The shadow struggled with its human parcel as it lumbered through the remote corridors of Sector C to a laboratory secretly masquerading as a broom closet. After punching in the door code, 2017 (the year of the Glorious Janitors’ Revolt), the stooping figure stepped inside the doorway into decontamination. The mirrored walls of the chamber reflected a burdened haggard man in a janitor’s uniform. The pressurized jets of disinfectant urged him expediently onward into the main laboratory.

Fluorescent light dominated the sterile environment containing stainless-steel cabinets, surfaces and a two-way mirror that allowed anonymity for those on the other side. A skeleton nursing staff bustled about, tidying up.

“Ah, Lawrence!” A jolly voice, tinged with a slight German accent, beckoned over the PA. “So glad you could make it. Please, place our distinguished Mister Noone on the examination table. We shall be with you shortly.”

Obsequiously, the janitor obeyed, laying the burly guard on the cold metallic surface with a grunt. Stepping back, he examined his evening’s catch before the door from the observation room opened with a sterile creak. Two men in lab coats emerged, circling the table like mismatched vultures. The shorter of the two, a distinguished-looking rotund gentleman with a snow-white beard was the first to speak.

“So,” he remarked with the same warm tone Lawrence heard but a moment ago, “you got him.”

“Actually, he was dead drunk, sir.” Lawrence replied, not looking directly at the doctor. It was considered rude in corporate culture to make eye contact with a superior these days. The last employee Lawrence knew of to violate this code of conduct found himself in the precarious position of becoming an executive’s unwilling new golf partner. Lawrence wasn’t going to go out like that.

“Excellent, excellent. So no damage has come to our dear Mister Noone?”

“Well, he bonked his head on the floor where he hit, but other than that he seems to be OK. Still breathing.”

The taller doctor, neatly shaved and looking particularly angular today, regarded Lawrence’s comment with disdain.

“Bonked?” he inquired sarcastically. “I have not heard of this term. Have you, Doctor Klaus? This is the technical term you have for ‘concussed’, Lawrence?” The tall doctor wagged a scarred finger at him disdainfully. “It is no wonder you clean floors instead of create the future.”

“Forgive Doctor Klingel, Lawrence my boy. He has just come from checking his lottery numbers. He won but, alas, forgot to play last night.”

Lawrence nodded respectfully, chin now resting on his chest as he admired the sheen of the floor in more detail, muttering to himself how it could use a good coating of Doctor Klingel’s blood. Bringing his anger under control, he looked up to watch the two doctors busily stripping their subject.

“Nurse! A syringe if you please!” Out of nowhere, a nurse appeared and gave him the needle. “Danke, Fraulein. This should keep him under while we work.” Efficiently, the rotund Klaus injected Joe with the needle. Lawrence gently cleared his throat.

“Oh, Lawrence. I forgot you were still here. You may go.”

“I don’t wish to bother you, sir, but what about our agreement?”

Klaus muttered caustically in a mix of German and English under his breath. “You’re a persistent blue-collar, aren’t you, my dear boy?” Then added, “Yes, yes, you will find the credits already deposited into your account. Kindly accept our thanks for your services.”

Adequately comforted, Lawrence nodded back into his chest. “Thank you, sir. It has been a pleasant deviation from cleaning the toilets.”

“Well, run along now. It’s high time you get back to it.”

“Yes sir!” Lawrence gave him a mock salute and turned to walk out. As he reached the door, Klingel deftly crept up behind him and pulled a sock full of quarters from his coat. With a lightning strike, he smote their unsuspecting lackey over the head with the bludgeon. Lawrence collapsed on the floor with a look of utter astonishment on his face.

Glancing away from the slumbering security guard on the table, Klaus coughed politely then remarked, “My, doesn’t he look surprised.”

“Indeed,” said Klingel putting away the club. “He believed you when you told him you agreed to his conditions. One so foolish should not be trusted with our secrets. He could snitch on us.”

“Correct as always, Doctor Klingel. Shall we dispose of the body, or merely give him something that will make this whole affair seem like a dream?”

“I disdain the latter. Tell you what—we’ll flip for it.” The gaunt doctor picked up the unconscious body and hefted it. “Ventral we brainwash, dorsal we dispose.”

“Agreed. Flip!”

Klingel hefted the body once more with amazing strength and, with the aid of Doctor Klaus, hurled the limp rag doll of Lawrence into the air. The tumbling body had as much grace as a wild pig bungee jumping. Crashing into the ground with extreme force, the body landed face up. Klingel groaned in disappointment.

“Ventral. You win.” He bared his crooked teeth at Doctor Klaus. “You prepare the brainwash. I’m going to the corner to sulk.”

Klaus, ever the jolly fiend, began rummaging through the stainless steel cabinets in the laboratory. A few moments passed before he threw his arms out in disbelief. “I told her we were running low, to order more! I cannot believe this!”

A sardonic grin touched Klingel’s lips. “What seems to be the problem? Out of brain wipes?” Venting frustration, Klaus threw a package of latex examination gloves at him.

“O, Immortal Ode to Joy, we get to dump him! Peachy-keen!” Klingel rubbed his hands together with glee. “The ball is in Klingel’s court at last.”

The cruel German trolled over to the unconscious Lawrence, now sprawled in an undignified position on the floor, and slung the limp body over his shoulder. Not the least bit burdened by the extra weight, Klingel walked to a closed hatch marked “TO DUMPSTER”, written in large inviting letters, then opened an adjacent cabinet and extracted an enormous black trash bag, which he tossed to Klaus. Klaus held the bag open as Klingel thrust Lawrence down into its hungry darkness.

The body made a dull thud against the floor as Klingel pressed the button to open the hatch. The hatch hummed and slid gracefully open with a hiss of foul air. Reaching into his pockets, the gaunt doctor pulled out rainbow colored twist-ties, which he used to close the bag. Carefully aligning the body bag in the chute, he nodded to Klaus and let go. Gravity working as always, the bag screamed down the chute with increasing velocity until it hit the dumpster with a loud “BWONG!”

Dusting off his hands, Klaus and Klingel shared a maniacal grin.

“Absolutely brutal!” they chimed in unison, nodding to the nurse who quickly laid out all the tools they would need for the examination of their subject.

“I shall handle the invasive samples,” said Klaus. “You will take samples of the skin, hair and the rest.”

“As long as I’m not on toe jam detail, I am happy, Doctor.”

“That will not be required this time, my comrade.” Klaus began the patient vampiric task of phlebotomy. Sucking air over his teeth, he made tick-tock noises as the sample slowly gurgled into the reservoir.

After a moment, Klingel broke the monotony. “So, any plans for tonight?”

“Oh, the usual. Redress this poor ignoramus, have Captain Tanzer or one of his goons put him back at his station, extrapolate the data, and then begin cultivation.”

“That accounts for the next twenty minutes. Shall we reclaim Lawrence from the dumpster and have another flip for old times’ sake?”

“No, we have our work to do. Precious man hours are involved, not your ‘twenty minutes’.” Klaus sighed at his compatriot.

“Agreed.” Resigned to the task at hand, the two experts got underway to the task at hand. Drawing small samples of blood, fluids and tissues from different locations of the body, Klaus arrived at the source for their pet project--raw data. They input this through the lab’s terminal into a super computer the size of a small office complex, buried deep in the belly of the facility. When the terminal reported that the project was in motion, Klaus looked up, bleary-eyed from the screen, and grinned another jolly grin at Klingel.

“James Dewey Watson, eat your heart out!” Klingel bellowed in satisfaction. Giving Klaus a hand up, he leaned in and gave him their fraternity handshake that consisted of grabbing each other’s noses while tap dancing and singing ‘Have You Ever Heard the German Band’. The terminal whirred as the code on its four screens scrolled faster and faster towards completion.

“We’ve done it! It’s working! For the first time!” Klaus waddled happily. Klingel, caught up in efficient excitement, high-fived his comrade and bounded around the laboratory like an athlete having scored the game-winning goal. Wiping joyous tears from his sparkling blue eyes, Klaus let out a satisfied sigh and watched his companion with a prideful gleam in his eyes.

“Did I ever tell you about the lab before you signed on?”

“Just bits and pieces, we’ve been so damned busy since.”

“Indulge me once more,” Klaus said, sitting back down. “This is a new milestone for us. Since 1999 we were all working for the Frenchies, government work mostly. They were on their quest to achieve what the US was unwilling to undertake. A prideful bunch of Bonapartists, I’m sure you will agree…even though back then you were still in secondary school. Still, we had reached an agreement with the most brilliant minds of the day to preserve a part of them that could later be cloned so that future generations, as well as our own, might benefit from their life’s work. Great scientists, thinkers, authors, artisans, diplomats, problem-solvers and the like.”

“Oh yes! I remember reading about that in the journals when I was at university. That was you?”

“Indeed,” Klaus cleared his throat, twisting the hair of his beard around one finger. “Michael Crichton and Dale Chiluly were among our more ‘secular’ choices,” he used the word as if it offended him. “Of most interest to me personally was our work with Stephen Hawking, Sir Martin Rees and Richard Greene. Such potential! Can you imagine the rate at which our knowledge of the universe would expand if such men were allowed to labor onward and upward into infinity?”

“Quite.”

“Well, with limited resources and funding, we were working with technology that was fast becoming outdated. Still, we went with the top twenty choices the government had passed down to us and began cultivation.” Klaus sighed disappointedly, glancing away into the monitor. “Total disaster. Set back the acceptance of human cloning by twenty years.”

“All I heard was that the program had been shut down and a gag order placed on the press. What happened?”

“As I said, outdated technology. We were using a secondhand system bought off the black market in Thailand. The ‘Gene-O-Matic’ replicated nineteen exact copies of Jerry Lewis, Rip Taylor and Richard Simmons! One week after incubation they were running amok. Horrifying. Eventually the military got involved and we were all put on permanent leave. Naturally the French kept the Monsieurs Lewis, but not until long after all the clones had trashed the laboratories and set fire to the complex.”

Klingel scoffed, not believing a word of his mentor. "Let me guess, the Lewis clones began running around shrieking ‘Nice lady!' while the copies of Richard Simmons couldn't stop screaming with Rip Taylors running around throwing confetti all over the petri dishes!"

“You laugh now.” Klaus glowered at him, tapping the monitor screen knowingly. “Worst of all was Clone #20, as he later became known. Our beloved Doctor Stephen Hawking was transformed into the Keebler Elf. For a second it seemed as if he going to solve the intricacies of worm holes when we learned that all along he just wanted to bake cookies.” Klaus held Klingel in his stern gaze. Klingel was stunned and blushed at the intense seriousness the otherwise eccentrically jolly German displayed. Klaus winked, then slapped Klingel on the thigh before howling with laughter. Klingel, nervously at first, joined in and high-fived Klaus once more.

“I knew you were having me on,” he chuckled.

Wiping a tear from his eye, Klaus beamed. “Not exactly, Arnie, but laughter can make any memory fond in retrospect. Those were the days when limited resources pushed the very envelope of good science and bad entertainment.”

“What has changed?”

“Not a whooping thing!” Klaus thoughtfully glanced at the time. “Tonight is cause for celebration. We have nearly fifteen hours until the debriefing with Falcon and Omega. What say we duck out and let our minions below finish the rest the procedure? Drinks and a movie perhaps?”

“Outstanding. What’s playing at the Apollo Holographic?”

Multi-tasking as well as he genetically engineered, Klaus opened the VirCorp Internet browser, patiently waiting as the icon of a little dictator dancing on burning peasant villages went through its animations until at last the listings displayed. “Let us see. The only thing that looks remotely interesting to me is Batman: Again? What do you think?”

Klingel leaned in like a crane plucking a fine catch from the water and read the monitor. “It is playing in…ten minutes! Let’s go!” Tearing off their lab coats like secret agents divesting from parachutes before the big party, the two doctors sprinted out the door tittering like excited baboons. The terminal ticked along in its progress. Meanwhile, a battered Lawrence woke to find himself in a less than ideal situation.