Jelly Donut (J. Dont)

A man walks out. His skin is red, with some little specs of black.

Man : I'm here to convince you to stop reproductive cloning. All four of you, well.. maybe more, but I know only four of you are listening. Stem cell research can leading to cloning, which is bad. I know this, because I am a clone. Or. A copy of my father. Not my mother, because then, at the time I was created, I would have been a girl. Believe it or not, whether you thought it was possible or impossible, cloning is happening, right now. Not in public, but in the private rooms of black market scientists. They're standing their with their test tubes and amber medicine jars with droppers with rubber ends filled with the DNA of someone who have enough money but the inability or lack of desire to procreate. I should say, now, they can determine the gender. Then they couldn't. I was probably the third done. Dad died. While I wasn't there for it officially, I heard it was a horrible experience. I assume so. I say officially because if I am a clone of my father, then I am my father, therefore I must have been there. I could've been a vein in his eye, or a piece of hair before it turned grey. When they clone you, they don't implant the memories of the host, at least not yet. He, the man who would have been my father, though I call him Dad anyway, died in some kind of crash. A plane crash, a boat crash, a car crash, a train crash, it doesn't really matter. It was violent, horrible. Mom always said that he was the love of her life. She reminded me everyday that I came from someone very very special. Someone that could never be replaced. The irony of cloning him has not been lost on me. At the funeral, so I'm told, a rogue scientist approached my mother. They do this. They go to funerals and talk to the dead loved ones. First they started outside vets and waited for people who looked sad. It's a dirty business, taking advantage of people who are at their weakest, after having just lost a loved one or a dog. She used the money from his life insurance to fund the "procedure." They say procedure, I say experiment, because, well, look at me. I'm red. They started quickly after Dad was buried, they dug him up and took his DNA. I would think that they could find all of his information from a hair follicle, but then again, I don't know much about cloning.

He pauses.

Man : Do you know anything more than what a sperm reaches the egg and poof, a baby? Do you know how everything matches up? The thousands of miniscule sperm and the single one that makes it? Do you know how a computer works? Do you know how your body works? How about your brain? What I do know about cloning, is that this picture can help explain it.

The following picture is displayed on a screen in the back.

(http://www.ornl.gov/sci/techresources/Human_Genome/publicat/primer/fig11.html)

Man : If you can make sense of it, great. If not, then just hum whatevertelevision show theme song comes to mind for the next minute. Everything you ever wanted to know about cloning. Go.

The man stands and looks at the screen for about a minute. The picture disappears.

Man : When I was created. Cloning was still shunned by mainstream society. Laboratories still wouldn't allow anyone to do it. This kind of science had to be done in kitchens turned into labs, or spaces that started as something and were then turned into a makeshift something else. Like trailers being turned into classrooms. Dr. Weinraub, the scientist who conducted the procedure, performed it in an abandoned shoe repair store. "Hal's Sole Repair." Hal hadn't been there for years. The way this works is that Weinraub would move for every new client he received. Any time someone new came along, he would find a new place to set up shop. This was to protect himself from being caught, arrested, thrown in jail. One of the benefits of the abandon shoe store, aside from it's left over footwear, was that it was directly next to a pastry shop. Every morning, Dr. Weinraub would stop to get coffee and three donuts, and then begin the day with a full belly and a kean mind to conduct his experiments. On one of the more tense days of work, the moment I became less of an idea and more of a reality, he decided to spread out the eating of his donuts. He ate his first, a chocolate, with the first sip of coffee. The second, a powdered, just moments before putting on his gloves to work. At three-forty five, I existed. At three-fortynine, Weinraub ate his final donut for the day, a strawberry jelly donut.

He pauses.

Man : Funny, how a little DNA can change dramatically when a single jelly covered sead enters the picture. I mean, I guess, I could have not existed at all. Rather than being the same color as the inside of that donut, I mean.

The picture returns, but where the human chromosome picture is, a drawing of a jelly donut squirting it's juices is next to it.

Man : I've tried to wash it off. I've tried scrubbing my skin with pan scouring pads until the red of my skin isn't any longer my skin and just my flesh. I can't really tell when my outsides start and where my insides end. It takes droplets of blood in the sink bowl for me to realize I should stop. Or it took. The first five years I knew how to wash. So now, I return to my original concern. Convincing you to stop reproductive cloning. Stop allowing backroom cloning. Because of it, I'm now here. I'm this color. No other human is this color. I am human after all. I have a mother and a father and they were both human. I'm just not the same color and I didn't come out of the same place as everyone else. So please, stop stem cell research.

He leaves, the picture fades. End of play.