Karma’s Kopies

Chapter 1

Karma pulled up outside the small shop and parked her car. She looked down at the newspaper beside her with its advertisement circled in red:

Grand Opening!
We make clones for any use!
Bring a picture and DNA sample of anyone
and we provide you with a Clone of Your Own!

Come to Clone of Your Own! this Friday for our
special Grand Opening! Your first clone is free!

In fine print beneath a cute cartoon of a little girl hugging a one-foot tall man was:

Clone of Your Own! meets with regulations as put forth by the Cloning Act of 2004. All clones are a fraction of normal size with limited lifespan. Void where prohibited. Not valid in Utah.

Karma climbed out of her car, brushing loose strands of black hair from her pale-green eyes. Her breath was a little short. She was excited. This was the first shop of its kind in her area since the Act came into being three months before. She’d read about them and couldn’t wait for one to come to her town.

She had to step aside in the doorway to allow a young blond woman room to pass. She was carrying a cardboard box with “Clone of Your Own!” stenciled on the sides along with the cartoon girl and her “dolly”. The blond had a huge grin on her face, and Karm heard a faint rustle and tiny, piping voices coming from inside the box. Her stomach fluttered.

The inside of the store looked much like the inside of a Kinko’s, or any other copy shop. There were banks of what looked like large copy machines, a counter with attendees standing behind it, and advertisements of services on the walls.

Most of the machines had one or two customers at them, and they emitted a pleasant hum. Karm watched as a brunette in her thirties wearing a smart business suit placed a small picture on a glass tray on top of the machine, something else Karm couldn’t quite see in a smaller tray on the machine’s front labled “DNA SAMPLE”, closed a lid over the glass tray, and pressed a few buttons on the machine’s console.

Just like a copy machine, bright light ran along the edge of the glass tray. The smaller tray, however, closed with a slight click followed by a soft buzz. A red light above the small tray came on. The hum coming from the machine grew louder, and another light appeared on the side of the machine. This one was inside a small chute about a foot wide and six inches long that fell into a large plastic bin. The bin was two-foot square and had six inch sides all around to hold whatever would come down the chute.

With a start of surprise, Karma saw tiny figures begin to slide down the chute into the bin. Unconsciously, she stepped forward for a closer look and saw they were all men, about three inches tall and identical to one another.

The brunette began to giggle girlishly and actually hopped in excitement. Soon the bottom of the bin was filled with the tiny men, and the machine hummed to a stop. The brunette, shaking in anticipation, lifted the bin and set it on the floor beside the machine. She stood up and, without hesitation, stepped into the bin.

Karma’s stomach did a back-flip as she watched the woman’s black high heel casually crush its way into the midst of the tiny men. Small screams rose to her ears, and the little beings scattered to the sides of the bin in terror. There was a series of pops and crunches as the woman’s foot settled fully to the bottom of the bin. The woman shivered and giggled again as she placed the second foot to the side and a little ahead of the first to catch some of the running men beneath it with more cracks and squelches.

“Whoever she cloned,” Karm thought, “he must have really pissed her off.”

“Revenge or leisure?”

Karma jumped at the voice and turned to see a young woman wearing a “Clone of Your Own!” green polo-shirt. She was short, around five feet tall, with a cute, round face and honey colored hair pulled back into a pony-tail. Karm was disarmed by the woman’s eyes. They were very large, giving her an inoccent look, and cobalt blue.

“Excuse me?” asked Karma, startled into confusion.

The woman smiled. “Will you be needing clones made for revenge or leisure?”

“Oh,” Karm said, and glanced back at the business woman, who was marching in place, mushing her tiny men into red soup. “What’s the difference?”

“Well,” said the woman, “lifespan, mainly. If you are cloning someone for revenge, we give the clones a shorter lifespan than, say, if you’re wanting clones as temporary playmates for your children, or. . .” she smiled coyly and winked at Karma, “. . . whatever.”

“Oh,” Karm said again. “A little of both, actually.” She tittered nervously.

The attendee, who Karm saw by her name tag was Kim, grinned. “I see. Well, let’s look at your choices and see what you’d like.”

She led Karma over to the counter where a large book lay beside a computer. Kim opened the book, smiled at Karma, and said, “Why don’t I let you look through this and decide what you want, and I’ll check back with you in a few minutes, okay?”

Karma nodded, “Thank you.”

Kim walked away, and Karm heard her say, “Mrs. Franklin, please wait until we have some plastic laid down for you before stepping out of the bin. At least take your shoes off.”

The rest of what was said faded to nothing as Karma found herself drawn into the book.

It was filled with descriptions and picture references to every service that was offered. There were diagrams of the different sizes your clones could be, ranging from one foot tall down to microscopic. You could even choose other statistics: speech capabilities (whether or not they could speak), languages spoken, intelligence level, pain threshold. You could choose whether or not they had a personality, and whether it was the same as someone you knew. You could even choose their resistance: if you wanted, they could be virtually indestructable, or they could break at the slightest touch.

Karm saw that you could even choose to have blanks made. Blanks were basically just copies that had no resemblance to anyone in particular and did not require a DNA sample.

Every single possible variation of a person was possible, and carried different price levels.

There were also packages to be had, and Karm noted that buying in bulk was cheaper in the long run.

“Ready?” piped Kim, who had come back from helping brunette in the business suit.

“I think so,” replied Karma. “Um, what’s the picture for if you have a DNA sample of the person?”

“Oh, well, the picture is only really used for a certain look you want,” Kim said. “You know, for people who want the clone to look like someone at a certain point in their life.”

Karm shook her head, not quite understanding. Kim tried to explain.

“Let’s say you have a particular memory of the person you want to clone that either you really like, or really hate, and you have a picture taken of them during that time,” she said.

“Oh,” Karma said, still not really getting the “why” of it.

Kim picked up on that. “Mainly it’s for exact reference of that time: the clothes they wore, etcetera. Also it helps us if the person you’re cloning has any visible scars that you want the clone to have. Or,” Kim said with a crooked smile, “if you want to duplicate a certain scenario.”

“Hmm,” Karm said, and nodded, still unsure.

Kim leaned in conspiratorially. “One lady earlier brought in a picture of her husband that was taken by a private investigator. He was having an affair. The picture was of the husband in bed with the other woman.” Kim grinned devilishly. “She’d managed to get a dna sample of both. She had us clone them and replicate the scene. Even had us fabricate the bed and place them in the same scenario so the clones thought they were in a hotel having sex. She wanted to set them up in a doll house at home and ‘discover’ them having the affair.” She giggled. “Talk about a cold shower. That little guy must have looked over and seen his wife outside the window as a giantess and wet the bed!”

“Oh,” Karm said, finally understanding. Then something Kim had said dawned on her. “So, the clones can be made to think they are the actual person?”

“Oh yeah,” Kim said. “We do it all, here.”

“They have memories?”

“If you want. It’s all in the book.”

Karma shook her head. “How? I didn’t know you could clone memories.”

Kim shrugged. “Sorry. I really don’t know. They don’t really train us in that stuff.” She smiled brightly. “So, what would you like?”

Karm reached into her jacket pocket and brought out a picture along with a plastic bag. Inside the bag was a cigarette butt.

“This is my boyfriend, Jamie,” she said, handing the picture to Kim.

Kim looked at it, seeing a twenty-something dark-haired man leaning on a sports car. “Cute,” she said, and whispered, “Is he cheating on you?”

“Huh,” Karm asked. “No. He’s a good guy.”

Kim had what appeared to be a disappointed look on her face.

“He just,” Karma sighed, “annoys me sometimes. A lot.”

Kim perked up a bit. “So, you want little replicas of him to take out your frustration on?”

Karm nodded, a little embarrassed.

Kim reached into the back pocket of her tight khakis and brought out a tiny clone that squirmed in her fist. “This is my boyfriend, Thom.”

Karm was startled when the little Thom began to plead with her.

“Please!” he said in a cartoon character voice. “You have to help me! She’s crazy!”

“Thom annoys me a lot, too,” Kim said, watching Thom struggle against her clenched fingers. “So I thought I’d clone a little play thing.”

“Help me, for God’s sake!” Thom cried. “I’m not a clone! I’m me!”

“Shut up,” Kim said to him, and squeezed her fist hard.

Thom’s cries ended in a high squeek, and his face turned first red, then purple. Kim’s knuckles whitened, and her fist began to shake with the effort of squeezing him.

Karma waited breathlessly for Thom’s head to explode and for his body to mush under the intense pressure, but neither happened.

“I set his resistance level pretty high,” Kim said, still squeezing. With a sigh, she released the pressure and stuffed him back into her back pocket. “And as you can see, I gave him Thom’s memories and stuff. He thinks he is Thom.” She smiled wickedly. “I love that. The real Thom is a sweety, though. He can just get on my last nerve.” She added that last with a look of anger, and slapped her bulging and wriggling back pocket with a loud smack.

Karma smiled at her. “I want that, too,” she said. “Well, that, and a few other things.”

“Okay,” Kim said, instantly becoming business-like again. She circled to the other side of the counter and positioned herself at the computer’s keyboard. “Just tell me what you want, and I’ll enter it into the computer.”

“First,” Karma began, “I want a pretty large batch. Three dozen to start out with.”

Kim began typing away on the keyboard. "Size?" she asked.

"Um," Karma thought about the business woman, Mrs. Franklin. "Three inches," she answered.

"Okay," more typing. "Resistance level?"

“The first twelve,” Karm went on, “I want to be pretty resistant.”

“What level?” Kim asked, looking at the monitor. “We have five. With level one, you get virtually no resistance. The little guys bruise at the slightest touch, and they crush with very little pressure. At level two, they can withstand, roughly, twenty-five percent more pressure. There’s some resistance to squeezing or crushing, but not a lot. About like an egg. And it increases from there up to level four and five. At level four, the clones have the same resistance as a full-sized human. That’s what my Thom is set at. You can squeeze them really hard, like I did. If you stomp on them, it is like stomping on a full-grown person. It hurts them and bruises them, but they can take it. You might break a nose or the odd bone here and there, but it takes a lot to kill them. Level five is indestructible. You can’t do anything to hurt them at all. Those are just the set levels. We can customize their resistance to any degree between each level.”

Karma thought for a moment. “Level four, I guess.”

“Intelligence level?” Kim asked, not looking up from the monitor.

“I want all of the clones to be just as intelligent as Jamie is. And I want them all to have the same personality as him. And,” Karm said quickly, getting more excited, “I want them to have his memories and everything.”

“Ookay,” Kim said as she typed. “Do you know his IQ?”

Karm thought for a moment. “I don’t really know.”

“No problem,” Kim said. “We’ll just make it average. What else?”

“The rest of them,” Karma said, “I want to be about as resistant as bugs.”

“Alright, that puts them somewhere between levels one and two,” Kim said. “Let’s say halfway between.” She typed some more, then said, “Lifespan?”

“Huh? Oh,” Karma said. “What are my choices?”

“Well,” answered Kim, “for revenge, we usually give them a pretty short lifespan, because they won’t live long, anyway. Of course, sometimes people want the revenge to go on a while. You can choose anything from a few hours to a few months. Legally, clones are only allowed to live for up to eight months.” She paused in her typing and looked up, waiting for an answer. When she saw that Karma was unsure, she said, “If it helps: the longer the lifespan, the higher the cost.”

Karma waved her hand. “That’s not a problem.” She thought for a bit more, then said, “Since this is my first batch, let’s just give them a lifespan of a week.” She smiled. “I can always come back for more.”

“That you can,” Kim said, returning the smile, and typed in the entry. “Do you want them to be clothed?”

“Mmm,” Karma said, thoughtfully, “how about two dozen clothed, and the highly resistant ones not?” There was a method to her madness, but she didn’t feel comfortable sharing it with Kim.

Kim nodded, typing. “Any particular clothing? You can use the picture you have. The machine will scan it and fabricate the clothes from it.”

“That’s fine.”

It went on like that for several minutes. Karm was surprised at all the details she could request the clones to have. At last, with a wink and a final, theatrical motion, Kim pressed the return key on her keyboard, and a small slip of paper printed out of the receipt printer. Kim tore it off and handed it to Karm.

“Here,” she said, “I’ll get you setup with one of the machines. That,” she pointed at the slip of paper, “is the code you’ll enter that tells the cloner-copier the specifications we just typed in.” She led Karm over to an empty machine and briefly explained how to use it, then left her to it.

Karm placed the picture on the glass tray and the cigarette butt - from a smoke Jamie had that morning and therfore coated with some of his saliva - into the DNA SAMPLE tray.

When the first clone of Jamie, one of the nakid ones, slid down the chute with a bewildered look on his face, Karm smiled broadly and eagerly snatched him up.

“Look at you, little man,” she said in a whisper. The tiny Jamie clone looked up at her in terror, his miniscule head barely peeking up above her clinched fist.

“K-Karma?” he said in a tiny, fearful voice.

A thrill of excitement coursed through Karm’s body. “Oh what fun we’re going to have,” she said.

She giggled, and squeezed him tightly as more and more miniature clones slid out of the machine.