The chap­ter dis­cuss­es the con­tro­ver­sial fig­ure of Alan Maniko­va and his dark lega­cy regard­ing the cre­ation of “mul­ti­ples,” which are cloned ver­sions of indi­vid­u­als. Ini­tial­ly, the con­cept of cre­at­ing mul­ti­ples seems ben­e­fi­cial, espe­cial­ly for dan­ger­ous tasks. How­ev­er, a his­tor­i­cal con­text is pro­vid­ed, high­light­ing the emer­gence of “Expend­ables” and the flawed tech­nol­o­gy of past bio-print­ers. When the bio-print­er was first devel­oped, it pro­duced only basic, less aware enti­ties, which could not repli­cate prop­er human func­tions, fre­quent­ly lead­ing to trag­ic out­comes for fam­i­lies who attempt­ed to revive deceased infants.

Alan Maniko­va, born into a wealthy polit­i­cal fam­i­ly, was a bril­liant but socio­path­ic mind. Fol­low­ing his par­ents’ mys­te­ri­ous deaths, he inher­it­ed vast wealth and estab­lished Uni­ver­sal Eter­ni­ty, Inc., where he pur­sued repli­ca­tion tech­nol­o­gy. After suc­cess­ful­ly demon­strat­ing the abil­i­ty to dupli­cate a human mind, he abrupt­ly liq­ui­dat­ed his com­pa­ny and embarked on an inter­stel­lar jour­ney to the colony of Gault, a set­tle­ment estab­lished by wealthy indi­vid­u­als tired of gov­ern­men­tal tax­a­tion.

Upon arrival in Gault, which was char­ac­ter­ized by its decen­tral­ized, self-reliant soci­eties, Maniko­va began to repli­cate him­self. As he amassed resources and pow­er, indi­vid­u­als began to dis­ap­pear, lead­ing to ris­ing sus­pi­cions and ulti­mate­ly, con­fronta­tions with local clans. Maniko­va’s supe­ri­or tech­nol­o­gy allowed him to over­come resis­tance with bru­tal effi­cien­cy, and he for­ti­fied his dom­i­nance over the colony.

The Union gov­ern­ment on Eden even­tu­al­ly decid­ed to inter­vene, but their attempts cul­mi­nat­ed in fail­ure when their mil­i­tary ship, Eden’s Jus­tice, was destroyed by mis­siles launched from Gault before they could retal­i­ate. A sub­se­quent, sim­pler response came from a neigh­bor­ing colony, Farhome, which launched a rel­a­tivis­tic pro­jec­tile dubbed “The Bul­let,” strik­ing Gault with dev­as­tat­ing force, anni­hi­lat­ing the colony entire­ly.

The chap­ter con­cludes by reflect­ing on the reper­cus­sions of Manikova’s actions, estab­lish­ing a last­ing stig­ma against mul­ti­ples and posi­tion­ing Maniko­va him­self as the sub­ject of blame for the destruc­tion of Gault, ulti­mate­ly fram­ing his pur­suit of immor­tal­i­ty and repli­ca­tion as a cat­a­stroph­ic endeav­or in human his­to­ry.