Make a Baby

NOTE: I was reflecting on several conversations where leaders were trying to figure out how to develop programs that would create more leaders. This scene popped into my head.

INT. LABORATORY - NIGHT

Lightening claps outside as rain drops pelt the window. A scientist stands over the lifeless body of his stiched-up clone, defeated.

SCIENTIST
(to himself)
I just need a better process.

WIFE
Knock knock?

She steps in, dinner tray in hand. She's seen this scene before. 

WIFE
No luck?

SCIENTIST
I just need a better process.

WIFE
What's the problem?

SCIENTIST
I don't know. Everything's in place. I've checked. I've torn it apart, put it back together. Replaced everything. Started over. Still...nothing.

She puts a mug in his hand.

He sips it.

SCIENTIST
How am I ever going to replace me?

Wife thinks about this a moment. Finally, she resolves.

WIFE
I have an idea.

SCIENTIST
Do you.

WIFE
We could make a baby.

What is she talking about?

WIFE
You know, you and me. We could leave the lab, make dinner, make out, make a mistake, make a baby.

SCIENTIST
I don’t understand. What would I do with a baby?

  WIFE
We would do parent things: feed it, nurture it, change its diapers. Give it eighteen years and then, voila, you’d have your replacement.

SCIENTIST
That wouldn’t be a replacement. That’d be some weird amalgamation of you and me and whatever it wanted to be. 

WIFE
What would be so wrong with that?

SCIENTIST
It wouldn't be me. I'm trying to recreate me. And I can do it; I just need the right process.

WIFE
There’s already a pretty good process.

SCIENTIST
You can’t just spam life into the universe. It’s too messy.

WIFE
And a little fun?

SCIENTIST
What's got you all---

WIFE
No, I mean "fun" like, you know, a lifetime adventure.

SCIENTIST
It’s fun for half an hour tops, then it’s nine months of you dying followed by four-to-eight hours of you wishing you were dead. Then two years of being scared to death that you’re killing it followed by sixteen years of wishing you could. Why would I go through all of that when I have a perfectly good clone right here.

She looks at him incredulously, picks up a lifeless arm, and drops it.

He takes the point.

SCIENTIST
I just need a better process.