The Triplicate Stone: Cloning Experiment

"How come they all look identical ... I mean, identical to *me*?" Sarah asked. "You really don't remember?" Eric asked. "Hmm. Perhaps memory loss is a side effect of ..." "Just answer me," Sarah said. "They're clones. Clones of you," Keith answered. "That was the main purpose of our experiment." "Your experiment was to clone me?" "No, no. We could clone you without ... well, you. In the equation, I mean," Eric said. "We wanted to see if you could incubate them. All of them. Unfortunately, things didn't go exactly as planned. But in science, there are always setbacks and we can always learn from our mistakes." "Mistakes? You mean there's something wrong with them?" Sarah asked. "They look healthy enough to *me*." "Oh, they're healthy," Kevin said. "But that's not the problem. The problem is that ..." "The problem is that they won't stop growing," Eric interrupted. "Their bodies are going through an accelerated growth and we can't figure out why. When we made clones in our lab, we didn't have this problem." Sarah looked over at the twelve young girls again and realized that in the short time she was there, they *did* look a little older. Perhaps a year and half old, instead of a year and three months? "Can you stop them from growing fast?" she asked. "We think so, but by the time we do it, they might be teenagers," Eric said.