I suddenly come to think of a phone call I received many years ago. I was visiting a friend in the west coast of Norway. She worked with cows. I was afraid of the cows. When the cows saw me, they jumped up and down as they sensed my unease. I wasn't used to cows. I sat at my friend's house, skimming the pages of Nietzsche's On the genealogy of morality (damn me for that!). The phone rang. A man greeted me in broken swedish. He had a weather-beaten voice. He must have been around 60 years old. Or more.

- My name is -----. I am a geneticist, a ---- at the university of Turku.
- eh.... (WTF? Geneticists don't give me a ring every day.)
- You have a very peculiar structure of chromosomes.... (I knew that)
He initiated a lecture about my special genetical set up and then some business:
- ...And we would need a blood sample from you....For research purposes. Do we have your permission?
-eh....I suppose....it's ok....
- And you .... function well? You are healthy?
- I suppose. I guess. [I was having the worst time of my life at that point, but what would I have said. I had no intention of talking about my state of health to a god damn geneticist with a sand-papery voice.]
- And of course we know that you were born with ---- [and then he meticiously listed all my physical defects; he knew stuff about stuff, that man.] And then he said:
- Well, you know, with a chromosome set-up like that you're lucky not to have had a ... [he was fumbling around for words] hm.... more problematic development. Some retardation. [Said in a neutral tone of voice, he was talking about scientific measures of probability]
Dumbfounded, I didn't know what to say. I was spooked out. But a promise is a promise. I went to have my blood sampled. The day was grey, TYKS was very Riget-ish with its drab, winding corridors and the nurse who handled the needle was rude, which made me feel all the more stupid for having made a bloody sacrifice for Science.

I wonder what that sample was used for. I received no further information about their research project. Maybe I have a monstruous clone of myself prowling the basement of some lab over at TYKS. Watch out, someday it will escape and it will kick your asses.