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ficbot · 02-24-2010, 08:25 PM

This is from my latest work-in-progress, and the one I hope will be my first big 'release' on Smashwords or wherever when I get myself organized to do this properly

All you need to know about this story so far is that the little girl, Cassandra, is a clone. The POV character is this section is her adoptive father, who is raising her as part of a nature/nurture experiment to see if some problems the original girl had can be prevented given their foreknowledge...

--

So, to his surprise, he had come to grow excited about his brother-in-law's imminent arrival. If he was being honest with himself, he had to admit that Martha was a little bit right. Perhaps he had been a little too clinical about this whole thing, going through the motions of applying various sets of stimuli to the child and comparing the results with the data they had on how it had happened last time. And of course, they actually had found some differences, which was as baffling as it was encouraging. What was it, specifically, about Mark One's childhood environment that had caused the dislike of watermelon, for example? What had they unwittingly done differently this time to produce the opposite result? If they could unravel the precise change that had produced this small dissimilarity, perhaps it might open the door to solving other, more troublesome inclinations in Cassandra.

He had spent days pondering the watermelon problem. Obviously, something had happened this time around to make the girl more comfortable, to create a different set of associations around this particular experience. Had the house been a critical few degrees warmer, or colder, on the day Martha had first presented the food to the child? Had there been music, or television? The presence of a favourite toy? Had the watermelon been sliced into more manageable pieces, or alternatively, left in bigger chunks which produced a pleasing tactile sensation? They would probably never know. But he realized that he had been viewing Cassandra's life as a series of checklists. Watermelon, done. Response same, or response different? Response different. Tick it off, then move onto the next food, or toy, or novel, or rock band, or college, all the way through to the end and see what's different. Martha was right, that was not a life, it was an experiment. Adding a little of the chaos theory, as she called it, ought to spice things up. It would just be his job to make sure they were not so spiced up as to compromise the integrity of the project.

02-24-2010, 08:25 PM	#4
ficbot Wizard Posts: 2,409 Karma: 4132096 Join Date: Sep 2008 Device: Kindle Paperwhite/iOS Kindle App	This is from my latest work-in-progress, and the one I hope will be my first big 'release' on Smashwords or wherever when I get myself organized to do this properly All you need to know about this story so far is that the little girl, Cassandra, is a clone. The POV character is this section is her adoptive father, who is raising her as part of a nature/nurture experiment to see if some problems the original girl had can be prevented given their foreknowledge... -- So, to his surprise, he had come to grow excited about his brother-in-law's imminent arrival. If he was being honest with himself, he had to admit that Martha was a little bit right. Perhaps he had been a little too clinical about this whole thing, going through the motions of applying various sets of stimuli to the child and comparing the results with the data they had on how it had happened last time. And of course, they actually had found some differences, which was as baffling as it was encouraging. What was it, specifically, about Mark One's childhood environment that had caused the dislike of watermelon, for example? What had they unwittingly done differently this time to produce the opposite result? If they could unravel the precise change that had produced this small dissimilarity, perhaps it might open the door to solving other, more troublesome inclinations in Cassandra. He had spent days pondering the watermelon problem. Obviously, something had happened this time around to make the girl more comfortable, to create a different set of associations around this particular experience. Had the house been a critical few degrees warmer, or colder, on the day Martha had first presented the food to the child? Had there been music, or television? The presence of a favourite toy? Had the watermelon been sliced into more manageable pieces, or alternatively, left in bigger chunks which produced a pleasing tactile sensation? They would probably never know. But he realized that he had been viewing Cassandra's life as a series of checklists. Watermelon, done. Response same, or response different? Response different. Tick it off, then move onto the next food, or toy, or novel, or rock band, or college, all the way through to the end and see what's different. Martha was right, that was not a life, it was an experiment. Adding a little of the chaos theory, as she called it, ought to spice things up. It would just be his job to make sure they were not so spiced up as to compromise the integrity of the project.