Idiots.
Despair flooded Jo as she collapsed back into her leather desk chair. These extremists had ruined everything. Mindmap and matrix programmers were currently tightly controlled and always used under the supervision and approval of doctors. They’d started with much more freedom to fix all sorts of genetic problems at first. Now extremists were changing who people were—not their genetic makeup, but their base personality.
It shouldn’t have been possible. No one had achieved that level of sophistication with programming. Jo estimated that fewer than five people could handle that level of mindmap programming.
Her other committee members, three clones and five humans, didn’t know her personal association with hackers. If they had, they wouldn’t have invited her onto the committee.
She’d used a hacker to modify her DNA to reverse the genetic anomaly that caused her to be born with withered legs. She found the new legs weren’t for her; they weren’t her. She didn’t feel broken in her original skin. She’d already decided her next clone would have the legs she was born with, regardless of the law. But it didn’t matter where she personally stood on the issue; if the committee found out that she had used the skills of a DNA hacker, then they would kick her out for bias.
And for the people who needed their modifications, namely the people with genetic illnesses and the transgender population, the best she could hope was for the committee to agree to a grandfathering of existing modifications.
But after the Luna colony priest incident…her colleagues would be out for blood.
She rubbed her face and read the news story again, and then reread the intel about the hacker. “You have no idea what you’ve ruined,” she muttered, eyes fixed on the Luna priest, Father Gunter Orman. But it wasn’t his fault. You can’t fight a personality hack. He was just the figurehead of all of their future lives altered forever. The true ruiner was the hacker, and whoever financed them.
Her tablet beeped. A text from her assistant, Chris, scrolled across the face: MEETING RECONVENING. She took a deep breath and went to head the meeting that would finalize the Codicils to create worldwide laws about cloning.
Her last job as a pediatric surgeon specializing in birth defects had been easier. And she’d never thought she would think that.
Government officials and their translators from all over the world milled about in the room. When Jo arrived, Chris appeared at her side with a cup of coffee and a tablet with notes. She sat at the head of the table, and the others took the cue to join.
“You’ve all had a chance to read through the proposed Codicils,” she said. “I’m going to put forth a vote on passing the rules as a whole document. Opposed?”
Ambassador Yang, a Chinese representative from Earth’s Pan Pacific United countries, spoke up immediately, his translator at his shoulder talking over him.
“We do not like to give complete approval of a document. Each part must be debated. What interests me is what is happening on the moon right now.”
Jo groaned inwardly and nodded. She sent a link to the group so that everyone could see the news feed. “It is a tragic thing that happened to Father Orman, but our proposed Codicils will make his entire situation illegal. It is already illegal to kidnap, murder, and clone against a person’s will, of course. Now it will be against the law to hack a matrix against the will of the person.”
The table erupted around her with questions and arguments. The Brazilian ambassador spoke loudest in accented English. “‘Against the will’ is not good enough. The damage caused by matrix hackers far outweighs the benefits. We need to outlaw the entire thing!”
Jo held her hand up and waited for silence. “Shall we begin debating Codicil Five to start with?”
The answers, mostly positive, chorused through the table once the translators had passed the message along.
Joanna sighed and sipped her coffee. It was going to be a long night.
At four the next morning, Jo rubbed her tired eyes. She sat with Chris at the otherwise empty table.
“You did it, Senator,” he said, passing her a fresh cup of coffee.
She raised an eyebrow. “Decaf, I hope?”
“Of course,” he said.
The meeting had gotten heated when various opinions about clones and humans came out on either side. Pan Pacific United Ambassador Yang, after demanding they debate each Codicil, came down strangely on Jo’s side more often than not. Most of the rules were easy to pass: No society wanted multiples of a clone. Overpopulation, homelessness, and crime were just a few of the arguments. Putting one person’s mindmap into a clone that wasn’t their body was easy too: That would just cause the clone to go insane. No arguments there.
The mind hacking had been a problem, with a majority voting to outlaw all but the most basic. If you had a hack, you couldn’t be grandfathered in, so hundreds of clones would wake tomorrow with problems they thought they’d left behind decades ago.
One Codicil that didn’t pass was the law that would deny clones any religion. Most world religions had agreed that cloning was against the rules of God/Goddess/Gods/Nature, anyway, so they dealt with it in their own houses of worship. But leaving the clones with no recourse to religion was deemed too limiting.
Arguments got into what a clone truly was, if it was even human anymore. Clones had rights other humans did not, such as the ability to leave themselves their whole estate upon death, the ability to live forever, and the ability for some people in lifetime jobs to hold their position for much longer than a lifetime. Thus they agreed that clones were “antipodal-human” and “antipodal-citizens.”
“I am surprised to have gotten the support I did from Ambassador Yang,” she said. “We couldn’t have passed the inheritance law without him.”
“Interesting fact,” Chris said in a neutral tone. “His translator, Minoru Takahashi, is planning on becoming a clone.”
Jo snapped her head up. “How did you find that out?”
“He told me in the break room while we were getting coffee. This was after everything had been signed, of course.”
All clones (or people who intended to become clones) were required to give full disclosure to the committee. Jo and her staff hadn’t vetted the translators; their bosses were supposed to do that.
“Why are you telling me this?” she asked. “I may have to report him to Ambassador Yang.”
Chris shrugged. “He looked like he had gotten away with something, but I don’t know the guy well enough to say. He didn’t disclose any diplomatic secrets, if that’s what you’re asking. We just talked about ourselves.”