NOW - 14.07.2015 - Endless Death Show

The story of the clones ended in 2164.
It started boringly and finished unnoticed.
The last clone reservations in Canada didn’t even need guards.
It was difficult for mere mortals to get there, for the reservations were also the territory of the ‘Indians’. But if somebody was still interested, the cost was inexpensive and there wasn’t much to see.
As was well known, the clones could speak any language but their words were dry and sparce.
When they spoke they looked at the nipples of their interlocutor, left eye on the left one, right eye on the right one.
They never asked any questions.
They would end a conversation abruptly and the stories about their ability to foresee or heal were just bait for tourists.

But in just ten years the remaining 150-200 thousand clones were bought by the Swiss, ostensibly to end the experiment.

Canada and the ‘Indians’ were happy.

The last notorious case involving clones began in Geneva, in its swamp of boredom and eco-paranoia.

The first performance of Shakespeare’s “Titus Andronicus” took its course as usual, with dinner and lethargic applause at the end. All quite ordinary until the moment when a gaunt and frantic clerk stepped on stage and announced to the “most honourable audience” that tonight 43 people had died on stage. In response to the laughter from the stalls he raised a curtain and pointed to a pile of bodies, a concise snapshot - “Clones”.

“Titus Andronicus”
It does indeed have many killings
And impeccably played and perfectly real, the death of a clone-actor attracted spectators hungry - now just as in ancient times - for blood.
But the terms got more complex, and a particular privilege became not just to watch throughout and clap at the end
But to also attend the funerals.
The clones weren’t buried or cremated. They were dissolved in a solution of complex composition bearing the glorious name “Sfumato” - the haze of Florence, raising a mountain in the hearts of those who never stoop.
And this elite audience, bidding farewell to the body of a clone melting in the solution, lived the show to its real end and took away, one would hope, some honour, courage and disdain for revenge.

Such theatres were banned, hidden, closed, then reappeared.
Because romantic love, passion, shown faithfully and frankly, always wins in front of cardboard knives and plastic clubs.

For the Endless Death Show, the weapons were brought from museums and sharpened by the masters of the fifth generation.

But all this has passed.

Not much has been written about it. People (men, mostly) didn’t want to speak, think or write about clones.

A single convenient argument was always used - imperfection of their souls.

Women were never included in the polemics, for a sin with a clone wasn’t actually a sin and after the explosion of clone-dating, a husband just became a talking zucchini…

Some things remain unclear: their unwillingness to tell jokes, dislike of geometry, prostration in front of any animal, crying at the sight of a river, endless catarrh.

But most likeable, what moved idiots and children, was when fifteen or more clones placed their arms on each other’s shoulders and danced in a ring for a short while before peacefully falling asleep, their skin colour changing to silver.

To look at their sleeping faces is forbidden, for he who does will see them always in his dreams till the end of his (their) days.

 

 

Text: Anton Adasinsky
English text editor: David Kemp
Photo: Elena Yarovaya