Bodies
What makes a person themselves? If you clone someone’s body and replicate their memories, which one of them is “real” — the original or the copy? What if it’s the President of the United States or the Queen of England? What if you make dozens of copies? And tweak them just a little, according to a political agenda? That idea could be a whole book right there, and it’s just one of many subplots in Bodies: A Romantic Bloodbath by Moses Yuriyvich Mikheyev, a richly layered novel that makes the reader question not only who is real, but what reality is.
Vince Nilsson is an ultra-smart teenaged geek of the future who thinks of himself as “hopelessly romantic.” He is ecstatic, over the moon, when the girl of his dreams, Melissa Price, agrees to date him. After a few months they break up, and instead of getting over it, Vince gets even. He clones a better version of Melissa from her menstrual blood — be warned, the grossness factor of this book is high — tweaking her genes to make her more receptive to him. Then he has to eliminate the real Melissa, of course. This is all facilitated by the fact that Vince’s dad is one of the richest people on the planet.
Thus begins a sort of extended dark comedy of errors, where Vince constantly has to reclone and genetically adjust both Melissa and her friend Ashley, whom he has also killed and cloned, all the while hiding from his parents all the various corpses, clones growing in bathtubs and living girls. Meanwhile, Melissa and Ashley have been declared missing and the police are investigating Vince as a suspect, as he is Melissa’s recent ex-boyfriend.
All of this gene-tweaking for personal use eventually leads Vince to a burgeoning career in cloning. He starts a company called Emergence, Inc. and is soon catering to an underground market frequented by parents wanting healthier versions of their children and spouses pining after a more perfect partner.
A BLACK MARKET FOR BODIES
In the far future, teenager Leo Oaks, whose mother was Vince’s lawyer, falls in love with a girl named Sara. Things are just fine — until his own dead body turns up on his doorstep. It’s just the prelude to a whole host of odd events in which Leo and Sara will find themselves entangled.
Adults are secretly and mysteriously being replaced by their clones, all of whom have been slightly tweaked — perhaps as ordered by an unhappy spouse or employer; who knows? If someone’s behavior changes, is it because they are now a clone, or because the person they are married to is the clone? Can you be sure you’re not a clone? There is no way to tell. Teenagers can even order their own clones and commit suicide when they can’t bear life anymore.
But it doesn’t end there. Something seems to be afoot with those who wield political power. As Leo digs deeper into the mystery, he befriends Vince’s son, and they scheme together to take down what amounts to a clone regime, racing against time and a deadly global conspiracy.
Bodies comes with a raft of trigger warnings, among them rape, foul language, violence against women, murder and gore, so it’s not for the sensitive reader. It’s a sci-fi horror novel that operates on several different levels, however, including a philosophical one.
Are clones less than human? Are humans expendable? Is murder a crime when a person has been replaced with someone who’s essentially themselves, just … different? Bodies posits an ethical nightmare to be sure; one in which pursuit of “the ideal” comes at the cost of what makes us human — and makes monsters of us all.
Bodies is available for purchase on Amazon.
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About Moses Yuriyvich Mikheyev:
Moses Yuriyvich Mikheyev is a Russian-American novelist who studied theology and philosophy at Whitworth University before obtaining his graduate degree in theological studies from Emory University. He is the author of “The Hack” and “Strange Deaths of the Last Romantic.” His third novel “Bodies: A Romantic Bloodbath” will be released Spring 2021. He is also a folk-rock musician. He lives and loves in Los Angeles. Follow him on Amazon to be notified of any surprise releases.
This book was the most insane book I had ever read in my entire life! Brilliant!