Project Survivor
Project Survivor was the codename for a multinational project to replace human procreation with an alternative method of reproducing males.
Begun just before the Second World War, under the aegis of the Endlösung, one of Project Survivor's three lines of research was an attempt to develop the science of cloning, this line of research finally bearing fruit in the beginning of the second decade of the twenty-first century—during the height of WARCOM's power—leading directly to the ban on procreation in the American Culture Act.
Replicative Mutagenic Cascade Failure
Project Survivor's successful implementation of cloning was qualfied, at best.
The project's scientists had failed to take the Hayes' Limit into account.
Each time a cell divided naturally, its DNA was altered so that the replicated cell had a slightly different DNA pattern.
Forcibly artificially dividing cells to create a human body only exacerbated this process.
The ultimate result was what is referred to by cytologists as replicative mutagenic cascade failure, in which the process of artificial cellular division—induced by nanotechnology—altered the DNA of a given cell sample to the point where it was no longer viable.
While this presented little problem when it came to cloning relatively simple things such as blood, minor internal organs, limbs and appendages, it posed great difficulties in cloning entire bodies...at best, a cell sample could only produce three viable clones, before progressive and cumulative mutations rendered the originial sample and its copies completly useless.
Moreover, each of the viable clones had precisely one-quarter of the lifespan of the copies which came before it, the first copy having 10% of the originial body's lifespan.
For example, the average human male lives 80 years, a lifespan somewhat prolonged with exposure to warpdrive and the use of metastas(which ruins any chance of viable clones; q.v.).
Of the three clones made from that original, the first would live for eight years, the second for less than ten months and the last copy for two and a half months .
This meant that the problem could not be circumvented simply by obtaining a new cell sample from the originial host body, due to the short lifespan of any viable clones created from that sample.
Cybernetics And Metastas
WARCOM's scientists thus attempted to circumvent the clone viability problems using a compound they called a metabolic stasis agent, or, more commonly, metastas, an antiagathic compound based on similar formulae used by practicioners of the vanished religion of voudoun to create “zombies“ and extend their own lifespans.
This extended the lifespan of the first clone by up to twenty years...at the cost of increasing dosage, diminishing effect, and accelerated aging and organ failure, as the doses accumulated in tissue and began to have a reverse effect.
WARCOM's scientists were then left with the use of cybernetic organs to replace failing organic ones, only managing to extend the viability of the initial clones by eighteen months, owing to the implanted cybernetics accelerating the necrotization of the flesh they were attached to.
Failure Of Project Survivor
As WARCOM's scientists struggled with explaining to the Group of Nine that the work of nearly a century was a complete failure, WARCOM itself fell apart in the chaos during and after the Eleven-Day War, the New America which temporarily supplanting this acknowledeging the failure of the project by removing the ban on procreation for American citizens, while continuing to maintain the ban on reproduction between zeds.
Even this was insufficent to stave off the inevitable end of the New America, as every man's hand turned against his brother's, culminating in the Great Civil War of the 2050s, and the consequent rise of the Republican Union of Terranova from its ashes.
The Uses Of Cloning In the Present Day
On a limited scale, cloning is used to replicate blood, limbs, organs, and the like for transplants. As mentioned before, replicative mutagenic cascade failure is not an issue where this is concerned.
Cloning is also used, in conjunction with improved coldwire neural transfer units, to give female impersonators, intelligence operatives and the like the perfect disguise.
This latter use presents a problem in that the lifespan of clones has remarkably decreased in the past six and a half decades, due to the lowering of the Hayes' Limit where genetic samples are concerned.
Only a single clone can be grown from a given sample at any one time, that clone lasting an average of three months. This usually is not a problem unless long-term impersonations are called for.
