Chap­ter 17 delves deeply into the dark lega­cy of Alan Maniko­va and his con­tro­ver­sial exper­i­ments in cre­at­ing “mul­ti­ples,” which are cloned ver­sions of indi­vid­u­als designed for dan­ger­ous tasks. At first glance, the idea of pro­duc­ing mul­ti­ples seemed promis­ing, offer­ing the poten­tial to reduce human casu­al­ties by send­ing repli­cas into haz­ardous envi­ron­ments. How­ev­er, as his­to­ry unfold­ed, the flaws in the tech­nol­o­gy became unde­ni­able. Ear­ly bio-print­ers, which were ini­tial­ly devel­oped to repli­cate human forms, failed to dupli­cate the full range of human con­scious­ness, lead­ing to the cre­ation of sim­plis­tic, unaware clones. These ear­ly attempts were far from suc­cess­ful, and trag­i­cal­ly, many fam­i­lies seek­ing to revive their loved ones encoun­tered hor­rif­ic out­comes when the repli­cas lacked the emo­tion­al depth and behav­ioral com­plex­i­ty of the orig­i­nals. These errors in repli­ca­tion result­ed in severe emo­tion­al pain for those who had hoped to bring back deceased rel­a­tives.

Maniko­va, born into a pow­er­ful polit­i­cal fam­i­ly, was a high­ly intel­li­gent but deeply trou­bled indi­vid­ual. After the sus­pi­cious deaths of his par­ents, he inher­it­ed a vast for­tune and used it to launch Uni­ver­sal Eter­ni­ty, Inc., a com­pa­ny focused on advanc­ing human cloning tech­nol­o­gy. His work reached an aston­ish­ing mile­stone when he suc­ceed­ed in repli­cat­ing human minds, allow­ing him to dupli­cate not only human bod­ies but also human con­scious­ness. After achiev­ing this break­through, Maniko­va abrupt­ly dis­solved his com­pa­ny and left Earth for Gault, an off-world colony. This colony, known for its iso­lat­ed and self-sus­tain­ing nature, had attract­ed the wealthy elite look­ing to escape gov­ern­ment tax­a­tion. It was in this seclud­ed envi­ron­ment that Maniko­va began to use his new cloning tech­nol­o­gy for self-repli­ca­tion, which sparked a series of events that would ulti­mate­ly lead to cat­a­stro­phe.

Upon arriv­ing in Gault, Maniko­va began repli­cat­ing him­self at an alarm­ing rate, con­sol­i­dat­ing more and more pow­er as he cre­at­ed an army of iden­ti­cal copies. The peo­ple of Gault soon began notic­ing the sud­den dis­ap­pear­ances of indi­vid­u­als, rais­ing sus­pi­cions about Maniko­va’s actions. As he con­tin­ued to amass pow­er and resources, resis­tance from local clans grew, but Manikova’s clones, equipped with advanced tech­nol­o­gy, crushed any oppo­si­tion with ruth­less effi­cien­cy. His reign of ter­ror was built on the con­trol of both his clones and the soci­ety itself. With each new ver­sion of him­self, he increased his dom­i­nance, lead­ing to vio­lent clash­es between his forces and the locals. These events set the stage for an explo­sive con­fronta­tion that would ulti­mate­ly spi­ral out of con­trol, as Manikova’s unre­lent­ing pur­suit of pow­er drew more ene­mies.

The Union gov­ern­ment, upon learn­ing of the sit­u­a­tion, saw Maniko­va as a grow­ing threat and attempt­ed to inter­vene. Their efforts, how­ev­er, end­ed in dis­as­ter when their mil­i­tary ves­sel, Eden’s Jus­tice, was destroyed by mis­siles launched from Gault. This mil­i­tary fail­ure esca­lat­ed the con­flict, and as ten­sions mount­ed, a neigh­bor­ing colony, Farhome, decid­ed to take mat­ters into their own hands. Farhome launched “The Bul­let,” a dev­as­tat­ing rel­a­tivis­tic pro­jec­tile that struck Gault with such force that it destroyed the entire colony. This cat­a­stroph­ic event marked the end of Manikova’s reign and brought the cur­tain down on his ambi­tious, yet ulti­mate­ly destruc­tive, use of cloning tech­nol­o­gy.

The after­math of Gault’s destruc­tion had far-reach­ing con­se­quences. Maniko­va’s attempt to achieve immor­tal­i­ty through the repli­ca­tion of him­self and oth­ers left a lega­cy of destruc­tion and fear. His actions led to a wide­spread rejec­tion of cloning tech­nol­o­gy, as soci­ety saw the poten­tial dan­gers of manip­u­lat­ing life in such a pro­found way. Manikova’s exper­i­ment, which once seemed to hold the promise of over­com­ing death, instead proved to be a dan­ger­ous and reck­less ven­ture. The fall of Gault served as a pow­er­ful reminder that the pur­suit of immor­tal­i­ty, when divorced from eth­i­cal con­sid­er­a­tions, can lead to cat­a­stroph­ic con­se­quences. Manikova’s lega­cy, marked by his reck­less ambi­tions, solid­i­fied his place in his­to­ry as the embod­i­ment of the dan­gers of unchecked sci­en­tif­ic exper­i­men­ta­tion and the human desire to con­trol life and death.