Cloning Technologies
According to recently discovered historical records, the veracity of which has yet to be proven, Human Cloning has been around for over three thousand years, and the new technology used for it is based on an old model which some claim is from that ancient time. In fact, the method for making a Human Clone is almost identical to the method same sex parents in the Coalition have used for millennia to procreate. Skin cells collected and converted into fetal stem cells which are then, in turn, converted into reproductive cells. The difference is that, in one case the reproductive cells are used for “normal” in vitro fertilization with reproductive cells from the other parent, whereas in cloning the reproductive cells are eggs, where the DNA is identical to that of the subject from whom the skin cells were collected. The method of going from skin cells, to stem cells, to reproductive cells eliminate the telomere problem which otherwise makes human cloning a bad idea. With cloning the telomeres comes into play anyway, as the method used in the Coalition also involves quickly maturing the clone to the same physical age as the donor brother, or sister, and in some cases making them older.
The scientist in the Research and Development Department at the Clear Corporation was a bit short handed so he made himself some pod brothers to get some help from likeminded people.
A friend of the Clear Family was a member of The Index and just his, or her, connections to arrange a meeting with the Captain of the spaceship Procrustes who had an old, cloning machine in the med-bay of the ship. The scientist found the technology appeared to be originally created by the Treel but didn’t credit them as he repaired and improved the unit on the ship, and reverse engineered his own version.
The old model on the ship had a device that was supposed to transfer the consciousness of a dying person to a new clone body, but it was one part of the machinery that worked alright on Treel, but became unreliable when used by humans. The Scientist studied the Cerebral Repository species in Lake Nuwattah-Nuwattah on Prometheus and learned from how they transfer memory fragments between themselves and other humans, and developed a new technology that reliably downloaded a humans memories into a new body. Some believe that it’s a person’s consciousness that is transferred, but there’s no evidence to support that and some people who have gone through the procedure, several times, insist that they are merely copies who think they’re the same as the previous person, imposters, basically. Gabriel Trent is among those who will argue this point whenever cloning is brought up.
The scientist made five pod brothers for himself and the Clear Corporation started limited manufacturing of cloning pods on a commission basis, no serial production, at first. The technology instead lead to the development of an artificial womb, dubbed a “Womb-with-a-View” that did go into serial production and within a few years became the most common way of procreation for Coalition Citizens, which had the side effect that the majority of children born in the Coalition no longer have bellybuttons, apart for the few who are born the old fashioned, natural way.
The cloning technologies, including the artificial wombs, were soon turned into their own business, which was a subsidiary to the Clear Corporation. In 2940, when Daffodil Armaments bought the Clear Corporation, the subsidiary was part of the deal, except they immediately sold it to Volksmann Enterprises who started serial production of the cloning technology, both for private industries and for the Trident Coalition Armed Forces who were interested in having soldiers who wouldn’t be stopped by such minor things as dying in battle.
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