Cloning Occasionally one of Michael's friends becomes concerned about his point of view and attempts to help him become better adjusted. This time it occurs when an old roommate calls to tell him about the best thing that should happen to him, ever. The very latest in human re-processing. Sincerity of purpose always confuses Michael and so he agrees to attend the sales pitch. It starts out with a revival meeting. People get up and testify about the wonderful things that have happened in their lives since they did the 'training'. The word bothers Michael, just a bit. The testimonials are roundly applauded, with much encouragement from the hostess. The hostess bothers Michael, a lot. His friend hands him a registration form and a $150 discount certificate. He says, "Take the easy way and we can get out of here. Sign on now." Michael has not yet been committed. Instead he is ushered into a small meeting room with three of Them and nine other non-initiates. The leader introduces himself, "Hi, I'm Jeff. I'm a computer consultant." Then he explains how to fill out the registration form. "All you have to do is write your name and phone number at the top, and sign here." Jeff asks each person why they have come. Each has a close friend, sibling, ex-lover, child, or co-worker who thinks the program would do them wonders. They are drawn out and group dynamics are established. Jeff thanks each one after they have shared their testimony, however small. Jeff turns to Michael. Michael says, "I'm here because an old friend called me at midnight on Saturday and whined for an hour and a half until I agreed to attend. I guess my problem is that I can't say no to my friends." Jeff smiles expectantly. "So, I'm just here to study some sub-cults of the American culture." Jeff does not thank Michael for his input. The main event starts with Jeff explaining how the 'training' will benefit them. "So, we're all here to to make breakthroughs. Try to think of something which, if it were different, your life, or the lives of those around you, would be greatly improved." He looks around the room, then glances at one of the other initiates. "Can you think of an example of a breakthrough in your life?" he says to her. She thinks for a moment. "Why yes, Jeff. You see I do telemarketing, and I hate it," she beems sincerely. "The reason I'm doing it is that I work for a managment consulting firm and they are training me to be a consultant. That's exciting for me." She smiles beatifically at the small audience. "I dislike the telemarketing so much that sometimes its hard to get up in the morning and go to work. But I do it." She frowns slightly, Jeff nods encouragingly and smiles back at her. "Just today, though, I realized that all I have to do is pick up the phone, dial a number and talk. It makes it so much easier." "Thats wonderful, Shana," Jeff says. "Thank you." "Thats crap, Shana," Michael thinks. "My haven't they turned you into the perfect little worker bee. Good Christ, if you weren't so cute I would vote to put you out of your misery. As a matter of fact, I would do it myself, as a favor. I should have escaped when that other guard was out of the room for a few minutes. If I just got up, right now, and told Jeffy that he's a Flaming Schlamazel, then I'd have a breakthrough." But Michael is to polite to do this. Soon they are allowed to take a break. Michael rushes from the room, leaves a note for his ex-friend, and storms out of the building. He gets on his motorcycle, rides as fast as possible to his favorite cafe, and starts drinking. "At least I know when I'm not happy," he thinks. Some years earlier, Michael allowed his boss to maneuver him into attending a similar event with a group of co-workers. They got reserved seats in the large auditorium because Norman was legally blind and had to sit in the front. Michael immediately noticed that the 'Reserved' sticker on his seat was the same size as his name tag. He switched them and went for a walk in the lobby. Three times sincere people in suits with black bordered name tags (Michael's had no border, possibly a secret code?) approached him smiling benevolently. Each started to put out his hand and say "Hello, fill-in-the-blank", looked down at the name tag, and wandered away bewildered. Three times Michael congratulated himself on his ingeniuity. Michael now believes that he is incapable of absorbing simple messages. The next morning he is still grouchy about this. He realizes that, not only does he not like those happy smiling people, he resents the implication that he should want to be like them. For some reason another past event comes to mind. He witnessed a big-name-performance-artist's high-budget-piece in communion with a number of other art fans. Most of the audience had apparently never seen anything like this before. Neither had Michael's group. But for different reasons. The audience gave the performance an enthusiastic standing ovation. Michael and friends slipped quickly out the side door and headed for the nearest bar in shame and disgust. When they were somewhat comforted and less twitchy, Michael announced, "Ok, that's it. If that's art, I quit." Cold turkey. He kept his word, more or less, for five years. Now he realizes with a flash of understanding, "I gave up the wrong thing! There will always be Vacuous Art. It was the audience's reaction that got to me. I should have resigned from the human race. All those years wasted trying to act human. Down the swirler." He lets it be known that he has resigned. Most of his acquaintences laugh it off. His therapist is perplexed, "What's he going to come up with next?" he thinks she is thinking. Other friends ask just what this entails. One wants to know if it is now legal to murder him, but waits for further precident before acting. As the first flush of excitment wanes Michael realizes that he isn't quite sure what the resignation means either. "Well I don't have to be polite to the schlimeiels, anymore, just because they belong to my species. That's a big step in the right direction. Maybe I should resign from the animal kingdom as well." Veg points out, "Who would choose this lifestyle if they weren't dysfunctional?" Michael feels he must take this as a supportive comment. "It's like refined sugar and fat," Michael tries to explain Resignination Theory to Brian. "They're evolutionary imperitives that have become harmful. Humans developed a taste for sugars and fats because they were necessary to a balanced diet and very hard to find in nature." Brian seems unimpressed. "So now we have so much of the shit that we can kill ourselves with it. We can't take another 50,000 years to re-evolve our dietary needs." "So you think you're on the cutting edge of human evolution?" Brian laughs. "I'm not human, anymore." "Oh, yeah, I forgot." He takes a bite of his ham sandwich. "And sex. Sex is like sugar and fat. It was necessary, once. Now its available in this refined form all around us." Michael gestures towards two women walking past in miniskirts. "If sex is a huge genetic joke," Brian follows the implication of the gesture, "at least it has a nice punchline." "So the point is to not be subject to the genetic programming." Michael takes a bite of a peach. "I mean we don't have these huge brains just to pick bananas with, you know." "You think the micro-code is out of date?" Brian, being the type of engineer that is forever rooting around in the guts of machines, drops the phrase lightly. "That's the perfect analogy!" Michael throws the peach pit at a squirrel and misses. "The tiny little, built in instructions are wrong. In my case, I think I even have a bug in the microcode. I'm stuck in a loop waiting for an interrupt that isn't enabled." "God, I love cross cultural gobledegook." Brian points at the squirrel, which is trying to bury the peach pit. "Really, I get into a group of humans and feel like there is a invisible membrane between them and me. Maybe its the bars on the cage. Maybe I should stay on my exercise wheel." "Well, you're the one that wanted to work downtown for the multinational corporation types." "Its even more twisted." Michael warms to the topic. "There is a small, but distinct sub-group that isn't interested in procreating anymore. I mean besides gays, who seem to want children anyway." "You mean the women you've meet lately?" "Yeah, them too. But I think some humans are sensitive to different parts of the program. They're picking up on the same type of thing that causes rabbits and rats to go nuts suddenly when they're over populated." Michael makes scattering motions with his hands. "They're trying to reverse the population trend." "It's too bad that all that genetic intelligence will die out in one generation," Brian says. "Lets go get some coffee." XXX (c) 1991 M. I. Smith