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To avoid extermination of their replicas, citizens dye, distort, and alter them with face and body molds. Only the most abandoned and shame- less characters venture to manufacture I.R.s -- Identical Replicas. A cretinous albino Caid, product of a long line of re- cessive genes (tiny toothless mouth lined with black hairs, body of a huge crab, claws instead of arms, eyes projected on stalks) accumulated 20,000 I.R.s. "As far as the eye can see, nothing but replicas," he says, crawling around on his terrace and speaking in strange insect chirps. "I don't have to skulk around like a nameless asshole growing replicas in my cesspool and sneaking them out disguised as plumbers and delivery men.... My replicas don't have their dazzling beauty marred by plastic surgery and barbarous dye and bleach processes. They stand forth naked in the sun for all to see, in their incandescent loveliness of body, face and soul. I have made them in my image and enjoined them to increase and multiply geometric for they shall inherit the earth." A professional witch was called in to make Sheik Aracknid's replica cultures forever sterile.... As the witch was preparing to loose a blast of anti-orgones, Benway told him: "Don't knock yourself out. Frederick's ataxia will clean out that replica nest. I studied neurol- ogy under Professor Fingerbottom in Vienna... and he knew every nerve in your body. Magnificent old thing... Came to a sticky end.... His falling piles blew out the Duc de Ventre's Hispano Suiza and wrapped around the rear wheel. He was completely gutted, leav- ing an empty shell sitting there on the giraffe skin up- holstery.... Even the eyes and brain went with a horrible schlupping sound. The Duc de Ventre says he will carry that ghastly schlup to his mausoleum." Since there is no sure way to detect a disguised re- plica (though every Divisionist has some method he considers infallible) the Divisionists are hysterically paranoid. If some citizen ventures to express a liberal opinion, another citizen invariably snarls: "What are you? Some stinking Nigger's bleached-out replica?" The casualties in barroom fights are staggering. In fact the fear of Negro replicas -- which may be blond and blue-eyed -- has depopulated whole regions. |
