You hear the shouts and wild mutterings long before reaching a large cloning complex set in rolling hills in southern China.
Feeding time produces a frenzy as the human clones strain against the railings around their pens. But this is no ordinary farm.
Run by a fast-growing company called Humaclone, this facility has become the world’s largest centre for the cloning of even more Chinese people.
The technology involved is not particularly novel – but what is new is the application of mass production.
The first shed contains 20,000 human clones in two long rows. They look perfectly normal, as one would expect, but each of them is carrying cloned embryos. Many are clones themselves.
The Chinese population has grown steadily but has tapered off in the last decade, and China needs more workers to work in the factories. There may be future viruses killing millions of people, so it’s always good to have spares.
Xian Xing Long, a technician on the farm says: “We have orders coming in every day, we make one batch, then another batch. Our goal is to increase the population of China to hit 8 billion by 2020.”
The human clones are given traditional Chinese names, fed, and clothed then shipped out all over China to start work.
“It fills me with pride to see the clones go off to work. Their DNA is structured for each type of work they are ordered to do. All for the good of Mother China. I am very proud of our achievement,” another technician on the farm revealed.
What could POSSIBLY go wrong with that genetic experiment?