Operation[]
Cloning technology can be divided into three major components: clone manufacturing, brain growth & storage and clone quality. Each of these areas requires intimate knowledge and skilled staff to operate.
Clone manufacturing[]
Clones are manufactured using biomass. Modern methods allow pretty much any kind of biomass to be used. The best clones are constructed from cadavers, but anything from animal carcasses to organic soups can be used. Using lower quality materials requires more extensive structuring and chemical processes and introduces a greater risk for error in the transfer of the customer's features.
At the time of purchase, the customer undergoes a thorough examination and several tissue samples are taken. This is then used to construct a clone of the customer – a clone that receives the consciousness of the original at the moment of death, granting a new life.
All clones are made from certified cadavers, all of them received from willing donors. The biomass has not been tampered with or thinned out – only highest quality preservatives have been introduced to hinder tissue decomposition. Clonning company mission is to establish itself as the manufacturer of clones of the very highest quality and its clientele can rest assured that the underhanded tactics used by so many clone stations do not apply for its operation. All galactic laws and regulations are applied rigorously, with governmental inspectors a permanent feature on all our stations.
The biomass is used to construct a functioning body. This body is complete in every sense, with fully functioning organs and peripheral neural system. Instead of a brain there is only a primitive cluster of ganglia which is capable of maintaining heart rate, blood pressure and respiration. Core body temperature is dependent on the environment, and so has to be controlled very carefully in order not to damage the cells. The immune system of the donor is crippled and the thymus is removed and replaced with implanted cells from the customer. The clone body will thus not reject any implant – this makes it possible to seed the body with stem cells from the customer. The clone’s body cells divide very slowly, allowing the new cells to take over in time.
Culturing a clone takes several months, but all clone stations store generic clones that are only put to use when a client buys it. The skull, and frequently other bones as well, is replaced by osteoplastic materials – soft synthetic bone polymers that can be shaped and then hardened by gamma laser irradiation. In this way, facial features and other body marks and textures can be applied very quickly. The process is very quick and is applied as soon as the clone is purchased. A similar technique is also used to adjust skin tones and give special skin marks, such as tattoos and scars. This means that the featureless clone is quickly transformed into an identical twin of the client.
Any respectable cloning company must take into account the physiological differences between the various races and their bloodlines in existence. Each of them has unique DNA imprints that must be replicated so that the transfer process goes as smoothly and with as little deviances as possible. If done properly the unique characteristics and traits that each race and bloodline has can be kept intact. This is very important during the brain growth process (see below), as the memory restoration is closely linked to the exact neuro-strata layout of the brain tissue, which varies greatly from one race and bloodline to the next.
Brain growth & storage[]
Clones are never bred with an intact brain as this is obviously very much dictated by the client. Once a clone is bought a thorough brain scan is made of the client to determine the shape of the brain and the placement of nerve cell nuclei. Then a three dimensional gel structure that matches the shape of the client's brain is constructed.
The cranium is constructed by seeding this gel structure (heavily impregnated with nutrients and inactivated growth factors) with nerve cells and glia, in accordance with information from the brain scan. Bound to the growth factors are molecular receptors that are coupled (using the well known FTL-communication technology) to molecules placed in the customer's burning scanner (see Clone quality, below). After seeding, the gel structure is suspended until the final moment of the original. As the burning scan is made, the molecules bound to the inactivated growth factors become unstable and cause activation of the growth factors by cleavage. The activation is an exothermic process which produces sufficient heat to melt pathways into the gel model of the brain. Thus dendrite paths in the model will be the same as in the original's brain, their growth fuelled by the activated growth factors
This process alone is not sufficient for an exact replica of the original's brain. The precise shape of the dendrites and the potentiation level of the synapse, which together determine memories and skills, have to be fine tuned through a neural link. Impulses are sent through the link to stimulate further growth and shaping of the dendrites, until they fill in the paths formed with the activation process. In the final stages of this tuning, as the clone regains consciousness, potentiation at synapses is quickly adjusted to recorded levels, generating a feeling often described as one of memories "coming back".
Clone stations store client clones (also termed readied clones) as well as still-to-be-used featureless clone bodies. The cloning process is always on a one-to-one basis, as the molecular receptors bound in the gel structure are coupled to the burning scanner carried by the customer. Premium members will of course always have clone copies of themselves in every clone facility, but as there is only one burning scanner for each clone, they will have to use a scanner that is coupled to a clone in a facility close to their current position (what implant could do automatically).
In the final stages of this tuning, as the clone regains consciousness, potentiation at synapses is quickly adjusted to recorded levels, generating a feeling often described as one of memories "coming back"
Clone quality[]
The moment the implant sensors detect customer inevitable death, they activate the emergency uploading of the mind of the person, as described above. The implant makes an analog scan of the brain of the person. This extraordinary snapshot records the exact state of the mind, including every neuron connection between every brain cell. Because the scan must be instantaneous and efficient it brutalizes the brain in the process. In early tests, the subjects were left with permanent and severe brain damage after being scanned, a fact that is impossible to escape. But as the person is about to die in any case, this unfortunate side effect has little consequences. All modern clonning implants are highly tuned to when to take the snapshot – if it is done too early there is a chance that the subject will not die at all, but live on in a vegetative state. And if the snapshot is taken too late there is the risk that the scan will fail or even that the revived clone will remember its own death, a very traumatic experience that can introduce severe psychological and functional problems in the clone.
The quality of the clone is always critical and this is a point that cannot be stressed enough. The closer the clone’s brain is to the original in shape and form the better the reviving process will work. The more different they are the more memory will be lost during the synaptic growth process. This is most clearly seen in the space industry. For a space captain to retain his license he must be connected to a cloning facility. But if he fails to buy himself a suitable clone, which he is not required to do by law, he will be given a generic clone instead at the time of death. As these generic clones are bound to have very different brains than the original the memory loss can be very severe. The best clones, made from certified human cadavers in perfect condition, are able to retain up to 99.99% of memory – a figure close enough to call the revived clone a true doppelganger of the original person.
Of course, after introduction of Droidan's mind storage and transfer technique, this process could be easilly adapted, so cloned person is true original, just with new body...
Customers without implants[]
There is still high percentage of customers, who couldn't have or don't want to have clonning implant in their head.
For them Droidans developed and deployed network of remote subspace scanners, what are constantly monitoring vital functions of registered customers and in case of death commences scan&transfer procedure as described above.
This network is galaxy-wide spread, with minimum of gaps. But they still exists, so carried personal clonning scanner is advantage and good assurance...