By Maria Sottile, April 2017
May 24
It’s my birthday tomorrow, but far from the traditional mode of celebrating, I’ll become a research experiment. I’m going to be the first cloned human. And not in the sense of just copying my DNA. They’re going to scan me and replicate every single atom in my body. It’s worked very well so far, but you can’t talk to a dog, or ask a monkey about its memories and identity. Everyone else thinks I’m moving here to be an intern, I didn’t want to tell them I was the test subject.
Though they assure me the process will not go wrong, I can’t help but be apprehensive. Can my consciousness truly be replicated? Surely it must be if it is a physical property of mine. But will my consciousness possess both bodies, reside only in one, or be split between them? I suppose these questions are the reason the experiment is being carried out, but I’m not sure if I’ll be aware of the situation and able to provide answers.
May 25
I feel exhausted both physically and mentally. I’ve spent most of the day drugged, paralyzed, and unconscious. I started to come to and there were too many lights and too many researchers swarming around checking on me. But now they said they’ll let me rest for a few days while they monitor my health.
Fortunately, they also care about my mental well-being because they’ve brought me a puppy. She’s a previous test subject named Cleo. Cleo seems to have either fully accepted or be completely unaware that she has a clone. I, on the other hand, am still nervous. But my worries will have to wait until later. Hopefully I can sleep off the drugs.
May 27
I slept almost all day yesterday. I still felt tired and drugged. I only felt well enough today to eat and take Cleo for a walk, but I think I’ll be better by tomorrow.
In a way, I can feel the anticipation building. The researchers who come check on me are eager and excited. I have been too sick to care and have yet to hear anything about my clone. This is only a guess, but I feel that may change tomorrow.
May 28
I’m told I was passed out for three days. But besides feeling only the barest effects of whatever drugs they used on me, I feel perfectly fine. Since waking though, I am only now being left alone. Earlier there was a constant stream of researchers checking on my physical well-being. The implication was that I would have tonight to recover and tests would start tomorrow. I have always been a wonderful test taker, I wonder if my clone is as well.
I asked about her, and she has been up for a few days already. Though encased in delicate wording, I will possibly see her tomorrow. I wonder if she asked about me. If the process has been successful, then logically she has. We are the same, and I was curious about her – she must be curious about me. Following the same logic, we must also think, speak, and act the same. But not all else is equal. We have already had different experiences; thus, we are no longer the same person.
Ah well, it’s not my experiment. I am here to provide data and cuddle with Cleo, a previous subject from cloning studies on canines.
May 28
Life at the lab is beginning to get interesting. Among all the physical check-ups I’ve been subjected to, more pertinent data collection is set to begin tomorrow. If the tests are challenging enough, then I’ll conclude life as a lab rat is quite livable. In addition, I believe I caught some mention of cooperating with my clone.
I must admit I am quite nervous to meet her tomorrow. Every time I write that word, I remember the day I learned how to spell it properly to win an argument with my friend Blake. I know my clone is supposed to share all my memories, but has everything truly been captured and replicated, such that we think and remember in the exact same way?
Cleo wants to go for a walk and obliging her is more pleasant than worrying about tomorrow. It’s not my experiment, I don’t have to ponder anything.
May 29
Today was strange. Individual testing was sufficiently hard as to be interesting, but then I had to work with my clone. The natural assumption would be that we would think alike and work well together. This was not the case: we both tiptoed around each other, too afraid to take charge. This may be a personality trait particular to us and not the norm, but I viewed her as my equal and was nervous that taking the lead would reveal some gross incompetence that would cause her to think less of me.
What followed was a conversation between ourselves. It was nothing so difficult. In a way, it was like catching up with an old friend. In another way, it was like watching a recording of myself that I had no memory of making. It was clear we share the same memories and experiences, but our minds seem to jump in different ways from topic to topic. We battled each other for speaking time. I was a little hurt when the subject of our respective Cleos came up, but the researchers stepped in and ushered us away.
I want to like her, but I cannot stand how close we are to being the same person. They won’t tell me about tomorrow’s plans, but likely I’ll have to see her again.
May 30
I planned to write yesterday, but I was tired from all the testing and consuming conversation with my clone. Every memory was brought up like we were both present. All the times I chased my brother around our house, she made it sound like we were twins chasing our brother together. We kept trying to talk over each other, and it seemed like we were bonding. I know so much about her, yet I feel so distant. I am no longer privy to my own thoughts, imagine that.
The researchers must still think the two of us are connected. I watched her testing today and tried to answer questions about her mental processes. They didn’t say anything, but I’m confident they can rule out the theory of connected minds and split minds. The two of us are very much whole and separate.
May 31
I saw her again today, not in person, or for a test like yesterday. I saw her walking her Cleo around outside. I have yet to fully form an opinion about her, and I believe it’s the same for her. We are each too cautious and want to consider what the other thinks of us first.
I used to think that most people thought like me until I had reason to think otherwise. For instance, all the embarrassing moments of my adolescence no longer affect me, but a friend of mine claims he still feels embarrassed by events that happened years ago. At what point will my clone and I be so separate that we no longer think of things the same way?
June 1
I just saw her again, though based on the reaction all around, it may be for the last time. Not that I don’t like her, but I feel that she may not like me. She accidentally confessed that she believed I was her clone. Already mildly annoyed with talking to her, I burst out laughing. Of course, they wouldn’t tell her she’s a clone. Believing such would likely result in an inferiority complex and would undermine any results they hope to gather from this experiment.
Being a lab rat is losing its appeal. I am less sure of myself than before I agreed to become two separate people, or whatever I am now. Experiments are supposed to hold answers, not confusion.
It’s only been about a week, but I’m tired. I want to go home.
June 1
I can’t believe I accidentally told her she was my clone. I’m not surprised she laughed at me; it’s a coping mechanism. She refuses to acknowledge her own inferiority. Admittedly, I would behave the same in her case. This must be valuable for the researchers: they can observe her with the knowledge that she believes herself mind and body to have been the original.
I am about to call my Mom. She thinks I’m a research assistant here and I’ve been told not to talk about the experiment. Talking to her should ground me and help me forget my clone, as it is likely I will not see her again.
June 2
Shortly after I wrote yesterday, they let me call my Dad. It has not been so long since I saw him, but it was comforting to have my identity confirmed. Living here, I have begun forming doubts. But now, even if my clone is convinced she’s me, she doesn’t have proof or confirmation. She has no claim to my identity in the minds of others. After I go home she will be nothing.
June 3
I mistakenly asked after my clone, and for whatever reason, they told me she got to call home as well. I’d been feeling secure in my identity, but she is so easily able to destroy it.
Maybe they’re lying to gauge my reaction. Maybe her phone call failed.
How can I have become two people? How can we share an identity? I have not. We cannot. Whatever similarities we share, one of us was born 19 years ago and the other has only existed for a week. The fact that I am no longer sure which one I am makes no difference. We share the continuity of our memories, but only one of us has the necessary physical continuity, and neither of us were conscious for the actual event.
I must insist on my identity. If I cannot have that, then I have nothing.
June 4
My hatred for the experiment grows by the day. I take comfort in logic and certainty, but my clone, or my original denies me this. Only in my mind can I be certain we are different people, to everyone else we are the same. If I die tomorrow, my consciousness will not continue in her, and had I been destroyed in the cloning process, my mind would not have lived on in her body either.
Why can’t the researchers draw these conclusions and let me go?
June 4
The experiment appears to be wrapping up. In the absence of my clone, I find I am quite content with her existence. Space is just another dimension like time. I would loathe to exist in the same time as my five-year-old self, just as I loathe to exist in the same room as my clone. Though like the changes to my mind and body I experience over time, I feel that the two of us are no more different than who I was on my birthday, and who I could have been had my birthday not also been her birthday.
We are the same person, in every sense but that we inhabit different spaces and do not recognize the other’s identity.
June 5
The researchers are almost done with me. After a last round of individual testing tomorrow, I’ll get to go home.
Artist statement:
I have always thought, and believed those around me to agree, that I am the same person I was yesterday despite any physical or mental changes that may have occurred since then. Rarely have I given this much more thought than determining that what makes me the same person over time is that I and everyone else believe me to be the same. While this criterion holds up quite well for gradual change, it seems easier to object to in the face of abrupt changes such as those presented by Derek Parfit in his Mars teletransporter thought experiment. Continuity is easy to argue in the case of my slowly changing body. Even when the original man is destroyed and recreated on Mars, we have little reason to believe it is not him, especially because everyone has agreed that the teletransported version is the same as the original. But when the original is not destroyed, this completely breaks down. The man exists in two locations and his consciousness is not shared across the solar system. Due to locational markers however, we know which man is the original.
I’d like to continue to question what makes me the same person I was yesterday by introducing two of me, and looking at how they reconcile their identities as the same or as different people.