[Great question! Not one he wants to answer. He grits his teeth unconsciously.]

The shitheels running Academy City, dumbass. [That's coming out and he's immediately regretting it, reaching up to rub the bridge of his nose.] The experiment that was going to use the cloning technology, the Radio Noise Project, fell through for some reason. I don't know, I never asked what it was about and they never would've told me if I did. Human cloning is banned by international laws, so....

[So that's technology that never should have existed in the first place. To say there's a shady side to Academy City is putting it lightly.]

Anyways, those fucking scientists found a new use for it and made them. But - ... [He pauses, working out this next part.] ... I gotta take a step back. There are a lot of different ways the researchers in the city track esper development and strength according to the Power Curriculum Program, and it's all summarized into one shitty category, the levels. Every esper gets assigned one. It's possible to move up through the ranks, but it isn't very common.