Um, I was being a smart aleck, but it is already possible to clone a human being yet we have not a clue how the soul is interwoven with the living body.
It's a question I asked, at that very moment of decision, but without any answers to know or tell.
He didn’t feel as though he were dying. In this youthful body, it was impossible to feel anything but boundless energy and hope for a long future. He looked at the shriveled carcass of the man he had once been. A body that had served him well through decades of storms and torments of all kinds, but which had, as it must, eventually failed him.
He could not help but feel that it was like a vehicle. He remembered briefly old cars and trucks that he had owned. They had all served him faithfully, or reluctantly, but they had all had to be discarded, some with more regret than others.
Where was his regret? Where were the tears that marked him as being abandoned and orphaned in a hostile world?
It was a question like asking, where are the keys to the new vehicle? The question, like he, was bereft of emotion. Was he more computer than human already?
He looked into Angelina’s face. His mother’s face. She wept openly, soundlessly. He thought about the tenderness she had always shown him, in his former body and in this one, and he suddenly felt sympathy for her loss. He knew that she could not really accept that his mind, his essence, his soul had moved on and was safe and comfortable in her arms.
He felt the tears begin, and roll softly down his cheeks.
Whatever emptiness of soul he had, whatever loss there may have been in its transference, he felt sorry for this gallant woman who was losing the father of her child, and who faced a future of unknown challenges. His mother was hurting, and he was hurting too.
Two words - Liquid Nails.