Author : C. Hale
After the Organ War, Jerald was called the Last Donor. An odd title for sure, considering that he was actually the first to do a lot of things.
Most importantly, he was the first to figure out that we were nothing but walking organ banks being raised by families rich enough for a clone but not quite rich enough to pay for a cryo tank.
So they kept us in spare rooms and servant quarters. We grew up cooking and cleaning for the family, and when father’s heart failed, there was no need for a waiting list.
He found us that October, living in the old part of town that hadn’t been demolished and reclaimed yet. There were maybe a hundred of us that had fallen through the cracks and been separated from our families. We only knew that the instant one of us was found, they never came back alive. Homeless and illiterate, we scrounged what we could and hid from the world. We probably wouldn’t have lived through the winter if Jerald hadn’t figured out how to turn the electricity on.
We didn’t believe it when he told us. It didn’t make sense! How could it be possible? You couldn’t just murder someone, regardless of whether it happened in a hospital. Most of us just wanted to go back home. And then, Jerald showed us the films.
Eight years later, there were seventeen million of us, most still living with families and waiting for the signal.
The signal came on the tenth anniversary of Jerald’s discovery of the truth, and the world was not prepared. The Organ War lasted two years, five months and one day, and Jerald himself negotiated the terms of surrender from Parliament: No more clones. No more murder. Full citizenship for those of us that had survived the war.
Two years later, Jerald died on the waiting list for a lung transplant.
He died with a smile on his face.
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