The Truth About Clones

"Forget all the sci-fi you've watched. The fantasy of the evil clone is a form of the terror of the doppelganger, which is our fear of our own Shadow. A clone is just a younger identical twin."

The prosecutor was calm and convincing, and you had read enough biology to know she was right, but you also knew that a clone was somebody with your face but not your fate, who would look like you long after your death. Sooner or later their face would no longer be yours but the other way around.

The jury knew what you knew, maybe secretly, perhaps without awareness. In any case their verdict of self-defense was unanimous.

You had read enough about clone murder trial statistics to know they would, and enough about the suicide rate of the cloned to tell yourself they were right. Your clone hadn't read any of it --he had been way too young for that-- but his last expression had been one of unsurprised sadness.

You killed yourself a year later, your will asking to be cloned again, leaving to him all you owned. No apology, though. You knew its pointlessness from the one your predecessor had left behind.