The Price of Data

A Story of Perfection

So, I’m telling you this story because, for the first time in what feels like forever, I was finally able to turn on my laptop and record this message.

The government won. They did what they set out to do, and I’ve lost everything. But the truth is, I’ve got nothing left to lose.

My social media accounts were deleted. I was completely disconnected from everyone—my family, my friends. My girlfriend left me. And now, all that’s left is this recording. It’s the only way I can get this out.

And worse of all, I don’t know if I’ll never get to see my dog again.

That is because I was at the center of one of the biggest technological advancements of the last 3 years. Now, I’m sure you’re assuming this has something to do with Artificial Intelligence, or the election scandal. But no, those were the stories we were being fed to distract us from the real one.

And what’s that story? It’s about cloning.

Yes, cloning—the process of taking the DNA from a living being and using it to create an identical copy, down to the smallest detail.

This is how it all started…

A few years ago, I entered a kitesurfing contest in the British Virgin Islands. Richard Branson, the billionaire founder of Virgin, is an avid kitesurfer and owns a private island there called Necker Island. That year, Richard was the host of the contest. So not only did I get to compete, but my whole family had the surreal experience of meeting him there. I even have a picture of my parents having drinks with him.

And as any billionaire does, he rubs elbows with all kinds of powerful and influential people. So while on Necker Island, I met a group of super cool and smart Japanese kids. They weren’t just passionate about kitesurfing—they were also obsessed with cloning. Talk about a unique group, right? It was an odd combination and I found them fascinating. So after that event we always stayed in touch through Facebook, and despite the distance, I considered them like brothers.

Fast forward to today—I met and got engaged to Jackie, the love of my life.

If there’s one thing you should know about her, it’s that she’s a dog lover. Not long after, my Japanese friends, seeing my new life with Jackie, reached out with an incredible offer to adopt a new kind of dog they had just designed.

And that’s how I ended up with Data. Yes, Data, that was the name she was given, like the nerdy kid from The Goonies who was always tinkering with gadgets. She was the product of cutting-edge cloning technology, something the world wasn’t ready to fully understand. And honestly, neither was I.

I don’t think my Japanese friends had any grand ambitions to change the world with their creation. They were just nerdy guys, deeply curious about science. But like the artisans you hear about in stereotypical stories from Japan, they devoted their entire lives to perfecting their craft.

And in the process, they ended up creating something truly extraordinary.

To get her, I had to sign an NDA, one of those Non-Disclosure Agreements you sign when something's so exclusive, it hasn’t even hit the market. And, I was given specific instructions as to what stories I had to make up to explain where she came from.

The mystery excited me, and I was on board with the whole plan. But after everything that’s happened, I’ve decided to hell with that. And that’s why I’m telling this story.

We got Data when she was still a puppy, just a few weeks old but was waking already. She learned commands quickly, and didn’t make accidents after the first couple of days. But there’s more to her than that.

Data wasn’t just any dog, she was the Captain America of dogs, perfectly engineered. No shedding, no diseases, great with kids. She also had this strange ability to communicate through her facial expressions.

In case you didn’t know, modern dogs evolved to express themselves in ways wolves didn’t. They can move their brows, creating what we call the ‘puppy-dog face.’ But Data could do something even more: She could squint. And when she did, I felt it was her way of telling me that something was up…or that I was doing something stupid and being an idiot.

I couldn’t know at the time - I was just getting to know her. I just thought that She was a total character!

Now, while I had her no one could ever take pictures of her. That was because encoded in the colors of her fur was a QR code that linked to the phone’s Operating System, preventing the camera from snapping a picture. It was some high-tech privacy feature I had never seen before which always confused everyone, but I knew that it was part of her secret design.

The only thing that was bittersweet about Data was her lifespan. Since she was a product of cloning, and for reasons I couldn’t understand, I was told that her life expectancy was around 6 years. This detail made sense when I read the story about Dolly, the sheep from Scotland, who in 1996 was the first mammal that was successfully cloned. 6 years later she was euthanized because she developed complications so there still seem to be some limitations to this technology.

But here’s where Data blew my mind.

She didn’t just connect with me—she connected with the world around her in ways I never expected. I once noticed her walking around my 7-year-old son in almost perfect circles. At first, I didn’t know what it meant, but that night, my son started sniffling and sneezing. I gave him vitamin C and put him to bed early. The next day, he was fine. Somehow, Data knew he was getting sick before I did.

Then there was this other time when Data did something completely out of character. Normally, she’s a calm dog, not one to drag me around, but one day—she did just that. She pulled me by the leash straight to my old neighbor’s front door. When my neighbor answered, I could tell she was upset. We talked for a bit. Data cuddled and comforted her. After we left, she seemed lighter. It turned out she’d been going through a tough time with her husband being in and out of the hospital.

It was moments like that that made me realize that there was something that seemed to mystically connect Data to the people around her.

When we walked together, Data always seemed content, yet there was this uncanny feeling that she was one step ahead of me, constantly processing things before I even had the chance. Her empathy for the world around us was so instinctive—so immediate—that it often made me wonder just how much of her intelligence I’d yet to uncover. There was always something about her, some unspoken depth, that left me wondering what surprises she still had in store.

It wasn’t long after that Data disappeared.

That night, my neighbor had innocently posted a heart-warming comment to her friends on Instagram about my sweet-loving dog which wore a “strange, barcode-looking code on her fur”.

Twenty-four hours later, she was gone. Disappeared. Just like that.

The food bowls, dog toys and her leash were all gone. I had no trace of her in my life. I reached for my phone to call my fiance but was all deleted - factory reset!

I didn’t know what’s happening. In the kitchen, I found a heartbroken note from my fiance that she had decided to leave me forever. I opened up my laptop and for some reason I couldn’t access my Gmail. Then, the computer mysteriously shut down by itself.

At that moment, I got this eerie feeling that my life was probably under the government’s radar now.

I never imagined something as small as a dog could change everything. But here we are. I don’t know if I’ll ever see Data again.

It’s strange, though. After everything that happened, I still can’t shake the feeling that this story isn’t over.

My life has changed so drastically for the better ever since that beautiful little dog came into my life that a part of me refuses to believe that Data is truly gone.

I couldn’t tell you why but I keep thinking about the way she’d look at me, always as if she had a secret—a surprise waiting to unfold.

Did she know all along something was happening? Was she trying to tell me that we were being watched? What would she do, if it had been me who went missing? I tried to put myself in “Data’s shoes”.

She was the smartest one in the room, always one step ahead. Maybe… just maybe, she left me a clue—something I missed.

I pause, feeling a sudden unease. Something catches my eye. Scattered faintly behind the fireplace, just enough to catch my attention—a strange scratch. I step closer to the fireplace, my heart skipping a beat.

Then, a feeling of hope and courage grew inside me.

Are those… paw marks?