I heard their screams.  They sounded like dying animals, helpless, numbered.  Doomed.  And I watched, equally helpless.  I watched them kill my son’s clones one by one.


        In the beginning, I controlled the world’s most prominent scientists.  In the beginning, I changed the course of human history.  How ironic then that humanity’s downfall started with my wife’s simple wish.   

        Claudia wanted children, and I wanted to make an infertile woman pregnant.  It seemed easy enough.  I had the technology, the money, and the power.  By the end of the year, Mason was born.  I had a son, an heir to my fiscal legacy.  I could not have been more pleased.  

        Until Mason became ill.  

        Something had gone wrong, something had faltered. My science collapsed around me.  Fated to lose my son, I contrived a way to save him: A clone.  The scientists adamantly refused.  Too risky, too soon.  Not enough data, not enough time.  So many excuses by so many intelligent minds.  Undeterred, I forced them to entomb my son in a tank of sorts.  I forced them to preserve his body until they could find the answers.  Mason would not die.

        I visited every day.  I stared, disgusted, horrified, as his body floated in the center of the pale blue liquid.  His eyes never opened, his heart never faltered.  But his body changed—rapidly.  First, his head began to swell, then his left leg.  Then his right shoulder.  Then his left hand.  What was happening?  The scientists repeated their eulogy: Not enough data, not enough time.  But my son had no time left.

        The news sniffed out my new obsession.  They paraded the single picture taken of my son’s new tank.  Its green, thick liquid made the monstrosity inside hard to recognize.  But Mason was still alive, buffered by the solution in his tank.  His heart never faltered.  His eyes never opened.  

        A new, young and promising doctor approached me several years later.  He claimed to have an answer and, in exchange for knowledge, wanted riches.  He wanted my kingdom.  How insanity blinds the foolish.  I agreed—yes.  I signed the papers, made the legal arrangements in a slapdash manner.  I heartily agreed.  As long as Mason would live.

        I became CEO in name only.  Dr. Alries supervised everything, everyone.  He manipulated me.  Mason became his obsession.  The boy was a scientific wonder.  Born by science, created by science, Alries planned to use my son for his own gain.  Cloning.  Alries had studied gene manipulation and stem cell research throughout his lifetime.  Some called him a genius.  I called him overly ambitious and manipulative.
My scientists never ceased to remind Alries and I how unreliable our data was.  Cloning could not be done, not yet.  Give it twenty years, give it time.  Let the experiments prove how invaluable correct data can be.  But Alries refused, and I was relieved.  How ambition blinds the foolish.  

        I remember when M-001 breathed for the first time.  M-2, we called him.  A second Mason.  His eyes opened, but his heart faltered.  Within a month, M-2 breathed his last.  And Alries’ deranged insistence increased.  

        M-002 through M-050 followed M-2’s path.  Only M-033 showed signs of progress.  Created July 15, 2018, M-033 survived for half a year.  By then, Alries hired new scientists and fired my old ones.  New minds, new greed, new enthusiasm.  New danger.
M-102 successfully lived for two years.  We studied, analyzed, recorded, gathered—even picked apart his body after he died.  M-102 provided new life for us.  

        Mason died April 20, 2020.  He was 12 years old.  Downcast and dejected, I threw everything I was into the M series.  They had his cells, his body, and his eyes.  How bitterness blinds the miserable.  

        The United States Army bought Geo-Tech fifteen years later.  Over time, our M series had evolved.  M-400 through M-1000 lived two to twelve years.  Then the army became interested.  What if we could produce soldiers?  Soldiers with no family, no friends, no spouses, no children.  No future.  It would change our future and give America the edge it craved.  How avarice blinds the desperate.  

        The MF series sprang out of the M series behind my back.  Lieutenant General George S. Winslow and Alries planned the production of a fighter series designed to kill a genetically targeted enemy.  In short, reconnaissance gets a DNA sample, the MFs assassinate the person it belonged to.  Perfect sniping capabilities, above average reflexes and agility.  We mass-produced a line of killers, hoping to destroy our rivals without the shedding of human blood.  Winslow and Alries shook hands and toasted to their fortune.  I continued on with the M series.

        MF-05 carried out its first mission perfectly.  The target had been a test, an Al Qaida leader, a nobody in our day and age.  Terrorism had been squashed nearly twelve years ago.  The army prowled after bigger game now.  

        How can you anticipate the future?  If you knew the mistakes you were going to make, would you go back and warn your self?  Or would you sit back and watch the chaos spawn around you?  I watched, knowing of Mason’s defections, knowing the MF series would eventually show their original’s flaws.  Even though Mason had died fifteen years ago, I continued tinkering with the M series.  I tried to bring Mason’s clones genuine life and fix their inherent genetic error.  Instead, I found the catalyst for our demise.  Uncaring, I sat back and watched my chaos unfold.

        After MF-05 completed twenty kill orders without an incident, the army assimilated the MF series into their ranks.  Human assassins were no longer required, and Alries received his compensation; I was told the number nearly cost America her economy.  The military had to cut its number by two thirds.  But MF-05 and his brethren were worth the cost to the military-controlled country.  

        Until MF-05, in his thirteenth year, showed us how invaluable experimental, long-term data truly was.  

        We never tested beyond twelve years.  Why should we?  Any bumps or issues would arise within the first ten years.  But Mason’s genetic disorder laughed at us, mocked our attempts at playing God, and spat it back in our faces.

        Mason’s legacy is simply this: MF-05 went rogue.  The kill-order receptor genes implanted in his DNA somehow fused and merged with the unknown error in Mason’s genetic code.  It caused MF-05 to go wild, feral, like a beast sent from hell.  It selected its own targets from a pool of twenty codes Winslow had given it on the last day of its “flawless performance.”  The days and months and years and decades afterward became known as the Phoenix’s Revival.  We unleashed its fiery fury.  Our madness, our science, our abominations.  We—I—did this.  And I can’t take it back.

        We couldn’t stop them.  One by one the clones went savage.  The army, poor and unable to defend it self, turned to Arlies.  But Arlies was a target on their list, already dead.  Their money, their salvation, burned down with his mansion.  The MF series continued to destroy the codes burned into their memories.  Every child, every man, every woman, every father, mother, sister, aunt related to the target perished.  We discovered what tampering with God’s work could do.    

        My clones were terminated not long afterward, and I stood there, watching, as the remainder of Mason died by Winslow’s hand.  Maybe it should have always been that way.  Maybe I should have let him go a long time ago.  

        But hope blinds the agonized, lonely, tortured souls of this earth.