Cloneworld - 04 Read Online Free PDF Page B

possibilities.
    He pulled the HondaHarley into the side of the road with a rumble, and sat there, twenty-four pistons thumping and idling, as he gazed with slack jaw and possibly slack brain at the massiveness before him. It reached all the way up to the sky. It stunk like a corpse pit, waves of stench rolling out over Franco as his palms grew sweaty in agitation and his mind started to do strange things, to tread well-known paths of terrible imagination.
    Do nothing, touch nothing, fuck nothing, came Pippa's echoing, long-distant, unbidden words.
    Ahead, Nechudnazzar seemed to breathe , like some huge, decadent, dying beast.
    This was the largest capital city of the gangers.
    This was the core of the cloning civilisation.
    No drinking! No bars! No women! You're there to do a job, and do a job you shall!
    "Bah," said Franco, kicked the bike into second, and roared towards the behemoth that filled his world, and now his imagination. He zipped past a battered titaniumII sign which read:
     
    Welcome to Nechudnazzar
    You'll never, ever leave!
     
    Franco grinned. They were probably right.
     
    "I was simply walking down the street."
    It was 3am. Franco sat on the bar stool and glared blearily at the line of shimmering bottles lining the back of the bar.
    "Are you okay?" asked the barmaid. She had a dumpy basin haircut which had, at first, made Franco laugh. A lot. Until it was pointed out that this was, in fact, a cool ganger look , mimicking the greatest of filmy and TV goddesses, Rebecca Rebecca.
    "S'fine. Drink."
    "What would you like?"
    "S'whiskey."
    "Single? Double?"
    "S'bottle."
    "Are you sure you're fit for a whole bottle?"
    "S'listen here, Rebecca, can I call you Rebecca, oh yes you said I could call you Rebecca, well I is Franco Haggis and I'm here on this mission and oh dearie me I can't be talking about all that. Still, nice to meet you, and be ashured I can take my spill. My s'drink. You know it. What I mean, I mean."
    "Sure, sugar." Rebecca passed him a bottle of whiskey, and Franco poured himself a pint. He squinted at the label. Scrotum's Old Todge Clogger - Finest Single Malt.
    "Good stuff," said Franco, without irony, as it left a burning trail from his tongue to his arsehole. "Never had it so good."
    "Good, sugar. Glad you like it."
    Another barmaid appeared. She looked exactly like the first one, and for a few moments Franco thought it was Scrotum's Old Todge Clogger - Finest Single Malt playing games with his clogged old todge. But it wasn't. She was a ganger. They all were. That's why it was called Cloneworld. It was full of clones. Hot shit.
    "So tell me," he drooled, leaning in his own spit. "Why are you called gangers? Eh?"
    "Because we have the ability to ganger ," said Rebecca, clone of Rebecca Rebecca, and sister to her fellow barmaid, also a clone, a ganger, and also called Rebecca, named after Rebecca Rebecca and all the other Rebeccas. "We can clone ourselves, copy ourselves, or shift ourselves. We can only do it so many times during a cycle, but we can change to resemble other people, or, using blank body shells, make another version of our person. Our reality. We can shift to look like people we find attractive, or alluring, or just downright fashionable, for example. Or we can make multiple gangers."
    Franco could see this might get complicated, and his mind twisted and curled like a twisted neutron core. "Er," he said.
    "It comes from doppelgänger... we are the double walkers, my ever-so-slightly drunk friend; we can change to look like any other living person in existence with only the slightest genetic sample. It's part of our heritage, as finely ingrained in the cultural psyche as sausages, horseradish, leather shorts, large glasses of beer and slapping our thighs when we dance. We are proud of our ability to mimic, to copy, to clone. It's an ability unique to our human pro-species."
    Franco's lips twitched. "Did you say sausages and horseradish?"
    "Ah, so we have a cultural awakening!"
    "I'm