Author’s note: This is first installment of a Science Fiction story from my fourth book, 7D: Tales from the Future. You can find the other installments here: Resurrected Part 2 and Resurrected Part 3
The bad roads and the three-hour drive are getting on my nerves. Damn them both for going back to the old estate!
I should have ordered Tut and Ankh to stay. But Ankh wasn’t able to deal with the pressure of Tut’s Presidential elections, and if Tut hadn’t gone with his pregnant wife, it would’ve hurt their image as a ‘nesting couple’. Last week, there was a brief respite in their public appearances, and I let them go. It didn’t seem to improve her ‘condition’ though. She had called me this morning, requesting one last family celebration before ‘opening our lives to the world’. It is the first time she had overridden a clear order and insisted on anything.
Lately, she has been becoming more work than she’s worth. So, I’ll deal with her once and for all. Conveniently, the small, brown, earthen bottle of Holy Sanction was still in my worktable’s drawer at the estate. It is poisonous when mixed with alcohol and it doesn’t leave a trace. Though, it would waste half of my life’s work.
*****
Fourteen years back, when I saw the DNA samples of King Tutankhamun and his wife at the genetics research organisation where I worked as a scientist, I could see myself in the senate, closest to the ‘throne’ as the President’s father and main advisor. He was the perfect Presidential candidate.
Tutankhamun was the last Egyptian king whose family claimed to be descendants of the Sun God. History claimed him to be handsome, intelligent and well educated, with a perfect lineage and a romantic marriage to his stepsister—well, that was a different world. He had all the traits that majority of the traditional voters preferred and he came from royalty, something everybody loves. The mystery around his death at 19 added to his aura and, even dead, he was one of the most craved‑for historical celebrities among the female populace. Ever since his tomb was opened, everyone wanted a bit of him—coffee mugs, dresses, latest fashionable items with motifs of him, his death mask or his portrait where he stands with his wife in a garden. Once reborn, he would be the latest scientific invention, luring the forward‑looking voters too. Overall, he was a complete package and a sure win. With the right conditioning, I could make him my pawn for life.
Of course, I could raise any Tom, Dick or Harry, and hope that he would win the elections, but where was the guarantee? Whereas Tut’s win was guaranteed. All he needed was a few legal permissions and a bit of conditioning.
*****
Human cloning required special permission due to several humanitarian issues, like, experimenting on a fellow human, conception in a test tube with no natural parent and concerns about genetic memory.
The last one was a lot of rubbish, of course. All children receive a small percentage of ancestral memory, especially of their parents, for easier conditioning to the world and quicker response to major dangers. Since clones receive the full genetic map of the ‘donor’, Psychologists claim that the shared genetic memories can lead to shared phobias and identity crisis. But I had turned the genetic memory claim to my favour, requesting the permission to resurrect the King and his wife to give them a ‘second chance at life’ since their lives were mysteriously cut short by their early deaths.
Of course, it needed a lot of funding and political influence, but once I laid out the plan of Presidential elections, some important people were ready to invest their time and influence and wait until I paid off their ‘loans with substantial interests’.
*****
So, I started off with the body cells that had been dead for 3300 years. I had to figure out ways to bring the DNA back to life. It took over a year.
But once the foetus was large enough, I could see that Tutankhamun was not as perfect as History had presented. He carried many congenital diseases, thanks to incest in early ruling families—cleft palate, club foot and scoliosis that gave sideways curve to his spine along with a predisposition to malaria and muscle degeneration—clearly, he was not a handsome warrior he is made out to be. I wondered what mental diseases he carried because these diseases couldn’t be accounted for until he was old enough to think. I had to discard the useless foetus and start over.
I would have given up then, but I had debts to pay. So, I spent the next year fixing these genetic diseases, replacing unhealthy genes with my healthy ones. It took another year, and many trials and errors, to get it right. My research notes are a matter of pride for me now.
Author’s note: To be continued…
Photo by Dilip Poddar on Unsplash
If you would rather read it all together in the book, 7D: Tales from the Future is available for free download here: Link
Short Stories | Fish-eye Perspective 