The Palimpsest — John T. Biggs

Inside the Jack Fork Installation is a high tech civilization maintained by a pair of mad scientist clones. Outside, humanity has degenerated to a stone age culture. The world is wild and dangerous. A thousand years has passed since the apocalypse. It may be another thousand years before humanity recovers. Perhaps they never will.

Clementine is the most important clone of all. Her central nervous system is the only one that can be programmed again and again. She can learn all the skills necessary to take high tech civilization across the galaxy to a new planet the scientists have chosen. But the cost is slavery for her and for everyone who follows the New World Plan.

How will Clem choose to use her special brain? Will she start over with the savage human race outside the installation? Or will she help the scientists build a brave new world that includes every comfort but freedom -- even an immortality of sorts?

Her only advisers are the ghosts of a few old friends who speak only inside her mind. And she suspects they might be her imagination.