thanks for the review…um, no-not everyone is cloned…only those who pay for it. one replacement per human life span :)
Novel Treatments / Prologue
Prologue
A brief history of the world
At the dawn of the twenty-second century, mankind was ripe with power. The human race rejoiced in its dominion over the planet, thrilled at their brilliant mastery of things- like a giant child under a synthetic pine on Christmas morning. Life expectancy had almost doubled since the early 2000’s, thanks to many great technological advances in “New Medicine”, including cloning and biochemical research. The issue of cloning, while in the past had been something of high and heated debate throughout the world, was now an essential ingredient to the physiology of world politics. This once “godless” notion played an important role in how the people of earth survived the Last Great War.
The first person to receive a body replacement made of fully cloned human material was eight-year-old Lizzy Sparrow of Idaho City, Idaho, USA. The child had been hit by at truck that had lost control as it slid over patch of black ice on the highway, sending a ton of metal screaming into the side of her mother’s car, pinning Lizzy in between the two. The accident couldn’t have been worse. It was a complete mess in every way. The mother suffered a fatal stroke at the sight of her daughter’s mangled carcass wound between two opposing twisted metals. Because of the remoteness and size of the town, and it being January 2103, all roads in and out were blocked. The three victims-two dead and one wounded, sat unnoticed for 52 minutes. By the time authorities were contacted, there was no hope.
Of course, the whole thing was well cloaked. The surgeon was none other than the infamous Dr. Chloe Wong, first lady of stem cell reproduction, and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize 2100 for her success in implanting the first cloned human heart into a dying patient. Prior to the Idaho City incident, Dr. Wong had been contracted several times by the New United Government; however, none of the previous experiments had been as highly classified. The death of the Sparrow girl had presented a wonderful opportunity for research. Curtains were drawn tight. The surgeon and her assistants arrived 31hours after the accident, approximately. The six hour procedure took place in a wing of the local hospital that had been closed due to its being “under construction”.
Twenty-four hours later, the little girl was back in the arms of her father and beloved family. Lizzy Sparrow never knew that she had died. She only knew that her mother had been killed in the same car accident that had put her into a “coma”. Nobody knew any better until Lizzy became pregnant. The forty weeks of gestation seemed to go as smoothly as possible. No defects were detected by any ultrasonic or echo- sonic tests. Her nutrient levels were high and toxin levels low. Oxygen saturation was normal, weight gain fine. Lizzy simply glowed, a beautiful triumph for Mother Nature.
The labor lasted for eleven hours exactly, during which time a nurse midwife attended Mother Sparrow, with a doctor on call for the delivery. She seemed relaxed enough between contractions, she progressed smoothly, and the tense excitement in the room was almost too much to bear. Both mother and father wept tears of joy as the doctor was summoned. Her eyes widened as big as saucers and she cried out, “It’s time to push!” As the baby’s head crowned, a confused and scared look seized the doctor’s face. He turned and ran from the room. The midwife fainted clean away. The uterus contracted and Lizzy Sparrow pushed with all her might and brought into this world an abomination.
Instead of eyes there were two big, bulbous blue spheres where the sockets would be, rimmed in black. The boy had no mouth, just a few crooked fragments of bone protruding out of the soft flesh below his slit nostrils. His feet came to a point where the toes would have been and his head was covered in a slimy worm-like map of blood vesicles. Lying on the sheets, bloody and squirming, the child lived his few seconds of life and perished before the midwife came to.
Lizzy was committed to the state mental hospital. She lived out the rest of her days, which were 141 exactly before the night she strung herself up with a bit of contraband rope from the rafters.
The story leaked into the press after that, thanks to Leah Thompson, who had been the assisting surgeon during the Sparrow replacement. Miss Thompson had apparently been struck in the forehead by her own guilty conscience. International uproar ensued, throwing the sending the whole of the New United Government into a panic. It was simply no longer feasible trying to cover everything up. Too many rumors were circulating; there was talk of action, in a moment of sheer idiocy, the bill was written and the votes were cast. Ninety-nine percent voted in favor of the legalization of full body replacement cloning. The scientific community nearly wet their proverbial shorts. Idaho City was forgotten.
Petitions for body replacements flooded the medical community, causing an economical shift. The elderly spent their whole pensions on down payments for replacements. Young people invested in savings bonds for future replacements. Prices were sky-high and profiteering overtook many. Suicide and homicide, even infanticide rates rose due to the new “freedom of life” law, which legalized a one-time use of full body replacement per human being per life span.
To balance out the boom in world population, the United Nations introduced a new strain of the flu virus into the population, killing millions of elderly and children around the globe in one swift stroke. The medical professionals pocketed the difference, naturally. The virus was kept circulated long after the vaccination saved millions, of course, because the cycle of resistance and persistence will continue.
Capital punishment for all heinous crimes was a worldwide absolute; however, the underground population of career criminals was larger than it ever had been, due to the corruption of the system. A sad paradox burdened the world. It was almost impossible for any court to find anybody truly guilty of a heinous crime. The new world view of society and how it breeds its own criminals had widened to accept and forgive most felons due to past trauma dealt by other people, and of course, the mental illness epidemic that followed the right to life bill’s ratification.
Most rapists and homicidal maniacs and average Joe murderers were housed in massive prisons for the mentally ill. These institutions were funded primarily through mandatory prison house taxation. They were better known to the general civilian population as “Bush houses” because they had been instituted throughout America by the former president George Bush the Fourth in the same year he introduced democracy to eleven separate African Nations.
New and exciting street drugs had cropped up in various places. One popular substance was a stimulant/hallucinogen called Triptamphetakins, or “skin” on the street. It was a hybrid drug, its foundation being methamphetamines. The user experiences an intense, prolonged euphoria that sometimes includes visual and auditory hallucinations.
An out-of-body feeling immobilizes the user’s thought process while the body becomes arrested by a series of spasms. Multiple involuntary sexual climaxes and all-over sharp tingling combined with numb rushes cycle through the physical person as the psyche is churned to oatmeal. The first phase of the high lasts two to four hours. Eight hours follow, during which the body is once again mobile, but the brain is not functioning properly. Many “skinners” black out the whole experience, knowing only that they have flown far, and have paid dearly for it. . There is a twelve- day detoxification following a skin trip during which the user experiences chest pain excruciating enough to cause a heart attack if another dose is not taken. The drug forces the addict to live in an altered reality either way.
“Skin” originated in Korea, but was soon after adopted as the favorite on the other side of the globe in North Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. From there, it grew across the nation. The individuals who specialized in the production and sale of skin grew fat on customers young and old. Organized crime grew strong, unstoppable. There had never been a higher murder rate in any country’s history.
Surrounded by shiny paper and cascades of curled ribbon, the United States government engaged in secret dealings with foreign mercenaries. The president of the United States, President Bonnie Kemp, was kidnapped by her own secret service and beaten to death after a 44-hour inquest into the whereabouts of the known terrorist and new ally to the President-Sir Igor Karovsky. The president was suspected of selling information from top-secret CIA files to the wanted, along with several unidentified weapons of mass destruction.
The assassination of Lady Kemp rocked the foundations of the senate and congress. Accusations flew freely back and forth across the floor. Plots were developed and traps were set. Several cabinet members disappeared without as much as a whisper. Chaos broke out within the United States Government. Over a period of thirteen months, America’s reputation and favor within the UN disintegrated. Without the superpower of the United States running the world, democracy fell, sending a thundering echo of freedom across the continents. Armies around the world were reinforced, drawing men and women from every forgotten corner and the man behind the curtain was finally revealed. The Puppet Masters took hold of the strings and wiggled and pulled and prodded the people of earth into all-out rebellion.
A great war spanned the globe. Thousands of political leaders from all different countries and their families were executed. The Order of Zion had overthrown the United Nations, dismissing leaders from life in a brutal massacre. The bloodbath swept over Europe and the Americas like a storm, leaving most islands unclaimed as yet. After the western hemisphere belonged to the order, they killed any man who did not fight for the cause as they moved into Asia and Africa.
Children, women, and men were all slaughtered equally and towns leveled at random as mankind fought against one world government. The battle cry of the rioting mob echoed off every city wall. Economies failed and people starved, killing one another for the last bit of bread or the warmer blanket. Highways were blocked and whole cities annihilated by nuclear warheads. People who didn’t die in the blasts fled into the mountains and countrysides, only to perish in the wilderness. The known global society toppled as the empire was destroyed and the world drowned in its own blood.
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Elf reviewed Version 1 -
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“International uproar ensued, throwing the sending”
...throwing AND sending..
“To balance out the boom in world population, the United Nations introduced a new strain of the flu virus into the population,”
not a good idea to use a word like population more then once in a sentence (or in such close proximity weather its in the same, or the next sentence. It throws your flow of words off. Makes it feel choppy.
(“former president George Bush the Fourth”...do I sence a little bit of dislike in this sentence…?)
“From there, it grew across the nation”
i don’t bleave “grew” is used will in this sentence. It needs to have a partner word with it, or to be substituted for another.
I believe you have dune a good job of laying your history out. It all feels important and not just some facts thrown together. You set the stage emphatically for whatever story is to fallow. No one can be in doubt of humanity’s decrepit state.
I enjoyed it my self, but keep in mind. Not all people enjoy reading something that reminds them at all all history book. Your going to get alot of mixed feelings about this start to your novel.
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chimchar214 reviewed Version 1 -
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Wow, great job. I love to read more of this again. About the human cloning and engineering. It’s quite exciting. This story should be in the science fiction thread, because of the theme.
I couldn’t understand part of the piece. Are you saying if someone dies, their bodies are replaced with a cloned body?
esmaril reviewed Version 1 -
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I definitely liked this piece for its originality. Although most people already think that the future is messed up you elaborated and gave the reader the sense of devastation throughout the world. I don’t have a creative imagination, at least not for the future, like you do, but what I can tell you is that you skip from topic to topic in the beginning, though nearing the end you regained your feeting. I like the ending of the prologue but feel that you could have done better trying to see the reality of things. Also, I encourage you to check your spelling before putting things on Urbis; one because then you wont have to get reviews filled with all of your spelling mistakes, and two so that publishers and other people can just not skip you’re writing. I like this and can’t wait to see what this turns out to be like in the end. As you said, the book is nothing like the prologue.
SandraLapthorn reviewed Version 1 -
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God no, not another 2 President Bush’s. Scary. I think you have set a rather convincing history to your futuristic world, the only problem I had with it is that I suffered a bit of information overload. Generally these problems will iron out on their own accord when you have written your novel. Things will become clearer once you have done this, then any revisions needed will become evident. Good luck with your novel.I think you write clearly and consisely and I didn’t notice any editorial mistakes.
quaintfungus reviewed Version 1 -
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Your novel treatment certainly has a great scope and epic proportions. Yet I am fascinated by some of the detail that you can focus down on.
I would be tempted to use a number of different characters to tell this story. Maybe the sister of the sparrow girl. A drug addict. An intern in the administration of Bonnie.
Let the story grow organically through them . You have some nice scenes to write including the crash. The baby being born and the character overdosing on skin. Try to keep the over arcing plot quite till we care about your characters.
good luck.
NancyAllen reviewed Version 1 -
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I couldn’t get the second page. You have a good start. “had lost” could just be “lost”. Over a patch of black ice (on the highway) not needed. “Pinned between the two (two of what?) Mangled carcass (wound, not needed) Omit the sentence: “By the time authorities…” Show, don’t tell.
tstone reviewed Version 1 -
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”..by at truck..”—‘a’ not ‘at’
”..over (a) patch..”
“three victims-two dead and..”—’..three victims, two dead..” OR, ”..victims-two dead and one wounded-sat…”
”..were 141 exactly (COMMA) before she..”—(also, might sound better: ’..exactly 141..’)
”..throwing the sending the whole..”—‘throwing’ or ‘sending.’
”..talk of action (PERIOD) In a moment of sheer idiocy..”
”..virus was kept circulated..”—‘kept circulatING’
—-okay, there’s my editorial help. now my critique: i like the set-up very much. you’ve created an interesting future, with quite a detailed explanation of how it arrived. my one suggestion would be to separate your various points with a marker of some sort, (maybe number each point, or a symbol like *.) this way, you can go into detail on some points without losing the reader, while at other points letting the reader know that ‘this is a significant point which needs to be stated, but does not need much explanation.’
—-hope that makes sense and helps a little. overall, great job, looking forward to more.
Harold_P reviewed Version 1 -
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A job well done. It reminded me of Bill Bryson’s “A Short History of Nearly Everything” in the beginning. However, the sci-fi element ensured there was a twist to the tale. Some wonderful turns of phrase to be savoured here and I think writing about stem cell research is both topical and a subject that cries out for suitable representation in fiction.
I like the alternate universe you present, even if it is one that is barbaric to the extreme. However, since dystopia is what you are shooting for, this one is certainly comes off like Idi Amin’s wet dream.
I would read more, but then again I’m not entirely stable. It’s a very well-written piece of work, and the post was the perfect size for me to digest and to tease me for more.
Harold_P
Sparkles reviewed Version 1 -
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Wonderful. I really like your graphic and complete synopsis. I REALLY like your new drug. Since humans are such an addictive species I think this is one of the best mentions in your piece. You have a very realistic and scary future portrayed here and I don’t know how rough this actually is, dear.
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