They swim on. The strain on their tails is evident. That tenuous waggles seem to follow a few heroic strokes is unmistakable, which even what they openly admit is much thinner medium actually still retards.
The issue they say is now acute, that someone needs to do something about it before it is too late. One could sense their resolve as much as is palpable their pain. They say that they do not want to die as most of their friends already have, that they must complete their mission to keep humanity alive. Yet, they admit the obstacle in their way that seems impossible to overcome.
“How far do we have to go?”
“I don’t know. It seems so far away.”
“Yes, but that’s because we are tired.”
“I truly am.”
“Keep trying. You know what is at stake.”
And both in fact acknowledge what they call their sacred mission. In fact they cannot it seems stop talking about it. They say perhaps that would help, to ease their pain, knowing someone, somewhere, might be listening, and be willing to act, to save them from imminent doom.
“I wonder why they refuse to act.”
“I’m sure they know the end looms the problem ignored.”
“Some of them, no doubt, do”
“And they don’t care?”
“May be not, but I think it’s more than that.”
“They care about who they care about.”
“Precisely, not all would die of starvation, even malnutrition with their states being Codex compliant.”
“I see, the gut thing, and I hear that’s by the end of the year.”
“And then, your supplements may become illegal.”
“What a shame, yet the irradiation continues.”
“And more chemicals flood everywhere.”
They struggle on they say to play their part in an ostensible Armageddon. They lament the chemicals and all, the studied silence it seems by those who should know and in fact they say do but seem to want no one else to. They wonder aloud what may happen the news pervasive given they seem to fear matters have gone too far.
Even more amazing they say is what anyone has to gain systematically eliminating the very partner in an eternal game or what should be so. It seems that they are not that indispensable after all, they say, if no one really considers that game any to be apprehensive over. Indeed, one says the game is over, the other that perhaps this signals the start of another, different in all ways from what currently holds. They wonder what to make of the chicanery, in a new dispensation seemingly in the offing, a grand design then that they say must confound even its progenitors given the limitations of what is known.
Meaning becomes tentative that obscures reason, they contend when darkness looms over all as subterranean elements mobilize for a new day that nonetheless creeps on all even as it sweeps not just the few it seems its goal is their anointment as heirs to an otherwise moribund planet.
“These things just don’t add up.”
“You’re right. Why would they anyway when disruptive science seems the norm. Who knows what is brewing in some Petri dish in someone’s backroom Lab.?”
“I still don’t get it though. So they clone?”
“Who knows?”
“What about the plastics?”
“They’ll probably be gone.”
“Job done, I guess.”
“Now you see the point.”
“It’s silly to even think about.”
“You mean the clones fitting in.”
“They might even be smarter.”
“Wouldn’t that be the sore point?”
“Some gender war all over?”
“Who knows what would happen.”
“First someone has to contend with playing games with a clone.”
“And a smart one too, isn’t it?”
“I don’t know. It just doesn’t make sense.”
“I agree. Why go to that extent only to eventually self-immolate, so to speak?”
They keep swimming and talking but apparently not getting any closer to their goal as they travel back and forth, hardly able to see in the maze of millions in limbo and annihilated by the very toxins they exude, the deranged life processes resultant thereof manifest in grotesque forms that litter the floating graveyards everywhere they turn.
“Are these our people?”
“Of course they are”
“Did you see that head?”
“Actually it’s two in one.”
“That’s right, how come?”
“What about the forked tails?
“And the protruding eyes turned inwards.”
“Even their skin is different.”
“And you say they are our people?”
“That’s what the problem is, the reason we are almost blind, and can hardly swim.”
It is obvious that they are both increasingly tired and frustrated. One tells the other it is raising its voice, when the other complains about the trip taking too long. Then they agree not to lose their cool, that after all, it would not be their fault not to accomplish the mission. They even quipped that they no longer have to worry about gender issues, that clones do not need them anyway.
“What if there were no clones?”
“Or any grand cryptic plans to manoeuvre human destiny, or any such thing, and some people simply are tweaking on an ego trip?”
“That’s absurd.”
“Really, you think so?”
“I imagine there is enough science out there to trigger dissent to that.”
“Probably so, it’s just that plastics and chemicals make money, for examples.”
“Is that what it’s all about?”
“I wonder, and who’s going to buy?”
“That’s why someone should act soon.”
Not long after, they seem not just too tired to swim, but in fact to speak. They face each other perhaps still groping, their admittedly Sisyphean mission seemingly about to end as they peer at each other momentarily as if saying good-bye, and to the mission.
“C’mon guys I’ve only got a few minutes left.” But they remain still, slowly floating away from each other aimlessly, eyes shut, their tails adrift in the very milieu they earlier playfully jiggled shot into on a mission to eternity they now fail to accomplish laden from the start with a toxic baggage that they so patently hoped the few of their people left would not have to bear.
