Chapter 20

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 20 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…

After everything in his life going wrong for so long, things seemed to be headed in a positive direct. He discovered an amazing secret government facility attached to his Titan One missile complex. He cloned himself, finally having another human around to interact with. And then there was the motherload—a massive room full of movies. But the universe wasn’t don’t letting him down. It appears as though something went terribly wrong with the new clone.

Let’s find out what happened next…

Chapter 20: Bryan - Hallway

“So where are we headed?” Joe asked

“I thought we’d go play mad scientist ourselves and go create another Joe.”

“It does sound fun after watching Superman.”

Once we got to the Genesis Machine, Joe punched in everything needed to get it going. He opened the lid and climbed in the chamber, stopping on the edge of the bed before pulling down the lid.

“I’m going to use the Genesis Machine to scan my body and map the neural pathways of my brain to pass my memories on to the new clone.”

“I remember that part, I just don’t know what happens after that.”

“It starts automatically, so you don’t need to do anything but wait,” he reminded me.

Even though I remembered that, too, I just went along with it. “You know, I can totally handle that,” and I lent him a hand closing the lid.

A moment later, the scanning began. It emitted green laser beams that danced around in a straight line, gradually moving up and down his body, much like the paper scanners I had seen most my life.

After the “audible beep,” Joe lifted up the lid.

“It’s pretty genius having the memory mapped in the cloning machine. It felt like I woke up right after you were done scanning. Nothing really jarring about it at all.” I helped Joe up. “So why aren’t we cloning me since my brain is somewhat repaired?”

He stood up. “You know how a copy from the negative of a film print is the best copy you’re going to get?”

“Yeah.”

“The answer print was made using either the cut negative or interpositive copies of the film. Then an internegative was used to make the release prints, so each film print we ever saw was a few generations away from the original. This was great to keep from damaging the original negative, but the image would degrade a little each time as they made a copy of a copy of a copy and so on before they reached the final release print that we would see in the theater.” He continued as he made his way over to the computer running the Genesis Machine. “It was a few generations from the camera negative. You’re like a show print that was struck directly off the negative. You’re better than the release print because you’re a few generations closer to the camera negative.”

“Dang straight, I’m a show print.”

“I’m worried that parts of us might degrade if we made a clone of a clone. Those small changes could result in massive personality changes—and not in a good way.” He then pulled up a new screen.

“Like the butterfly effect?”

“Exactly. And since there’s no worry of damaging the original negative, AKA me, during the scanning process, it doesn’t make sense to risk any dangerous outcomes that could happen from a degradation that might be in the copies of the copies of me.”

“Got it.” That made a lot of sense to me.

“Because of you, we now know that my memory problems can be mostly fixed when my mind is being built in a new clone. What’s really cool is this,” he pointed down to a bunch of different items listed on the screen. “Since the memory is being built from the ground up, we have the ability to add additional skills and knowledge before we begin the Genesis Process. All we have to do is select any of these presets, and whatever skill or knowledge base we pick is then programmed directly into the clone’s brain as it is formed.”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. “So let me get this straight, we’re able to give us skills we didn’t know before? Without going to school or spending years to learn it?”

“Yep, here’s a list of skills that can be programmed into the clone’s mind,” he handed me the Technical Manual for Operation and Maintenance of the Genesis Machine, opened to the Programming Knowledge and Skills into a Clone’s Mind section that listed all the available options.

I started to search through the list, and one thing in particular caught my attention. “Did you know that I could have known how to do kung fu?”

“Yes,” he said while he was typing in something.

“Why didn’t you load me up with some kung fu fighting skills?” I began punching through the air while still holding the manual. “I could have been a master of martial arts, man!”

“Yeah, and I could imagine the first thing you would say with all that knowledge,” he jumped into his best Keanu Reeves impersonation, “Whoa, I know kung fu.”

“I cannot confirm nor deny that I would have said that,” I laughed. “But I’m pretty sure my Keanu would have been better.”

Joe just rolled his eyes at me.

“Fine! That’s exactly why I wanted that skill… that and all those awesome kung fu movies we watched as a kid.”

“But really it was more for that line, right?”

“Umm… Yeah, maybe,” I shrugged.

“I don’t think there is any maybe about it.”

“Come on, you know it would have been cool.”

“Yes, it would have,” he followed up with the real reason why he didn’t want me to learn kung fu, “but I’ll be honest, I was afraid you might not turn out to be a good guy and you might try to take over the place. Plus, I wasn’t sure how my memory problems would affect you, so I didn’t load you up with anything else. And did I mention kung fu? You know there is no way either of us could take on some dude who knows kung fu?”

“Yeah, that’s true,” I replied with disappointment. “That makes a lot of sense.”

Joe knew that I needed a little pick-me-up. “How about we compromise and give this new Joe some extra non-kung fu or fighting skills?”

“Yeah, like some brainier skills!” That perked me right up, and I started flipping through the pages trying to find some good skills to add. “Genetic engineer is one of the options; that seems like a good choice with the whole cloning thing and all.”

“Plugging it in now,” he said as he typed it in to select it.

“Ah, here’s another… trauma surgeon,” I suggested.

“That could come in handy.”

“Emergency medical specialist,” I rattled off.

Joe checked that one off, too. “You know, that’s a good idea.”

“Plant geneticist seems important since we were never good at keeping plants alive,” I stressed, “and now we have a massive garden we rely on.”

“Most definitely,” he agreed.

“Oh, my… yesss!” My excitement was bursting through. “Please say yes to this one… laser scientist.”

“Why not?” he shrugged. “How else are we going to have sharks with laser beams?”

There just seemed to be so many good choices as I searched for different skills. “We should just load him up with the sciences.”

Joe kept typing in our choices. “You know, that makes total sense. I didn’t find any books, and I haven’t found any other way for us to figure out some of these things without a lot of trial and error.”

I smiled proudly just thinking about it. “He’ll be like our encyclopedia.”

“Not a bad idea,” he said as he typed in even more of the skills on the computer.

I was getting more ecstatic just thinking about it. “Dude, we’re gonna be like hecka smart.”

“Like we aren’t already,” Joe cracked, and we both laughed.

“Touché, my friend. Touché.”

Joe typed something else and then turned to me. “I think we’re ready now.”

“Sweet, let’s do this!” I was bursting with anticipation to meet the new us.

He pressed the button to start the process. “Well, we have some time, so do you want to go watch a movie?”

Like he even needed to ask. “You had me at movie.”

Joe 2.0 - Science Lab

I woke up and felt more alive than ever. As my eyes opened, I could see me staring down at me.

Wait, is that me? I must be disoriented or something.

The morning fog lifted, and then it hit me.

Am I a clone? I do not feel like one. But what else could be going on? Logically speaking, I am a clone.

Both of them were staring at the top of my head.

“How are you feeling? Does your head hurt?” Joe queried.

“No, I feel amazing. Better than I have ever felt in my whole life. Why do you ask?”

Bryan went from both eyebrows raised, to just his left, before he slowly turned his head to Joe. “Dude.”

I could see that there was definitely something that concerned them because Joe’s brow was furrowed and his mouth was hanging open.

“Ummm, yeah, there might have been a slight problem.”

That concludes Chapter 20 of Post-Apocalyptic Joe in a Cinematic Wasteland. Written by Joe Gillis and read by Joe Gillis.

Why are Joe and Bryan so concerned with the new Joe? Tune in next time to find out.

Implanting skills directly into your noggin isn’t anything new in sci-fi. Do I think it’s feasible? Yes, and that’s why threw it in my story. The brain operates much like a computer—it’s basically a bunch of on/off switches and it’s the combination of switches turned on/off and the pathway that gives you the info or tells the body what to do.

I think the hard part would be actually mapping the memory or skill. Heck, if you could do that, then remapping it in the brain wouldn’t seem that much harder. Of course, I’m sure that there are scientists out there that would totally disagree, but there was a time where washing hands didn’t make sense to the science community, so maybe it’s just about keeping an open mind.

Who knows where the future will take us? I do believe as we integrate tech into the body, that we’ll get closer to figuring out how to do something like this. And maybe this same tech could be used to help cure things like Alzheimer’s or dementia?

With that, we hit the end of another chapter.

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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.