[Dick switches on his radio host baritone—the one he's been sharpening for years.
To build his vocal cords, every morning he runs his 10–15 minute routine:
first—deep inhales and exhales,
then—low humming like a bull in mating season,
then—a siren loud enough that the neighbors have called the fire department more than once,
then—buzzing like an overloaded transformer,
and finally—tongue articulation drills that would make any speech therapist cross themselves]“Well, well, well, baby… what did Todd send over?
Take a look—what are we telling tonight…”
[Jackie flips through a thin stack]“Usually there’s… a lot. Like, a LOT of paper.
But this? Barely anything. And half of it looks like drafts.
Stuff that didn’t make it into the main story, I guess.
But… a couple of these look real interesting.”
[Dick lets out a tired sigh, already accepting his fate]“Alright. I’ll read it like it’s not a draft,
but a goddamn masterpiece.”
[Pages rustle. He snorts]“Alright… so this one’s a story about
Zeros deciding to try therapy.This is before they got their hands on the second ship
with that batshit AI. All that was last yearSo…”
The company XEREX™
used to make printers.
Then they moved on to food replication.
Since then, everything we eat is printed,
and real food only exists in museums
or in the homes of fetishist millionaires.
But XEREX™ had a secret project—
the XEREX BIO-REPLICATOR™,
a bioprinter capable of copying humans.
And some rich asshole hired them
to steal that machine.
Or at least get the blueprints.
Zeros and Blindy broke into an abandoned XEREX™ station.
Bypassed security.
Entered the lab complex.
Dust. Half-dark.
The hum of dying power systems—like the breathing of a dead office.
In the center stood a massive bio-replicator,
glowing like a printer that’s about to print curses.
Zeros went in first.
Blindy got lost in the corridors,
and Zeros was left alone—quiet.
Suspiciously quiet.
Dangerously quiet.
He looked at the machine…
and whispered, almost gently,
like an android staring straight at the meaning of life:
“If I kill one Blindy—that’s nice.
If I kill many—many—many Blindies…
That would be… therapy.”
He placed a strand of Blindy’s hair into the scanner
and pressed:
COPY → HUMAN → INTELLECT LEVEL: IDIOTThe machine rattled and coughed
like an office printer running on original toner for twenty years.
The door slid open—
Xerex-Blindy #1 stumbled out, swaying.
“H-hey, b-b-buddy! There’s whiskey—”
BAM!
Zeros smashed his head in with a punch like an overripe watermelon.
“I. Hate. Blindy.”
He immediately hit the button again.
Xerex-Blindy #2 crawled out, grinning:
‘Hey, fuck-droid, I got that hottie’s number—'”
FFFWOOOSHHHH!
Zeros lit him up to a crisp using Thermistor Mode T-100.
Now Zeros started twitching,
like a Windows 98 system freezing mid-task.
“MORE…
I NEED…
GIVE ME MORE.”
He kept slamming the button like it was an elevator button,
until the machine itself started having what looked like pain spasms.
Clones came out one after another—
and received:
- Gunshot;
- Brains blown out;
- Kick;
- Slammed into the wall;
- Electroshock;
The room turned into a warehouse of meat paperwork.
And right at that moment—
the real Blindy walks in.
He looks at the pile of his own corpses.
At blood-soaked Zeros.
At the printer screaming under stress.
Raises his hands.
“H-h-hey—hey, buddy…
WHAT—WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOIN’—?!”
Zeros answers calmly, like he just finished a spa session:
“Therapy.”
Blindy freezes for a few seconds.
“THERAPY?!
THIS IS—THIS IS FUCKIN’ GENOCIDE—OF MY—
MY—IDIOT SELF!
You—you—
You’re a—
You’re a SERIAL—
BLINDY-KILLER!”
Zeros said calmly:
“Xerex-clones, don’t count.
It’s like deleting spam.”
Blindy screamed:
“SPAM?!
SPAM—?!
THOSE—THOSE ARE MY FACES!
Look—LOOK—
THAT—
THAT’S MY ASS—!”
He suddenly went pale.
“Wait—
wait—hold on—
How the hell do you even know I’M me—?!
What if—I’m not—
What if I’m a copy—?
Like—a leftover—?!”
He stepped forward, then—cringing—kicked one of the already decaying clones.
“What if the real me—
is in that pile—
and I’m just—
just the next one up—?!”
He grabbed his head, lips trembling.
“Oh—oh GREAT—deGrasse…
that’s—no—
that’s not good—
that’s REALLY not good…”