Miriam unlocked the door to her study and surveyed the scene. As usual, there were towering stacks of books and papers taking up almost every inch of surface space in the cozy little room. This had always been Miriam's favorite room in the house. Phil used to say, "You love it best because you can lock all the rest of us out of it." It sounded like a criticism but he always said it with a smile, and Miriam knew that he was one of those rare men who actually appreciated his wife's eccentricities. Miriam paused for a moment because she could have sworn she heard Phil say his other favorite line:"Living with you, Mims, is like a carnival ride, ups, downs and upside-downs." Then she squeezed her way into the room and pushed Sadie off the desk chair so she could sit down. This wasn't the first time since Phil's death that she had felt his presence in a room. His ghostly presence was not troubling to her; in fact, Miriam actually found it comforting. She sometimes wished he'd make himself known more often. Perhaps he could move the curtains around a bit or turn some lights on and off. Miriam knew she would get a big kick out of that kind of ghostly bravado.
The stacks of books and papers would have been daunting to someone less driven than Miriam, but even at 76, her Type A personality was still going strong. Rona loved to tease her about it. Years ago, the Steinbergs had taken Rona and several of her kids on one of their family vacations to Provence where they had rented a big house. Every day, Miriam would read a list of options for the day divided into how many hours away from the house the outing would take. That is why her daily list became known as the "3-5-7's." Miriam always chose the 7-hour day trip, while Rona chose the 3 hour one and spent the rest of the day reading by the beautiful pool that overlooked hills covered with olive trees. Sarah had whispered to Rona at one point in the trip, "When I'm in charge of the universe, we will call the outing options "1-2-3's and somedays, we might never leave the house at all!"
The late evening sun was streaming through the pale yellow linen curtains and Miriam allowed herself a moment to enjoy the warmth before settling into her project. Using the hunt and peck method (having never learned to be a proficient typist), Miriam typed "Dolly the Sheep updates" into the google search bar. Dolly, the first mammal successfully cloned from an adult cell, had been born in July of 1996 and passed away about 6 1/2 years later. At the time, Miriam had not paid a lot of attention to the whole cloning debate. Usually, she came down on the side of science; she was, after all, a woman who had given her life to the pursuit of medicine and science was the goddess she worshipped. Recent events had motivated Miriam to find out more about the breakthroughs in cloning since Molly's death in 2003. Surely, substantial progress had been made.
A few weeks ago, when Miriam took Saul to the vet because of a limp he'd suddenly developed, she was told that poor Saul had a tumor on his spine that would eventually cause him to become paralyzed.
The news had hit Miriam hard; she realized that she'd relied heavily on the companionship of Saul and Sadie since Phil's death. Unlike another type of woman, Miriam spent no time railing against the inequity of the universe. Rather, her mind immediately tried to search for a solution. After the veterinarian who specialized in feline cancer gently assured Miriam that there was nothing to be done in Saul's case, Miriam searched her brain for other options. That is when the story of Dolly jumped into her head. Miriam's online research lead her to tons of info on SCNT or somatic cell nuclear transfer. Through her research, Miriam learned that the process involved the transfer of a living cell from an adult animal into an unfertilized egg from which the nucleus had already been removed.
Saul was such a gentle soul and such a loyal companion, why shouldn't she try to replicate his genetic perfection? Of course, the girls would be against the idea if they knew. They'd give her an awful time about messing with nature and perverting the natural order of life. That is why Miriam would not be sharing this project with them anytime soon. In fact, her "Necessary Honesty" policy was going to come in very handy with this little venture.
Miriam returned to the search engine screen and one of the entries farther down the page caught her eye. "Mary Shelley's doctor would feel right at home in San Diego lab." Miriam had not read Frankenstein since she was a sophomore at Mount Holyoke, but it had always been one of her favorite books. Of course, she thought that everyone came down too hard on the young doctor. Her classmates had seen Viktor Frankenstein's desire to create life as the epitome of hubris, but Miriam had admired his bravery. They had argued that only God should have the power to create life, but Miriam had held her ground. "If I could guarantee you the birth of a child free from birth defects or illness and with an astoundingly high IQ, would you honestly refuse?" To the best of Miriam's recollection, the professor had abruptly ended the debate and moved the class to a close reading of Shelley's husband, Percy Bysshe Shelley's, poetry.
Now, all these many years later, Miriam began to wonder again about the creation of life. The sheer grandeur of this project motivated her like nothing else had in recent years. Sure, Frankenstein's monster was physically loathsome, but he'd had the capacity to feel love and to learn. In Miriam's mind, he certainly wasn't a complete failure. Of course, she must acknowledge that he caused the deaths of most of Frankenstein's loved ones. Even Miriam had to admit that that was certainly a very high price to pay for scientific progress. So, she would proceed with caution. Miriam heard a gentle mew and looked down where Saul lay in the patch of sunlight streaming through the curtains. She knew what she had to do.
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