SRIJAN 2002-2003(1st Edition)

♦ CONTOURS OF THE MIND/VVinds Of Change
EGO-SCIENCE FICTIO1Y
By:
Swati Mahajart
First Year,
Architecture.
Doctor Gunther relaxed back in his seat. His moment has finally arrived. As he sat today in 2039 A.D. , his mind wondered off to
the time, when at the age of 23, he had a dream, a mission then considered impossible of making an exact replica of human being: a
human clone. What could be done with monkeys and chimps can also be done on.human beings, he reasoned and set out on a journey,
obvious of the implications or the other things he could achieve in his life time. He was sure of just one thing, his ultimate goal of
creating a human clone. After receiving U.S. aid for his project he literally segregated himself from the world. For weeks together he
would work, day and night with D.N.A. samples till he dropped to the floor with exhaustion, and slept for days at a stretch. He lived,
ate, drank, slept and breathed wrapped in the thoughts of cloning. And soon the tall handsome, Dr. Gunther was reduced to an emaciated
pack of bones.
Finally he hit upon the right solution to his quandaries. He found that the embryo, after undergoing the scientific process, would
become a baby. But that was not all if the baby was kept in a time chamber it could be transferred into a seventy five year old Dr.
Gunther in only seventy hours. This clone would possess the same features, some mental capabilities, some voice, same gait, etc. but
only difference between him and the clone would be that the clone would be as healthy and strong as he was at the time of the birth.
And now this Dr. Gunther II was about to enter this world as Dr. Gunther triumphantly uttered the word "EXECUTE". There was
a blinding shower of sparkles that issued from the time chamber followed by a whirring of levers and gadgets. Tears of joy, of
jubilation, of ecstasy of of it was hard to describe Dr. Gunther's feelings at that moment when he beheld a human form
emerging from the time chamber: a Dr. Gunther II without his weakness and ailments.
Some days later, when the original doctor referred to the clone as Junior, the clone retorted, "Look doctor, I don't see any reason
why you should call me your junior. I possess the same abilities as you do and you keep treating me as your kid brother."
"But I created you, eh" the doctor defended himself. "You will get the due recommendation for that all right". "But now that I m
here, I'm the better person, why, you are no more than a silly old scientist with one of his legs already in the grave while I m fresh as
baby. I have a long way to go..."
The quarrel went past the seventh degree. Two penknives rose in the air and two pools of same blood flooded the floor as he and
his clone dropped down dead.
Come to think of it, he was probably wrong. He was right in giving the clone the same features, the same mental facilities and the
same gait, voice etc., but he surely committed a blunder in giving the clone same EGO!!!
t iroir;: . Man is toying with nature, with the help of science. The recent attempts at cloning humans can make a day dawn, when
we will be wiped out by our own creations which attempt to sabotage the basic laws of nature.
(ssmAr4)
PREJUDICE, n. A vagrant opinion without visible means of support.
(2oo2-03)