𝗧𝘄𝗶𝗻 𝗦𝗶𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗿 | Personal Writing Challenge

This story was a part of a personal writing challenge between my boyfriend and I. We spun a wheel-of-names to determine what genre we'd be writing, and it landed on comedy and science fiction.

I don't think I'm bad at the latter, but comedy is not at all one of my strengths. The following is what I managed to come up with. I hope you enjoy!

▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔

“We’ve done it, Blair!” said the doctor, his loud and enthusiastic shout reaching me from across the lab. I sat hunched in a swivel chair about twenty feet away from where he was performing his trials on nuclear transfer, a concept we’d been researching since the world first realized that biological reproduction wasn’t the only way to produce a living creature; but now I was pushing off the bottom of my desk and launching myself out of my seat, sprinting towards the back wall lined with stereomicroscopes and micromanipulators where Dr. Lewis Ponce was attempting the world’s first case of cloning via nuclear reprogramming. And, by the sounds of it, successfully so.

I laid a trembling hand on my partner’s shoulder, trying to contain the small amount of adrenaline shooting through my body. “What 𝘥𝘪𝘥 we do, exactly?” I asked, cringing as I heard the nervous crack in my voice.

Dr. Ponce removed the holding pipette attached to the sides of the machine and lifted the clear plate containing our specimens, which were a single somatic fat cell from the abdomen of a sheep and a separate, unrelated egg cell from a different creature of the same species. “You are currently viewing the first instance of biological cloning ever performed by human hands.”

A wide smile spread across my face. I felt tears forming in the corners of my eyes. All at once Dr. Ponce had set down the dish and jumped up to his feet, hollering and celebrating with the most honest enthusiasm I’d ever seen from him. I ed him, grabbing his hands and belting out my own version of relief and elation through high-pitched cheers and sobs. Cloning was something humanity made up one day for storytelling purposes, like time travel or space colonization; we wrote our books and made our movies, and then we laughed off the preposterousness of the entire thing and continued with our lives. Dr. Ponce used to be a simple reproductive endocrinologist, a career he pursued only as a means to survive as he and his wife had battled poverty ever since they had married young. With me as his loyal assistant and a friend to his wife, Priscilla, he accomplished the only well-paying career he knew well. Medicine ran in his family. The two of us were inspired to attempt more complicated sciences by a short feature film about a German man who cloned salamanders using a very thin hair-loop as a splicing tool, but we had no idea what we were getting ourselves into. Now, after years and years of painstakingly tedious labor, hundreds of thousands of our personal finances dumped into this project, and the weight of never seeming to be taken seriously by our fellow peers or strangers following us wherever we went, two individuals who never seemed like they’d amount to very much have changed the course of humanity and the world forever.

I hugged my long-time friend and lab partner. We embraced for quite a while. Afterwards, we shook one another’s hands and I went out to grab champagne for the occasion. When I returned, the two of us talked for a very long time about how our lives were going to change.

···································································································

Dr. Ponce spent much of our time after that fantasizing about telling Priscilla he had invented nuclear cloning. He confided in me about how much strain had been placed on their relationship recently, especially when they discovered there was a very likely chance that Priscilla was infertile. They argued just the other day about the value of their marriage, and whether the two of them provided enough to one another in order to justify staying together. “I mean, I used to work a job that revolved around diagnosing pregnancy issues and figuring out how to treat them,” he moaned from between his hands, covering his face in shame. “Maybe she was right. Maybe I don’t do enough.”

“Hey, don’t say that.” I scolded. “You love your wife more than anyone I’ve ever met does. If there was a way to do more for her, you would’ve, but some people's' bodies are a complete mystery... especially when compared to working with one or two sheep cells. Don’t downplay yourself.”

He acknowledged my advice but didn't say anything. Instead, he lifted his head to look around the lab, a mix of bittersweet emotions on his face. After a few moments of silence, he broke the tension. “I never told anyone this, but the weekend before last when she went out to donate eggs to our previous facility, I stole them in order to study them. You’re absolutely right. I’m willing to do anything if it means helping her.”

“Woah now, mad scientist. A little concerning.” I teased, but I could feel myself begin to sweat nervously.

“You should’ve seen how distraught she was when she learned about the chances. She’s never been diagnosed with anything and she has no family history. All we ever talked about was having kids, and how great she’d be as a mother. I couldn’t leave her without any answers!”

I placed a gentle hand on his shoulder. “You don’t need to explain yourself, Lew. I get it. What did you find?”

Sighing, he itted that he hadn’t found anything. “I looked at those eggs for days. Ten out of twenty were, theoretically, perfectly healthy and viable. I left the other ten in the storage display so I could keep coming back to them, but I ran out of things to do with them almost instantly. It isn’t an issue with her eggs.”

I nodded and the two of us sat in silence for a period. Occasionally we took sips from our cheap glasses of Korbel Brut and shared a few awkward words for the future, but otherwise, we’d slipped into our own heads by this point. It was my turn to look around the lab, taking in the familiar atmosphere around me. I was secretly bidding a sad farewell to my humble surroundings as I imagined a large, sterile office with lots of coworkers and a humming ambience of scientific effort. I stared once more at all the complicated machinery that we’d begun our journeys with, and then let my eyes wander to the storage displays, where a number of untouched specimens sat awaiting use. Suddenly, a strange intrusive thought pushed its way into the back of my mind. I tried to ignore it, but curiosity got the better of me.

“Hey, Lewis…” I began. He nodded at me, setting his glass down and leaning back in his seat. I cleared my throat nervously. “So, what ended up being wrong with the previous trials? Why did they fail if this one was so successful?”

“Oh, that’s actually an easy explanation. We kept replacing the somatic cell with different specimens thinking that they weren’t viable, but it was actually the egg cells that were bad. They must’ve been harvested at a later date than we knew of, and they went bad months ago. I guess I must’ve accidentally grabbed a different tube of eggs when I went to set up the experiment this time, and the entire process just smoothened out instantly.”

I could feel my entire body ten. “Would you mind showing me the label? Of the specimens you used this time?”

Dr. Ponce made a weird face but complied, standing and walking over to the back wall where he had conducted his experiments earlier. Fortunately, due to our spontaneous celebration, a few empty containers and basic tools still remained on the counter. He picked one of them up, which was a cylindrical tube containing a small wet sample that slid around the bottom of the container as he inspected it.

After a few seconds, Dr. Ponce abruptly set the container back down. Turning back to me, he walked over and collapsed in his seat, pouring himself another glass of champagne. The color had drained from his face, and he, too, began to sweat compulsively.

I swallowed, feeling a hard lump in my throat that only grew more uncomfortable as I waited for him to speak. Seconds went by, and then minutes. I was developing a splitting headache. I decided to say something. “Well?”

“Well,” he stuttered, his lip quivering. “If it doesn’t work out with Priscilla… there’s always her twin sister.”