Anna To The Infinite Power Read Online Free PDF

She’s so close to puberty now anyhow.”
    “Why were you supposed to wait until then?”
    “That was the time we all agreed upon. Otherwise Anna or one of the others might have given the whole thing away at some point. You know how youngsters are. That was not a chance worth taking. And then there was the other aspect.”
    “What other aspect?”
    Her eyes measured him for a time before she said, “You mustn’t mention this to Anna. It could only worry her. They felt that puberty would be the most critical time of the experiment, when the body cells change so greatly.”
    “What could happen?”
    “Nobody knows, of course. Personally, I think they’re being overly cautious. They just want to be sure that nothing physically bad happens.”
    “Like what?”
    She said impatiently, “Honestly, Rowan, I don’t know--cancer, perhaps.”
    That startled him. She made it sound as if Anna and all the other Annas were living machines that might explode at any moment. A sick feeling washed over him. Perhaps that was what they were. Living machines. That would certainly explain a great deal about Anna. Or had the first Anna Zimmerman had the same unfeeling kind of personality?
    Rowan wasn’t quite sure his mother was any more ethical than Anna, fooling them all that way. She had even insisted Zimmerman was an old family name that she wanted to carry on, and no one had even questioned her. Rowan couldn’t begin to imagine how his dad would feel when he found out.
    Then a horrifying thought struck Rowan. “What about me?”
    For a moment his mother looked perplexed. “What do you mean?” He couldn’t bring himself to say the words, but she must have seen the fear in his eyes and understood, because she quickly reassured him. “Oh, no, Rowan. You were born in the old-fashioned way, the way babies have always been born. You have only to look in the mirror to see how much you look like me.”
    That was true. He did look like his mother. They were both tall, slim, and leggy with dark chestnut hair, olive skin, high cheekbones, and brown eyes. They even had similar cowlicks. Yes, she was obviously telling the truth. And what a relief that was. For the first time, he felt a stab of sympathy for Anna. “Have they cloned anyone else?”
    “I don’t know, but I must admit, I’ve wondered. With everyone pressing for the one-child family these days, it almost seems suspect when you see couples with two or more. Believe me, I’ve felt the social stigma myself. At a time when we so desperately need to reduce population, you can’t help but feel guilty for overbreeding.”
    “Then why make more people by cloning them?”
    “Because of all the good it can do.” She went on to explain all the possibilities cloning would open up. Nothing was left to chance that way. You could duplicate any kind of person you wished or needed. “You see,” she said, “we’ve foiled nature. We’ve stopped the process of evolution. We’ve found too many ways of keeping alive people with genetic diseases, giving them the chance to reproduce themselves and perpetuate their weaknesses. Cloning will be a way of mastering evolution.”
    “I don’t understand. How?”
    “For one thing, we’re learning how to reprogram body cells, possibly alter the message within them that determines whether a person will have an inherited disease like diabetes.”
    His mother was always most convincing when she put forth a scientific argument, yet why did the thought make his skin crawl? He’d never felt quite easy with many aspects of what was considered technological progress. Was it progress that so many people were living on manufactured foods these days? Fortunately his family fared better than most because of his mother’s connections. Or was there another reason for that? he wondered now.
    “Does all this business with Anna have anything to do with our getting more and better food than most people?” he asked.
    “Yes, it does, Rowan. Because of our