Suicide Note
By the time you read this, I will be dead.
I realize this is not a very imaginative way to begin a suicide note, especially for a man who has made his fame and fortune by creating vivid images with words and telling stories with cleverly turned phrases. But my imagination, which has long proved to be both my blessing and my curse, has at last deserted me. I am barely capable of coherent thought much less literary creativity.
My purpose in writing this final letter is to explain my behavior during the past several hours, behavior which will, no doubt, be reported on and examined in great depth in the weeks and months to come. My photograph and personal history will probably appear in every newspaper in the country, and my marriage will more than likely become an ongoing soap opera in the tabloids. It may go so far as to inspire some Hollywood writer to bring my story to the silver screen.
I'm sure there will be many people who will question my sanity in light of the events of this evening. Let me emphasize right now that I am not insane nor have I taken any mind-altering drugs or gone on an alcoholic bender. What drove me to commit such a heinous act was nothing more than an overactive imagination.
* * *
From my earliest childhood, I had a strong fascination for fantasy and make-believe. During my adolescence, my love of books such as The Time Machine, A Journey to the Center of the Earth and 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea led me to explore the works of authors such as Ray Bradbury, Isaac Asimov, Ursula K. Le Guin, Harlan Ellison, Robert A. Heinlein and Arthur C. Clarke. I also spent many enjoyable hours watching reruns of Star Trek and classic sci-fi thrillers such as When Worlds Collide, The Day the Earth Stood Still, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Forbidden Planet and War of the Worlds. I was soon hooked on all forms of science fiction, and I longed to live in a world where interplanetary travel was a reality and where robots and intelligent computers were as common as telephones and radios in my own environment.
By the time I started high school at the age of thirteen, I had already decided to become a writer. Fortunately, no doubt because of the years I spent with my nose buried in the pages of countless books, I acquired a larger-than-normal vocabulary. Also, thanks to a succession of dedicated English teachers, I had a fairly good working knowledge of grammar, syntax and organization to accompany my creative ideas. Armed only with these mental skills and an old Remington manual typewriter, I was thus able to weave a web of fantasy around even the most common aspects of life.
Often considered somewhat of a prodigy, I sold my first short story before my twelfth-grade graduation and my first novel before my twenty-first birthday. By the tender age of twenty-seven, I had already written three bestsellers and had won two Hugo Awards, a Nebula and even an Oscar for adapting one of my books for the screen. I was the golden boy of the popular fiction world, and Hollywood expected great things of me.
After winning the Academy Award, I was asked to write a second movie, this one an original screenplay about genetic experimentation gone terribly wrong. The producer arranged for me to consult with Dr. Rolph Detwiler, a Nobel Prize-winning scientist and a genius in the field of genetic engineering, who was to review my script for technical accuracy. One night, Dr. Detwiler graciously invited me to his home for dinner so that we could work in more comfortable surroundings than my no-frills office at the studio. There I met his wife and his daughter, Helga, a twenty-four-year-old beauty who stole my heart before the end of the evening.
Helga Detwiler was a vision of perfection. She had a face and figure that would have put both Venus and Helen of Troy to shame. Furthermore, she had a mind that was as superior as her looks. An early achiever like me, she graduated MIT with honors at the age of twenty and, when she wasn't assisting her father with his research, she was studying for her doctorate degree.
I've often heard people say that reality is stranger than fiction. That must be true given the fact that Helga Detwiler fell in love with me, which is more unbelievable than anything I've ever written. Love me she did, however, and I, of course, fell deeply in love with her. Six months after we met, we were married with her parents' blessings.
For the next five years, Helga and I were deliriously happy together. I completed my screenplay, and the movie was a blockbuster hit that earned me another Oscar nomination. After that, I published two more novels that both topped the bestseller list. My wife received her doctorate, and since the child we both longed for had not yet been conceived, she decided to continue working with her father.
Another year passed, and Helga was still not pregnant. Anxious to become parents, we decided to consult an infertility expert. The tests done on me confirmed that everything was in proper working order. The tests on Helga revealed the same—at least that was what I was led to believe.
Not long after we visited the specialist, I noticed a slight but definite change in Helga's personality. She rarely laughed and often sat staring vacantly out into space as though deep in thought. Although she assured me on more than one occasion that nothing was wrong, I was worried about her. As the weeks and months went by, my wife seemed to be slipping further and further away from me. I hardly ever saw her anymore. When I questioned her about her frequent absences from home, she claimed she was spending more time at the lab, supposedly working on an important project with her father, one she could not discuss with me.
Naturally, I suspected the worst: I was certain that my beautiful, brilliant Helga was having an affair. My suspicions were so strong that I took to following her whenever she left the house. After six months of sneaking around like Philip Marlowe, I gladly conceded that my wife was indeed working and not seeing another man.
But why couldn't she tell me anything about the nature of her research? I would not tell anyone about her efforts or write about it in my next novel. Could it be that Helga thought I was too ignorant to understand even a simple explanation of her work? True, I was no college graduate much less a Ph.D., but I wasn't stupid. Something was not right, and I had to know what it was.
I decided to resume my private detecting. My first step was to begin spending more time at my in-laws' house. Whenever I was there, I kept my eyes and ears open and was not averse to doing a little snooping. While rifling through the desk in my father-in-law's den, I found a number of thick files, all containing notes on gene targeting and nuclear transfer—in other words, cloning. Was that what he and Helga were up to? If so, why all the secrecy? Cloning was certainly nothing new.
Tired of the Sam Spade routine, I decided it was finally time to be open with my wife. One night at dinner, I came out and asked her point blank if she and her father were working on nuclear transfer experiments. The color drained from her beautiful face, and then her surprise gave way to anger. She accused me of spying on her and of not trusting her. So much for honesty being the best policy! Helga didn't speak to me for weeks.
We eventually made up, though, but it was a limited and fragile peace. We began speaking to one another again, but Helga seemed even more remote than ever, and nothing had changed to allay my suspicions that there was something terribly wrong with my wife and that it was in some way connected to her father's work.
I was so preoccupied with discovering the nature of Dr. Detwiler's research that I could not write. My imagination, it seemed, could not be in two places at once.
Finally, I gave up amateur sleuthing and took a more direct approach. While Helga was sound asleep one night, I took her keys from her purse, went to an all-night Walmart and had copies of them made. I then bided my time until my mother-in-law took one of her frequent trips to Virginia to visit her sister. With Mrs. Detwiler out of the way, all I needed was a night when Helga said she had to work late. I didn't have long to wait.
I sat in my car, parked a block from my in-laws' house, waiting for nightfall. Under cover of darkness, I walked to the Detwiler home, took out the duplicate key and let myself in the front door. I tiptoed down the hall toward the staircase that led to the basement, which had been converted into a state-of-the-art research laboratory. I had a key for that door, too, but I did not need to use it because the door was not locked. I opened it a crack. I could hear the whir of machinery and the sound of my father-in-law's voice.
"You are my greatest creation," he said proudly. "So perfect, so lifelike in every way."
I crept down the stairs, forcing myself to move slowly and silently when I wanted to run, to take those steps two at a time, to learn at long last what my wife and her father were up to.
There he was—the genius, Dr. Rolph Detwiler. His back was toward me, and he was talking to someone or something that was lying on a gurney. The body was covered with linen sheets, and a maze of tubes and electrodes obscured most of it from my vision.
Where is my wife? I wondered.
When my father-in-law stepped aside to adjust the flow of an intravenous drip, I saw Helga lying on the gurney. Her face was deathly pale, almost devoid of color. It had an unnatural shine, and it reminded me of the wax creations I had seen at Madame Tussaud's museum.
"You'll need a few more pints of blood, my dear," my father-in-law announced. "Then, once your pulse is steady and your blood pressure is at an acceptable level, we'll begin fine-tuning your motor skills."
All of my years as a fan and then a creator of science fiction failed to prepare me for this moment. I watched Invasion of the Body Snatchers (both the original and the remake) dozens of times, yet I never seriously considered the existence of pod people, much less imagined that I would find myself married to one!
It was Helga who saw me first.
"Darling, what a surprise!" she said in a voice more electronic than human, like the computer-generated voice that recited phone numbers for directory assistance.
"My boy," my father-in-law said, "we had hoped to wait to share this wonderful moment with you; however, now that you're here, come and meet your wife."
I stood still, unable to move. Dr. Detwiler removed the electrodes that had been attached to Helga's skin. With her father's help, she stood up, and pulling the IV bottle behind her, took a few awkward steps toward me.
"A little physical therapy and she'll be able to run a marathon," my father-in-law assured me.
I had once longed to travel to the stars, to boldly go where no man had gone before. I had wanted to live in a world populated by Vulcans, androids, Klingons, beings of pure thought and machines with human intelligence and emotions. Yet there I was, face-to-face with my wildest dreams and I felt no wonder, no awe. What I did feel was disgust, anger and blind hatred.
I was married to a thing, an object—not a woman. Obviously, that was why we could not have children, I realized.
As the thing reached up and put its arms around me, I pulled away, horrified. Then I struck out at it, savagely, wanting to destroy all human likeness, beautiful though it was.
Helga's father tried to intervene, to rescue his precious creation.
"Are you mad? What are you doing? You'll hurt her!" he screamed.
I shoved him hard, and he fell backward, striking his head on the edge of a metal cabinet. He lay there unconscious while I continued to destroy what I considered the modern equivalent of Frankenstein's monster.
Only after the thing was lying lifeless in a pool of human blood, did I collapse on the floor from complete physical and emotional exhaustion, wishing I could wake up from the terrible nightmare. How was I to explain to my family and friends that I was not and never had been married, that I had loved a machine that some mad genius had tried to pass off as his own daughter like in some Twilight Zone or Outer Limits version of Pinocchio?
As I buried my face in my bloodstained hands, I heard a sound. Dr. Detwiler was coming to his senses.
"Helga?" he called weakly.
"Your monster is gone," I informed him bitterly. "I destroyed it."
"You stupid fool!" he cried, wincing from the severe pain in his head. "Go look in the freezer," he demanded, pointing to a cold storage unit like those used in hospitals and morgues.
I did as my father-in-law ordered. I pulled out the drawer. Inside was another Helga. How many of them had he created? I stared at the body. It didn't move. This one was either already dead or not yet brought to life.
"Is this your great work, Doctor? A population of Helgas?"
"That," he said tearfully, "is the body of my daughter—your wife. When she went to that infertility specialist, he discovered a tumor. She consulted another doctor, got a second opinion and then a third. The prognosis was always the same: inoperable cancer. She was given a year to live, maybe two if she was lucky. I could not stand by and watch my child die. Oh, I couldn't cut out the cancerous tumor, but I could replicate her body—every organ, every pore, and every hair follicle. I could use her DNA to make a new Helga, a cancer-free one."
"She never said anything to me about cancer," I argued.
"She didn't want to worry you, and she didn't want to discuss our experiment until she was sure of its success."
"It's a lie!" I shouted, taking refuge in denial.
"Together, she and I created a clone. Then, this morning, I transplanted Helga's brain into the cloned body. It was not an android, a robot or a machine; it was a living, breathing, feeling human body. The mind and emotions—the soul, if you will—were Helga's. This operation was really not much different from a heart or a kidney transplant. Except in this case there wasn't a donor involved. The body was Helga's, created from her own DNA."
"But if what you say is true, then that means ...."
I couldn't give voice to my conclusion. It was far too horrible.
"... that you murdered your wife," my father-in-law finished my sentence. "You killed her with your bare hands."
Feelings of unbearable guilt and grief overwhelmed me. I wanted to cradle my wife's body in my arms and beg her forgiveness, but which one of the corpses constituted the remains of my beloved Helga? The cold body on the morgue slab that I had held close to mine for the past ten years, or the clone with the transplanted brain, the medical miracle that I had desecrated in my ignorance and anger? I guess it didn't matter which of the lifeless cadavers I held; neither one had the power to forgive me, to absolve me from my terrible crime.
My father-in-law rose unsteadily to his feet.
"Get out of here," he ordered.
"Let me take you to the hospital," I offered. "You're hurt."
"Never mind that. I don't want your help. Get out! Now!"
"Aren't you going to call the police?" I asked.
Can they charge me with murder? I wondered. Would killing a clone, the product of a scientific experiment, be interpreted as homicide?
Or would my father-in-law—with his highly illegal although successful operation—ultimately be held accountable for his daughter's death since he had been the one who removed her brain from her original body? It's a question that will never be answered.
As I left the house and walked toward my parked car, an explosion knocked me off my feet and threw me to the ground. I turned to see my in-laws' house leveled. My wife's body—or bodies—my father-in-law, his laboratory and all his research had deliberately been destroyed.
* * *
The coroner ruled the deaths of Dr. Rolph Detwiler and his daughter, Helga, accidental in nature.
I knew there was no evidence to connect me to my wife's death. Even if I had been charged with the crime, it is highly unlikely that twelve people would ever find me guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.
Yet I have always believed that there is a higher court, one at which I must soon present myself. I believe that the supreme judge expects an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. I agree with this justice, so now I offer my own life in payment for the precious one that I have taken.
The day they clone Salem, I'LL commit suicide!
