Chapter 2: What Nancy Said
"We ought not to be talking," Dr. Nancy Melitta whispered over a cup of café latte. "You are the subject of an experiment I'd rather forget my participation in."
"There are things I need to know about me, Nancy, and you're the only one who can help me." Octavia paused over her mocha. "Two years ago, when I was in the hospital, you said you wanted to help me. Do you still?"
"You want to know why you were created? You know the psychology experiment was just a front."
Octavia knew that, but she didn't tell that to Nancy. "If that's where you want to begin."
"The more right-wing elements in politics have long been seeking to institute a Pax Americana—a worldwide empire controlled by corporate conglomerates. There are also certain elements that control world affairs behind the scenes. All politicians in Washington, whether President or Congressman, Democrat or Republican, defer to them more or less, and the media look the other way. Any halfwit can tell you there hadn't been nukes in Iraq for a long time. They just wanted to control the oil."
"Those certain elements—are they the Illuminati?"
"You've been listening to that conspiracy nut Nicholas too much. Don't worry how they know about him."
"Does he really have a tracking chip in his ass?"
"Maybe, but that's not how we know. He has his own blog website, don't you know? He calls it 'The Conspiracy Watchdog'. You ought to see it sometime. He mentions you on there, but not by name, of course. There was a group called the Illuminati in Europe, but it died out in the 1890's. It only exists in certain Dan Brown novels. But next time you see Mr. Nicholas, ask him about Bilderberg, Trilateral, and the Council on Foreign Relations."
"Back to the experiment," Octavia prodded.
"Yes, back to the experiment. Certain people behind the scenes—doesn't matter at this point what you call them—realized the American people would no longer tolerate preemptive wars based on flimsy evidence, like Gulf War II. They knew they needed better equipment or better soldiers—or both.
"The CIA outfits in New York City began studying the work of the British scientists who created the sheep Dolly. They also started observing mutants and other superhumans—and New York certainly had a lot of those. One in particular intrigued them the most. He had extraordinary intelligence—he had previously worked as a nuclear physicist—but no genetically based powers. The agents couldn't predict the effect of mutancy on a clone. But he amply made up for what he lacked with technology—specifically four artificially intelligent mechanical arms."
"Doctor Octopus." For the first time, Octavia could speak the name of her father.
"Yes, him. They thought he and his equipment could be highly useful for the so-called war on terror. They also realized that to—fill out—the ranks of the volunteer army, they could use cloning and genetic engineering technology to create powerful super soldiers that could easily be replaced as they were killed.
"We had the NYPD bring him in and collect a blood sample. We followed the Dolly procedure to create an embryo—a much younger twin of Octavius. A clone. A replica."
"Me," Octavia finished. Nancy seemed very calm for someone who had participated in such a travesty. She was a Victor Frankenstein in a skirt.
"Yes. We followed the techniques of ectogenesis to plant the embryo in a carefully developed artificial womb. However, the embryo was, upon further testing, discovered to be flawed from the start. Let me digress to explain.
"You see, the Y sex chromosome is the weakest chromosome in the human body. It has less than half the genetic material of the X chromosome. Genetically speaking, the men are the weaker sex. Males are so much more vulnerable to heritable diseases—hemophilia being the most well-known example."
"Hemophilia is carried on the X chromosome. A female receives two of those, so one of those will most likely be normal if the other's not, so she'll be a carrier but healthy. A male gets only one X chromosome, so if it's flawed, he'll be a bleeder."
"That's right, Octavia. The Y chromosome is the weak link on the DNA chain, consisting of little more than the blueprints for the male sex organs, the secondary sex characteristics—broader shoulders, stronger muscles and bones, narrower hips—and hormones. When we tested the embryo's genetic material, the SRY part of the chromosome was flawed. We were afraid the embryo would die, but it developed as an otherwise perfectly healthy female. It had female primary characteristics, but I could predict it might develop some male secondary characteristics later on. We all let out a sigh of relief.
"Another SDSI outfit began working on those famous arms, leafing through the accounts in the comic books. Building the tentacles was easy for scientists who had reversed-engineered extraterrestrial vehicles to create stealth bombers. Mechanically, it was only a question of how big, fast, and strong they would be. I warned them that the human body isn't even wired for extra limbs. How would the clone control them? There had to be computer scientists writing artificial intelligence programs to assist the signals from its brain and manufacturing molecular-sized computer chips to serve as artificial nerve synapses. I had the biology department creating neural stem cells. The chemical signals that nerves use to communicate with each other had to be emulated. When that was finally done, we grafted the embryo's spinal cord onto a computer interface capable of providing sensory feedback to the developing nerve cells.
"When the fetus was nine months of age—full term for a normal baby, we knew that we would still have to complete the experiment when it first reached puberty. Some of the scientists wanted to raise and train it in the lab from early childhood. Drs. Grace Morrison and Edward Bowman, the psychologists, disagreed. They argued that they could use the famous "nature versus nurture" question to justify the experiment to a heavily Religious Right Congress and President. After consulting FBI profilers, we found out that the template had had a less than ideal childhood. Both of his parents were most likely first- or second- generation immigrants. His father was a manual laborer who would have preferred a more 'macho' son. His mother was most likely from a culture with strong matriarchal roles, most likely Greek or Jewish, and coddled and overprotected her son to a fault. With her endless praise, he grew up believing he was 'special' and developed an arrogance that quickly turned away his peers. We then decided to give the fetus up for adoption to a stable, all-American-looking, white bread, middle-class family. The nature element, of course, was the same as the template. The nurture element would be as different from the template's as day from night."
"Did my 'parents' know what kind of situation they were getting into?"
"Hell, Octavia," Nancy spat. "They specifically asked for someone like you! They specifically wanted a science genius for a kid! They got what they wanted, and then some! They got the clone of the most brilliant nuclear physicist to walk—or tentacle-crawl—the earth! Of course they knew!" Nancy then continued with her narrative.
"We then decided that we needed to mark the fetus so we could later retrieve it from its family at puberty. Dr. Morrison decided a small tattoo on the shoulder blade would be perfect—not so unusual to be noticeable, easily covered under clothes, but just different enough to clearly know our own work when we ran into it. Of course, she thought it supremely appropriate to make the identifying mark the template's namesake. We found a married couple—a lawyer and a homemaker—to adopt you. After warning them to keep the kid away from Marvel comic books, the first part of the experiment was completed. All that remained was to retrieve the clone at puberty and put the tentacles on."
Octavia looked at the scientist with growing horror. "You created me—as part of a master race!"
"I didn't know this all in the beginning. You mustn't blame me! I only had part of the picture!"
Octavia realized something else. "And another thing—you were always talking about a clone, a replica, a fetus, an embryo. You never referred to a person, a baby."
"You aren't a person, technically speaking. A person comes from the sexual reproduction of two people."
"You played God. You created me out of one guy's blood cells. You doomed me from the start. You're right. I'm not a person. People have families. Who is Octavius, anyway? My father? My much older identical twin? A female version of himself? Do I even have a soul?"
"You are an anomaly, Octavia," Nancy sighed. "Christian doctrine states that since God created man in His image, all people have sentient souls. If you're a good person, your soul goes to Heaven when you die. If you're bad, your soul goes to Hell."
"But since I'm the creation of Man, I don't have a soul, do I?"
"I'm a scientist, not a priest. I can't answer that."
Octavia ignored that. "And if I don't have a soul after all, when I die, I won't even go to Hell. I'll just cease to exist, like an animal."
Nancy chuckled. "You are an animal, Octavia. Do I seriously need to remind you how you murdered two scientists at that scientific convention last year? Or how you murdered a security guard at Oscorp Industries shortly afterward? Or how when you first got your arms, you murdered a cabbie by flinging his taxi through a wall? Or how you attacked a superhero and nearly killed him—twice? Look, I don't even know why I met with you. I was grateful to see how my great experiment turned out, but I am not in the habit of engaging in extended conversations with lab rats."
A tentacle shot out and grabbed her by the throat. "Can a lab rat do this?"
Nancy choked out her next words. "All that stuff I said about you being an animal? You're proving me right."
Octavia's voice was shaking. "Next question. Are there any more clones?"
"There have been rumors—"
"Yes or no!" The tentacle threatened to wrap tighter.
"I'm not entirely sure. I was only working on Project Octopus—each scientist knows precious little about what the others are doing. What I told you was the whole jigsaw puzzle. At the time, I only got a few pieces. The engineers working on the tentacles got a few more. Morrison and Bowman got a few more. Only the Director has the whole picture—"
"I said I wanted a yes or no answer!"
"Yes. Now put me down so I can explain."
Nancy was set down with a hard thump. She started to rub her throat. "I have talked with one of my colleagues. Henry Griffin—another genetic engineer, like myself—mentioned working on something called Project Scorpion. Actually, we were at dinner together and he said, "Too bad they don't have you working on something exciting, like cloning supervillains."
"Project Scorpion was another supervillain cloning experiment? Does the name Macendale Jackson mean anything to you?"
Nancy sighed. "I'll give you the address of Dr. Griffin. He was my counterpart on Project Scorpion while I was working on Project Octopus. Just—leave me alone and don't talk to me again."
Octavia chugged down the rest of her grande mocha and rose to get up.
"Oh, Octavia?"
"Yes?" Her teeth were gritted.
"Carlyle's dead."
"What?"
"He was remorseful about what he did for Project Octopus. He alone contacted Norman Osborn. He alone had you injected with the Oz formula. It was he alone who saved your life."
"How did he die—?"
"It wasn't an accident, and it certainly wasn't natural causes. Goodbye, Octavia, and thank you."