new Sender by consensus of the general will.... The Mayans were limited by isolation.... Now one Sender could control the planet....
The Divisionists occupy a mid-way position, could in fact be termed moderates.... They are called Divisionists because they literally divide. They cut off tiny bits of their flesh and grow exact replicas of themselves in embryo jelly. It seems probable, unless the process of division is halted, that eventually there will be only one replica of one sex on the planet: that is one person in the world with millions of separate bodies.... Are these bodies actually independent, and could they in time develop varied characteristics? I doubt it. Replicas must periodically recharge with the Mother Cell. This is an article of faith with the Divisionists, who live in fear of a replica revolution.... Some Divisionists think that the process can be halted short of the eventual monopoly of one replica. They say: 'Just let me plant a few more replicas all over so I won't be lonely when I travel.... And we must strictly control the division of Undesirables....' Every replica but your own is eventually an 'Undesirable.' Of course if someone starts inundating an area with Identical Replicas, everyone knows what is going on. The other citizens are subject to declare a 'Schluppit' (wholesale massacre of all identifiable replicas). To avoid extermination of their replicas, citizens dye, distort, and alter them with face and body molds. Only the most abandoned and shameless characters venture to manufacture I.R.s --Identical Replicas.
A cretinous albino Caid, product of a long line of recessive 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 neurology under Professor Fingerbottom in Vienna... and he knew every nerve in your body. Magnificent old thing... Came to a 82
sticky end.... His falling piles blew out the Duc de Ventre's Hispano Suiza and wrapped around the rear wheel. He was completely gutted, leaving an empty shell sitting there on the giraffe skin upholstery.... 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 replica (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. The Divisionists are all latent or overt homosexuals. Evil old queens tell the young boys: 'If you go with a woman your replicas won't grow.' And citizens are forever putting the hex on someone else's replica cultures. Cries of: 'Hex my culture will you, Biddy Blair!' followed by sound effects of mayhem, continually ring through the quarter.... The Divisionists are much given to the practice of black magic in general, and they have innumerable formulas of varying efficacy for destroying the Mother Cell, also known as the Protoplasm Daddy, by torturing or killing a captured replica.... The authorities have finally given up the attempt to control, among the Divisionists, the crimes of murder and unlicensed production of replicas. But they do stage pre-election raids and destroy vast replica cultures in the mountainous regions of the Zone where replica moon-shiners hole up.
Sex with a replica is strictly forbidden and almost universally practiced. There are queer bars where shameless citizens openly consort with their replicas. House detectives stick their heads into hotel rooms saying: 'Have you got a replica in here?'
Bars subject to be inundated by low class replica lovers put up signs in ditto marks: ' ' ' 's Will Not Be Served Here.... It may be said that the average Divisionist lives in a continual crisis of fear and rage, unable to achieve either the self-righteous complacency of the Senders or the relaxed depravity of the Liquefactionists.... However the parties are not in practice separate but blend in all combinations.
The Factualists are Anti-Liquefactionist, Anti-Divisionist, and above all Anti-Sender. Bulletin of the Coordinate Factualist on the subject of replicas: 'We must reject the facile solution of flooding the planet with 'desirable replicas.' It is highly doubtful if there are any desirable replicas, such creatures constituting an attempt to circumvent process and change. Even the most intelligent and genetically perfect replicas would in all probability constitute an unspeakable menace to life on this planet....'
T.B.--Tentative Bulletin-Liquefaction: 'We must not reject or deny our protoplasmic core, striving at all time to maintain a maximum of flexibility without falling into the morass of liquefaction....' Tentative and Incomplete Bulletin: 'Emphatically we do not oppose telepathic research. In fact, telepathy properly used and understood could be the ultimate defense against any form of organized coercion or tyranny on the part of pressure groups or individual control addicts. We oppose, as we oppose atomic war, the use of such knowledge to control, coerce, debase, exploit or annihilate the individuality of another living creature. Telepathy is not, by its nature, a oneway process. To attempt to set up a one-way telepathic broadcast must be regarded as an unqualified evil....'
D.B.--Definitive Bulletin: 'The Sender will be defined by negatives. A low pressure area, a sucking emptiness. He will be portentously anonymous, faceless, colorless. He will --probably --be 83
born with smooth disks of skin instead of eyes. He always knows where he is going like a virus knows. He doesn't need eyes.'
'Couldn't there be more than one Sender?'
