Loading ...It’s undeniable: We are living in the future. And while notions like hyper-space travel, personal robot servants, flying cars and holodecks aren’t becoming a reality anytime soon, science is apparently doing its best to make all the morally questionable aspects of science fiction a reality right quick. You know how, if given the option, you always say “give me the bad news first?” Science is probably just getting all the scary shit out of the way before slapping down some hoverboards and robo-butlers. Take, for example, cloning.
It was all over the news a few weeks ago: A doctor claimed to have successfully cloned human embryos, and then "transferred them into a human womb…" as opposed to a cow or a bear womb, I guess. And considering the scientist behind the recent cloning experiments, those were probably very real options. Dr. Panayiotis Zavos, also known as Dr. Spellcheck-fucker, claims that he created a total of 14 cloned human embryos, with a total of 11 successful womb transfers. Though it should be noted that none of those transfers has actually resulted in a pregnancy, you can’t blame the science for that. Christ, it’s not Zavos’ fault that you’re too barren to give birth to the future, ladies. He’s just there to play god, not cupid.
Dr. Zavos completed this research at a secret laboratory, (theorized to be somewhere in the middle east,) and claims that this attempt is “only the first step” in his human cloning experiments. So the question must be asked at this point: Is he actively trying to sound like a supervillain, or is that just unfortunate wording? I argue for the former.
The evidence I point to that this is actually the birth of a new age of terror, is the simple fact that the man responsible for the cloning is named "Dr. Zavos." That is a name just begging to be screamed from the tortured lips of Captain America as he mourns the loss of his lady love at the hands of Zavos’ merciless Nuclear Gorrilas.
Second, he has a secret laboratory located somewhere in the middle east. That’s the kind of vaguely ominous description you’d expect from a comic book:
“Meanwhile, at his secret laboratory, somewhere in the middle east, Dr. Zavos wakes his clone army from the cold stillness of unlife!”
And for my final, most damning piece of evidence that Dr. Zavos is a the world’s first genuine mad scientist, I don’t have to point to fucking anything: Look at that initial quote! When pressed for further information on his research, he ominously hinted that this “is the only the first chapter” in his plan! I haven’t found a video of this interview, so there’s no way to tell if he laughed maniacally for twenty five minutes before disappearing in a ball of fire after that, so I’m just going to have to assume he did.
Really, what else could that possibly mean: "Only the first chapter?" You’ve already claimed to have successfully cloned human embryos and transferred them into human hosts where you’re attempting to initiate a preganacy.
That’s it.
No more chapters. That’s the whole book; you have a clone after that. What other goals could you possibly have? Full grown clones? Designer clones? Two clones at the same time? Where does this ‘next chapter’ lead you if not to evil?
Luckily, Dr. Zavos did go on record as saying that he was “not out to clone the Michael Jacksons of the world,” which he apparently thought was a comforting statement. He went out of his way only to insist that he was not going to use cloning for probably the most terrifying single usage I can think of: A clone army of Michael Jacksons. You’re not specifically out to clone the completely deranged hyper-rich serial child molesters of the world, you say? Hey, awesome. Way to take one for the team, Zavos. Is there a middle ground you are out to clone? Just regular child molesters? Comfortably middle class maniacs only?
Fortunately for the sanctity of your children’s orifices, Peter Williams – the Documentarian who is following the experiments of Zavos The Recreator – says that we have about two years before they actually expect to see a healthy baby human clone produced from their efforts. And that’s good; he just said “we expect.” Expectations fail to get met constantly, so maybe there’s no real need to worry here. Maybe it’ll never actually happen. It’s like Zavos himself said:
"There is absolutely no doubt about it, and I may not be the one that does it, but the cloned child is coming. There is absolutely no way that it will not happen,"
Good god, every word out of his mouth sounds like a threat you’re just incapable of processing. Did he append that statement with “it doesn’t eat, it doesn’t sleep, and it absolutely will not stop until you are dead!”?
There’s no way this could get more ominous.
And if you believe that, you don’t know Zavos! He has also cloned cells taken from the corpses of at least three dead people, including a 10 year-old girl named Cady, and successfully created human embryos out of them for implantation.
So…he’s cloning the corpses of children? When the ultimate goal of your ‘experiment’ could easily pass for the plot of a Stephen King novel, perhaps it’s time to revise your endgame, Doctor. That is, unless you’re running for the office of World’s First Supervillain Emperor of Science, but Dr. Zavos would never do something like that. Why, in his own words, Zavos assures everybody that he just wants to help:
“I don’t intend to step on dead bodies to achieve something because I don’t have that kind of ambition. My ambition is to help people."
See? He’s going to help out. And he specifically said, right up there, that he doesn’t have any “ambition” that would require him to “step over dead bodies” to get what he wants. And yeah, maybe it’s a little odd that he goes out of his way to specifically assure people – people who didn’t ask in the first place – that he totally doesn’t have the unassailable, unerring kind drive within him that would cause a man to climb a mountain of corpses if it would get him just one step closer to his ultimate goal – but that’s just Zavos being Zavos, and in no way is it the first proclamation of war from the Clone Master and his unkillable Child-Corpse Army which will rise from the deserts of the middle east and march across the face of this world like a hellish fire relentlessly pushed onward by the ever raging wind!!!
It’s not like that at all. Because he said so. It’s totally cool. You can go now.
…
HA HA! FOOL! NEVER TURN YOUR BACK ON ZAVOS!
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