Small Doses of the Future by Brad Aiken

Author:Brad Aiken
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Springer International Publishing, Cham

Brad AikenScience and FictionSmall Doses of the Future2014A Collection of Medical Science Fiction Stories10.1007/978-3-319-04253-4_6© Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2014

6. The Last Clone

Brad Aiken1

(1)Miami, Florida, USA

Brad Aiken

Email: [email protected]

Abstract

Being an early adopter of technology is fun, but it’s not always the wisest decision.

I pulled the lapels of my full-length black wool dress coat up around my neck, bracing against the Windy City’s biting October breeze, as I looked up at the polished brass letters identifying the Chicago Medical Center. Faux marble, swirls of black against a white background, covered the entire facade of the two-story building on Michigan Avenue. The revolving door began to swirl as I stepped in, and deposited me into a monochromatic cavern of a lobby.

The absence of color was dizzying: floor tiles, walls, and ceiling, all washed in a pristine whiteness, broken only by a semicircular black stone reception desk set dead-center in the room. The young woman sitting there didn’t seem to notice, or more likely, care, that I had entered her domain.

My footsteps echoed along the tile as I approached.

“Ezekiel Kuperman?” I inquired.

A rich auburn head of hair turned upward, revealing a youthful face with prominent cheek bones, crimson lipstick, and dull hazel eyes that failed to benefit from neatly plucked brows and ample mascara. She looked vacuously in my direction, more through me than at me.

I showed her my badge. “Blake Duncan.” The picture was from my first day on the job, over 30 years ago, but I hadn’t changed a bit. “I have an appointment.”

“Of course you do.” She went back to doing whatever it was she’d been doing when I walked in.

“No, really. I do.” I pulled out my cellular and brought up the confirmation, then turned it towards the woman who seemed to me to be more stone-like than her desk.

She looked at the screen, then scanned the bar code at the bottom of the image. A ‘bleep’ registered on her monitor. “I’ll be damned,” she said. “How’d you swing that? You’re the first one he’s let visit in all the years I’ve been working here.”

You call this work? I thought it, but was smarter than to say it. “Guess I got lucky.”

“If that’s your idea of luck.” She pointed down to the far end of the room where the elevators were located. They were white, of course. I hadn’t noticed them before. “Second floor. Two thirty-eight.”

“Thanks,” I said with enthusiasm that was clearly not directed toward her, but rather toward an interview I’d been trying to land for over a year.

I hurried to the elevator and went up to the second floor. The door opened into the same sterile brilliance of the lobby below: a long hall, stark white floors, walls, and ceilings; no commotion, no wheelchairs or stretchers in the hallways. I hadn’t been in a hospital since my father died, and that was almost 50 years ago, back in 2073. This wasn’t at all how I remembered it. I knew things had changed; I mean, there was no reason for most people to go to a hospital anymore, once they’d made it past childhood.

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