angelic upstart
Very well known Exeweb poster
- Joined
- Jul 8, 2004
- Messages
- 27,538
A crisp fiver for anyonethat can find out where this came from and tell me....
So I was strolling through a city centre throng the other day when I noticed a girl with a face like a vengeful banshee. Whoa, I thought, don't point those demonic peepers on me, I'm just here to take it easy. That was about all the thought I gave her as she walked by me and I set off in the opposite direction.
Imagine my surprise when, eight hundred metres or so later, the exact same girl walks by me with a face like hell on a bad day. Identical. Different dress.
Wow, I say to myself, now these harpies come in packs. There's probably a coven somewhere.
Now I know, they're probably twins and whatever, but it got me thinking again about cloning. Cloning hasn't been fashionable subject matter for a little while, but I think it's time we take a look at where we're headed, now that the big impending neon-drenched hovercar sci-fi reality we've all seen in films seems closer than ever.
First off, whatever laws we say we're passing, whatever measures the various governments say are in place, cloning humans is happening. If there's evil sci-fi sh*t to be done, and potentially profit to be made, someone will be doing it somewhere, most likely in a disused medical facility in Korea or something. I think we should accept that it's going on, and that's scary enough as is.
The scarier thing is, what happens when we start to like it?
The Cloning market will be driven by consumer trends, just like everything else. Cloning humans will lead to cloning body parts. Crushed your leg? F*ck it, have another. Buy one, get one free. Smoked so much you can't breathe? Here, have a fresh pair of lungs. They're yours, after all. We grew them from your DNA. It's, like, natural. Almost.
It's vanity. Once we can make ourselves new bits out of our old bits, we'll want whatever we can get. Tune-ups for bodies. New supple tits, new mega-gargantuan-gasp-inducing c*cks, new shapely asses, or even, wait for it, completely new bodies. Yeah, we've all seen The Sixth Day, and if we ever get to a stage where we can download our consciousnesses into other vessels, the sky's the limit. Today, you'll say, I fancy being a seventeen-year-old eskimo girl. Tomorrow, an eight-foot Inca warrior. You might want to know what sex is like for an obese old man. You might want to be a kid and go back to school for a week and be the popular bad boy sports star you never were. I don't know what you'll want. You might want to be a pigeon for all I know.
The really frightening thing will be the inevitable day when human beings finally go digital. Someone will invent a way of mapping humans and turning us into infinitely manipulable human biological matter. Think about it: tweak anything and everything. A smaller chin, thicker hair, no more genital warts, absolutely no imperfections. The f*cking nanites will rewrite your DNA profile while-u-wait. And who won't want to be able to pimp their hide? You'll be gorgeous. You'll pay through the nose for a new nose that gets reshaped in seconds. If you don't like it, reset and start again. Like I said, you'll be gorgeous. Everyone who can afford it will be gorgeous. Eventually, like all technology, it'll get so cheap anyone can have it, even if they draw minimum wage.
Ugliness will be abolished almost overnight. A whole new system for rating beauty will have to be invented, because everybody is so f*cking achingly beautiful you want to cry, until pretty soon you become completely desensitised to beauty and elegance and perfection and it becomes fashionable to wear some ugliness again. A stylish mole here, a wandering eye there, just a splash of cellulite, a hint of a double chin, a smidgeon of subtle acne scarring. People will want to stand out from the crowd. We'll revere supermodels with moustaches. Well admire movie stars with visible nose hair and pot bellies.
When the human race goes digital, youll be able to clone anyone you like the look of for your own purposes. Download them off a torrent or something. Like your girlfriend? Clone her. One for f*cking, one for earning. Secretly want to bone her mum, or dad? Clone 'em. Keep them in the shed out back with the soundproofing and the sex toys.
You can have a pack of six blondes for a weekend. Or a rugby team. The f*cking evil scientists, they'll come up with a way to make clones disposable, just like everything else. Those blondes can be used for a weekend and then they'll evaporate after four days. No mess, no fuss. Life is cheap.
So it's the future. You're still you, you think, but you look different. You're the sixtieth or seventieth generation of a model that youve been tweaking every day for years. You spend your days drinking with and f*cking people that may or may not really be real. They might be clones of someone you once knew, or they might be shells that just act human and then evaporate after four days. No-one can tell the difference anymore. And maybe, nobody cares.
You go home. Your family doesn't bear any resemblance to you. Your brother is a sister for the day. Your mother was black, today she's Chinese. You're not entirely sure anyone is who they say they are anymore. But everyone's gorgeous, thats the main thing.
You look in the mirror. Who the hell is that? And whats that on your ass? A tattoo?
Or a barcode?
Anyway. I could be wrong. Maybe cloning will be used for the greater good of mankind, we'll eradicate disease, find ways of feeding the hungry, and put an end to war.
Either way, you see why I was unsettled when I saw the harpie girl on the street. She could be the herald of a terrifying new phase in human history.
In the future, clones worship an animal god. Her name is Dolly. Her effigy is everywhere. Instead of crosses, clones wear the holy test tube around their necks. Dolly was the beginning. She was the first of all of them.
I could be wrong.
So I was strolling through a city centre throng the other day when I noticed a girl with a face like a vengeful banshee. Whoa, I thought, don't point those demonic peepers on me, I'm just here to take it easy. That was about all the thought I gave her as she walked by me and I set off in the opposite direction.
Imagine my surprise when, eight hundred metres or so later, the exact same girl walks by me with a face like hell on a bad day. Identical. Different dress.
Wow, I say to myself, now these harpies come in packs. There's probably a coven somewhere.
Now I know, they're probably twins and whatever, but it got me thinking again about cloning. Cloning hasn't been fashionable subject matter for a little while, but I think it's time we take a look at where we're headed, now that the big impending neon-drenched hovercar sci-fi reality we've all seen in films seems closer than ever.
First off, whatever laws we say we're passing, whatever measures the various governments say are in place, cloning humans is happening. If there's evil sci-fi sh*t to be done, and potentially profit to be made, someone will be doing it somewhere, most likely in a disused medical facility in Korea or something. I think we should accept that it's going on, and that's scary enough as is.
The scarier thing is, what happens when we start to like it?
The Cloning market will be driven by consumer trends, just like everything else. Cloning humans will lead to cloning body parts. Crushed your leg? F*ck it, have another. Buy one, get one free. Smoked so much you can't breathe? Here, have a fresh pair of lungs. They're yours, after all. We grew them from your DNA. It's, like, natural. Almost.
It's vanity. Once we can make ourselves new bits out of our old bits, we'll want whatever we can get. Tune-ups for bodies. New supple tits, new mega-gargantuan-gasp-inducing c*cks, new shapely asses, or even, wait for it, completely new bodies. Yeah, we've all seen The Sixth Day, and if we ever get to a stage where we can download our consciousnesses into other vessels, the sky's the limit. Today, you'll say, I fancy being a seventeen-year-old eskimo girl. Tomorrow, an eight-foot Inca warrior. You might want to know what sex is like for an obese old man. You might want to be a kid and go back to school for a week and be the popular bad boy sports star you never were. I don't know what you'll want. You might want to be a pigeon for all I know.
The really frightening thing will be the inevitable day when human beings finally go digital. Someone will invent a way of mapping humans and turning us into infinitely manipulable human biological matter. Think about it: tweak anything and everything. A smaller chin, thicker hair, no more genital warts, absolutely no imperfections. The f*cking nanites will rewrite your DNA profile while-u-wait. And who won't want to be able to pimp their hide? You'll be gorgeous. You'll pay through the nose for a new nose that gets reshaped in seconds. If you don't like it, reset and start again. Like I said, you'll be gorgeous. Everyone who can afford it will be gorgeous. Eventually, like all technology, it'll get so cheap anyone can have it, even if they draw minimum wage.
Ugliness will be abolished almost overnight. A whole new system for rating beauty will have to be invented, because everybody is so f*cking achingly beautiful you want to cry, until pretty soon you become completely desensitised to beauty and elegance and perfection and it becomes fashionable to wear some ugliness again. A stylish mole here, a wandering eye there, just a splash of cellulite, a hint of a double chin, a smidgeon of subtle acne scarring. People will want to stand out from the crowd. We'll revere supermodels with moustaches. Well admire movie stars with visible nose hair and pot bellies.
When the human race goes digital, youll be able to clone anyone you like the look of for your own purposes. Download them off a torrent or something. Like your girlfriend? Clone her. One for f*cking, one for earning. Secretly want to bone her mum, or dad? Clone 'em. Keep them in the shed out back with the soundproofing and the sex toys.
You can have a pack of six blondes for a weekend. Or a rugby team. The f*cking evil scientists, they'll come up with a way to make clones disposable, just like everything else. Those blondes can be used for a weekend and then they'll evaporate after four days. No mess, no fuss. Life is cheap.
So it's the future. You're still you, you think, but you look different. You're the sixtieth or seventieth generation of a model that youve been tweaking every day for years. You spend your days drinking with and f*cking people that may or may not really be real. They might be clones of someone you once knew, or they might be shells that just act human and then evaporate after four days. No-one can tell the difference anymore. And maybe, nobody cares.
You go home. Your family doesn't bear any resemblance to you. Your brother is a sister for the day. Your mother was black, today she's Chinese. You're not entirely sure anyone is who they say they are anymore. But everyone's gorgeous, thats the main thing.
You look in the mirror. Who the hell is that? And whats that on your ass? A tattoo?
Or a barcode?
Anyway. I could be wrong. Maybe cloning will be used for the greater good of mankind, we'll eradicate disease, find ways of feeding the hungry, and put an end to war.
Either way, you see why I was unsettled when I saw the harpie girl on the street. She could be the herald of a terrifying new phase in human history.
In the future, clones worship an animal god. Her name is Dolly. Her effigy is everywhere. Instead of crosses, clones wear the holy test tube around their necks. Dolly was the beginning. She was the first of all of them.
I could be wrong.
