Dolly Supermodel -

The paradox of her existence was a heavy burden she never had to carry. She was the most famous sheep in history, yet she was most content in the mundane. She would watch the other sheep, the "normal" ones, with a tilted head, sensing no difference. They smelled of earth and wool; so did she. They bleated at the rain; so did she. And yet, the humans looked at her as if she were a riddle wrapped in fleece.

One autumn, her body began to speak a truth the scientists had feared. The telomeres—the tiny clocks at the ends of her chromosomes—ticked with the rhythm of the donor, not the lamb. Her joints grew stiff with arthritis, a disease of the old, while she was still young. The pristine copy was flawed. The Xerox machine had captured the image, but not erased the age.

Dolly knew none of this. She knew the warmth of a heat lamp, the sweetness of a bottle, and the comforting rhythm of her own heart. She did not know that she was a copy, a Xerox of a ghost. She lived in the present tense, chewing her cud and blinking her long-lashed eyes at the visitors who pressed their faces against the glass.