands of DNA at the end of chromosomes that are responsible for youth and aging. Since her telomeres are shorter, she is genetically older and so, she is already showing signs of this. As these telomeres shorten, the chromosomes are more prone to become unstable and are most likely the cause of everything that you have observed, such as the pain in her joints—a sure sign of arthritis. Clones are known to develop problems,” the doctor explained.

“Jason, it’s time for lunch!” Sarah called at the bottom of the staircase. Soon after, a little boy emerged from the corridor and descended the stairs one at a time. Jason looks exactly like John, Sarah thought to herself as she watched her son. However, no matter how hard they tried to raise Jason in the same conditions as John, Jason still turned out to be a totally different little boy. He did not like dinosaurs like John and he hated the grilled cheese sandwiches that John had loved. Jason was like nothing his mother had imagined.
Sometimes, when she had time to herself, she wonders if the procedure was worth it. A few surrogate mothers were used but every time an embryo was implanted, the babies did not come to term. Finally, Sarah decided to become the child bearer herself. She had given birth four times and each ended with a miscarriage or a dead fetus. She still had nightmares about those dead babies and each one had the image of her beloved John. On the fifth try, Jason was born after almost an entire day in labor. And even the birth was abnormal; Sarah never saw so much blood in her entire life. There was blood everywhere—on the floor, on the doctor, on the nurses, and especially on Jason. At the point, she thought that the baby had died again or that she was dying.

3:00pm. At the age of twenty-five, Emma passed away from heart disease. After her daughter’s death, she resolved to never have kids again.

“Happy birthday!!” shouted the gathering of family and friends at Jason’s seventeenth birthday. The adolescent closed his eyes, made a wish, and quickly blew out the seventeen candles, each representing a year of his life.
Ethan and Sarah looked on as their son enjoyed the festivities. Jason was different than they had imagined but they were still grateful to have a son to call their own.
It was twenty-five years ago to the day that John died.

 

Human cloning is an unpredictable, defiance of nature and the attempt of humans to “play God.” Two of a Kind is a short story that portrays the monstrous aspects of human cloning. By utilizing the theories of the uncanny by Freud, margins by Douglas, and the abject by Kristeva, the story draws on the things people fear most about cloning and what the consequences could be if humans were to be cloned.

Throughout the story, the time of every event is stated. This is an important aspect of the story because it is a motif of cloning. The length of a clone’s life is not known because many factors affect its lifespan; a clone is known to have a shorter lifespan than a regular person because the telomeres are shorter—this is due to the older chromosomes of the clone. In addition, the older the chromosomes, the greater the chance for the chromosomes to be subject to mutations and other damage. This is a known fact in the scientific community and the doctor in the story explains this to Amy, who wondered why her daughter was growing at an abnormal rate. This is one of the unpredictable aspects of human cloning, which makes it so monstrous.

This also draws upon Freud’s theory of the uncanny because cloning, “from having been an assurance of immortality, it becomes the uncanny harbinger of death” (211). Cloning has long been assumed to be a way in which people can live forever. By cloning themselves, they are born over and over and are able to live life once again. However, this is impossible because the clone will not be the exact replica of original. As in the story, the clones are unlike their predecessors. Emma had many health problems and Jason behaved very differently than John. Moreover, cloning is uncanny because it is unfamiliar. Freud says that “what is novel can easily become frightening and uncanny…‘uncanny’=‘unfamiliar’” (195). Cloning is still a relatively new process and scientists are still learning more about it so people in general are even more ignorant about this subject than scientists—it is unfamiliar and unknown. To continue with this concept, the consequences of cloning are also unknown. In the story, Dr. Ramon states that “clones are known to develop problems.” This is similar to the problems Dolly, the first cloned sheep, developed. Dolly developed arthritis and a lung infection, problems that usually occur in the later stages of a sheep’s life. However, since Dolly’s chromosomes are older, she exhibits the signs of these problems earlier. These unpredictable, unfamiliar problems are examples of the uncanny.

Clones are also examples of Freud’s double theory or the theory of the doppelganger. The doppelganger is a copy—it is a double. However, it is believed that this copy may look like the original but in actuality, acts, thinks, and feels differently. A clone is a doppelganger because they may be similar to the original genetically and physically, but due to the difference in environments, the clones end up acting differently. It is impossible for clones to be the same as the original in every aspect.

Instances of Mary Douglas’ margins are also present within the story. First, there is the process of cloning. Human cloning is illegal because it represents chaos and is outside the boundary that is society; disorder “symbolises both danger and power” (Douglas 94). Human cloning is a dangerous thing because the technique has still not been perfected—it takes hundreds of embryos to bring one to life. In addition, the general opinion of cloning has been negative and many people oppose this uncertain process; it is not within the confines of the social norm. However, at the same time, cloning also implies power because it signals the ability to “play God” and manipulate nature. Dr. Ramon can be compared to Victor Frankenstein from Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein because Frankenstein also thought that by manipulating nature, he had power—“when I found so astonishing a power placed within my hands, I hesitated a long time concerning the manner in which I should employ it” (Shelley 57). Dr. Ramon believed he was superior to other doctors when it came to cloning humans—he had power that others did not. Another margin is the blood that is evident in many parts of the story. When John died “there…[was] a massive loss of blood” and when Sarah gave birth to Jason, she had “never…[seen] so much blood in her entire life. There was blood everywhere—on the floor, on the doctor, on the nurses, and especially on Jason.” A marginal substance is something that can be expelled out of the human body, which is a boundary. “Matter issuing from [the body] is marginal stuff of the most obvious kind. Spittle, blood, milk, urine…by simply issuing forth have traversed the boundary of the body” (Douglas 121). Blood is a marginal substance because it can travel outside of the human body. Blood is also monstrous because it is often associated with monsters, such as in the novel Dracula by Bram Stoker. Dracula drank blood from his victims and the process of a transfusion, the exchanging of blood, was often mentioned in the book. Blood is associated with monsters because it symbolizes a dangerous margin and it is red, a color that also symbolizes a monster.
Finally, the idea of the abject from Kristeva is also apparent in the story. First, there is the idea that “the corpse, seen without God and outside of science, is the utmost of abjection. It is death infecting life. Abject. It is something rejected from which one does not part…” (Kristeva 4). The process of cloning produces hundreds of dead embryos before just one can successfully be created. This was shown in the story when Sarah flashed back to the process she had to go through to give birth to Jason. “She had given birth four times and each ended with a miscarriage or a dead fetus. She still had nightmares about those dead babies and each one had the image of her beloved John.” The dead babies and embryos are examples of the abject because they embody death—life has forsaken those bodies.

Death is a monstrous thing because it is uncanny and unfamiliar. In addition, some people believe that the hundreds of embryos that die are murdered. Murder, because it is also outside of the social norm, is also considered marginal which makes it monstrous. Many aspects of cloning concern marginal states, the uncanny, and the abject. “Two of a Kind” is a story that combines the various monstrous facets of human cloning, a process that deals with both life and death. In this story, human cloning is successfully portrayed as a monster by drawing upon what people fear most.

Works Cited
Douglas, Mary. Purity and Danger: An Analysis of the Concepts of Pollution and Taboo. New York: Routledge, 1966.
Freud, Sigmund. Writings on Art and Literature. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997
Kristeva, Julia. Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection. New York: Columbia University Press, 1982.
Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein. 2nd ed. New York: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2000.

 

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