I published in data-driven fiction on Medium a piece on the future of tattooing which includes a Rosella Tolfree story.

In the short story entitled, "Rosella Gets Her First Tattoo, and It’s Medical" is set when Rosella is 19 years of age and living in a group house with other online college students. 

You can find the piece here.

And BTW... I’m aware of some who follow certain Christian beliefs about tattoos. I’m fine with that. In no way am I advocating people to rush out and get tattoos. That said, Rosella’s world is a dark dystopian future under the ecological disaster of global warming. So sh*t happens. Sorry I had to say this... but a few got triggered by the image I used for the article. Also I have no tattoos myself.
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 #tattooing  #scifi #shortstory #amreading #amreadingscifi

There are some stories already out there that provide glimpses into Rosella Tolfree’s past.

One is on the Reedsy Medium site entitled “Rosella Tolfree’s Mother’s Day.” This story contains many elements of her past and hints at stories mentioned in the JSD #5.

In the last line of the story Rosella toasts her dad. Something not mentioned in this story is that Rosella is drinking a glass of an Argentinean Malbec. With this story, she’s in her early 40s and Rosella has become partial to Malbecs. She prefers the taste of the Argentinean wines sourced from the high mountains.

The second short story is “USRM-ISB Installment 0.2- The Drive to Anaheim.” Here she’s 29 and reminiscing about her childhood on the long drive to Anaheim with her partner. This takes place before the first installment in the JSD #5.

Her Early Life

Born 19 years before the Presidency of Rick Garrett and 20 years before the formation of the Ranger Marshals. She grew up as a child during the late Economic Isolationist Recovery Period, when America was recovering from the twin disasters of the Great Melt and the New Madrid Volcanic Traps. America had turned inward, like many nations. And focused on rebuilding itself. A period of omnibus legislation to deal with issues and reconstruct society materially. It’s also a time of disillusionment with the government and society, as people did things to take care of themselves first and didn’t care about others. This despite the technological wonders about them, such a fusion power.

Childhood

Rosella lived with her father, Mordell Tolfree, in the remodeled landscape of San Francisco, California. As a child, she could see the remains of parts of old skyscrapers sticking out of the water. She would see people working on them to recover whatever scrap they could, but by her time they had picked clean many, leaving the salt water to corrode the remains. Many of the old buildings became roosting sites for My Pet Dragons. A genetically altered lizard turned into a model flying mini dragon. One of humanity’s genetic mistakes that got away from us. It occupied the same ecological niche of birds and resulted in the extinction of many wild bird species. She would watch these small flying lizards trying to catch fish.

Like all children of her time, she attended online schooling. She did very well in school and had an innate aptitude to apply herself. She would do her schoolwork with precision and helped around the house with chores. But with her own room, it was always a mess. Even today, as an adult, she leaves a mess in her government car while keeping other areas in her life nice and neat.

One odd thing for Rosella was she never got sick as a child. Despite the availability of free medical services, her father never used them for her. Except once when he took her to the dentist at the urging of a teacher. The dentist said she had the most perfect teeth and gums she had ever seen in a child.

Unlike the other kids in the neighborhood who got vaccines for childhood illnesses, she didn’t, but she never got sick either. No colds, no allergies, and scratches healed up with no issues. Oddly, she could eat foods that most people would consider past its prime. This turned into contests with her online classmates in middle school, where they would dare each other to eat stuff left out too long. Rosella always won and earned the nickname Rosella Iron Belly.

Teen Years

Being a cloned female, Rosella’s genes and anatomy were altered. Genetically puberty was delayed until closer to her mid-teens. This was true for all cloned females. A cloned female would have growth spurts and other changes starting around 14 to 15 years of age that lasted until the age of 19. Going through all “Tanner Stages” in this period. Which, for normally conceived humans, would typically end at 15 years of age. As a result, cloned females socially enjoyed a longer childhood. This is not true for cloned males who matured at the normal rates because of the lack of altered anatomy and genes.

During this time of changes, Rosella became extremely irritable around her father. The smallest thing would set her off, causing her to retreat to her room, slamming the door. It sounds like typical teenage behavior, but for her father, his little girl was now insane and uncontrollable. In her late high school years, she became online friends with fellow students her father disapproved of because of the type of video games they played and their general anti-social nature. Despite all this behavior, her grades never suffered, and she was still pulling a straight 4.0.

It all reminded her father of his drug dealing days, and the behavior of a bad junky. When he got a chance, he would check her room for drugs in all the common hiding places he knew. He even installed dark programs on her computer to monitor her activities. He found nothing, and as quickly as this started, the behavior ended. It was gone when she turned 18 and was going off to college.

What’s it like being a Female Clone

The android that created Rosella made her without a uterus. This is an unresolved “bug” with the A-4 birthing androids. She, like all female clones, still has her ovaries.

The “bug” was discovered after the A-4 birthing androids were introduced and began producing female children. Without a uterus and the ovaries still present, this caused ovarian failure. Which led to a collapse of puberty factors. As a result, these initial children ended up being child sized women and lacked adult female features.

Once discovered, they sent a genetic patch out that still allowed female puberty patterns to occur despite the lack of a uterus and presence of ovarian collapse. Albeit they delayed the puberty patterns in age.

This situation causes a host of long-term medical problems from general irritability to profound fatigue, to loss of sexual desire and other issues with sexuality and associated pleasure, insomnia, anxiety, suicidal thoughts, nervousness, to even more minor issues like muscles, joint or bone pains and headaches.

For Rosella, when she was in her late teen years, she was very irritable and battled with insomnia. The problem of insomnia continues today and resulted in her developing sexsomnia while in college. After her father’s death, she had trouble socializing and once she was transferred to the Washington, D.C. office, she lost interest in interacting with people outside traditional work. These losses of socialization and interaction caused her to be more alone and isolated from other people.

Conspiracy theorists on the Social Media Net speculate that they did this puberty delay because of involvement by the Church of the Ember Coalition. They point to a group of wealthy women, who were members of the Church, that were publicly advocating genetically delaying female puberty to reduce teen pregnancy.
Links for More About Cloning in Rosella’s World
The Work of the Family
From Artificial Wombs to Human Clones