The Glacier
Issue Two
Winter 2023

Future Starving Artists

And the American President, Nick S. who was himself a struggling artist in the past, now made January 1st Starving Artists Day. The President said that it sometimes takes a genius to know a genius and some unusual thinkers died without fanfare. Like Kafka or Melville or Alan Turing, who basically invented the computer. Or the great scientist, Nikola Tesla, who was basically the inventor of many things like AC/DC power, or the ancient Hero of Alexandria and his steam power and many others.

In more recent history there was Dee R, the inventor of automatic cosmetics in which a woman would select a face/draw a face and the computer would do the rest; her machine though was adopted after her death and, in addition to plastic surgery, made many women a complete knock out. And they didn’t even clone her.

And Marcia G. who invented air cars that could dive to the bottom of the sea instead of using submarines. But powerful business groups saw to it that her invention was quashed, until after her death by suicide. But sometime after her death she was cloned.

And Rob Q. who invented a defense against many biological weapons, and after his death his invention was used widely but not in his lifetime. But recently he had been cloned many times.

And Harry D. who wrote a novel forecasting an “Invisible Life,” in which all creatures were spirits and materialism was dead. After his death, the human soul was invented, and people went to Heaven, Hell and Limbo after death. And they cloned him some time after his death.

And then there was Tim C., who had invented a cloud creator machine which produced interesting shapes of creatures and things in cloud form. When he invented it people laughed at him and ignored him. But after his death, cloud forming was very popular, especially in terraforming Space and they cloned him.

And then there was Jude T. who wrote about future civilization as being ruled by the masses who would launch insurrections against any clever leader and were all convinced that the former elite had been leading the World and Space to destruction. Their demagogues led them to arrest all people who didn’t “fit in.” But he died without fanfare. However recently in some Chinese city states the masses took control. And the peoples’ movements then spread like wildfire. And so they cloned Jude.

When people died, the decision as to whether to clone them was mostly made by a powerful multi-national company, “Clones Unlimited.” The company was founded by Nick S., the President of the US.

TOM BALL has published novels, novellas, short stories and flash in 32 publications. Website: https://tomballbooks.com. Online Journal Website (he is senior editor/co-founder): https://fleasonthedog.com. E-mail: tomball33@yahoo.com. Facebook: tomball33@gmail.com

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