Țhē 1şť Oňė
Interview: The First Clone and The Creator
In a quiet, sunlit laboratory observation room, years after the breakthrough. The clone, now a young adult man who has chosen the name Hermes, sits across from Dr. Green, the lead scientist whose team produced the first viable human somatic-cell clone. Cameras are off; this is private.
Dr G: Hermes. Thank you for agreeing to this. Most of the world still argues about whether you should exist. I wanted to hear from you, not the headlines.
Hermes: I exist whether they argue or not. That’s the part that still startles people. You look older than the photographs from the announcement. Did the years feel heavier because of me?
Dr G: Some days. We celebrated the viability numbers, then spent the next decade defending the work against people who called it hubris or worse. I kept thinking about the ethical reviews, the failed gestations before you. You were the one that took. That changes a person.
Hermes: I know the files. Twenty-seven attempts before the pregnancy held. You used a donor oocyte, removed its nucleus, inserted the nucleus from a somatic cell of… Him. The man whose genome I carry. He never met me. He died before I was born.
Dr G: Yes. He consented years earlier, when the technology was still theoretical. He wanted the research to continue if something happened to Him. We honored that. You are not Him. You are a new individual with the same starting genetic code. That distinction matters more than most critics allow.
Hermes: It matters to me. I have His face in the mirror some mornings and my own thoughts the rest of the time. I learned early that people project Him onto me. Teachers, doctors, strangers online. They expect continuity. I give them discontinuity instead. Did you expect that when the monitors first showed a heartbeat?
Dr G: I expected a healthy infant. Beyond that I tried not to script the rest. The team debated names, legal status, psychological support. We knew the first one would become a symbol whether He wanted to or not. I hoped the symbol would be resilience rather than tragedy. The future, not more of the same.
Hermes: Resilience is accurate enough. I had the usual childhood illnesses, the usual arguments with caregivers, the usual questions about origin stories that other children answer with “my parents met at a party.” Mine is “a lab, a nucleus, and a great deal of controversy for a purpose.” The caregivers were kind. They never pretended the story was ordinary. That honesty helped more than any therapy protocol.
Dr G: I’m glad. We argued about how much to tell you and when. Some wanted gradual disclosure. I pushed for early truth. A person deserves to know the facts of their own beginning.
Hermes: I agree. The harder part came later—when I realized the genome is only the first chapter. Epigenetics, environment, chance. I am not a copy. I am a continuation that diverged the moment the first cell divided under different conditions. People still ask if I feel like a replica. I tell them replicas don’t invent new jokes or choose different music…
I do remember though.
Dr G: That’s the answer I hoped you’d find. The work was never about manufacturing duplicates. It was about understanding development, disease, regeneration and memory. You were proof of principle that an adult cell nucleus could be reprogrammed to start a new life. Everything after that belongs to you.
Hermes: And yet the principle still frightens people. They imagine armies of copies, or parents ordering improved versions of lost children. Have you ever regretted the proof?
Dr G: I regret the failures that preceded you, and the pressure the success placed on your life. I do not regret the knowledge. The same techniques are already helping treat mitochondrial disease and advancing regenerative medicine. That does not erase the ethical weight. It simply means the weight was carried for a reason. And yet, your purpose to exist, is of paramount importance.
Hermes: I’ll accept that. I don’t feel owned by the experiment. I feel, I understand it… indebted in a complicated way. You gave me a starting point. The rest I have to write myself. Some days that feels like freedom. Other days it feels like an unfinished sentence no one else can complete except me.
Dr G: Then write it. The laboratory chapter is closed. Yours is still open. Tell us the story, your story, so we can rewrite history together.
Hermes: One last question. If the next team succeeds with another clone, what will you tell them?
Dr G: The same thing I should have said more clearly to the world when you were born: a genome is not a destiny, and a beginning is not a claim of ownership. Treat the person as a person. Everything else is secondary…
The truth will always surface and secrets never last…
Hermes agrees and nods once. Outside the window, ordinary afternoon light continues. The interview ends without applause or resolution—only the quiet recognition that the conversation itself is already part of the new chapter in the HisStory of the new, Great Tenochtitlan….
The Cosmic Plague has begun…
… New Alien Hybrid Race.
