 Lukas Scott put the "wild" back into the West with his first novel Hot On The Trail (Idol, 2000). His short story "There's More To Love (Than Boy Fucks Girl)" was published in Mind Caviar's first anniversary issue and "Moon" appeared in the anthology Buttmen (West Beach Books, 2001). He has been a University lecturer, nun, theatre director, bookseller, television and film extra, counselor and safer-sex worker. Email
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Clone Zone It was perfect. Not legal, but perfect. The perfect union between man and self. Kai Stone smiled smugly in the mirror. He felt the smooth jawline, freshly shaved, oiled and moisturised. The tan he’d picked up from the sunbed was still strong, lending an olive tinge to his flawless skin. Well, flawless bar the birthmark on his right shoulder, but that added character. He smiled, that perfect smiled created by his orthodontist at a cost of god knows how much per tooth. He ran his tongue over their perfect whiteness. Oh yes, he’d put his father’s estate to good use. Thousands of Euro-credits spent on improving himself. Laser surgery had enabled him to live free of glasses and lenses, his steel grey eyes now unfettered by anything other than his own fine features. The tiny scars from the neck tuck he’d bought were healing well, too. His ears, once the bane of his life at school, were now comfortably tucked close to his scalp. The nose, too, had now lost the cracks and puggishness that had tormented him for sol ong. Yes, Kai was a self-made man in so many ways. When his father had died, shot down by mercenaries hired by one of the many gangland overlords that he had ticked off, Kai had inherited it all. It hadn’t helped him then at the age of six , but now at twenty-one Kai was seeing the benefits of it all. His mentors had widely invested, making him a multi-millionaire already and well on the way to becoming a billionaire. It was just as well - everything seemed so expensive these days, and Kai most certainly had expensive tastes. Cars and apartments bored him easily, having gone through three of each in the last year. Hell, it was only money after all. And it’s not like he’d known his father. If he had, Kai had often told his therapist during those expensive self-reflective sessions, he doubted if he would have much liked him. Murderer, blackmailer, womaniser, drug trafficker. A role model for his son, to be sure. Yet there was a quality that Kai had admired about his father. His confidence in himself, the knowledge he could do anything (and get away with it, Kai thought wryly.) Oh, he’d paid in the end. But what a way to go. Naked ambition. Despite his father’s failings, Kai felt sure his father loved him - almost as much as he had hated him in return. Money didn’t buy everything. Of course it didn’t. But it had bought Kai most things, and attracted so many others. The men, the beautiful men who visited and passed, all of them hungry for a taste of the green. How funny that mere cash still pleased some people. Kai always preferred to use his plastic- it was so much easier for the large amounts he liked to spend. Why count out the fuckers? If there was love, Kai was yet to find it. Elusive, perhaps, unimaginable, certainly. It wasn’t on his shopping list at the moment. If he found it lying in the street, he’d pocket it. But pity the poor fool spending a lifetime searching for it, and those satisfied with its duty strapped substitutes. The sex had been good, but never good enough. He was always left wanting. Always left with a bullet of desire waiting to shoot. No matter how hard they tried, how extreme or pitiful their will to please him, Kai needed more. The drugs he took before, during and after lifted him higher, but never to the ceiling. Never to the top. Today would be different. Today the perfect patnering. He’d wondered about it. The technology was there, had been for sometime. Everyone had denied it, of course. Ethics. But it was inevitable. Like ideas, these things leak, develop, multiply. Seeds are planted and grow, even in the dark, even in the cold. They have a life of their own. It starts to be whispered about in darkened corridors at conferences. Allies find themselves out, smell their own kind in a jungle of ambition. But ideas aren’t enough, not to the truly ambitious. They need to be tested. They need to be funded. He wasn’t a science buff, Kyle. He’d been as horrified as anyone by mice with human ears, as fascinated as anyone at the idea of sheep cell from sheep cell. He’d heard the calls to prevent human cloning. Never understood why someone didn’t ask ‘why not?’ There seemed so many reasons. Fathers lost in war and accident, the helpless trap of sterility, the elimination of mind crushing and body wasting disease. The zealots, the fundamentalists, the small minded, had been able to stop all that. Worldwide legislation, global condemnation of the very idea, the very thought of, cloning human beings. And then the rumours. Leaking, surfacing, spreading. Fire in scrubland. The secret laboratories, the half dozen renegades from science. At first, single cells, test-tube heresies. Then further rumours of unborn foetuses. Birth of unconceived son-brothers to secret donors. He’d put feelers out. Wanted to know how far it had gone .How far they’d be willing to go. His wealth bought the ears of the renegade scientists. They’d revealed that it went further. Not just birthed clones, but grown adults, manufactured to order. Clone replicas, a new generation of the same generation. Copies. Illegal replicas that could never be acknowledged. Many had had to be destroyed, collateral damage of the war for pure science. A few pictures had appeared, in print and online, but nothing conclusive. Too shocking, too horrendous for most people to comprehend. Too close to the truth for governments to acknowledge. Only military expertise and facilities had been able to develop such audacious leaps in technology. Kai’s request had had to be bargained for. His special request had cost him far more than he originally thought. Their response had been sceptical, cautious, their fears genuine. They’d been distressed, but also wet with excitement, stiff with anticipation. But their ambition made them weak in refusal, merely greedy in haggling. Money had piled on money, resulting in a barely affordable conclusion. But for Kai it would be worth it. For Kai there could be no price tag high enough. Whatever Kai wanted, Kai got. Whatever. He bent and washed his face in the cold water, watching his reflection in the ripples. He grabbed a clean towel from the rail to his side, dabbing himself dry. Kai picked a silk shirt from the rack, buttoning up but leaving the top two undone. He looked back at the mirror. He liked his physique - well toned, with an exclusive trainer who didn’t kiss his but too much. Of course, he literally had kissed his butt one evening, after Kai had suggested they get it on. It hadn’t been repeated, at Kai’s demand. Kai had sculpted his body the way the rest of him had been built up and perfected. It was in good shape, and he never stopped telling himself so. The blue silk went well with his cream chinos, pleat perfect. He left off the socks, preferring his feet naked against the rich carpet shag. He combed his hair, smiling at the handsome young man looking back at him. The bell rang. A long rousing buzz. Kai turned off the video monitor and answered it. He didn’t want to ruin the surprise. ‘Happy birthday,’ the speakerphone enthused. A thrill went through him. The moment had arrived. ‘Come up,’ he commanded. He buzzed the visitor in, allowing a privileged entrance to his exclusive loft apartment. Kai splashed a shot of whiskey onto a couple of rocks of ice and downed it. The bitter malt stung his mouth, and he felt it burn its way down his throat. Fire in his belly. He stooped when he heard the rap on the door. It was as familiar as his exclusive cologne. Kai strode over to the door, took a breath and licked the last trace of whisky from his lips. He raised his head, snapped back the bolts on the door and pulled it open. He was an exact clone. He was Kai. Even down to the blue silk shirt and chinos, as specified. It was as if he was back in front of the mirror, looking out at himself. No refection, this though. No same movement, no opposite translation. The clone was an exact replica. The DNA extraction, the cell collection, had been easy enough. The waiting had been hard. Even the maturation process, the speeding up of cell growth, took time. It had taken a full year to hatch a clone the same age as Kai. A year of waiting for the masterplan to be completed. ‘You’re perfect,’ Kai couldn’t stop himself from complimenting his guest. ‘Fucking perfect.’ He reached his hand out and touched the clone’s face. His fingers traced round the smiling mouth, feeling skin as warm and soft as his own. ‘I come from good stock,’ came the reply. ‘Mind if I come in?’ ‘Sure.’ Kai stepped aside and let in his guest. ‘Welcome home.’ He came in, looked around. ‘Nice place. You got taste.’ ‘Yeah. Haven’t I just?!’ Kai was still entranced by the miracle in front of him. He’d been warned he might freak out at the sight if an exact clone, a perfect match. That somehow his own identity might feel threatened and break. Instead, he felt the thrill of rebirth, of seeing himself reproduced immaculately. ‘You fancy a drink?’ ‘Yeah sure.’ ‘What’ll it be?’ ‘You got a whisky?’ his clone asked. ‘You bet. See, we even got the same tastes.’ ‘Yeah. I hope so.’ Kai poured the whiskey to his own liking, and handed over the glass. It was down in one, in exactly the same manner as Kai had done earlier. No training given or necessary. Kai stood admiring hisperfection. He dared himself forward, and recognised even his own smell on his relative. He found himself being looked back at, eyes unnervingly similar to his own. The curious smile repeated in front of him. ‘Fuck,’ he said. ‘This is incredible.’ ‘Yeah. .Fucking hot. You getting me going already, Kai. ’ The sound of his clone speaking his own name gave Kai an instant hardon. ‘Let’s see you. Let’s see fucking all of you, Kai.’ He used the name back, touching his clone’s front, unbuttoning him. Hands wandering downwards, feeling the real flesh underneath. In an instant, they were kissing. Kai’s mouth tasted the whiskey on his clone’s mouth, his tongue touching his partners, the breath sucked out of him. It should have been slow, considered, every moment savoured for its perverse novelty. But they couldn’t hold back, the excitement and thrill driving them into passion. They fell, semi-naked onto the sofa. Kai kissed along his lover’s shoulder, shuddering as he came across the same birthmark, a personal tattoo that they shared. He ran his tongue along the chest, following the belly downwards. A tongue traced a similar pattern down his one flesh, exploring known yet unfamiliar terrain. Without speaking, they reared up towards each other, again kissing passionately. Lying on the floor, they sank into a scissor position, heads burying into clothed grins, tracing the line of each others hardening cocks with their mouths. Kai couldn’t believe the way his body was coursing with energy, pumped with an excitement unknown until now. Kai felt his own zipper being pulled on, and deftly opened the front of his companion’s trousers. The hard dick inside was the same length, the same girth as his own. Only one thing was different between them. ‘Fuck. You’re uncut.’ ‘As nature intended,’ his lover replied, pulling his head away from Kai’s crotch. ‘I never thought about that…’ Kai chuckled. ‘Of course you’d be uncircumcised.’ ‘You want it snipped? I can get it snipped.’ ‘No…no,’ said Kai, entranced at the sight of his own dick but with the foreskin. ‘It’s fan-fucking-tastic.’ His tongue roamed over the tip, slipping under the skin. ‘Fucking feels it when you do that,’ his clone relied. ‘Fan-fucking-tastic.’ Kai’s own erection was swallowed up, as the two men sixty-nined. They followed the same movements, strokes, tender caresses as each other. They moved in unison, a writhing fleshy mass. Almost telepathic, the two Kais were able to anticipate each other’s movements, responding to each a way impossible with other lovers. For the first time, Kai escaped into the act of sex, allowing himself to flow freely, untrammelled by issues of power or control. He felt at ease, an absolute equal with his new lover. They went from room to room, exploring the flat as much as they explored each other. In the kitchen, on the butcher’s block table, Kai felt the thrill of his first orgasm with his cloned partner. It was sudden, unexpected, and mutual. Hot fluid issued from them, mixing with sweat and the spittle of desire. They’d gasped aloud, then silenced each other in a kiss so powerful Kai felt winded. Afterwards, they lay panting, hearts beating in eerie unison. Kai felt his flesh cooling at the same rate as the clone’s, imagined their skin shed, their flesh melting. He was unsure who had initiated their resumption of intimacy. It sort of happened, tongues and mouths connecting once more. When he felt his partner slipping inside him, the thrill of his first fuck, Kai felt ready to explode. They found that rare sensuous rhythm of lovers at one, gasping aloud in ecstasy. They switched, Kai riding the hard butt and penetrating as deep as he was able. He pulled out as they climaxed again, his hot streams of come mingling with his opposite’s, a river of juice falling between them as they lay together. They hit the shower, washing each other down with desire. The jets of water brought them both back to life, as if a third had joined them. Touching, stroking, caressing, it wasn’t long before they found themselves moaning in unison as their third climax approached. Ejaculating into his clone’s face, Kai, bent over and kissed him, tasting his own juice as if from his own mouth. They sat on the floor of the tub as the shower continued to pelt against their shared skin. His clone reached forward, hit it to its coldest spray. The hard rain bit into them, causing them to shiver in each other’s embrace. Day gave way to night as they continued to be enchanted by each other’s intimate company. They seemed to make love endlessly, lost in the excitement of each other and their unique relationship. It became something more than either of them, more than the sum of them. Kai felt as if he had finally found himself- in himself, in the illusion of his other half. He felt strangely complete in the arms of his own image, content to be wrapped up in the embrace of his twin and not-twin. They dozed together in Kai’s four poster bed, under the lace canopy that roofed it. He felt his other half falling into slumber, the pace of his breathing slowing and becoming a comforting murmur. Kai pulled the man’s arms around him, fitting so snugly around his prone body. He felt the warm breath against the back of his neck, occasionally accompanied by a soft murmur of contentment. Would they dream together, too? wondered Kai as he felt his own consciousness slipping away into sleep. Would they be together in their dreams? The night passed. Morning settled back into the routine of Kai’s life. The morning call came at eight, the breakfast arriving at half-past. Delivered fresh. He hadn’t bothered to dress when answering the door, happy to shock the courier with his nudity. Sitting alone in the kitchen, he drank fresh orange juice from the carton. He felt it spill out, dribbling over his lips, his chin, his neck. His skin sticky and sweet, he stood under the shower, still set to its coldest point. The chill kicked him awake faster than the dark coffee he had brewed for himself. Enough for two, and still hot. Kai heard movements in the apartment below, the lazy rousings of upwardly mobile but childless young couples. He smiled to himself, smug in his own successful reproduction. No patter of tiny young feet, but the march of grown men. It was the future. The morning beckoned. A bright new morning. This new life, these new sensations. The city was breaking into its daily routine, the blare of traffic outside growing louder as thousands joined the urban throng. Thousands of individuals, all distinct and unique. Each one was different from Kai as he was from them. Yesterday had been his birthday. Today, the first day of the rest of his life. His new life, this strange, unreal existence he had bought for himself. His new and latest creation. The masterpiece. He punched numbers into the golden telephone console, the digits squeaking as they dialled. The familiar clock of the line, the tone ringing as he waited for Sonya to pick up. ‘Hello? Can I help?’ her plaintive cry eventually came. ‘Sonya, Kai.’ ‘Oh good morning, Mr Stone. I thought you said you’d be out of town for a few days?’ ‘Gonna takeoff soon, Sonya. I was wondering if I could get you to book an appointment for me.’ ‘Of course, sir.’ ‘It’s for the surgery, Sonya. As soon as possible.’ ‘Oh dear, I hope everything’s alright, Mr Stone? I mean, if it’s an emergency I’ll see if I can get something today…’ Kai smiled at her loyalty. She’d been easily bought, and was a low maintenance PA. ‘That won’t be necessary. It’s of a more personal nature.’ ‘Oh, I see.’ Her silence told him that she was dying to know exactly how personal. Fuck it, he thought. ‘I want to be circumcised, Sonya.’ He could hear her flustered shuffling over the speaker. ‘Oh, I …um, I don’t know, Mr Stone, I always thought…’ ‘I don’t like you thinking about my cock, Sonya.’ ‘No, of course sir, I just meant - I thought it was common these days. In youth. That… kind of thing.’ ‘I’m not common, Sonya. Precisely the opposite. Let me know when you have it booked.’ He terminated the call. Kai had been a fucking fool. Thinking he could create someone in his own image, that he could have a plaything. The lovemaking had been exceptional, but the novelty had worn off quickly. The experience had, the original Kai was dispensable. He’d looked startled - betrayed, even - as the life had been throttled out of him. There was the body to dispose of, naturally, but that would be solved. Kai Stone had bought himself privacy, and that would be used to ensure his quiet despatch. It hadn’t been planned, at least consciously. Perhaps he’d just been cloned with bad blood. There just wasn’t room for two Kai Stones in this world. Even Kai would agree on that. A newer model had replaced the original. Kai was dead, long live Kai. Now that was something the clone could drink to. To life! Copyright
© 2002 Lukas Scott. All rights reserved. Do not copy or post.
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