THE PRIVATE AND CONFIDENTIAL JOURNAL OF DR AYOTOLA OBANYE
5th July
I am writing this journal because something deep inside me needs to make confession. I do not believe what I am doing is wrong, but it is illegal. The problem is, we were so close to a breakthrough before the courts stopped us. The authorities came to shut the lab down, but I managed to smuggle out some of the experiments. Cloning could help to solve so many problems we have in the world right now. This work must continue.
I’ve always had a lab in my basement. It’s not fully equipped, but it’s enough. The experiment is continuing which is all that matters. I had to use my own DNA in the test batches. There are currently several embryonic mini-mes in the lab! I’m on the verge of a breakthrough. It’s too bad I have to keep it a secret.
17th August
I didn’t think I would get so emotional, but I guess it’s effectively a birth. When I drained the vat, she actually cried! Obviously, I can’t tell if she sounds like I did when I was born, but she looks just like my baby pictures. It’s bizarre, exhilarating, and slightly unnerving. The accelerated growth is the most shocking part of it all. Although she was just born this morning, she is already the size of a one-year-old, and she’s verbalising. I think I just heard her say ‘Mama’.
18th September
It’s been a month now and my findings are absolutely incredible. As she ages biologically, she appears to acquire the memories I had at the relevant age. She remembers the bike I got for my thirteenth birthday, that time I got so bored revising for my final exams, left the university campus and spent the day at the beach. In terms of her maturation, she is currently about a year off my age. The rate of maturation has slowed, so she should reach me in the next couple of weeks. Once she reaches that baseline, my prediction is that she will begin to age at the normal rate. I had always hypothesised this, but seeing it happen before my eyes is incredible.
26th October
I’m starting to think I didn’t think this through. She keeps asking to leave the lab but there’s no way I can do that. I would be arrested, and God only knows what they would do to her out there. She says that I should never have created her, that I have done something terrible. When I ask her to explain, she says that I wouldn’t understand. She’s begging me to destroy all of the research and shut the lab down. I’m trying to assure her that I’ll figure out a way that she can experience the world. But the work must continue. It’s too important.
7th November
She wouldn’t listen. She just wouldn’t listen. I had no choice. There are things beyond science. Things in the soul of a person that cannot be replicated, not without damaging the very nature of life itself. She doesn’t understand. She can’t understand. I will have to shut down this research project. I’ll figure out what to do with the other Dr Obanye. This will be my last journal entry. I guess, in a sense, it’s also my first.
