When I Grow Up

By: submission | July 26, 2026

Author: Melissa Kobrin

“No, your nose is too big for you to be him.”
Ryan glared at his best friend. Samuel lay on the bed next to him, looking unrepentant.
“You should be glad you have such a big nose, it’ll make it easier to figure out who your pattern is,” he added.
Pattern. The word made Ryan grimace. He hated that he was a clone. A copy, an illegal knockoff version of another person. Someone else had been him before he had, and he didn’t even know who he was. The privacy laws that banned cloning also banned identifying his pattern or any genetic health information they shared in his records. If he somehow found out, he wasn’t legally allowed to disclose his identity. He had signed an NDA by being born. Clone babies, if they were discovered, were placed into foster care with blank records.
That was how he had realized he was a clone. Even Samuel, whose biological parents had died before he was born, had some information. The uterine replicator facility his biological parents had chosen to have him gestated at, the industrial accident that had killed them both, and that he had a predisposition to alcoholism from his biological mom’s side of the family. Ryan had nothing until his intake physical when he was placed into foster care.
“What about this guy?” Samuel suggested, tilting his phone to show the screen. Ryan stared down at the man in the picture.
“I don’t know. I mean his hair looks kind of like mine, but I don’t think my face will look like that when I’m older. Who is he?”
“You should hope your face looks like that, he’s kinda hot. He was some minor league baseball player in Pennsylvania, I think.”
Ryan flopped on the bed. “There are too many celebrities who are white with brown hair and eyes. What if he’s some random YouTuber in, like, Russia who was only famous fourteen years ago? What if he was never famous? Maybe some random guy died and his wife cloned him,” he suggested glumly.
“Well, then at least you’ll know you had a wife who loved you?” Samuel offered.
Ryan halfheartedly punched his shoulder. “It wouldn’t be me, you idiot. And whoever it was had to be rich, and rich people are always famous. I’ll find him someday.”