MINDLYFT (COMPLETE)

CHAPTER 1

"My name is Jennaberry June," said the young woman, looking mid-twenties with red hair and green eyes. Her dimples were deeper than mine for some reason and her hair color had a reddish glow that I'd been trying for weeks, but I couldn't get the GeneSplicer to nab the right shade. She was tall and lanky with a neck like a giraffe. Her skin had a pinkish glow that might have been mine if not for years of sun exposure.

I looked back at her and nodded my head with an encouraging smile. She returned the smile, which I thought a bit irritating, but her glistening white teeth were a mirror of my own and I always loved my teeth. I turned to the woman seated next to her and nodded my head.

"My name is Jennaberry June," said the next one. Her hair was purple but the same bright green cat eyes. This one's dimples were barely noticeable and there was nothing else that outshined me. I felt like I'd get along with her the best. Her smile was more subtle, in need of reassurance, but friendly enough. I nodded to the third woman seated on the sofa and glanced to the flurry of traffic flying off in the distance through the bay window of my centennial-story flat. The sky was clear today but the cloud of cars passing made it dark.

"My name is Jennaberry June," said the third and final CarboCopy.

"It'd be a little unnerving if it wasn't," I said, laughing at my own joke. Only Deep-Dimples seemed to get it. Maybe she would be my favorite. I'd given the third one a bleach-blond hair gene, which I was now regretting. I could tell she was uncomfortable with it too. She kept checking herself in the mirror behind me. "What was she thinking?" was probably going through her mind. I couldn't disagree.

"Well, the moment we've all been waiting for," I said, raising my voice a pitch, kind of excited. A weird excited actually. I was a mother but not really. I hadn't carried any of them in my womb, but I had waited for the jiggers to grow in the bathtub for three months. I'd changed their feeding tubes and the other ends too. Almost daily. Really disgusting. And I only had two portable tubs so the third one went into the sonic shower. I bathed at the office gym this whole time. The whole ordeal felt like a real pregnancy in terms of inconvenience and there were three of them. Triplets. I even monitored and occasionally fiddled with the gene-editing software throughout the process. Thus the hair color selections and a few others like attitude, narcissistic tendencies and intelligence. I didn't want any of them to be smarter than me. Harder to control that way. I needed them just smart enough to do the job.

Unfortunately the gene editing doesn't work that way. It's not precise. With hair color it works for the most part, but complex behavioral elements and intelligence are made up of multiple combinations. Altering one configuration can have unexpected outcomes on other elements of personality or psychological makeup. That's why I could only make small tweaks.

There'd been a long pause. They were all looking at me expectantly. Like they didn't know who I was or why they were there, which of course, was the case because they'd only been conscious for about ten minutes, and only alive for three months and yet they were genetically twenty-five years old, and aging rapidly. Their lifespan was approximately ten years according to GenieCarbons Corp, the company that made them. They wouldn't start looking aged until the last year so they'd be useful to me for quite awhile. At least long enough so it wouldn't matter.

"I want you all to know that you are welcome in my home, that we are all sisters here together, and that you are loved." Those were the activation instructions given to me by Genie Corp. "You are my Genies and I now initiate memory sequence." The final instructions which would trigger a download of all necessary memories. I'm a bit of a techno geek so I actually read most of the instruction manuals and interfaced all the MindInstruct related to self-cloning. In short, the memories downloaded to them establish myself as their "Mother" and our long history together. I'm the cornerstone of their emotional support and we love one another deeply. It has been this way for years as far as they're concerned.