If I were writing an article not a story, I'd say that in present day (our world, not the story's) we don't have a way of keeping comatose patients healthy that works as well as being awake and mobile. People who can't move get bedsores, and I think other ailments, and sometimes they die of them. I suppose we could have some new suspended-animation tech.

Here's the problem: I could put in stuff from the paragraph I just wrote into an info dump . . . but it's not something the POV characters would be thinking about, since they're familiar with their world already. "As you know, Alice, we haven't developed any tech for keeping comatose bodies healthy..." So what would you do?

Develop the story until you yourself are pleased with it.

At that point, forget the critiques and call it finished.

If it makes no sense, maybe you failed, but it's your story, the way you meant it to be.

My philosophy of being critiqued is this: Having other people critique your story is valid and useful to the extent that it helps you perfect the story you wanted to tell. Once you feel comfortable with the story, put it in an envelope with some stamps on it.

IS there an acceptable way to do an info dump? I've certainly seen plenty of info dumps in published novels. If a person keeps the explanation down to a minimum - a couple of paragraphs, perhaps (at a time) - can you get away with it?

Regarding your question about clones learning to speak when they are raised in an institutional setting that is non-nurturing... I'm not sure they would learn language in the same way we do. I'm not an expert on this topic, but my friend is. She's an early childhood educator and has done massive research on brain development. I know something about it from having studied a bit about the Montessori method of education when I had young kids.

What it boils down to is that stimulation of the brain is critical to brain development. Language is a particular skill that requires deliberate stimulation. For example, children raised in spanish-speaking countries learn to pronounce the spanish "double r" sound without a problem. There are a host of adults in english speaking countries that are never able to emulate that particular sound. It's not that people raised in english speaking countries are physically deficient, it's that the brain's ability to replicate particular sounds isn't flexible once the brain has matured. Research shows that teenagers are losing brain cells at an alarming rate - this is a case of "if you don't use it, you lose it" as the brain becomes selective about which functions are required and which are not. (I have a research article somewhere about this topic.)

We all know small children - under age 8 - that are bilingual. Small children learn languages FAR better than adults because their brains are wired for learning language at this age.

Now, getting back to your institutionalized clones - I tend to think of the children raised in orphanages in Romania. They don't develop language skills or bonding skills like normalized people.

HOWEVER - the brain is a resilient thing. I should think that if it is not stimulated in the normal pathways of communication it would develop down a different pathway. Like a plant that grows sideways seeking light, the brain would find other ways to communicate with people.

I could envision a room full of children who want to communicate with each OTHER, doing so through invented language, hand signals, even psychic communication. In short, they would learn to talk but not in a language the adults around them would recognize. I believe there have been cases of this sort of thing happening between twins who develop invented languages.

http://www.news.wisc.edu/8291.html

http://www.drfederici.com/print_friendly_instituational_autism.htm

http://pages.towson.edu/sglennen/OrphanageCareandLanguage.htm

At any rate, I read your story too and didn't have a problem with it. Of course, being so short, I looked at it more as a character sketch and didn't worry about particulars that could possibly be explained in a larger work.

If your characters are having to deal with problems relating to conscious clones, then one of the characters should say something about wishing that someone would develop a way to keep them comatose without bedsores and poor organ development. That way you have acknowledged the question that has come into several readers' minds as they read, and you have indicated that it is not something that can be solved in your story world.

The same goes for the question of the clone learning language. If it is something that makes a problem for any of the characters, have one of the characters remark on it in some way. Maybe the clone herself notices that most of the other clones don't seem to have gained language, so she must be special or a clone of a particularly articulate person. <shrug>

I would think that those who work with the clones might try to teach them how to talk, unless they are smart enough to realize that talking clones are more like "real people" and so shouldn't be harvested for organs. In fact, they may try hard to keep clones from developing language for that reason.

Anyway, the point of my post is that when critiquers ask questions like these, they ask them because they are things that the writer needs to find some way of addressing.

An info-dump is only one way. A better way is to figure out how to get the characters to address them.

On the subject of children deprived of mental stimulation during their developmental period (to keep them from learning language) the physical health problems can be severe, which is pretty counterproductive if you're using them for transpants. If you manage to keep them physically active (and thus healthy) without teaching them any language, then their behavioral problems can be nightmarish.

So if you want to harvest fully adult-sized organs from clones and don't have any kind of technology to accelerate growth while keeping them unconscious or something like that, then raising them pretty normally is probably your best bet.

That said, taking the organs from the prenatal fetus and rapidly growing them to near maturity in a vat is probably the most plausible solution, (if we put ethics aside entirely). The most plausible solution overall (taking ethics into account) is to grow the organ directly from a mass of adult stem cells without ever creating a conceptus. Scientists are already doing plenty of gross stuff with growing human tissue cultures for various purposes (I think the experiments with brain tissue are the grossest, but that's just me).

Since you have said that you are unsatisfied with not having some of these things explained in the story, here are some ideas:

Consciousness - when the Alice and the nurse are talking, the question comes up about why Alice tortures herself by coming to see her clone. Alice thinks of the clone as a part of herself much the way a child is. If you wanted you could have the nurse say something a little more. Perhaps a comparison that raising clones is like raising cattle (perhaps an analogy to 4-H kids who raise calves like pets and then have to sell them for food). The nurse would be explaining to the reader why the clones are conscious but in terms of the story she would be talking to Alice about the emotional impact of visiting the clone.

Language - You touch on this briefly when Honey talks about going to play tennis (which sounds fun even though she doesn't know what it means). As I recall, this is the only place you raise the issue of language. I liked that bit in the story, but once I got to the point where I knew the truth about Honey, it did get the qusetions going. If the consciousness is explained, language could almost be assumed, especially in Honey's case since "Mother" comes to talk with her. If you really wanted, perhaps the nurse could comment on Honey's language skills being more advanced than the other clones because of Alice's visits. That it is disconcerting to the staff and that it just makes it harder on everyone if you treat a clone like a real person -- talk to it like it's a real person.

1. A lot of times when readers ask questions like this they seem to be looking for something wrong...especially in scifi, it's almost a macho "I want to prove I know more about science than you do" sort of thing. It is, of course, important to have good science in scifi and to utilize the best knowledge of today, but keep in mind that possibility. I'm afraid I did not read the story in question so I wouldn't know for sure, but I have often run into critiques (both for my stories and others) that came across very much like the person wanted to have a problem with it.

2. One of the things that bugged me a bit about the flash challenge when I participated (it is a great thing and I think everyone who works hard to make it work are great) is that the critiquers read the other critiques before writing their own. So what might happen is that one person legitimately had those problems or else did what I suggested above and then other people read it and started wondering the same thing. When I get critiques from my critique group (where we have a rule not to read the other responses first) I never get such consistent feedback as I did when I participated in the flash challenge.

I say this because there are two rules for listening to critique:
1. When it resonates with you.
2. When many people say the same thing.

But that second one needs a modifier...many people need to say the same thing INDEPENDENTLY.

My preferred method is to work not-too important stuff in as part of something else. So I might have a bit of a scene like this:

"...and this will be your work station. You're in charge of the thirty clones on either side of the corridor. They're awake, so they can exercise themselves, but keep an eye on them and make sure they stay healthy. We don't want damaged parts."

The new tech nodded and peered curiously in at Alice.

"Hello," she said. He stumbled backwards.

"My God, it talks!"

"Huh? Oh, sure, some of them have picked up a few words." The older tech shot Alice a profoundly disinterested look before turning away. "One of the guys that worked here was a little crazy, used to talk to the meat all the time. Now, over here...."

"I wasn't expecting them to talk," said the new tech, too quietly for the other man to hear. He looked back over his shoulder before he went, his eyes troubled.

This is, obviously, only an example and probably does not fit your story, but it serves two important purposes: to answer some of the technical questions before they occur to the reader and to introduce the reader to the setting. Ideally one tech or the other would also be a reoccuring character - certainly Alice ought to be. The more purposes you pack in, the less it's an infodump and the more it's a real part of the story.

Dialogue is my strong point and so my first choice for stuff like this. You can also use internal reflection (A bell rang; Alice sighed. Time for exercise again. The techs were obsessed with keeping them in shape - sometimes she thought it was the only reason they kept them concious at all....) or simple description (Down the second flight of stairs was the exercise yard where the clones kept their valuable bodies in peak condition.). The point is to make it serve multiple purposes, to make it part of the story, not an insert. If you can take it out and not feel that the story's been reduced, then it didn't belong in the first place.