Hm, sounds like a setting for a sci-fi movie. First you get human life extension: humans can live 200 or 300 years. Then you get some horrible criminal who got 300 years prison sentence. But the criminal cloned himself before being caught. The judge decides both versions should get 300 years. The owner of the private prison thinks “nice, free labor!” and makes ten thousand clones of the criminal—because the criminal is extra smart and/or extra strong, so he is more profitable than an average prisoner. Turns out the clones cooperate with each other, and together they escape from the prison… and then the usual Hollywood story starts, with explosions and stuff.
Later they find out that the criminal actually made one more clone of himself before he became a criminal. So the clone is a good guy. (Or maybe unauthorized cloning of yourself is already a crime, so this old clone is hiding from the law, but he is not a violent criminal, unlike all the other clones.) Now the police tries to recruit him, maybe promise an amnesty to him if he helps to eliminate the other clones. Between the action scenes, there are flashbacks to the past, explaining why one of the two original clones became a violent criminal and the other did not. Possibly a love story that ended tragically. (Were both in love with the same girl, and did they fight for her? Or maybe, both were in love with the same girl, then she died in a traffic accident, one of them decided to forgive the guy who accidentally killed her, the other one murdered him.)
Or perhaps the old clone helps to kill all the fugitives and get the amnesty, and then it is revealed he was actually the worst of all… only his crimes were never exposed, because he managed to frame the other clone.. so he was the bad guy, who just murdered ten thousand copies of the good guy...
At the end, the bad guy kidnaps the corrupted judge, and tells him he just made ten thousand copies of him. One randomly selected copy will be released, the remaining 9999 will be tortured to death, and all evidence will be destroyed, so no one will believe that any crime happened. The bad guy is just bluffing here, there was only one copy of the judge, and he is finally released, but he is traumatized because he will never know whether the threat was real or not.
(I’m going to just think aloud here about your idea).
Reason why this guy is so dangerous—He was genetically engineered. both his mental and physical abilities are wicked good. but, well, he was created during the first few years/decades of genetically engineered humans, and there were… some unforeseen consequences.
Or maybe he experimented with unauthorized cloning a lot, and self-experimented on the clones with all kinds of enhancements. some going better some going worse.
Possibly a love story that ended tragically. (Were both in love with the same girl, and did they fight for her?
Perhaps somehow the mind cloning was good, but the body cloning wasn’t (or the body was hurt afterward), and now he’s ugly and the girl didn’t want him. the scenario where she dies in an accident and one instance forgives the guy and the other murders him suggests quite different minds—so, not really the sort of clone we’re talking about.
There are many possible ways how to do this. I imagined something like “bad moral luck”—two minds that started the same, but different things happen to them, and they diverge as a result.
For example, both decide to murder the guy, and both wait for him at different places. One murders him. The other waits at a wrong place (maybe just further down the same street), so nothing happens… then he goes home, gets some good sleep, and realizes that he was stupid. Alternatively, one gets a phone call that reminds him of something, and he changes his mind.
The idea of mind divergence was already done with parallel words (e.g. Sliding Doors), except these would be clones living in the same world.
is someone writing this? are you writing this? should i try to write this? i really want this written. did i mention already that this is awesome and should be written?
Hm, sounds like a setting for a sci-fi movie. First you get human life extension: humans can live 200 or 300 years. Then you get some horrible criminal who got 300 years prison sentence. But the criminal cloned himself before being caught. The judge decides both versions should get 300 years. The owner of the private prison thinks “nice, free labor!” and makes ten thousand clones of the criminal—because the criminal is extra smart and/or extra strong, so he is more profitable than an average prisoner. Turns out the clones cooperate with each other, and together they escape from the prison… and then the usual Hollywood story starts, with explosions and stuff.
Later they find out that the criminal actually made one more clone of himself before he became a criminal. So the clone is a good guy. (Or maybe unauthorized cloning of yourself is already a crime, so this old clone is hiding from the law, but he is not a violent criminal, unlike all the other clones.) Now the police tries to recruit him, maybe promise an amnesty to him if he helps to eliminate the other clones. Between the action scenes, there are flashbacks to the past, explaining why one of the two original clones became a violent criminal and the other did not. Possibly a love story that ended tragically. (Were both in love with the same girl, and did they fight for her? Or maybe, both were in love with the same girl, then she died in a traffic accident, one of them decided to forgive the guy who accidentally killed her, the other one murdered him.)
Or perhaps the old clone helps to kill all the fugitives and get the amnesty, and then it is revealed he was actually the worst of all… only his crimes were never exposed, because he managed to frame the other clone.. so he was the bad guy, who just murdered ten thousand copies of the good guy...
At the end, the bad guy kidnaps the corrupted judge, and tells him he just made ten thousand copies of him. One randomly selected copy will be released, the remaining 9999 will be tortured to death, and all evidence will be destroyed, so no one will believe that any crime happened. The bad guy is just bluffing here, there was only one copy of the judge, and he is finally released, but he is traumatized because he will never know whether the threat was real or not.
(I’m going to just think aloud here about your idea).
Reason why this guy is so dangerous—He was genetically engineered. both his mental and physical abilities are wicked good. but, well, he was created during the first few years/decades of genetically engineered humans, and there were… some unforeseen consequences.
Or maybe he experimented with unauthorized cloning a lot, and self-experimented on the clones with all kinds of enhancements. some going better some going worse.
Perhaps somehow the mind cloning was good, but the body cloning wasn’t (or the body was hurt afterward), and now he’s ugly and the girl didn’t want him. the scenario where she dies in an accident and one instance forgives the guy and the other murders him suggests quite different minds—so, not really the sort of clone we’re talking about.
There are many possible ways how to do this. I imagined something like “bad moral luck”—two minds that started the same, but different things happen to them, and they diverge as a result.
For example, both decide to murder the guy, and both wait for him at different places. One murders him. The other waits at a wrong place (maybe just further down the same street), so nothing happens… then he goes home, gets some good sleep, and realizes that he was stupid. Alternatively, one gets a phone call that reminds him of something, and he changes his mind.
The idea of mind divergence was already done with parallel words (e.g. Sliding Doors), except these would be clones living in the same world.
Ouu that’s also nice!
This. Is. Awesome.
is someone writing this? are you writing this? should i try to write this? i really want this written. did i mention already that this is awesome and should be written?
Thanks, but I am not good at writing. Anyone, feel free to use this idea.