Clone Crazy

"Arlogeist GmbH: saving the world from certain destruction at the hands of Arlogeist GmbH since 2001."Early last week an announcement came from doctor Severino Antinori, an Italian fertility expert, that the world's first human clone was due to be born healthy in January. While this announcement met with a mixture of shock, horror, and disbelief among various groups of scientists, religious types, and those afraid of the world being dominated by an army of clones, it came as little surprise to Lowtax and myself. You see, as the founding partners of Arlogeist GmbH we have been in the business of human cloning for much longer than most of our competitors, Mr. Antinori included. Back in our formative years of August through October of 2001, R-Lo and I decided to take a leap in the right direction, the direction of science! I am only now revealing this information to prevent others from making the mistakes that we did, and of course to take full credit for developing the first human clone ever.

It started when I met with Rich in his summer home in sunny Sand City, Utah. It was a warm late-summer afternoon and we were both sitting on the porch enjoying some iced lemonade and snicker doodles brought to us by his curiously silent black manservant Hector. Dressed as always in a white suit with one of those snazzy black string ties like Colonel Sanders has, Rich turned to me and said "boy, what do you think of them 'human clones' what everyone is always talkin' about?" I replied with enthusiasm, as at the time my ignorance to the horrors of human cloning had led me to believe that clones were usually mindless servants or possibly hilarious doubles that could be used for things like test-taking, work attendance jackanapes, or even some sort of bizarre homoerotic sexual encounter. I agreed with him that human cloning would be a great direction for our "Shady Ops" division of Arlogeist and Rich dispatched me to our research laboratory off the coast of New Jersey to assemble the team and create the first human clone. He would have gone himself, but he's more of an idea man, preferring to sip lemonade and consume copious quantities of snicker doodles while his needs are attended by Hector.

Assembling a team of researchers was much easier than I had anticipated. I put some ads in some science journals and within a week had a hundred resumes submitted from amoral scientists around the world. Our head researcher was Dr. Heinrich Pretsch, the brilliant micro-biologist from Schwarzfaust, Germany. I felt it was important that we selected a lead researcher with the experience, intelligence, and most importantly, the completely clinical and almost Machiavellian approach to human cloning experiments. The operation was codenamed "Juicy Pete" or "Saftiger Peter" as Dr. Pretsch insisted on calling it in all of his project memorandums. I tried to convince him to speak English but he just scowled at me, his one dead eye staring blankly at me with a sinister white on white, while his other glared with rage through the tinted lens of his monocle. Normally after such confrontations he would have to force his left arm down to his side as when he grew angry the temperamental prosthetic was prone to striking co-workers or crushing steel girders.

Once the team had been assembled for "Juicy Pete", we had to set our goals and timeline. Dr. Pretsch was as difficult to work with then as he proved to be later in the project, while I argued simply creating and gestating a human clone embryo, Pretsch had increasingly bizarre, and some would say insane, ideas. Unfortunately, we were already over budget by ten percent and the project had not even started, so I had no choice but to trust Pretsch's judgment. Among his ideas that I vetoed during that opening series of planning meetings were the following:

Dr. Pretsch shows off his handsome smile. A clone fetus that would already be pregnant with another clone fetus and would give birth inside the womb. One of the other scientists even suggested that we should make the mother fetus lactate and nurse the baby fetus until both were born.

A human clone engineered to be immune to the harmful side-effects of smoking and have a genetic predisposition towards wearing rugged cowboy attire. It was Pretsch's hope that we could recoup the entire budget of the project by selling the clones to various cigarette manufacturers as spokes-clones.

A modified clone fetus that could fold into a 1x1x1 inch cube for ease of storage.

A fetus that was combined with DNA from an ant to make it pupate rather than gestate. Pretsch was dissuaded from this line of thinking when he realized how expensive it would be to create giant caterpillars and milk them to feed the growing infants.

A fetus that, when angered, would emit a shrill noise for several seconds and then detonate. Pretsch insisted that these creatures would somehow aid disaster workers in recovering corpses trapped in debris, although he could not adequately explain in what way.

A fetus with awakened psychic potential and the ability to make the attractive female temp in secretarial at the lab want to perform oral sex constantly. Denied as self serving, the red-head was way hotter.

A human clone consisting of half-human DNA and half DNA salvaged from the wreck of the Hindenburg. It was Pretsch's theory that when the infant developed the ability to sit upright pockets of hydrogen gas within its body would move and allow it to become lighter than air. This was tested on rats but they all floated up into the light fixtures and then caught fire.

The recombinant DNA of Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen, synthesized into a single embryo. Rejected after preliminary testing revealed that the clones might have a tendency to murder the entire cast of "Full House". Research saved in the event of a "Full House" reunion show.

A human combined with DNA taken from a Nintendo Powerglove. The resulting clone would, theoretically, be unbeatable at any video game, unfortunately there was a high risk that the clone would be completely inept and nothing more than a fancy glove-shaped fetus/controller.

Human DNA crossed with a pickle. Briefly entertained but finally decided against when I noted that Dr. Pretsch's sack lunches smelled really strange.

Few documents survived from the "Juicy Pete" cloning project. Here is a sample photo of asexual in vitro fertilized units from the pre-clone series. Click the image for the full document.I eventually convinced Dr. Pretsch and the rest of the team to give up on their flights and fancy and pursue a simple and straightforward human clone program. I signed off on twenty-six test embryos just as the host mothers were arriving from sub-Saharan Africa for their initial medical evaluations. I felt confident that the program was off to the right start as I boarded the Arlogeist corporate helicopter to attend to other pressing corporate issues. It would be almost a year before I returned to the offshore oil rig where the laboratories were based.

The call came at just after two in the morning and I hurried to the Arlogeist chopper. Apparently things had been going poorly at the lab for weeks and no one had bothered to tell me. When I arrived at the oil platform fires were burning in several of the laboratories and it was obvious that something had escaped into the Atlantic Ocean. Pretsch was catatonic, his mechanical arm torn free of its linkages and his face splashed with a mixture of blood and hydraulic fluids. A few of the other scientists were dead, little more than mangled heaps of flesh and bone. I found the chief of security huddled in a closet and after a few slaps and a splash of cold water he began to recount the events of the past few weeks to me.

Apparently Dr. Pretsch had gone ahead with his own plans despite the instruction left by myself and the Arlogeist board of directors. He had performed hideous experiments on the DNA of the clones, experiments that caused all but two of them to be stillborn. The two that survived gestation and emerged into this world were hideous beasts not meant to walk this earth. I managed to recover some of the documents on them from Dr. Pretsche's files, and of course residents of Philadelphia are fully aware of one of them. In the spirit of freedom of information I have summarized and disclosed profiles on each of the malevolent monstrosities. To further disseminate this information I am reproducing both files here.

"Baby Jessica" (DOB 05-09-2002)
"Baby Jessica" immediately after birth.Sex: Female
Birth Weight: 14lbs, 2 ounces
Genetic Composition: Baby Jessica is the product of manually manipulating cell reproduction and structure to create a hyper-intelligent infant with the aggressive tendencies of a predatory cat and more than a few of its physical capabilities. Jessica possessed a brain more than 2.5 times the size of an adult human's at birth. By the time she was forcibly terminated some 36 days later, her brain was nearly the size of a walk-in closet and she was capable of unhinging her lower jaw to swallow an average sized-adult whole. After only one day she could speak English and German, read and write fluently, and walk upright (with difficulty, her neck muscles had not yet fully developed). By ten days she was capable of reading the minds of her handlers at a distance of several yards, she could propel objects across the room by force of will, and she could cause small fires to spontaneously generate. By this point she had also developed powerful paralytic venom stored in sacks just above the gum line. Intelligence testing was inconclusive but her IQ was estimated to be nearly 500. By the age of twenty-days she had modified the lab computers to quadruple their efficiency.
What Went Wrong: Baby Jessica was Dr. Pretsch's attempt at forcing human evolution. She was hideous to behold but she was also faster, stronger, and smarter than any person on the station. Disaster struck when she began to explore the vast information repository of the Internet. She vacillated over her sexuality, falling into hideous pits of depravity before she even reached the one-month mark. One minute she would be obsessed with furry macro artist Doug Winger, the next she would be begging for one of the nurses to break her legs and put them in Jarvis Mark 9 Halo cast units. Baby Jessica finally died tragically at barely over a month old when her increasingly complex and degenerate sexual fetishes reached critical mass. She developed a fetish for infantilism coupled with auto-erotic asphyxiation. A rare fetish, even on the Internet, that involves dressing up like a baby and simultaneously masturbating, choking yourself, and shaking your head violently. Jessica's weak neck just could not hold up to the stress and she died from a crushed larynx and a broken spine. Jessica was not the only victim of her perversion, during the course of her downward spiral she ate at least three workers at the laboratory and killed or inured several others.

"Baby Tyler" (DOB 05-28-2002)

"Baby Tyler" is seen here "takin' it to the streets" in Philly.Sex: Male
Birth Weight: 92lbs, 6 ounces
Genetic Composition: I have to say that Dr. Pretsch really outdid himself with "little" Tyler. He dumped together the DNA from over a hundred humans along with generous portions of amoeba genetic code. The result was, well, about the most terrifying thing you could imagine. Even at birth Tyler was more than ninety pounds that oozed and chewed and digested his way out of his mother. His plastic flesh stretched and slid along the floor on a carpet of secreted slime, pseudopodia formed and dissolved back into the main mass, faces drifted screaming silently across his surface. The two workers who were present for the "delivery" immediately went insane. One collapsed and was killed by Tyler, his tissues fueling the rampant growth of the infant, while the other was dragged to safety only to commit suicide in the infirmary the next day.
What Went Wrong: Things went wrong with Tyler from the start. Pretsch eliminated all cellular growth restriction so that Tyler was literally destined to grow endlessly by constantly devouring any organic matter, from wood to people, that came within reach of his fleshy tendrils. Eventually he grew so large that he was able to batter down the walls of his cell and rampage through the station before being driven into the Atlantic by fire from the security teams. I had hoped him dead when I arrived at the station, perhaps drowned in salt water or killed by a helpful pod of dolphins, but instead he resurfaced in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. His was ten-stories tall by that time, his body swollen from the bountiful harvest of the sea. In the end it took executive action in the form of a ten-megaton nuclear warhead to put a stop to this abominations path of destruction. Those who witnessed him on live television will never be able to burn the memories from their mind.

All in all I feel that the "Juicy Pete" program was an overwhelming success despite the incredible loss of life and billions in litigation expenses. I wish Dr. Atinori all the best but I think he should know we totally beat his ass to the punch on the whole cloning thing. That's right bitch, we cloned so fast and furious that our clones be cloning shit now. Top that Dr. Go-Slow! You done got OWNED.

Gaming By Dummies

Gaming guru Psychosis has just finished enduring the Squaresoft game "Ehrgeiz" much to his complete lack of pleasure. Take heart, you do not in fact have to suffer through the game to appreciate his review, in fact we highly recommend against playing "Ehrgeiz" unless you want to force yourself into suicide.

As proven by the flames for the Final Fantasy X TruthMedia review, Squaresoft has managed to amass a legion of devoted fanboys over the years. There is an alarmingly high number of teenagers out there who would attempt to bludgeon you to death with a cinder block if you were to make a statement that they feel unfairly represents Sephiroth’s true feelings. So in the same way Allah tests the faith of his followers by letting them all get killed by the Jews, Squaresoft has released Ehrgeiz (pronounced “air-guys”) to screw all their fans over and see what effect it has on their unconditional faith and love. So far only one fanboy has complained, and he was quickly clubbed into submission by another fanboy with a 3-foot Bahamut statue, so Ehrgeiz could be considered definitive proof that idiotic die-hard Squaresoft devotees are, in fact, idiotic.

Take a look at Mr. Psychosis's's's's review so that you never again feel tempted to pick this game up out of even the deepest corner of the bargain bin!

– Zack "Geist Editor" Parsons (@sexyfacts4u)