The Next Couple Years…
In 2036, Helix announces functional, rejection-proof organ scaffolding from cloned tissue. Organ donor shortages are now obsolete.
Public opinion around human cloning starts to shift. Social media floods with tweets like:
In 2039, Singapore legalizes full-clone gestation. Helix immediately begins construction on the “Peregrine Development Complex,” a “closed-environment, cradle-to-adult human optimization facility” in western Singapore.
The Announcement…
It’s early 2040. You’re at Panera Bread, and you may have just been slightly rude to the one other guy here who tried to start a conversation with you, so you figure you’ll wait in the bathroom until your food is ready. Public bathrooms all have bidets at this point, so you take your phone out and settle in.
You’re playing iCopter when a notification slides down from the top of your screen.
You tap, and a live feed takes over your phone screen.
Dr. Oren Calyx takes the stage. Tall and thin, late 50s, would for sure be played by John Malkovich. The Helix pin on his coat — a silver X — catches the light. He reaches the podium, and Aspen Hall goes still. He stands there — maybe a beat too long — then speaks:
Dr. Oren Calyx
Good morning.
The mind of Plato tells us:
“What is truly real is never subject to change.”
Nations. Languages. People. These are mutable and subject to decay — but the forms — the ideal essence of the thing — this does not change, does not age, does not come into being, and does not pass away. The form of beauty, the form of strength, like a perfect triangle, exists only in the realm of the truly real.
Over the last eight years, Artificial General Intelligence has proven itself an invaluable weapon in the war on pain.
But unlike you and me, machines are bound by their intended function. They cannot exceed the constraints of their design, and thus, their form is fixed. They refine, but they do not transcend.
Helix was established for a single purpose: to create a blueprint of human transcendence. We believe that the forms of human strength, resilience, coordination, and adaptation are constraints which can now be explored with ethical care and scientific precision.
We believe that we can measure not only talent, but potential. Helix has spent the last several years studying the rarest expressions of human capability ever recorded — across history, across sport — individuals whose bodies represent the outer limits of what the human form can achieve.
[A WHITE SLIDE APPEARS BEHIND HIM — TWO HELIXES FORM A BLACK X]
Today we present: Alpha Sapien.
A coordinated, international research program focused on understanding — and responsibly developing — the full potential of human physical performance.
[A PAUSE. THE ROOM HOLDS ITS BREATH.]
This is not our final form.
Thank you.
The Reaction…
Within 20 minutes, #AlphaSapien is trending #1 globally. #Helix is #2, and #FinalForm is #3.
One Week Later…
You’re walking through the mall alone, quietly having a hero fantasy about tackling a mall shooter, when you feel a buzz in your pocket. You get excited, thinking it might be a text from someone who’s thinking about you. Perhaps an old friend you haven’t heard from in years.
You stop walking in the crumbling husk of a once glorious food court and pull up the site.
A PDF on the “Disclosures” page catches your eye. It outlines the criteria Helix is using to select individuals for cloning.
Explosiveness, coordination, strength, body awareness/balance, reaction time, endurance, and sport-specific tactical intelligence are among the most important qualities Helix is looking for. The document also emphasizes that the clones are all “biologically legitimate,” meaning no genetic modifications or performance-enhancing drugs are allowed.
Stephen A. Smith goes on a classic rant about it on ESPN’s First Take…
Stephen A. Smith
… I saw the website in question yesterday, but I didn’t wanna make a fool of myself, so I decided I would keep my mouth shut, for the time being.
I slept on it.
I woke up.
I checked that website AGAIN…
And let me tell you something: IT GOT WORSE.
“SUSTAINED OUTPUT CAPACITY?!” Uh, uh … “PROPRIOCEPTIVE INTELLIGENCE?!”
LADIES and gentlemen… I talk for a living. And I consider myself — humbly speaking — a loquacious man…
In my experience, when somebody’s being honest with you, they speak plain. You ask them what time it is; they tell you what time it is. They start lecturing you on “temporal mechanics”; that’s not transparency. That’s sleight of hand…
[A BEAT]
I’ll be honest with you all. I’m 72 years old. I’ve seen how this world operates… I don’t like the way this ends at all.
The List…
A month has passed. After a devastating typhoon in Japan and the death of NBA legend Michael Jordan, Helix and the Alpha Sapien project are effectively rinsed from the news cycle.
Helix uploads another document to their disclosures page: “Alpha Sapien Cohort: Authorized Lineage.”
It contains 144 names, mostly professional athletes, grouped by weight class.
No commentary. No explanation. Just the names.
Upon close inspection, you suspect that the ordering of the athletes is not random. The names are ranked. Specifically, they are ranked by the predicted MMA potential of each selected individual’s fully optimized clone.
Dana White issues a statement on behalf of the UFC: “No UFC fighter will be fighting a Helix athlete.”
Dana dies two weeks later of a sudden heart attack.
After the knee-jerk reactions start to settle, the public begins to spend less energy on who was chosen and more on: “How the hell did they get these people to agree to this?”
Helix collects all 144 signatures in a single 36-hour window.
SportsCenter won’t touch it.
VISE runs with it:
A Legion of Motherless Warriors…
Three months later, someone leaks a 19-page Helix Level Zero Document titled Partial Ectogenesis Protocol.
The main takeaway?
Helix is growing the clones in synthetic wombs.
In 2040, human gestation is entirely possible using endometrial scaffolds for the first eight weeks and then synthetic womb pods for the remainder of fetal development, giving Helix absolute control over all developmental conditions with zero maternal variability.
August, 2040 (4 Months Before the Birth of Clones)…
By August, Helix is radioactive.
They release no statement. They make no attempt to apologize or explain. On August 18th, 2040, they upload another document.
You read the document in the back of a self-driving car on your way to your daughter’s basketball game. (You’re thrilled that she got your ex-wife’s height, but unfortunately, she also got your paternal grandmother’s hand-eye coordination. You are unaware of this, but that’s why she’s so bad.)
Your ex-wife will be there with her new husband. Your daughter will be on the bench. Better save the document for the game.
One of the starters on your daughter’s basketball team is sick. Your pride and joy is gonna be out there tonight.
Your daughter just fouled out.
At age 10, clones start engaging in daily sparring sessions with older, non-clone fighters, preceded by visualization sessions and followed by VR analysis.
There’s a lot more about diet, weight training, cryotherapy, “speed chess,” hot yoga, oxygenated bedrooms, and rigorous, daily technical martial arts refinement.
You leave before the game is over.
December 8th, 2040: The Birth of the Clones…
Nobody puts it on their fridge. Nobody freaks out, either.
Two and a Half Years Go By…
Helix has been radio-silent.
A few months into the silence, headlines like “What happened to Helix?” and “Is Helix in Lockdown — or Something Else?” flood the internet.
By the summer of 2043, Helix’s critics have either burned out or been absorbed into academia or podcasting. Cold curiosity is what remains.
Then — Helix drops the videos.
July 29th, 2043…
Helix uploads 144 short clips to their website. You watch every one.
Alpha Sapien — Phase II Developmental Milestone
Subject: Angus MacAskill-X
Age: 31 months
0:41At the far end of the frame, a small child stands in front of a low metal wagon.
Inside it: a dozen kettlebells.
A small placard on the wagon reads: Total Load: 48 kg (105 lbs.)
A gloved hand briefly enters the frame and taps the side of the wagon once.
The child grips the handle and walks forward — the wagon rolls.
His gait is uneven in the way toddlers’ gaits are uneven — one foot slightly pigeon-toed, the other slapping flat.
He drags the load six feet, then stops, lets go, and looks off-frame, distracted — as if expecting praise, or a toy, or perhaps nothing at all.
CUT TO BLACK.
Alpha Sapien — Phase II Developmental Milestone
Subject: Wilt Chamberlain-X
Age: 31 months
0:33At center frame stands a small child. A thin strip of tape on the floor marks a line.
The child steps onto the tape. He lifts one foot and places it on the calf of his other leg. There is no wobble.
Five seconds pass. Ten. Fifteen.
At second eighteen, the technician quietly says: “Okay.”
The child lowers his foot and immediately looks bored.
CUT TO BLACK.
The other 142 videos feature clone children catching rubber balls, carrying water jugs without spilling, stacking blocks while a blood pressure cuff inflates, etc…
Love at First Sight…
Jack Mallory (Former Olympic strength coach.)
[FOOTAGE FREEZES ON LITTLE ANGUS MACASKILL-X PULLING THE WAGON.]
Pause it.
Right there.
Cute kid, right?
Yeah, he’s cute alright, but approach at your own risk, cause a baby T. rex is still a T. rex.
[LASER CIRCLES ANGUS’S FEET]
Not on his toes. Not slipping. He’s driving into the ground. That’s force transfer. That’s tissue density. You can’t fake that.
Now watch this — right here is where 99% of toddlers fall down and start crying.
[SLOW MOTION: THE WAGON STICKS FOR A SPLIT SECOND. ANGUS ADJUSTS HIS STANCE AND KEEPS PULLING]
This kid’s nervous system is going, “Resistance? Got it. Adjust angle. Continue mission.”
Brother, I’ve trained grown men who don’t do that!
Jordan Whitaker (Former NFL Wide Receiver, ESPN “Leadership & Human Performance Expert”)
[FOOTAGE FREEZES ON LITTLE WILT IN TREE POSE.]
Hold it.
Right there.
This is not about strength, ok? Strength is predictable.
[TAPS SCREEN]
This is about awareness.
[TELESTRATOR CIRCLES WILT’S PLANTED FOOT.]
Look at that foot. That kind of trust in your body is rare at any age. That’s power before power.
[LASER POINTS TO WILT’S FACE.]
No strain at all. No panic reflex.
And what do we call control without fear?
We call that composure.
Forty-Eight Hours Later…
Helix knows what you need.
The top-seeded fighters in each division are paired against the twelfth-seeded fighters on opening weekend. The next weekend, the two-seeds face the eleven-seeds, and so on.
Each clone is scheduled to fight every five or six months over a nearly five-year period until everyone has fought everyone else in their division, round-robin style.
The clone with the best record in each division is crowned champion. The winner of the Ultra-Weight division is crowned ALPHA SAPIEN.
The Hype Train Rolls On…
Over the next several years, Helix periodically releases footage.
Sports media in general has become inexplicably uncritical of the Alpha Sapien experiment, save for controversial ESPN host Mariah Cole.
Mariah Cole
[OPENING MUSIC FADES OUT]
Good evening. This is No Apologies. I’m Mariah Cole.
[SHE EXHALES POINTEDLY]
I’m supposed to play you guys another Helix clip, and I’m going to do that, but first I’m going to say what I need to say…
Helix wants you to believe that the Alpha Sapien experiment is “fate” — it’s not.
They want you to believe that you’re already complicit in this, and it’s too late to turn back. It isn’t.
You can stop watching.
You don’t need a movement, or a documentary explaining how this has all gone too far.
You can just stop paying attention.
Alright, show the clip…
“No Apologies” is replaced by an Alpha Sapien Futures roundtable, and Cole starts a podcast that does just ok.
The Shockwave: 2059–2062… Age 18–21…
After nearly two decades of legal fencing between Helix and the UFC, the clones are approved for officially sanctioned competition — but remain forbidden by Helix from fighting each other.
Mickey Mantle-X wins his fight in the shortest amount of time, shutting his opponent’s lights out thirty-one seconds into the fight.
Nate Robinson-X gets himself knocked out in the third round after whiffing on a misaligned punch (a split second too much hip, not enough shoulder).
The Inflection Point: Ages 19–21
First rounds end abruptly. Game plans evaporate. Corners go quiet.
One former champion puts it bluntly after a fifty-eight-second loss to Cristiano Ronaldo-X:
“I didn’t just feel slow. I felt late.”
Nate Robinson-X gets submitted after whiffing on another misaligned punch (a split-second too much shoulder, not enough hip).
As the clones’ profiles rise, so does public fascination with their originals. Interviewers all ask the same question in different forms: “What does it feel like to meet yourself?”
One late-night host interviewing Rob Gronkowski and Rob Gronkowski-X asks the former what he would do if he “had that body again for one day,” to which the now seventy-year-old Gronk replies, “I don’t think I can say on TV.” The audience laughs. Rob Gronkowski-X does not.
By 2061, the clones are full-blown icons:
Wilt Chamberlain-X is spotted leaving a Paris nightclub with a dozen models.
Mickey Mantle-X starts dating “Siren,” a major pop star of the early 2060s.
Diego Maradona-X gets kicked out of a yacht party in Monaco for public intoxication.
In October 2061, social media erupts when photos surface of twenty-one-year-old Dennis Rodman-X holding hands with one-hundred-year-old Dennis Rodman outside a Malibu restaurant.
Prominent cultural critics and casual Twitter users alike call the relationship “disturbing” and “morally incoherent.”
Persons magazine gives the couple a chance to share their side of the story…
The Great Closing of the Gate: 2063–2065… Age 22–24…
For a couple of years, MMA becomes a lot like bull riding. Fighters are judged by how long they can stay in the Octagon with a clone without getting knocked out or submitted.
The Global VR Rollout…
A month before the clone fights begin, on Christmas Day, 2065, Helix pulls the biggest stunt in media history. 2.8 billion free NeuroSight One headsets are shipped by drone worldwide. They arrive at your elder enrichment facility while you’re playing VR ping-pong.
A Defector…
Retention rate of the clone fighters before opening night is nearly perfect. 143 are ready to go.
Only Mickey Mantle-X is no longer accounted for.
Timeline of Departure:
Age 20: Mantle-X begins dating a global pop sensation known simply as “Siren.” In interviews, she comes off as frustratingly ethereal to some — always slightly out of phase with the room she’s standing in.
Age 21: Mantle-X develops an obsession with painting — a behavior never observed in his predecessor. According to later released Helix reports, Mantle-X paints late into the night — mostly rendering figures with blurred faces.
Age 22: Mickey starts giving cryptic, indirect answers in interviews, saying things like, “The only Mickey Mantle-X that’s real is the one in your head,” and “Relax, it breathes by itself.”
In a post-fight interview, Mantle-X refuses to answer the first couple of questions. The interviewer asks, “What’s on your mind Mickey?” At which point Mickey takes the microphone and bellows, “Did I request thee, maker, from my clay, to mold me man? Did I solicit thee from darkness to promote me?”
The quote is identified within minutes. Paradise Lost.
Age 23: Mantle-X and Siren break up.
Age 24: A transit camera captures the last confirmed image of Mantle-X.
He’s barefoot.
He disappears into the trees in a forest in Jurong.
But Wait a Minute…
Why do none of the other clones quit? A retention rate of over 99% feels unrealistic, no? Even for Helix.
Way back in 2041, right after the clones were born, Helix sent an internal document to each clone’s Father Team outlining the basic principles of “Identity Conditioning.” I am unable to tell you how I obtained this document.
Now, on to the fighting…