Creating Dad

My dad died. They said they would give me a dad in return.

But he was dead already.

Digital cloning can be understood as a twin, upgraded version of cloning technology. Through neutrino “printing” technology, blood vessels, muscles and bones of the human body can be remodelled like 3D printing. With the aid of a mechanical heart, current technological developments can already enable a body to generate circulation and metabolism. Of course, is it impossible to be completely build the intricate neural wiring. After all, human beings can’t really think of themselves as Nuwa, the almighty Creator.

The point is that they can simulate the workings of the human brain and reboot the memory-storing Hippocampus so that the clone can possess memories of the original person.

The bio company approached us at my father’s funeral with the intention of “resurrecting” a hero. Until then, human cloning was reserved for the rich and powerful. They enjoyed a better quality of life and better medical care, such that death became an option instead of a definite end. But cloning in the conventional sense is quite expensive as it requires a sophisticated and specialised system to keep the clone stocked and functioning. Simply speaking, the cost of cloning a human body is equivalent to emptying a gold mine.

Until the advent of digital human cloning, the Research and Development Group hopes to popularise this technology as a publicly available version of cloning. In view of the relatively lower price, the prosthetic body was manufactured with a limited time of use, which was designated to be from one to six months. During this time, people can properly bid farewell to their dead loved ones and make up for any regrets at the time of death.

How tempting is the rhetoric of letting the deceased leave with no regrets and letting the living live with none either! So, the research group had to pick the right endorser; celebrities and the rich were clearly not the audience for this technology, it would be like asking an alien with no digestive system to endorse pretzel peas. Besides, cloning involves many complex ethical issues. But who can resist resurrecting a hero?

All of a sudden, everyone was giving me their blessings. Including the friend who begged me to accompany her to visit her dad in the hospital, and all I asked was, “If I were to give this chance to you, will you take it?”

If you asked me if I was happy or surprised, I’d tell you to scram to the moon and fill potholes with dirt for fun. Why bother to bring back a replica when the dead was already dead? Mum said it was because I hadn’t yet understood the true meaning of death at the age of twelve that I faced parting so effortlessly.

“And what do you think they would be sending back? My dad?” I asked, poking a hole viciously through my homework with the tip of my pen.

Mum swivelled uneasily in her chair, and soon, she regained her composure and said, in a deeper tone than usual, “I am not asking for much, I just wish that he …… that person can send you to school and pick you up.”

At night, when my aunt put me to bed, she said that it was just a matter of time before mum could cope with the situation. My maternal grandma and grandpa died when my mum was very young, and she grew up in foster care with relatives. Whenever I was at odds with her and needed to give in, my dad would say that the two of us were the only family mum had in the world.

But I just can’t make sense of this. How could such uniqueness be replaceable?

“What about you?” I asked my aunt, “Do you think it would be dad that they send back?”

Aunt was silent for a long time, “I don’t know either.”

It wasn’t long before my aunt left, and returned to her original lifestyle. Before she left, she took grandpa back to the nursing home.

She didn’t wait for her cloned brother. I figured she didn’t have to leave that fast, but maybe she was running away from that, too. The day after she left, dad’s life-sized standee appeared in the town square. On the big screen was an image of a light grey humanoid, and on the other side of the square was a neutrino printer, starting the most basic of print jobs in a shed that was fully transparent all around.

That thin layer was probably the skin on the soles of dad’s feet. To be honest, looking at a part of “dad” through the glass, I felt nothing but absurdity. But when I think of the time I spent with my mum after my aunt left, I’d probably prefer to stay with this absurdity.

The bio company didn’t just want to make a clone, they made the printing process of the prosthetic body public to give a little flexibility to family and friends who knew him well. Their explanation was that dad’s brain was damaged in the fire, which simply meant that a part of it was cooked, so memories extracted were incomplete and needed to be supplemented with memories of family and friends.

Anyone with a clear mind knew that marketing was the main intention behind their actions. Getting people to modify dad’s image with their memories was just a gimmick, the end result wouldn’t be outrageous. At best, they’d give dad a sharper jawline, or add a cosmetic pupil, or something to that effect, according to what the company’s salesman promised mum.

The opening ceremony was indeed grand, which I attended as the family member of the hero. Mum, grandpa and I were given three hoverboards on which we were to paint the hero in our eyes, and a composite of the images created by the three of us would appear on the big screen at the venue. This would be used as a benchmark for friends and family who subsequently ‘modified’ dad’s appearance (within reasonable bounds, of course).

I sighed as I thought about the pathetic scores in my art book. If my participation in this activity and a few random strokes on the board could ease my mum’s anxiety, then why not? I prayed in my heart that she wouldn’t pass out from the sight of my “masterpiece”.

Then, I was amazed at how thoughtful the organisers were. They already constructed the nose and ears, so, like jigsaw puzzle pieces, all I needed to do was to stick them on at the right place. It was as if I was playing a game of facial construction.

I could see that grandpa had also temporarily detached himself from the fog of Alzheimer’s today. Still, the son he remembered seemed to look so much younger than he was in reality. Presumably, that was why all parents found their children childish.

The dad in my mind was taller and bigger, and had fists that were way larger. I guess it was because I always had to look up to him in my small and petite build.

Grandpa wasn’t very proficient with electronics. While helping him adjust to minor problems, I peeked at my mum’s work. Her composition was almost indistinguishable from the real dad. It seemed to be a twin brother to the humanoid standee in the square, except that the nose was slightly flatter, the lips were thicker, and that there the sclera occupied more space in his eyes.

How should I put it? It was as if you had borrowed spare parts from a lathe to fix a bicycle, and it works now, but a subtle sense of dissonance always prevailed.

The three images overlapped and merged on the big screen in the plaza, and the final framed image resembled the dad on the standing sign but looked brighter and more confident.

The acting principal of the orphanage, who was the original principal (rumour has it that he pushed the blame for the accident to the vice principal), pointed to the big screen and said to the children, “This is the hero who saved your lives.”

The staff asked the children how the man on the screen was different from the day he saved them. In the kids’ lively discussion, my dad not only had biceps that glowed with metallic lustre, but also had super strong arms, and hair made of steel

From a certain perspective, he seemed like a strange creature parasitic on strong arms. I guess those kids would have put a halo on his head or wings on him if they could. It was amazing how imaginative children can be, and it made the atmosphere at the solemn scene a little lighter and more enjoyable.

The truth was, I didn’t care much whether that machine ended up printing out Hulk or an ape. My mum had an awful look on her face, and there was one other person who wasn’t smiling at the scene. A woman, dressed in a black mourning dress, holding a purple rose in her teal lace gloved hands.

At that time, I was still drowning in the grief of losing my dad and didn’t realise that a bigger disaster was gradually chipping my life away.

Printing was already done down to the ankles when the scandal broke out.

It started when the virtual image of dad got uglier and uglier, with the latest image resembling a diseased child with Down’s Syndrome.

People couldn’t stand to have a hero trampled upon like this, and righteous netizens found the person who scandalised the hero and cyberstormed him. Who knew that what was unearthed was my dad’s unexpected and unpleasant past.

The guy said he was a construction assistant on a project and that my dad stole and sold materials from the warehouse while he was on the job and profited from them by substituting quality materials with inferior ones. The neighbourhoods where owners recently moved in and had troubles with their homes were dad’s doing.

Angry homeowners threw eggs at dad’s life-sized standee and at the big screen, even engaging errand boys to help do it for them, for three times a day.

Although it was clear to me that it wasn’t dad, I was still quite upset. I asked my mum if he had really done those bad things, and she held me tightly in her arms and soothed me by saying that my dad was just an ordinary worker and that they needed a scapegoat because their project had gone wrong.

“A dead scapegoat who would be forever silent.”

“But they are cloning dad, and once the memories come back it would prove that he didn’t do it.”

“It wouldn’t matter. In this world,” my mum’s fingers gently tucked in that naughty strand of hair for me, “when everyone reckons you’re a thief, you’ll think you’ve actually stolen something.”

On this day, the super printer finished the whole calf and both knees.

It wasn’t just the embezzlement, someone even revealed dad’s past of bullying his classmates when he was a student. I learnt my lesson from earlier experiences and firmly denied it. But the anti-bullying trend still reached my school. My best friends didn’t play with me anymore, and I was alone all day long; only the child of my dad’s injured colleague was willing to keep me company, but she didn’t come to school often. When I failed in another attempt to defend my dad’s honour with my fists, I returned home with bruises and a wild nosebleed.

My mum was shocked to see me skipping school because she was liaising with the bio company in the house as well as the man who had defamed my dad with bullying on the internet.

I recklessly rushed over to him, scratching him with my nails and biting him with my teeth, in attempt to vent all the aggravation and violence I had been subjected to.

Mum and the staff held me off as tight as they possibly could, and I struggled like a maggot in their grip until I saw the thick pile of agreements spread out on the table.

“So, was it true that dad bullied his classmates?” I asked, as tears fell on the cuts on my cheeks, it stung, but not bad enough. I calmed down and continued clarifying, “And it was true that dad sold the construction materials?” I went in search of mum’s eyes, but she never paid me any attention.

She sent me back to my room, and I sat on my bed as I heard her footsteps leaving, their chattering, and then the door opening and closing. It wasn’t long before my mum returned to my room, her eyes skimming between the childish furnishings of the room, as if she had gone back to her everyday role as a mother, rather than the person who had just turned a deaf ear to me.

“The injuries on your face……”

“Did dad really bully others?”

I interrupted her as my mum asked, still in an eager tone, “What would you like to have for dinner tonight?”

“Was dad really corrupted?”

She remained as gentle as ever, “It must be exhausting, school must be exhausting……”

I lunged over and grabbed my mum, who was about to turn around and leave, and asked with all my strength, “Did dad really hurt his classmates, did he really sell the construction materials?”

Mother’s strong hand took my wrists and placed them back on my lap. She crouched down and looked up at me, “I don’t know.” She said, “I don’t know.”

“Why didn’t you call the police?” I asked.

“Call the police?” A sense of confusion emerged in her eyes.

“Yes, call the police.” I said anxiously, “If they were framing dad, we have to clear his name.”

“If,” she said with a look on her face that I couldn’t understand, “like you said, ‘if’. But what if your dad did do it?”

I drew my hand back abruptly and shook my head as I looked down at my mother, “What are you suggesting, doesn’t the truth matter?”

My mother stood up slowly, her face half lit by the setting sun at the window. After a long while, her voice came through over the faint sound of the cars’ engines on the street, “Is the truth all that important?” She tried to convince me, but I couldn’t hear a word of it, I jumped off the bed and repeated in a shrill voice that I was going to go to the police, that I was going to clear my dad’s name, that I wanted them to apologise to him ……

My mother slapped me across the face, leaving me frozen in shock, just gasping for air, forgetting to even cry.

While I was still dazed, mum took me into her arms, her gentle yet strong hands gently holding my shoulders, and caressing my back. I closed my eyes and felt the vibrations in her chest, the sound coming from above my head. She said she didn’t know if my dad had done those things, she said those were Schrodinger’s Cats, that it would be better to not open the box, but just shut them up.

My mother went to get iodine to help me dress my wound, during which I cleared my thoughts. The bio company wanted to use the cloned father to open up the market and reverse people’s established impression, so they would help to suppress any negative public opinion as soon as it arose, but I didn’t think it was the right thing to do.

As my mother pressed the iodine-soaked swab heavily onto my wound, the light brown solution trailed down my cheek, and she held her breath, ‘Justice wouldn’t pay your school fees, or the mortgage, or the custodial fee for your grandpa’s nursing home.”

“But,” I said, “what if dad did do those things? What about all the victims?”

My mother leaned wearily against the wall, seemingly smirking as she formed a lone silhouette. She said it made no difference whether he did it or not, was forced to do it or initiated it, and that in the adults’ world, there was far more than a single truth–

“Just choose whichever suits your desire.”

With that, she went to prepare dinner, leaving me to sit alone in the sunset. It was the first lesson I had to learn as I made my way into adulthood. I looked at my faint silhouette on the windowpane and watched it blur away bit by bit until it was no longer visible.

That night, I tossed and turned as I couldn’t fall asleep. My face was burning hot from the slap, but while I was angry, I did not dare to vent my frustration. In a daze, it seemed as though a cat was scratching my face with its tail.

I opened my eyes to find my mum sitting on the edge of the bed, “Sorry, today I was just……”

Without waiting for her to finish, I grabbed the covers and wrapped myself up tightly. Thirty seconds later, I gave up on the suffocating plan and took a huge breath of air as I popped my head out of the covers.

Mum and I froze all at once, and in the next second, burst out in laughter.

“Mum, would you please sleep with me?” I begged. Then I curled up with my mother at my side, yawning in the warmth and scent I had long missed. As I wiped away my tears, I mustered the courage to ask, “Would it remember, those things?”

Mum tucked me in and didn’t answer me at all for a long time, so long that I thought she had fallen asleep, and then I heard her voice saying, “No.”

“Why?” I sat up as I asked.

There was nothing my mum could do about my stubbornness other than to explain that there was a limit to the amount of brain capacity that could be extracted by digital cloning, and that trade-offs had to be made, which was one of the elements that kept the cost of the upgraded cloning technology down.

“But who helped dad with the trade-offs?” I asked, but this time, she didn’t answer. Or maybe my mum did answer, and it was me who just didn’t get it. I figured everyone had dark secrets that they would rather keep to themselves. In my case, it was the experience of quietly switching mattresses with another sleeping child after wetting the bed in kindergarten. I’m sure dad had something like that too, and there must have been other things besides those. I have no idea why, but the sad and conflicted eyes of the woman in the square always crossed my mind.

I wasn’t sure if it was my father’s true wish to not extract the memories and find out the “truth”. I was simply curious as to whether deleting these memories would really help my father keep his secrets.

That night, they finished printing the entire lower half of my father’s body, and like cogs in a clock, everything was running in a perfect order.

Because of the strong intervention by the capital of the bio company, negative news about my dad was quickly suppressed. Reports of his heroic sacrifice to save the children were all over the place. I knew clearly that they weren’t cloning dad but trying to manufacture a hero.

I couldn’t figure out what they were up to but thank goodness the company cancelled its plans to print the hero in public, the other half of my father’s body was allowed to be made in a tighter, quieter lab. And I finally stopped agonising over real-time feeds of the printing status on the news.

This was a rare moment of peace and clarity. I still hadn’t figured out how I was going to deal with the clone, whether he’d come home with us when he was built, or whether he’d sit in the window of the bio company like an exhibit for all to see, I didn’t know any of that. I tried hard to shove the annoying thoughts out of my mind and focus on matters I had on hand.

My mum worked as a customer service agent for a real estate company, so I stayed with my dad when I was a kid, as he had a much more flexible schedule as an electrician. He would cook me very awful meals and do crafts with me. My favourite stuffed rabbit was hand-sewn by him, and it stayed right next to my bed, keeping me company as quietly as my dad did.

I soaked it in detergent, and wrung it out painstakingly with my injured hand, pinning both ears to hang it out to dry on the balcony. The pink bunny swayed in the wind like a swing, watching it from afar brought a smile to my face.

But in the next second, the smile froze on my face.

Mum had brought that thing back home.

It, that thing walked up to the dumbfounded me and got down on one knee, calling out “My princess”, and took me into his arms. I screamed as I pushed him away, turned around and ran back to my bedroom, locking the door behind me. I cowered under the covers without any further movements.

I gasped desperately in the darkness, my heart pounding wildly. When he called me princess, when he hugged me, God, he smelled just like dad!

At night, I was starving and tired, but I just couldn’t fall asleep. While I could skip dinner, I couldn’t do without my bunny. So, in the dead of night, I opened the locked door and snuck out, secretly found a slice of wholemeal bread in the refrigerator which I popped into my mouth, and then went to the balcony and reached for the bunny with the help of a stool.

“Need a hand with that?” The voice sounded on my side, and my heart tightened as I realised that the doll’s button eyes had been ripped off by me.

Exasperated, I jumped off the stool, stomped back into the living room in my slippers, switched on the light and fished out the sewing box to clumsily stitch the bunny’s eyes. But the wound on my finger was still swollen and pale from inflammation that I couldn’t pinch the needle and thread at all.

The dark figure moved from the kitchen to the living room, placed a plate of bread on the table, and rubbed his hands together next to me tentatively, “I…… Let me sew it.”

After another failed struggle with the needle and thread, I threw the stuffed bunny and button eyes out altogether and grabbed the bread on the plate. The bread was toasted, with my favourite mango pomelo sago sauce sandwiched between two slices. I ate it in silence, scanning my side secretly. He just sat there quietly, doing his handiwork in an unhurried manner, that silhouette of him overlapped with countless fragments of my memories.

I suddenly lost my appetite, dropped the slices of bread, snatched the half-repaired bunny and ran back into the room without looking back. I retreated into the darkness once again, and when I finally calmed down, I looked at my bunny by the moonlight. The needle that was originally attached to the thread had been removed at some point, and the end of the thread was tied in a loose knot. The bunny’s eyes, sewn outwards in the shape of petals along the four buttonholes, were exactly the same as the one before.

Early next morning, I was woken up by the smoke alarm. Presumably, the alarm thought someone was making a bomb in my kitchen, when it was actually that thing making breakfast.

This scene was all too familiar. Whenever dad did something wrong or had a favour to ask of mum and I, he would offer to make an effort in the kitchen, usually making the situation even more awkward. Proficiently dialling the number of the property management and asking them to turn off the alarm, my sleepy-eyed mum puts down the phone and says to that thing, “You don’t have to do anything, just stay put.” When she spotted me, she pressed her temples and tried to smile, “How about cereal for breakfast?”

I ignored her and haphazardly put on my school uniform to leave the house. Mum caught up with me in her pyjamas, “Let me take you to school after breakfast.”

I walked on without looking back and she tagged along behind me. She said that the bio company would send someone next week to shoot a documentary, and that it was written into the contract. I hate what she did, I hate that she made a fool out of dad, and now she was trying to make me a fool too.

“Think about your school fees, living expenses……” My mother stopped at the cross junction, but her words kept circling around my ears.

No one wanted to be friends with me at school, so I put all my energy into my studies and realised that it was possible to learn topics that I didn’t use to understand. If we could ignore the teacher’s announcement at recess about collecting textbook and miscellaneous fees for the next term, school life wasn’t that unbearable.

At the end of the school day, my mum didn’t come pick me up, but that thing did. It stood far away, waving to me, and upon being ignored, it trailed a short distance behind me until I got home and locked it outside the house.

That thing had fallen asleep by the door when my mum, who was off the night shift, let that thing in. She dragged me back to my room, promising, “Two months, just two months, just bear with it.”

I asked her what she meant, and she said that dad’s clone only had a two-month lifespan, which was also set at the very beginning.

I couldn’t help but to glance at the busy yet clumsy figure in the kitchen and struggled as I spoke, “Are you saying that in two months’ time, I have to watch him die in front of me, one, more, time?”

In an instant, innumerable waves of sadness and anger came crashing down on me. I refused to communicate and pushed my mum out the door, I needed time to calm down. The so-called bio company came to my dad’s funeral, shoved a clone into my life, dressed it up as a clown, and said in an eerie tone, “You’re going to experience his death again in two months. Having already experienced it once, I’m sure you’ll act stronger and braver this time……”

On what grounds, on what grounds exactly, did they dare to trample on the lives of my dad and me like that?

I cuddled with my pink stuffed bunny as tears streamed down my face uncontrollably.

I thought I would be sad for a long time, but I quickly accepted reality. That thing was nothing more than a walking object. How big of a deal was it to make a documentary about it? What could be more frustrating in life than the rising numbers on a school bill?

A week had passed since we started the filming, and there we were, a harmonious and amiable father-daughter duo, in front of the camera only, of course. Today’s shot was a scene at an amusement park, where the next event would be the Meteor Hammer, and ‘dad’ will tie up his daughter’s hair for safety purposes.

“Right, right, right, roll it a little, roll it a little, hold the little tail with a pin, pull it through and hook it down, that’s it……”

The cameraman held up a hand and signalled that the battery was dying and needed a replacement. I moved away from the commercial with the swinging hammer in the background and distanced myself from that guy. It wasn’t really as awkward as I thought it would be to be around him, but it certainly wasn’t pleasant. In fact, for the sake of school fees and living expenses, I had been teaching him how to be a father all week. I prayed with all my heart that these two tortuous months would pass quickly.

He understood my emotions and bought matcha-flavoured ice cream, handing it to me with his arm stretched out as far as possible like an elephant nose.

“For what?” I asked, annoyed, unsure if I had rolled my eyes.

“This is for you,” said the guy, showing me the thing in his hand, and with an ingratiating smile on his face, urging in a whisper, “It’s going to melt.”

“Where did you get your money from?” I asked, still refusing to show him any amiability.

The guy pointed to the film crew, all the expenses during filming were advanced by the bio company. It was natural that the people in it shouldn’t be stretched for money if they were going to shoot compelling, promotional films that would bring clones into thousands of homes.

But subconsciously, I felt that such behaviour was akin to begging, and with an unknown anger raging in my body, I snatched the ice-cream from him, turned around and shoved it to a passing kid, and then left the amusement park without a second glance. I heard the guy’s shouts and his hurried footsteps, and I knew that the film crew was right behind us, but I didn’t want to bother with any of it, I just wanted to escape, as fast as possible.

Anger made me lose my mind, as if I was a cranky alpaca scurrying across the road. I didn’t know where I was going, I just kept walking, even forgetting to look at the traffic lights. When that big strong hand pulled me back from the pedestrian crossing, I hit the guy’s chest so hard that I felt his panicked heartbeat and saw anxiety and remorse written all over his dad-like face.

A loud bang sounded from the rear-end crash caused by the car that ran the red light. The three-car accident also involved two ladies who were riding their scooters in passing. Yet the car that started it all didn’t stop but spun into the supermarket at the centre of the streets. Between the broken glass and dust, bright cherry-coloured flames blazed.

Thick black smoke billowed from the front bonnet and poured into the building. The people in the supermarket watched in horror as the exits were blocked by this burning monster. The guy who was holding me, set me down on the steps and ran in the direction of the accident. I subconsciously reached for him but drew my hand back lightning fast the second I touched him.

Do clones come with factory settings that state that they must save lives and give priority to natural human beings at all times or something along those lines, like in science fiction? I don’t know, and I didn’t care, but he was really heroic at the scene.

Like a hero, he chiselled a hole in the wall with a fire axe. He rescued people trapped in the supermarket and rushed in several times to carry elderly people who choked from the smoke and had gone unconscious. I thought I saw my father rescuing the children at the scene of the fire, and I couldn’t help but go up and hug him.

“What’s wrong, I’m okay.” He dried my tears and cupped my face, “Don’t cry my little princess, you’re turning into a dirty little kitten.” That was what my dad used to say to cheer me up when I was little. He told me to wait, as there were still a few more people to save.

I just hugged him and repeated, “This will do, this will do.”

The mishap brought this once controversial clone back into the public spotlight.

But I didn’t care, it was something else that made me anxious. I realised at the scene of the car accident that I was afraid of losing him.

It’s funny how my dad, who was a mediocre technician in life, suddenly became so famous after his death.

That guy, I meant the guy who looked like my dad, was the first individual to receive an advertising offer as an artificial human. Public opinion accumulated from the two rescue incidents showed the manufacturer a business opportunity, but he himself didn’t particularly care to make any remarks. My guess is that it might be because the proceeds go to my mum and me, although the ownership of that guy is with the bio company.

I tried to find a chance to ask him if he would be upset if he didn’t get paid for working so hard on the advert, but he said that as long as my mum and I were happy, it was all good. In that moment, I realised he was indeed just a clone. There was only my mum and me in his head. His work, the life skills he used to be so proud of, his hobbies, and everything else about him no longer existed. It was as if he was a slice, a slice that mum and I had chosen.

I was overwhelmed by an indescribable sense of sadness, and I lived like a zombie during the days he was away on a business trip. I didn’t know how to face him, whether to love him like the way I loved my dad or to treat him like a disposable tool. He smiled at me with the face of my father and cared for me. He was flesh and blood, but his “life” was destined to end at a certain moment in half a month’s time.

I muddled through the monthly exams, not communicating with anyone at school, not even answering phone calls from my father’s colleague’s daughter. I once felt lucky about my own dad’s clean death outside her father’s hospital room, and now I have learnt what it feels like to be stuck with a thorn in my throat, which cannot be swallowed or spat out.

The original filming plan was scheduled to last five days, but he came back in two and a half days. I hid in my room, not knowing the right expression to greet this man with.

But he was even more haggard than I expected. I was drowning in my own sorrows when someone revealed to the media that he was willing to lay down his life to save the children in the orphanage only because there was his illegitimate child in it, which also brought up old stories of corruption and bullying all over again.

With bloodshot and weary eyes, he asked, “Was I such a person, am I…… such a person?”

Mum handed him a glass of honey water. When I got up to use the restroom that night, there was no sign of him on the couch, where he used to sit all alone.

The following day, the staff and legal team of the bio company came to the door with their protocol in a breeze. Standing in the perspective of the company and the project, the priority was still to suppress heated discussions, divert the public attention with other news, and then keep the whistle-blowers silent. Whether it was done with money or otherwise, was not something that we needed to worry about.

Mum took over the agreement, but she was stopped by his grip at the moment of signing.

It was at that moment that I realised that this was never a negotiation between equals. From the very beginning, he had not been regarded as a participant, but as a man-made item, an object, an inconsequential object.

But he also experienced feelings, temperature, and thoughts, and he would suffer from guilt and sorrow. To us he was only half a human being, an object. But wouldn’t an object cry, wouldn’t it be entitled to express pain?

At that time, my mum did not give an immediate answer, but only promised to think about it. When it was time to leave, the representative of the bio company remained undeterred and dragged mum outside onto the porch and chatted for a long time.

My cloned dad cowered in the plain velvet couch with daisies emblazoned on it. He looked like a tiny little ball for such a big guy. I wondered if he had any memories of the couch in his brain, which he and I had bargained for at the second-hand market in exchange for a load of stuffed animals. At the time, my mum was furious because the two of us had wasted all the money we had for the couch on slot machines in the arcade. It wasn’t until we took the couch apart, refurbished it from the inside out, and made sure the wood on the inside was dry and free of insect eggs or other potential hazards that this daisy couch officially became a part of this home.

I took his hand and lay into his arms, as a surge of nostalgia for the past and compassion for the present flooding through me. For a long time, neither of us spoke again. The silhouettes of my mother and the businessman fell on the wall, exaggerated to the point of distortion from the reflection of light. He closed his eyes feebly. A judgement was probably being reached against him right there, and he could do nothing about it.

I shook his knee and said in a muffled voice, “The bunny’s eye is loose again. Stitch it up for me, will you?”

Then he cracked the only genuine smile he’d had all day.

I watched him tauten the threads that he had torn last time, cut them off, and sewn them back together stitch by stitch. The little bird in the grandfather clock jumped out and chimed the time, and everything was exactly the way it was. In a trance, I couldn’t tell if it was an artificial being or my dad in front of me.

“Was I, in the past, such a person?” He spoke suddenly, with a suppressed pain in his voice.

“What kind of person?” I asked rhetorically.

His smile was weak and feeble, and my gaze fell long on the bunny.

I had no idea what my dad, if he retained his full memory, would do when it came to rumours about him and the children in the orphanage, but he, my cloned dad, was determined to get to the bottom of it.

That afternoon, I hesitated for a moment, clutching onto that cheerful bunny in my hand, before deciding to take his side.

When mum asked him why he wanted to do so, he said he loved the both of us, and couldn’t believe that the person he once was would do something like that.

My mum smiled, and looking back at it later, I realised that her smile was rather pale that day.

My dad’s relationship with the children in the orphanage was swiftly clarified, and a DNA test proved the hero’s innocence. Angry netizens found the initiator of the rumours by tracking down ID of the posts, and it was someone that none of us had expected. But life must go on, I still had to do every single page of homework, and occasionally run errands for teachers.

When I visited the daughter of my dad’s colleague to hand her homework for the new week, she was squatting on the ground digging a hole. I squatted down next to her, and found a rock to join in her digging. When the hole became approximately the size of a shoebox and was as deep as the palm of her hand, she pulled a grey rabbit out of the black bag behind her and carefully lowered the lifeless little thing into the hole.

“This is a little rabbit in the woods nearby that would come over and munch on cabbages I planted. I called it Whitey. But last night, it was hit by a car, on the stone path right in front of my house”. Her tears fell on the rabbit’s grey, jagged toes, slid down the lustreless fur and fell onto the soil. “My mum told me to throw it away with the wet rubbish, but I couldn’t bear to let it go like that. It’s ugly, isn’t it?” She looked up suddenly, fixedly at me with those weepy red eyes, and asked, “I’m ugly too, aren’t I?”

I grabbed the puffy dirt and sprinkled it bit by bit on the grey body of the bunny named Whitey and said, “The bunny is fluffy, and I’ve never seen a bunny that was ugly, or a little girl that wasn’t pretty.”

“You’re being sarcastic,” she stopped crying, “you know exactly what I’ve done and yet here you are being sarcastic with me.”

I made an oval mound on top of Whitey, which looked like a big bun that had failed to rise, and picked up the best-looking grass around to stick on top of it. After doing so, I patted the dirt off my hands and wiped the tears off her face, “Stop crying, you won’t look as pretty if you keep crying”.

Her face, the face that was even dirtier after I wiped it, was full of trepidation. It took a long time before she could control her tears, shrug her shoulders and say to me, “My dad, my dad killed himself. I couldn’t find anyone that day, even you missed my calls, I……”

“Sorry.” I said.

She shook her head, interrupting me, ‘No, no…… It was me; I was the one who was jealous of you. They were both there to save lives, but your dad was the hero, and he could play with you and be on TV while my dad was in the hospital with no one minding him and no one to look after him, so I made up the rumours……”

She hated her dad, who died a cowardly death, not in the least bit like a hero. I could relate to her; I was once jealous of her too. But none of that mattered now. I helped her up and patted the dirt and leaves off her, “Alright, go home now, your mum would be worried.”

With that, we parted. And as we were leaving, she called out to me, “From now on, we are no longer friends.”

I nodded and put the homework I had forgotten to give her on the tiled floor for her to collect herself.

“Rumours?” On the way back, I pressed my face against the window of the bus, mumbling a certain girl’s words in my mind.

How I wished that they were all just rumours. Is it true that many things in adults’ world could simply be dismissed as non-existent if one pretends not to see them?

It was an accident that I ran into that woman. I left school early that day to prepare a birthday party for my mum because this would be the last time ever that the three of us could be together for a celebration.

I wasn’t sure if the woman planned her appearance on that particular day, but we bumped right into each other at the entrance to the flat. I recognised her eyes all at once, those gloomy eyes that had appeared at the funeral scene and in the square.

When I got home, my mum was in their bedroom, throwing out everything that belonged to dad. I didn’t startle her, silently jotting down the address on the pale yellow post-it note that appeared abruptly on the living room table. Then, I gingerly went downstairs and found a place to have the cake. When the time was about right, I threw the leftovers and flowers into the rubbish bin and pretended to be coming home from school.

Mum was already back to her usual self, and dinner was quite routine, but we didn’t expect anything extraordinary from that guy. When it came time to tutor me on my homework that evening, mum was cranky.

Coming out of the kitchen with a fruit platter, the clone tried to distract my mum with snacks, when she yelled at him to not interfere with my education, exclaiming that she had always treated him as a tool, and that he could only be a tool. She cursed at him with venomous language and told him to scram as far away as he could.

The poor guy, who was shut out by me last time, was shut out again. This time, by my mum.

Being forcefully injected with consciousness and having to bear the shifty bad temper of my mum and I, I suddenly felt a tad bit sorry for this artificial being.

Late at night, I let him in while mum was asleep and had some hot milk ready. Maybe the temperature wasn’t quite right as he looked like a scalded kitten when he drank the milk.

I debated in my mind whether to tell him what had happened. It was only when I was eating the cake that I remembered that I had seen a picture of that woman and her child on my dad’s phone, which he had claimed to be a picture of his colleague’s wife and kid. The sugar should be blamed for making my brain work too well, I quite regret being gluttonous.

The man in front of me was so cute, we were like two little mice stealing food. Every of his move was just like dad’s; no, he was literally dad’s doppelganger. But should I tell him what I know? Apart from the much-discussed ethical issues of human cloning, should I risk complicating the situation by asking him if clones were liable for mistresses and illegitimate children? After all, under the current legislation, illegitimate children have the same inheritance rights as legitimate children.

Yet I could never find the chance to ask after always missing out a suitable time, until he finally said, “It’s awfully late now, do go to bed.” I went back to my room and cuddled up with my bunny before I finally breathed a sigh of relief.

And so, I made a trip to that address first thing after school the next day.

The block of flats was south-facing, while the unit, being on the ground floor, had a courtyard full of colourful flowers and a sunroom built off the balcony. That woman was there, pushing her little boy on a swing.

I watched for a long time until that woman was called away by her neighbours, and while they were chatting around the corner of the building, I took advantage of their blind spot and jumped into the garden. “Hey little brother, may I ask for a glass of water? I’m really thirsty.” Upon my request, this boy who could have been my younger brother froze for a moment before stretching out his short legs and jumping to the ground, even stumbling in the process. He pushed the swing over to me, “Do you want orange juice or coke, Sis?” When he smiled, there was a shallow dimple on the right side of his face.

“Either works.” I said.

He turned around to find his mum, but I said I was too thirsty and urged him through the door. Then, quietly, I jammed the glass door of the sunroom with my foot.

Frankly speaking, I didn’t believe the rumours that my father was reselling construction materials at the very beginning. We had been living a very humble life, so where did he spend the money he earned? Until I entered this lavishly decorated house, I still firmly believed that my father loved me, it’s just that he made the same mistake that many men would make.

It was until I saw the picture of the family on the wall and saw my dad smiling so happily, that the belief in me shattered. The living room was filled with miniature photographs of the boy. I pulled out the oldest-looking yellowed photo of the little baby who was still wearing a hospital bracelet, wrapped in a purplish red blanket, and on the back of the photo was my dad’s handwriting, which read five words: I have a son now.

The little boy struggled to get the drink out of the fridge, but after he poured it into a glass, he was surprised to find that the visitor who had approached him for a drink had disappeared. I took out the yellowed photo, tore it up and threw it out of the car window. As I watched the shreds fly away like snowflakes, I realised through reflections on the glass that I was already in tears, so I cried as if no one else was there.

I couldn’t care less about when they’d realise the photo was missing and if they’d call the police, there was only one thing in my mind that I wanted to verify.

I checked the guy’s schedule. One of the conditions of the bio company’s sponsorship was that the clone would have to engage in a certain number of social welfare activities, and the day after tomorrow he was to volunteer at the orphanage for half a day. So, when I presented him with the invitation card for the parent-teacher conference the afternoon after tomorrow, he almost leapt with joy, especially after I emphasised that he was the only one invited and asked him to keep it a secret from my mum. At the dinner table, we were like two little mice stealing royal grain, exchanging secrets known only to each other under mum’s nose.

For the next two days, I was torn over and over again. Should I do it or not? I was happy, we were all happy. Wouldn’t it be nice to stay happy just like this? But I just couldn’t get over the hurdle in my mind of who was more important to him: me, or that child.

On the scheduled day, I secretly placed a letter in the pocket of his jacket. A handwritten letter introducing himself in the voice of that child and inviting his “father” to a parent-teacher conference that afternoon.

Of course, both the school and the class were made up by me, because I didn’t want to lose that utterly even if I did.

Throughout the day, I was absent-minded. I sat in the wrong classroom with the wrong textbook, was called out by teachers several times, and even had my name written on the blackboard for special ‘attention’. I held my face and wailed in my heart for the upcoming parent-teacher conference. I wasn’t sure why, I was afraid that he would come, but even more afraid that he wouldn’t. Even though there were a lot of hiccups, we had been around each other for two months. If he wouldn’t choose me even then, did that mean that my father, the one who gave me my life, wouldn’t choose me either.

If he hadn’t passed away unexpectedly, was he planning to divorce my mother to be the father of that child……

I pondered much in my mind, counting time by the second, eventually making it through noon and finally arriving at the afternoon. I volunteered to stand in for the classmate on duty to serve as the reception. Parents came one after another, yet he was nowhere to be seen.

My stomach felt as if I had swallowed a lump of ice, my intestines and stomach twisting together. With every second that passed, the despair grew heavier. Finally, the bell rang, signalling the start of the conference. And my seat, was empty.

I closed the door in frustration and put on my backpack, ready to leave. But then I heard the sound of hurried footsteps coming from the end of the long corridor, a sound that grew louder with each step, each sound causing tremors at the bottom of my heart. How I wished that this person, this sound, were running towards me.

I stopped where I was, waiting. Waiting for fate’s judgement. I was about to suffocate from the yoke I put around my own neck, and with every second leading to the moment, I felt a little closer to death.

It was only when I saw the figure I had longed for with all my heart running towards me, that I leapt over to him and jumped into his arms. At that moment, I was the happiest person in the world, I didn’t care why he was late or where he had been. These no longer mattered, as long as he finally chose me, as long as he came.

“Dad……” I cried out loud in his arms.

We had an unbelievably happy time after that. As long as I was the chosen one, as long as I wasn’t the one being left behind, it was enough. I could still be the unsophisticated little girl with my mum and dad, as long as I forget about that child.

Sometimes I would implicitly ask my mum if we would keep him.

“Do you want him to stay?” Mum asked.

I find it a pity somewhat that this whole illegitimate child thing actually got spilled like that. It would have been nice if he did not have to know about it for his entire life. But that wasn’t realistic, that woman showed up because the clone was famous and making money. I heard my mum on the phone with the staff at the bio company, asking them to settle the woman who had come asking for money just like how they settled all previous rumours.

I assumed that everything could be resolved, if the company stepped in. At last, the moment came when the fate was to finally be decided. Although the free usage period ended, dad’s clone became famous, hence receiving several olive branches from other local companies. While this meant we’d have to bear the high maintenance costs of the clone, the amount of money he would make should be enough to cover his own expenses. A representative of the bio company even approached mum in private, saying that the company was willing to give us a great discount if she renewed the contract, so we would only have to fork out basic costs.

The reclaiming ceremony was as grand as the day we received my cloned dad. The host did a recap of what the clone had done for the community and for the family during the two months, before asking the solemn question to my mother if she wanted to renew the contract.

For the first time, my mother did not respond. The silence was slightly awkward, then he asked again, and for the third time.

My heart raced as I followed my mother’s gaze, it was that woman, the one with the gloomy eyes. But this time it was not just her, but she had her child with her, that boy.

I eagerly searched with my eyes for the liaison officer, they should have had a precautionary measure for such a scenario, they should have ushered the two out and told them to shut up for good to uphold the image of the hero.

But they did nothing. They let the two women’s eyes meet right at the venue. We had explicitly agreed to keep him the day before, but that also meant that my mother would have to deal with the relationship between the three of them every single day with the presence of the cloned dad.

I saw exhaustion on my mother’s face and knew that it was a bad sign, that she had obviously had enough of such torment, that she had given up, and that she wanted to be relieved. Then I heard her announce that she refused to renew the contract.

All that planning with the negotiated terms and upgraded version of my cloned dad went out the window.

Strangely enough, I didn’t see a hint of discouragement on the faces of staff who had been working with my mum, but rather relief, as if this was all expected and within their control.

The next instant, with all eyes watching, that woman slowly walked onto the stage with her child, announcing that the dead hero was the father of her son. Under current regulations, clones could be applied for by spouses or immediate family members but could not be reapplied for when there was an existing clone of the same person. In other words, there could only be one unique clone in this world.

Under current societal interpretations, immediate relatives were by default taken to be parents or children born in wedlock, the question of whether children born out of wedlock had the right to clone their parents was still a matter of debate. But what happened did earn the bio company a gimmick. I also suspect that even if my mother had renewed the clone, they would still look for an opportunity to debut the mother and son duo. They did this for the obvious purpose of targeting their marketing to a fixed group of people, but I couldn’t care less who they are.

With my mother’s refusal to renew the clone’s contract, we had truly distanced ourselves from this drama once and for all. I watched them take the cloned dad away, feeling as if I had, once again, lost him.

When I came out of the bio company, I wanted to cry out loud, but I was in no capacity to do so. We had to take grandpa back to the nursing home first, and it was completely dark by the time we got home.

Neither of us had much of an appetite, but mum insisted on cooking for me, and then I heard weeping coming from the kitchen. I followed the sound and saw cooked dinner in the microwave. Because he was afraid that we wouldn’t be able to heat it up properly, he had thoughtfully marked the temperature and heating time on a note slip.

We split the plate of not-so-good vegetable rice bowl. After dinner, I wanted to talk to my mum, but she always seemed to be busy. She was either brushing her teeth and washing up or sorting out financial statements, cleaning out the cabinets or waxing the floors.

Not wanting to disturb my sorrowful mother, I went back to my room alone. Under the moonlight, there were two identical bunnies on my bed. I stumbled over to them, picked up one bunny and then the other, unable to tell which was the new one and which was the original. In the depths of the dark night, I sobbed and whimpered as I hugged the two identical stuffed bunnies, repeating over and over again in my mind, “I love you both, I love you both……”

I lost my dad, and possibly, the other one as well, in perpetuity.

I remember it was the dead of night when I solemnly typed the words THE END at the end of the document; it was the height of summer, but the night was shiveringly cold.

The passage above is a short version of my novel. I took a feminine pen name and submitted it to a publisher. When the editor asked to meet with me, she said that when she read the piece, she figured I was a guy.

“How did you figure it out?” I asked.

Through a small, insignificant detail that exposed you in the opening pages, she said with a laugh.

“The opening pages?”

She nodded and said that there was no way a granddaughter could just help her grandpa zip up his trousers. I was standing in for my younger self while writing, but in reality, until the man I biogenetically call grandpa died, he had never once hugged me.

Yes, I’m the little boy in the story. I no longer have the shallow dimples when I smile. Maybe I still do, but it has been a long time since I’ve smiled.

All this time, I’ve been snooping like a maggot on other people’s happiness, writing this story from my imagination. I tried to claim that happiness for my own, I imagined myself as the girl who came to the house and tricked me for a drink, and I imagined my father loving me.

At the launch of the new book, an impromptu story was made up for my young readers. I said that I was the little boy in the story, and that the love I felt that noon when my clone dad came to say goodbye was something I would hold dear all my life.

A child, who was very courteous raised his hand and asked if there can truly be fatherly love for strangers of whom one has no memories or impressions.

“That’s a great question,” I said, “I’ll have an answer for you when I’m a father.”

At the end of the story, I lied. The mother and daughter didn’t give up on the clone of their loved one, and they lived together all along. I didn’t get a chance to apply for one because of the guideline that clones must be unique. At the time of the story, which was during my teenage years, it was still vague whether a child born out of wedlock could apply for a clone of his or her parents. Two years later, the authorities revised the terms and opened up permission for application.

I just don’t know, if that’s a blessing or a curse for children like me.

It was drizzling when I got out from the book signing, I went to my mum’s grave first to give her the latest edition of the novel. Then I rushed home in the rain, where a much younger mum was waiting for me. She had gloomy eyes, like this weather.

She took over my coat, urged me to have some hot tea, and then went back to scrubbing the kitchen hood.

“Let the robots do the work.” I said.

“No, they can’t scrub it properly.”

I took a sip of my hot tea, stared at its rippling, misty surface, and asked cluelessly, “Do you still love him?”

“Who?” Mum asked without any hesitation, the brush in her hand never pausing for a single moment.