The Tragedies of Science and Love
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Mon Dieu.
Merde.
What had she been apart of?
She had known that the clones were not necessarily considered to be "human" in the most traditional use of the term.
But she had not known that it extended this far.
That they did not even consider the clones to be human in a looser sense of the word.
That they did not consider Cosima and her sisters to be human at all.
They were property.
Merde.
She had been apart of that. She had nearly remained apart of that.
She could feel her hand coming up to rest against her mouth as she chocked back the urge to vomit.
She had been apart of that, she had once thought like them. That Cosima and her sisters were only subjects in experiments, that they were meant to be observed and learned from, she had not thought of them as humans, but she had thought of them more as then subjects.
No that was denial. At first she had thought of them only as subjects in a larger experiment.
But then she had meet Cosima, briefly seen her sisters.
She had realized quickly that she was dealing with a human being with hopes tragedies. Each of them had their own stories and their own lives.
And they had been intruding upon them, inserting themselves into lives they had no right to be in.
Merde.
What had she done? What had she become involved in?
She glanced over at Cosima whom was staring at the laptop in front of them, her eyes tracing over and over the message encoded into her very DNA.
The building blocks of her, but not what made her who she was.
She had been apart of that, apart of that thing that had encoded a patent into the DNA of a human! Of her… lover.
Merde. She had really as the Americans would say "fucked this one up."
There were a thousands things that she wanted to say, and a thousand more things she wanted to do.
She wanted to go and confront Aldous Leekie and demand to know if he knew that the scientists who had created Cosima and her sisters had put a patent in their DNA.
The barcode she could understand, a way to tell the subjects apart, although know she also had to shudder at the way they had talked about all of them at DYAD.
Experiments.
Lab Rats.
Never their names.
Always their tag numbers.
Always the tag numbers.
A way to dehumanize the experiment, to allow the scientists the distance themselves for the clones, so that they didn't end up becoming inadvertently attached.
To allow them to think of them more as animals rather then as human.
Could not risk skewing the data.
Cannot start to feel for the subjects.
Do not fall in love.
Like she had.
So much like she had.
She had violated one of the first rules of science, of being an impartial observer, of striving to keep bias out of the data to prevent it from becoming riddled with outliers. It had to be done for fear becoming so high in bias and low in precision that it was unusable.
Like a series of darts scattered all around the dart board with so patter or reason to believe it was accurate.
Never think of the subject as human.
Get close but do not allow yourself to feel.
Allow them to believe that you were their friend, or allow them to believe that you and her were more.
But no matter what remain impartial, do not fall for the subject.
But she had.
She had fallen in love with her subject.
There was no taking it back, no denying her feelings because in the end there was no point.
She had given up everything else in order to come here, in hopes that she could at least be of some use to them, even if they were reluctant to trust her.
She should have known that DYAD might have had ulterior motives when they assigned her to be Cosima's monitor. They knew that Cosima was her favourite clone to work on, the one whose tag number she had memorized.
Despite her best efforts even back then she had not been impartial because she had already started to become biased. She had been imaging what kind of life Cosima must be leading, imaging what she was like, how she looked and acted, what was different from her sisters and what was not.
The seeds of her feelings may have been planted back then.
Not of love, but of admiration, and an intense desire to get to know the woman who had been 324B21 to her until she had learned her name.
Cosima Niehaus.
She had never expected to fall in love with a woman.
But really, it was not so crazy to think that she had an expectation, she knew that sexuality existed on a spectrum, that most people were varying degrees of bisexual.
Still to realize that she was in love with her subject was probably worse then knowing that it was a woman.
Objectivity had never really existed in this scenario had it?
But then again had that ever been the point of this situation?
She was a human observing another human in their "natural environment".
She was not a zoologist studying an animal in the wild; she was spying on another person, invading her life, and giving away very personal details.
Delphine shuddered as realization dawned on her just how much she had been tricked, manipulated by a company she thought she could at least put some faith in.
But no, what they had done went far beyond unethical, far beyond immoral.
It was illegal, although knowing DYAD, then must have found some way around the more pressing legality of it all.
Merde.
She had fallen in love with a human being she had been observing like an animal.
She had fallen in love with her subject.
She had fallen for possibly the worst possible person.
She could still feel dirty at the thought of having done that, or having told Aldous… Leekie about Cosima's sisters
At least she had made the right call, not telling them about Kira.
That was a mystery, one for another time and another place.
Right now she needed to focus, she needed to find something to focus on other then the fact that her lover had a patent inscribed in her DNA, into her cellular building blocks.
Merde.
She didn't even know if it was legal or not.
There was no precedence for this.
No legal precedence for this at all, but she was not a lawyer, she was an immunologist.
They had never actually told her if the clones DNA was human derived, using donated genetic material or if they were an entirely artificial creation.
There was no precedence for any of this.
There was no precedence for anything at all was there?
And she had fallen in love with a clone.
Although by this point that could be considered trivial, clone was simply a label put on Cosima because of the circumstances of her birth, it did not describe her as a person.
She could hear Cosima talking to someone on the phone, but the words weren't registering.
She was still reeling from the discovery, what she had helped to uncode.
It was too much.
It was far too much. If they expected her to ever go back to them… they were wrong.
They were far beyond wrong.
They did not have anything over her, unlike the rumours she had heard about the other monitors.
She had been hired as a scientist to help with the myriad of health issues the clones had.
She was in it for the science.
She had been in it because she thought that in the longer term she would be helping to better humanity.
How wrong she was.
These were people, these were woman who all had lives, different personalities ticks, and should be treated as humans.
Not as test subjects that someone can run labs on, invade their homes, test whenever they want.
No. They had nothing on her.
Her most scandalous actions were having an affair with her boss and a man several decades her senior.
She had heard worse. She had heard far worse then that.
She was not setting foot in a place that dared to think they could own Cosima and her sisters.
If they believed that she would continue to help them, continue to repot to them on Cosima then they were very wrong.
They would have already guessed that she had betrayed them more then likely, she had walked in and stolen as much data as she could from their Minnesota lab.
She had taken her research, the reason she was hired to begin with.
Hopefully it would be useful to Cosima, or the other two if they were ever in need of it.
She was on their side.
There was nothing that the neolutionists could do to change that. Even if Cosima and the others did not believe she could be trusted she would do her best to ensure that they remained healthy and stable.
She was well versed in some of the complications a few of the clones in Cosima's group had suffered from, primarily the immunology related issues, but nonetheless she was aware.
She could feel the couch sink again under Cosima's weight as she sat down. She could hear Cosima repeating the phrase still staring back at them from the computer screen.
After she heard Cosima repeat the phrase aloud a few times she could feel Cosima's eyes turn towards hers, her lip starting to quiver and her eyes starting to water.
Alarmed Delphine sat up, she knew that Cosima was not usually one for tears unless something had happened.
She could see Cosima making a desperate attempt to compose herself for a few moments before she took a breath and began to speak.
"I'm sick Delphine."
She could see Cosima's lower lip begin to tremble in earnest and she reached out to cup her cheeks for a few moments before she leaned in to pull Cosima into a hug.
She accidently bumped her glasses as she leaned over but in that moment she did not care in the least.
All she could hear repeating in her mind was I'm sick.
Non. Non.
Please non. Why of all of them, why of all of her sisters why Cosima?
She knew it was selfish, but she found herself wishing that it were one of the others, one of her sisters who was ill, not this beautiful woman in her arms.
Not this brilliant mind, this crazy, cheeky, adorable, strong woman who was so full of life, and so curious about the world around them, about the life around them and where it had come from.
Of all of them why did it have to be her?
Why did it have to be her chere?
Of all of them why did it have to be the woman that she loved? The woman that she had just fallen for?
Who she had not even told about her feelings yet?
Who was only… she did not even know what to say.
Their relationship that had been built on lies, the one that she so desperately wanted to salvage.
If not as Cosima's girlfriend then at least as her friend. She never wanted this brilliant and vibrant mind out of her life.
So why did it have to be her of all of them?
She could feel helplessness creeping in.
There were no guarantees that she would be able to do anything, that she would magically be able to find the cure.
She was not even sure which of the many illnesses that afflicted the clones that Cosima had.
The cancer?
The inexplicable organ failure?
The respiratory disease that seemingly had no origin?
The myriad of immunodeficianies and cellular degradation issues?
The myriad of other genetic disorders and complications that the clones developed throughout their lives?
She didn't even know where to begin.
She could feel Cosima begin to shake against her as she felt the younger woman bury her head in her shoulder.
Delphine could feel her own eyes watering at the helplessness she was feeling.
It was all so overwhelming for her, she couldn't even begin to imagine what Cosima was going through, and with that she could feel her heart ache for her lover.
She wished that she could promise Cosima that she would search for a cure, that she would work tirelessly to find the cure for whatever she had, or that if it was not her area of expertise then she would be with Cosima every step of the way for treatment.
But she could not.
Because she was starting to wonder if the myriad of complications that the clones suffered from was really caused by them being clones or if it was some kind of programmed self destruct.
She wished she did not have to entertain such thoughts, but the scientists who had created this amazing woman in her arms and her many sisters had inserted a patent into her DNA.
She would not have put it past them to have put a self-destruct in them as well.
She wished that there was some magical cure that she could come up with, but there was not.
For most of the clones' complications gene therapy or highly experimental drugs would be the only answer. Unfortunately DYAD would not risk their precious creations on such experimental procedures.
She slipped her hand under the bottom of Cosima's shirt, massaging the skin she found there in some attempt to offer her what little comfort she could, but if she was honest she wished she could do more.
But right now she did not want to scare Cosima away.
So for now all she could do was hold the woman she loved in her arms as she cried, as they both cried if she were to be completely honest.
She could feel the tears starting to fall down her cheeks as she mourned the dreams in her head that she had hoped would become reality.
She had wanted to do so many things, see so many places with Cosima.
To do so many things with her, both personally and professionally.
But now she had to become used to the idea that she way have to see the vibrant and so full of life Cosima die slowly and painfully from a medical condition that she could possibly but more then likely not cure.
She felt Cosima's grip on her tighten.
And she had to resist the urge to whisper "I love you" in Cosima's ear.