Chapter 18

Welcome Wastelanders to the Post-Apocalyptic Joe in a Cinematic Wasteland Audiobook Podcast! My name is Joe Gillis, and I’m the writer and narrator of this Serial Fiction Series. We’re in Chapter 18 this week, but there are more chapters headed your way, so be sure to subscribe.

Also, if you stay until the very end, you’ll get a peek behind the page with a quick tidbit about this chapter.

The story so far…

All hope seemed lost for Joe after the end of the world happened above ground and he found himself underground and alone in his Titan One missile complex. He began to have a mental breakdown as the realization that his memory would most likely never comeback, nor would he ever see his friends again. Then things started to look up when his tennis ball “came to life” and Bally helped him find joy again. However, it was short lived after he disappeared in a hole that turned out to be a secret government facility. Better yet, Joe had just discovered a cloning machine.

Let’s find out what happened next…

Chapter 18

Normally I might skim something like a manual, but I couldn’t believe what I was reading, and found myself re-reading things just to make sure I read it correctly. I had to say, it was the best manual I had ever read in my life. First, it was an honest-to-goodness cloning machine manual, and then they dropped that the U.F.O. in Roswell was real—and it was extraterrestrial with both aliens and a ship!

“Holy cow, I think I just discovered the real Area 51,” I blurted out with excitement. “Weather balloon, my butt.”

I kept reading the manual, and it turned out that the government had reverse engineered the alien technology. But it wasn’t just the technology the government was after. During the autopsies, the government found that the alien creatures had regenerative abilities, and the manual said they were also trying to tap into that with this technology. I couldn't believe what I was reading: basically, the whole technological revolution was due to alien tech slowly being introduced to the public.

I wonder if Moore’s Law was the government’s formula for gradually releasing alien tech into our world?

According to the date on the bottom of the manual, the Genesis Machine had been around since 1985. That meant that the same year the Nintendo was introduced to America, we were already cloning human beings. As Marty McFly said in Back to the Future that year, “Whoa, this is heavy.”

It didn’t take me long to decide to go ahead and test the machine. I had no idea if the thing worked, or what the effects would be on any ‘Original,’ but I knew I was going to need someone to talk to after losing Bally. I turned to Section II in the Technical Manual for Operation and Maintenance of the Genesis Machine and found Operating Procedures, then got to work.

The manual said the Original was to be scanned in the same chamber where the clone would grow. It referred to the clone-growing procedure as the Genesis Process, which sounded like how a 3D printer worked, but with cells and biomaterials instead of filament.

Huh, we were already printing organs and bones, so were humans catching up to aliens, or was the government beginning to push some of this tech out into the private sector? And if they were, why didn’t the government share the tech with me?

I was knee-deep into tech like this with the MECHA system. I had truly believed our tech was pushing the world into a realm that we had never seen before—or so I thought.

This Genesis Machine made our stuff seem like I was back to programming on my old TRS-80 Micro Computer System that RadioShack initially released in 1977—which is funny, because the control panel attached at the upper end of the chamber didn’t appear to be that much more high tech than the TRS-80.

I can’t believe this thing can recreate me with all my memories.

I flipped the power switch on, and followed the manual, typing out the commands required for scanning me.

“The scanning will commence 30 seconds after the lid is closed,” I read off the screen.

All I needed to do was hop in the chamber, and it appeared as though the machine would do the rest. I lifted up the chamber door and laid down on the bed inside. I wasn’t sure if this thing was built for a one-person operation, but then I spotted the handle inside the door. That certainly pointed to the person who built this thing thinking of everything. I pulled down the door and waited for it to begin.

The manual said that a laser would scan me from head to toe. It recommended keeping your eyes closed for this part, so the only way I could tell it was going was by the sounds of it moving back and forth. It reminded me of the sound a paper scanner made. It also said that there would be an audible beep at the end of the scan. Yes, it actually said audible beep, even though a beep to me would be by all definition audible. I guess it would be like saying ATM machine, which is really saying automated teller machine machine—you don’t need the machine after ATM, yet a lot of us would say it that way.

After I heard the beep and it seemed like the scan was done, I opened the chamber door and climbed out. I went back to the control panel and used the manual to find out what I needed to do next. I turned the page to discover a whole new section: Programming Knowledge and Skills into a Clone’s Mind. It said I could implant additional skills and knowledge into the clone’s mind by creating new neural pathways, which was pretty darn cool since there were no schools, libraries, or the Internet to learn from anymore. The programming was done during the Genesis Process of the clone’s brain along with all the other memories. It was like the machine could slip in new memories you never had. There was a huge section of options available after the explainer—pretty much every science, technical, historical, and of course, military option were there for the taking—one of which immediately caught my eye: kung fu.

“Man, what’s sad is the first thing I would say with all the knowledge of kung fu downloaded in my mind is,” I then did my impersonation of Keanu Reeves, “Whoa, I know kung fu.”

The problem with giving my clone a serious upgrade was that he could easily overpower me and take the facility. It seemed like that had the makings of every bad sci-fi movie. I also didn’t even know how good the thing was going to work. Even if I didn’t give him all these skills, this still might be the start of a cloning story gone wrong, turned into a horror movie that I’d be the star of. Throw in the memory problems I’d been having, I’d be taking a chance either way. I decided to bypass adding any knowledge and skills to the clone and moved on to the next step.

“Scan for physical and memory errors now,” I wasn’t sure if it meant with the new ones that would be incorporated in with the old ones, or the original memories, or just the new ones. I could have just read the manual, but I never really like doing that, so I just typed “Yes” and pressed Enter. A progress bar popped up, showing the percentage of scan that was complete. I figured it would be as slow as running a scan on a hard drive, but it was moving way faster than any hard drive scan I’d ever done—and I had some screaming fast computers. Heck, all this tech was way beyond anything that I even knew was out there—and it was already over 30 years old. Moore’s Law my butt.

The Genesis Machine finished scanning and reported that there were several errors found. It asked if I would like to fix the errors. Since the manual had talked about integrating the regenerative capabilities of the aliens into the machine, I figured this might be a good thing and typed “Yes” again.

After running through another progress bar, it asked if I would like to commence the Genesis Process.

“Here goes nothing,” and I typed “Yes” and hit Enter.

Lights flashed as smoke filled up inside the cloning chamber. I was really interested in the whole Genesis Process, but the smoke made it to where I couldn’t really make out much of what was going on. Best I could tell was there was a robotic arm spraying layers of what must have been bio-inks and stem cells into the shape of a human being. There was some sort of laser dancing around inside. It was probably like the UV lasers used in human organ 3D printing to activate the materials, fusing the cells and bio-ink together, building the new version of me layer by layer.

As much fun as it was trying to figure out what was going on inside of the fog-filled chamber, the manual estimated the process would take around 180 minutes, and I decided my time might be better spent exploring to see what else I might come across.

I headed down the hall until I ran into a room with a small circular window in the upper half of the door. Peeking through the window, I could see this was my type of room…

Heck yeah, another TV!

It got even better as I pulled open the door.

Is that a VCR?

After I powered it on, I hit the Eject button, while mentally crossing my fingers.

Oh, please have a tape in it… Please have a tape in it…

The mechanical whirring and clicking of the VCR were a good sign.

Then the best thing ever happened… it began to eject something, revealing a cassette with a worn white label.

I nearly cried as I went to pull it out.

Then I had to hold back the tears as I saw that the VCR had other ideas. The black plastic tape was being yanked out of the cassette, having gotten caught up in the play head or something.

“Freakin’ A, man!” I screamed out as I tossed the cassette onto the ground.

Everything in the universe seemed to be fighting against me getting to ever watch a movie again.  

After I regained my senses, I realized there must be more tapes somewhere in there, so I got up and began my search.

There was nothing on the tables next to the couch or chairs, nor anywhere else in the room.

It was disappointing, but I had found alien technology, so it wasn’t as horrible as it would have been without that.

Time to move on, I guess.

Luckily I did because right then I made an even bigger discovery in the room next door. As I opened the door, a bright golden light billowed out of it, covering me with a radiant glow that would only emit from a room full of golden treasures.

I shielded my eyes so I could see past the immense beam of light shining onto me, “Ohhhh, my...”

That concludes Chapter 18 of Post-Apocalyptic Joe in a Cinematic Wasteland. Written by Joe Gillis and read by Joe Gillis.

Things may finally be going Joe’s way. What do you think his next big discovery will be? Tune in next week to find out.

We’re finally at the true origin of my idea that became Post-Apocalyptic Joe in a Cinematic Wasteland.  It was originally going to be a film called Clone Alone about a nobody stuck alone during the COVID-19 lockdown that decides to create a clone of himself so he can have some friends during lockdown.

It began with him being let go after being told that he’s a non-essential employee during the COVID-19 lockdown. Nobody wants to hang out with him due to the worries of COVID, so ends up with his own Wilson. The TV he’s watching becomes bad versions of shows featuring him. That’s when he realizes he needs someone real to talk to and comes up with the plan to clone himself. He watches some videos online and builds what he needs to make a clone (or he orders an “At home cloning kit”). The clone isn’t everything he was hoping for and he quickly realizes he made a huge mistake after the clone realizes that there can be only one of them. And a battle begins to try and kill each other.

Obviously, a lot has changed since then. The nobody became a somebody named Joe. COVID-19 became a nuclear apocalypse. And the DIY cloning idea became The Genesis Machine.

It evolved into another idea before it became Post-Apocalyptic Joe in a Cinematic Wasteland, but that story will have to wait until later when we reach that point in our journey.

And that brings us to the end of another chapter.

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Thanks for joining me on this crazy journey! See you all on the flip side!

Post-Apocalyptic Joe in a Cinematic Wasteland copyright 2024, Joe Gillis, All rights reserved. This is a Jowagi Production and is distributed by Slacker Entertainment.