Bodyland - Chapter 1

Where does one begin in a tale of this magnitude? 2005? 1985?? Thursday??? Yes, I suppose Thursday would be as good a place as any. Although Thursday would need a back story to explain some things, so maybe I will start on Thursday with a short narrative to explain what took place beforehand...yes, that should work...so let me think; Thursday was cloudy, but that is irrelevant, so should probably be excluded, but now it is included there is no point deleting it. Hmm, this isn’t going very well, I should just leave it there and move forewords; in fact I should leave it there and move backwards, back to a point where I can explain how we got to Thursday. I shall explain about Bodyland.

Bodyland was a charity...of sorts. By that I mean that officially Bodyland was a registered as a charity, but the reality was slightly different. It’s charitable purpose was the rehabilitation of bodies for their eventual reintegration into working society. This was a rather opulent mission statement, for in all my time there, without knowing that Bodyland was officially a charity, I would never have guessed it. I saw nothing charitable about the organisation, not one thing. What I saw was a body rental company, willing (with staff encouraged) to rip off its customers wherever possible.

What Bodyland did had been blasted all over the papers in recent years but in case you don’t watch the news nor had access to it I should explain what we did and try to give some history on how the company (nay Charity) came into being. To be honest I am not 100% clear on the details of how Mr. Porkhorne, Bodyland’s owner and founder, came to be in control of the bodies but I will let you in on what I do know and that should give you sufficient background to draw your own conclusions.

You may or may not remember but back in 2012 when Stem Cell research was an acceptable practise whilst cloning had become sciences new favourite challenge and the public’s new collective moral issue. Cloning was legal at the time (it has since been banned) and despite the uproar of all bar the morally inept it was a common practice amongst ambitious scientists, looking to become the first to successfully clone a human, so that their name would go down in history and become a question on quiz shows the world over. Whether or not the quiz shows featured in their thinking is open to debate (unless you are one of the aforementioned scientists or know one well enough to be able to ask them) but I’d like to believe quizzes feature heavily in the thinking of all scientists and inventors.

Two scientists were ahead of the rest, their names are not important and to tell the truth I do not know them off hand and as the names are irrelevant I have neither the time or inclination to look them up, you can do that yourselves if you are sufficiently intrigued. It transpired that this pair were young Frankenstein’s...or, more accurately, young versions of “the doctor that created Frankenstein”...either way they seemed to be ahead of the rest, for within weeks of cloning becoming legal they each had hundreds of ten year old clones. They had- allegedly - taken advantage of poor families by offering them a measly sum in exchange for them handing over their newborns for testing on. All they had to do after that was bring their child in each year to undergo a series of comparison examinations so the good scientists could compare the cloned to the clonee.

The reign of the clone lasted 8 years before the Government gave in to some pretty heavy pressure and banned the cloning of humans. In that eight years over 50,000 humans had been cloned, all - bar the aforementioned 10 year olds - ranged in age from 1 to 8 years old and decisions had to be made about what to do with them.
The clones were like humans, well they were humans, but for some reason their mental capacities didn’t develop at the same rate as the children they were cloned from. Some of the clones were allowed to live with the families they were cloned from but most people were doing it for the money and so the last thing they needed (or wanted) was an extra mouth to feed. So when the legislation was changed, someone needed to support these clones.

It’s hard to say what happened exactly to these young children, charities and appeals were organised, people were encouraged to adopt the clones and were given Government subsidies to do so. This apparently took care of about half of the 50,000 kids. Unfortunately many were not satisfactorily taken care of. Some (but not all) of the families that took the clones in did so for the money. The Government set up basic criteria which needed to be met but as they wanted as many of the children placed in homes as quickly as possible, this criteria was very often not met.

There seemed to be a period where every second ad on the television was asking for a donation to help the clones. The internet was littered with support groups and websites. It seemed that the remainder of the clones that were not taken into family homes were put into specifically created care-homes to look after them. Apparently conditions in these homes were not fantastic and they were costly to run.

Inevitably a backlash occurred. Some people suggested that they were taking up too much of the tax payers money and that the scientists (many of whom had fled to countries that still condoned cloning) should be made responsible for their creations. Again groups were set up (mobs mainly) calling for the clones to deported to clone-friendly countries and some political groups agreed; namely the BNPP (British Nationals Purely Party) SBI (Serving Britain’s Individuals), but then again, those two seemed happy to be able to voice their displeasure against any minority.

The Government remained silent on where the clones were placed but an Internet expose found and leaked documents that showed 50% of the clones were placed in homes across Britain; 28% were deported for scientific research around the world; 13% were in “Homes for Clones”; and the remaining 9% were unaccounted for.

Of course this led to the customary protests by the usual pressure groups, people demanded to know what happened to the missing 9%, people demanded the removal of the Government, but as is the norm in these situations, a program was made, people were interviewed but another problem took priority and everything soon died down with the exception of a few irregular follow up reports in various media.

Of course, the more sagacious folk noticed that there were those who were cloned before it officially became legal. A certain Thomas R. Porkhorne also noticed it, although he could never be described as sagacious, perhaps someone tipped him off to the fact. He chased down where these 300 or so clones were and what was being done with them. It transpired that the Government was undecided about what to do and Porkhorne somehow managed to persuade them to hand the un-housed clones over to him. This was done on the premise he could train them and ease these aged clones back into society. Of course the public gained wind of this and there were mass protests, but these soon died down bar some die-hards who still protested the Bodyland premises daily.

That was three years ago and Bodyland is now fully operational as a rental company, renting clones to construction companies as cheap labour and occasionally renting “bodies” to public renters. There was a time when we marketed the clones as “zombies” but that is no longer allowed, political correctness and all that. The Pc crowd came up with the team “Bodies” which is how we must now classify them. “Clones” is also still acceptable, as are the terms “alternative humans” and “walkers”. The latter of which is slang used in old Zombie movies but it apparently less offensive then some of the terms bandied about. Speaking of old Zombie movies, there are still rumours in circulation that some of these “bodies” were in fact brought back from the dead thanks to stem cell research and various endorphins being pumped through their bodies, but these rumours have been strenuously denied by all concerned. Clive is convinced these rumours are true. Clive is my co-worker by the way; he mainly works out back with the bodies whilst I deal with customers. The other people that work here are Porkhorne, the aforementioned owner, and Dr. Treacle, a scientist.

Dr. Treacle was brought in a few months back to try and show the public we were doing all we could to make the clones self-sufficient for their eventual integration into society. The scientist (a complete mad man) runs tests on the clones to see if they understand the concept of money, working etc. but to tell the truth I can’t see them ever getting back into society, some of them can’t even remember to feed themselves for Christ sake!

So that should pretty much cover the back story. I must mention before I delve into the details of that fateful weekend that what is to come is written from memory, I have questioned other parties that were there to confirm the facts and where there was disparity I have either gone with the majority or what best contributes to the narrative. Some of what is written I learned after the fact and, as with all stories reliant on the limited human memory, some details may not be one hundred percent accurate but please believe that nothing contained henceforth was intentionally written to mislead or misrepresent anyone.