trans_9 | Probatur, ut to order, futurus veritas

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Probatur, ut to order, futurus veritas

Le Prefecture De Police was an impressive building, but that wasn't the reason it had been chosen by the members of the civilian council; it had been chosen because none of the Councilmen (and women) had any ties to it, making it neutral ground. There was also the potential for everyone to have an office with a desk in the same general vicinity if they so chose, making communication easier.

One of the larger rooms had been cleared of most of the furniture, except for chairs and a few tables. It had been left up to each individual where they wanted to sit, and how, since they were all currently equals.

The Council had a lot to discuss. They had yet to choose a chairperson, and three major issues had popped up in a relatively short amount of time: Mei-Xing's clone, Schmuz and Iniss the yeerks, and whether there should be mandatory physicals and/or psychiatric evaluations for the crew.

They were also going to have a few guests presenting information, but at the moment, people were still arriving.

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The third person to stand was Fate. She, too, was dressed formally, in a black outfit Rein had made to resemble her Enforcer uniform. The single light pink ribbon in her hair probably clashed with the dark uniform, but Fate didn’t care; Nanoha couldn’t be here with her, so she had taken a reminder of the other girl with her for support.

Her face was a mask of calm as she approached the council, but just under it, her emotions were threatening to overwhelm her. Between hearing Lex’s full report, and the still lingering shock that this even had to be seriously discussed… well. This was definitely going to be a long meeting.

“Hello, ladies and gentlemen. I am Lieutenant Fate Testarossa Harlaown, and I thank you for giving me the chance to speak today.” She said, inclining slightly in a bow of respect. Her voice, like her expression, was calm, giving no hint to her inner turmoil.

“I’m not a scientist. I can’t comment at all on the state of that girl… but I do know that she’s not needed. Stacy can grow organs in a matter of hours, correct? If Mei-Xing was hurt on a mission, Stacy could easily grow whatever organ was needed during the time it takes to return to the ship. And if she was somehow critically injured on the ship, well… is there a way to preserve organs in the Med Bay?” Fate paused, taking a breath to keep herself calm as she continued.

“Say we do let her keep the clone. What happens when her organs run out? Say she injures a lung, and the clone doesn’t have either of hers…” Again, Fate had to pause. She was disgusted that she was even thinking about that. “If we can just grow a new lung for her, that defeats the purpose of her clone, and it would mean we wasted a life.

And just as important as that is the effect this will have on some of our crewmates.” Her mask was beginning to falter, and she frowned a little.

“There are several clones on board, myself included. “ She placed a hand on her chest. “If the other crew members find out about this incident, it’s probably going to hurt them badly. I can’t speak for all the clones on board, but I know several people who have struggled for years trying to prove that they’re people, and not copies. If they find out about this about this, how do you think this is going to affect them? To hear that someone is allowed to consider their clone property just because they created them… it’s going to bring up questions they’ve been trying not to ask themselves for a long time.” It was obvious now that Fate was speaking from personal experience, and her emotional mask was slipping a little more.

“Like the others, I trust all of you to make the right decision. But you must keep in mind that this decision shouldn’t be made merely based on scientific fact or a matter of ownership. You also need to keep in mind that you aren’t just deciding on one clone in this one instance. Whatever is said here is going to set a precedent for any cases like this in the future, and this could be very dangerous.” Fate finished. She wanted to say more, but she had to remind herself that Kon still needed to speak. This meeting was just as important to him as it was to her, so she trusted him to mention what she didn’t.

So, with another bow, and another “thank you”, she turned on her heel, returning to her seat.

Kon was looking down at the floor as he stood up, thoughtful, and didn't looked at Mei-Xing or Luthor--or even fate. When he got to the podium, he placed his omnicom in front of him and placed his hands to the sides carefully, and gripped them for a moment.

Unlike the others, he wasn't really dressed fancy. He was in his standard "S" T-shirt (that he'd gotten made at Zokez) and jeans.

It took a second for him to start, but when he finally took a deep breath and let it out, and looked up, there was an expression of resolve on his face that made him almost the mirror image of his mentor when said mentor was in 'save-the-day' mode. Looking back at his omnicom, he started.

"When I was cloned, I was aged up very quickly. I went from a clump of cells to a teenager in about a week. That made it impossible for my brain to develop, and the tech at Cadmus, the facility that cloned me, had to do a lot of stuff to prod my brain into working. Since I'd never used the damn thing, they introduced programming--basic knowledge, social knowledge, all that to it, arooound I guess when I was physically 12 or 13 maybe. That's when I remember the start of it anyway and that's how old I looked. I think."

A deep breath.

"Do I recommend doing that for the clone? Well, actually no. We don't know if we can, a lot can go wrong, and aside from that, I had a whole grab bag of issues from that programming and having my mind formed for me rather than developing it with age--everything from arrogant, evil megalomaniac supervillains using that to control me to identity issues that I still struggle with today."

"But my point is that, at one point, I was in the same state as Mei-Xing's clone. My brain was there, it was healthy, but I wasn't doing anything but floating useless in a tube, at first. Clones are often not...like normal people in our stages of development, that's the part I'm trying to impress here. When you've got someone playing mad scientist, they don't always pay attention to the fiddly bits like proper neural development or whether or not the clone can survive out in the open air without their skin turning to chalk. That means that clones sometimes develop in strange steps, or are undeveloped, or shoot off into a developmental dead end, usually because of the callousness and cruelty of people who only intend to use them for something."

"Now Luthor is quick to point out that Mei Xing shouldn't be punished for what she did in her world--and you know what? I agree. The law is the law. But she had a clone made, developed in a way that it's capacity for sentience was damaged by the process itself, and did this knowingly. If she had done this with a child created by normal sexual reproduction and grabbed it out of the womb before it'd started to really develop, and aged it up so it was in the same state as this clone, where it grew too fast for its brain to keep up, to have its organs plucked out, we wouldn't be having this conversation right now. We'd call it a travesty and be worrying about how best to deal with this poor kid's condition, and what's best for them, even if we weren't punishing her or whatever."

"That's the biggest problem I have with this. Is the clone sentient? No. Should it have been? Yes. It was developed in a way that even if it wasn't intentionally developmentally disabled, it just didn't matter to its creators if it was. What happened in its creation was a horrific process. It shouldn't be allowed to ever be imitated on board, but on that token, even if Mei-Xing shouldn't be punished, the rewards from this process shouldn't be allowed to be enjoyed. It is a very small step from letting someone use a clone's organs to allowing someone to create a similar clone. After all, if it's legal to benefit from this, if you deem the clone has no rights, then why can't others make similar clones, if they have no rights? You've already condoned their use. What's the difference between use and creation if you've already decided that a creation like this isn't a sentient and doesn't deserve protection? I have worked shutting down rotten cloning operations--trust me, it is a slippery slope you do not want to go down. It's an easy slope to go down."

"And also, okay, even if we argue that living creatures can be possessions? Does that mean that someone can torture and murder their own dog on board? Cause non-sentient creatures pain just for the hell of it? I know we don't have laws in place, but my point is that my freakin' dog Bitey should not have more rights than the clone of a person, and as it stands, he probably does."

"As for the organ argument, I have weird organs I can't live without. A lot of people do. If Mei-Xing is that worried about having cloned organs immediately on hand, she can arrange with Stacy to have them already in wait and on ice or otherwise kept preserved so they're ready for immediate implantation. And if she's worried about her quality, she can have the doctors check them over to make sure they'll work okay. There's nothing to stop her from stockpiling. And if you don't believe me, well..."

"Hey Stacy! Is what I just said true?"

||Yes, Kon-El.||

Kon just raised his eyebrows at Mei-Xing and Lex, as if to say 'What, am I the only one who thought to ask?'

"In the end, it all comes three things: need, precedent, and compassion. Is there need for Mei-Xing to keep this clone or even use its organs when she has many other options available, including stockpiling ahead of time? No. Would using this clone for that set bad precedent? Uh, yes. For both consent issues when someone is incapable of giving consent and for the use and creation of clones. And then most important of all: Is letting this clone be used as an organ bag compassionate? Whether that's in life or in death?"

He looked up at them all, his face pleading.

"Well, is it? Look at the poor thing's life. Bam, you've got the start of life and she grows and she grows and then when people are developing and seeing the world around them, she has nothing, and she grows, and it's still nothing, and then she grows too fast, and it's more nothing, and then... she is what she is. It doesn't matter to anyone that she never had a chance. It doesn't matter to anyone that she was grown in a way that deprived her of a real life, of thinking and feeling and deciding who she is. We call something damage when there was something there to get damaged in the first place, but how's it not cruel to deny someone the chance to grow and develop in the first place to use their body? Maybe that shouldn't be punished, sure, if it happened off-ship--but why should that be rewarded?"

"The law should be tempered by compassion, and the compassionate thing here is to decide what's best for the clone, if not out of respect of what she is, than out of respect for what she should have been. I don't know what's right for her, but I do know that she deserves to have the least amount of suffering possible. She deserves the dignity that was never afforded her. If you all decide she should be pulled off the life support or something, I can't even argue that--as long as people aren't allowed to peck away at her organs like vultures, 'cause that's not dignity. That's letting what should have been a person be treated like a thing."

Kon took one last deep breath.

"Because in the end, clones are always created for a purpose. It's our nature. We are treated like we're not people, and that we're property, that our organs or other parts of ourselves belong to other people. We're told we're not individuals or that we're soul-less or that we're not thinking for ourselves, only programmed. I'm luckier than some because my purpose needed higher thinking skills and allowed me some freedom--and because the person I was cloned from looked after me and was my friend from the start--"

He looked at Superman gratefully.

"--but most clones are lucky if they can even think above the third-grade level and don't have an extra arm coming out of their crotch. Hell, most are lucky if they even survive the cloning process itself, or can think after it, something, unfortunately, that Mei Xing's clone is a casualty of."

He added bluntly, "And it sucks. To be used. To be treated like a thing. To be made to be used."

"Please. Please make that different here. Taking away Mei-Xing's clone to do what's best for it, whatever that is, isn't punishment when the organs can be replaced by Stacy--and even stockpiled, it's just respecting life, and preventing an insidious practice from having the tiniest bit of leeway from edging into our legal system. Because you can't say it's okay to use a clone because they're not sentient and also say it's not okay to make an unsentient clone to be used, not with any legitimacy. Using life that was created to be used and creating life to be used are intertwined. It's not possible to separate the two."

Kon swallowed.

"And that's all I have to say."

Once those asked to present testimony to the Council had finished, and he'd had a few moments to organize his thoughts, Luke leaned forward. He'd never been much of a speechmaker; growing up on Tatooine as a farmboy hadn't exactly made him the eloquent one, not like his sister. But he would do his best.

"I've said before that where I'm from, we've had some experiences with clones," he said. "In our case they were usually soldiers, clones of those with the kinds of abilities that were deemed useful. And that's just how they were thought of by some - useful, and in the end, expendable. But others didn't see it that way. The Jedi, for example, did what they could to make sure that the clone soldiers under their command in the Clone Wars were taken care of and respected."

He took a deep breath. "Most clones were engineered to grow up quickly, and that kind of accelerated aging process meant that methods such as flash-learning were used to essentially download information from a template mind into the mind of the clone." Visions of Thrawn's clone, in the Spaarti cylinder on Nirauan, swam up to the fore of his mind. "Before that process, most clones wouldn't have even been taken out of the cloning tanks. They wouldn't have been able to function.

"But that doesn't mean they wouldn't be alive. My calling has always been to preserve and honor life as best I can, and I can't in good conscience say that a being doesn't deserve that same treatment just because they're dependent on machines for sustaining their life. And just because they're not cognizant right now doesn't mean they can't become that way. It's not a good thing to start doing, thinking of living beings in terms of usefulness, or that they're anyone's property.

"Out of respect for the other members of the crew who are clones, and based on my own thoughts on all this, I suggest we take care of Mei-Xing's clone as best we can, and keep her from being used for repairs, so to speak. Stacy's said pretty clearly she can take care of things if there's a call for something the clone would normally provide."

He sat back, breathing a silent sigh of relief.

Wanda took a deep breath and when she spoke her voice was calm and level, though it was clear from the look on her face that she found the subject highly unsettling. "From what I understand, based on Mr. Luthor's testimony, the clone can never gain sentience, basic understanding of its surroundings, or even have any basic thoughts. I'm also concerned about life, but I'm not certain if the clone could be considered alive. Does she have a soul? It doesn't sound like she does, or ever could.

"Now, I don't think Mei-Xing should be able to use the clone. Stacy can provide any organs she might need, and letting her use the clone's would set a precedent. Even if we said that no one was allowed to do it, giving her an exception would be unfair and look poorly. It might encourage others to ignore the ruling."

"I, and every other adult individual of my race, are clones. We were created in a different manner than the ones most of you are used to; dark magic was used to warp the eggs of metallic dragons to hatch us instead. We were meant to be weapons in a war, shock troops. The Dragonarmies had originally intended for us to be smart enough to be able to fight better than goblins, but still be tractable, and much to their dismay, we surpassed that," Kang began, wings rustling.

"Now, I have not and will not lie to anyone on this ship about my past, or who and what I and my kind are. Our side murdered, stole, and worse, and we willingly went along with it. It was the only life we knew, and we'd been raised to think that we were doing the right thing. Not only that, but we had been told that no females had ever been created, or would be, to keep us under their control; decades later, we found out that was a lie. Partway into the war, most of the dragon eggs that hadn't been warped yet were recovered by the other side, and the Dragonarmies needed more soldiers.

"One of the three that had worked the spells to create us also made an artifact, called the Heart of Dracart, that took the soul of an existing draconian and split it, making hundreds of copies. Unfortunately, these clones were, to put it bluntly, stupid, were not capable of magic or any of the abilities each type of us possesses, and didn't have a life span much longer than three years. Before Dracart got the chance to use it, the war was lost."

Kang crossed his arms over his chest. "Most of us only knew of this artifact through rumors, and were unaware of all the details of what it did. A little over a year after we had found the females, and had raised them, one of our kind decided to use it. He wanted slaves to follow him, nothing more, and he planned on killing the girls, as well. He was killed before he could use it on too many of the men."

"I pitied them. They always had a lost look in their eyes, and if I had ordered any one of them to kill himself, he would have, with no hesitation, due to the strict obedience training they'd undergone. I had hopes that these draconians would one day regain what they'd lost, so I allowed them in Teyr. They never did. To this day, I wonder if I should have just had them all killed, out of mercy."

He took a breath, "So you can see that I've had more than my share of experience with clones, and why I'm uncomfortable with the idea of anymore like Mei-Xing's being created. However, we must remember that this clone already exists, and that in this particular case, it will never do anything more than lie in one spot, unconscious. It will never speak, or even open its eyes of its own volition. This was done purposely, yes, but the point is, and one that Mr. Luthor made as well, that it is not sentient, and that is what is important. It is that lack of sentience, despite its physical appearance, that makes it unequal."

"I want to make it clear: while I am of the opinion that Mei-Xing should be able to keep the clone as an organ donor, I am against any further clones being created in such a manner. In any manner, really. Once it can no longer provide any parts she may need for her magic to operate properly, Stacy can then grow them and keep them in storage. If it is decided that she is not allowed to keep it, then I would rather it be destroyed than left hooked to the machines."

And then the bozak paused.

"There is one other thing we must remember, regarding Schmuz, Iniss, and yeerks as a species. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe yeerks need an organic brain to interface with, so creating an inorganic body for them to inhabit won't suffice, unless an organic brain is cloned. That goes right back to the issue currently at hand; the decision we make about Mei-Xing's clone will affect their chances at having a body to call their own, without sharing or taking over another person's. We may, in an effort to ensure that every sentient aboard this ship is guaranteed a body of their own without infringing on the rights of other sentients, have to allow things that we are not comfortable with. It's a difficult choice to make, and no matter what we choose, someone is going to be unhappy. Unfortunately, that comes with our job."

Superman listened to what the other Councilmen had to say. So far, it was pretty much split. He let out a sigh as he went to speak.

"I'm going to admit something - I've never dealt with this sort of thing. At least not in this sort of magnitude. Cloning and Kryptonian DNA is hard. Before and after Kon, I've dealt with clones of me that literally disintegrated in mind and body." He was referring to the first two Bizarros that his Luthor had created. All that so Luthor could have something of him. "As it stood, though, they were still living and I had to protect them from both themselves and those around them."

"However, this isn't the case. What we're dealing with here, if what we heard is right, is nothing more than an organ bank. And that, I feel, we can't allow to keep going. As everyone's said, Stacy can take care of her needs, she doesn't need to use something this inhumane. At the same time, though..." he let out a sigh and sat back. "...I am abstaining from deciding what becomes of the clone itself."

Sorry, Kon. Sorry, Fate. Getting involved in this from the get-go has made him a bit weary of wanting to make a choice.

Kang quirked an eyebrow ridge, "Inhumane, Councilor?"

Superman looked at Kang and noticed that he tread a mark he wasn't supposed to.

"My apologies." he said. "Allow me to rephrase it: something this cruel."

Yeah, this was going to be tougher than he thought. There was WAY too many toes on this ship that could be stepped on.

"Regardless of race," said Matt, finally coming out of his meditative pose and giving Kal and Kang a look, "This is a decision that makes up the whole of the council and we shouldn't quibble over things such as our genetic makeup."

Sitting up further, the young man finally seemed to have made a decision on his own opinion. "While in truth we have a comatose clone which will never regain sentience, and no matter how strongly we feel towards certain aspects of it, the fact remains that what we decide here will also impact the Yeerk decision."

"As such, after pondering options, I've been thinking on the matter while everyone offered opinions, and I will now offer my own on the matter."

Matt took a breath and let it out slowly. "I agree with Kang on both matters, as such Mei Xing should not keep the clone in the best interests of preserving rights of the people involved in this conflict and full clones should not be created in the sake of equal rights. However, we should also look into viable options for the Yeerks and their hosts. As such..." And Matt sighed. "As such, I believe we should ensure the protection of their interests, as well as the crew. I believe we should support the clone on life support until the time comes that it passes from the state it is in, but look into creating an artificial form for the Yeerks to inhabit, thus, using the clone for study in a model that could benefit both host and Yeerk and the interests of those involved."

Elfangor had listened quietly, having only returned very shortly before the meeting. Really, he was coming in mostly blind. He knew of one of the issues to be addressed, but that was later.

And listening now...

< There are races in the universe that depend upon clones for their own survival, to continue their race. I would never condone the life of one who is sentient being destroyed, but when there is no sentience, that is a different matter. >

He paused. It was true. For the moment, they have not come across the issue, but the Pod Caverns and the Universe were quite vast. At some point, there may very well be a time that a person would come from a species where clones weren't a convenience, but a necessity.

< I have faith in the crew to be able to tell the difference and being able to defend their crew mates should someone not be able to. Even for the emotional side, the plan suggested for the Yeerks came from one of the younger crew members who, herself, is a clone. >

< I would not condone this to be a common practice. However, for the rare occasions it is an issue, it should be a viable option given that it's monitored heavily to be sure there is no harm to what could be a sentient creature. But in this instance, should Mei Xing be able to gain from Stacy as she can from the clone, then it should either be given a 'merciful' death or kept on life support. If she can't and it's the only truly effective way to protect her sentient life, then it should be used for it's intended purposes. >

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Re: Mei-Xing's Clone

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