The young clone of Jesus
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Simone is an orphan with an unexplainable dream. In order to achieve this dream, he graduates college with honors in genetics, imagining the consequences of his success. He feels confident that he would surely win the Nobel Prize in Medicine, as no one before him had succeeded in the feat of creating a clone of Jesus. The first time he vocalized this idea, it sounded like a fantastical rant, even to him. But he began to repeat, in front of the mirror, "I am going to clone Jesus," until he was convinced. It was a plan that could not materialize without the cooperation of a woman to carry the embryo, so he involves Barbara, a student, and pretends to be a seminarian to enter the Turin Cathedral all in order to draw blood from the Shroud of Jesus. The process seems to be unfolding smoothly for the first embryo, with Barbara now passionate about Simon's devotion to this magnificent goal. All goes according to plan, but what paternal conflicts may the young clone experience? What beliefs will he develop as an adult? Will he approve or condemn this grand action of his father's? Born with the charisma of a leader, but contrary to his parents' beliefs, he enlists in the army to seek his own adventure.
Giovanni Menicocci
Giovanni Menicocci, Laureato in Lettere, è giornalista pubblicista. Ha lavorato nel 2005 come sceneggiatore a Mediaset per la scrittura di una sitcom, e ha collaborato al portale di cinema MyMovies.it. Attualmente direttore responsabile del portale Mauxa.com, si occupa di interviste ad attori, scrittori premio Pulitzer Pulitzer, artisti. Il suo primo romanzo, John e Marilyn. La fragilità degli dei ha avuto buon successo di pubblico e critica.
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The young clone of Jesus - Giovanni Menicocci
THE YOUNG CLONE OF JESUS
Written by
Giovanni Menicocci
Translated from the Italian by
Jake Fraczek
HELIKE PUBLISHING
Original title
Il giovane clone di Gesù
Translation by Jake Fraczek
Giovanni Menicocci
ISBN 9791281813038
© 2024 Helike Publishing
www.helikeedizioni.com
Translation copyright © 2024 by Helike Publishing
First publication: Helike Edizioni Avril 2024
Helike Publishing is a trademark of Argo s.c.a.r.l.
Any reference to existing or existed people, facts and places is purely coincidental and a figment of the author's imagination.
Look, even the Sun is smiling on you today
Prologue
In the chapel, a janitor runs his fingers over the wall, touching a shrine bathed in darkness, broken only by a few candles giving off a faint halo of light.
Next to the shrine stands a sign with the Shroud of Jesus, the closed eyes popping out with the X-ray complexion. The janitor has a gun in its holster, touches it, then scurries away and approaches the door. Between the chapel gallery and the floor, a blade of light suddenly pierces the darkness. Dawn is here. The janitor looks at the clock hanging on the wall, detaches it, and moves the hand back one hour.
He peers toward the door, then quietly approaches the shrine again, and with a key, opens the door. From his case, he pulls out a pocket knife, pulls the Shroud to himself, and with the sharp point, detaches a sliver of blood, which he gently lays in a test tube.
Simone wakes up in her bed. He has an erection.
1
Simone and Groglio
––––––––
Groglio could not imagine that one day the bells would ring together for Alessio. Then again, he, Groglio was the best general in the Army Training, Specialization and Doctrine Command, and he accepted no opposition to his directives. All these beardless boys who were embarking on a military career, or who wanted to avoid one by appealing to what he regarded as insulting conscientious objection, he hated. Instead, he would enlist them in an iron-clad and obligatory manner. He would be the one to decide, and that increased his own vainglory.
Groglio knew that even at the military town of Cecchignola, recruits used to go to breakfast twice, then go out to buy the newspaper, and for careless kicks, would be gone for half an hour. This infuriated him.
A few days earlier, from the doorstep of his office, recruit John Zacharias had told him, Go and croak.
Without a second thought, Groglio punched him in the face so hard that he mangled his jaw and left him bleeding.
You're an insurrectionist,
he ranted as his teeth bled.
It's not lawful what you’re doing,
John exclaimed boldly, grabbing a tray placed on top of the desk, trying not to let the blood drip on the floor.
You are just a voice crying out in the wilderness,
smiled Groglio, who was beginning to hold a grudge against that gnat.
Someone will come and teach you a lesson.
The hematoma radiated even more on his pale skin, and John dabbed at it for a long time, cleaning himself with water, but the wound continued to bleed, so he ran to the infirmary of the military town.
In reality, the recruit was just a person who had dared to stand up against him, with a rare attitude that Groglio thought was disrespectful. No one had addressed him like that in so many years, and although he listened to him willingly because of how bold he was, a recruit was still a soldier. He feared that if he involved other fellow soldiers, there would be a tirade against him.
After a few hours, John had sent a letter recounting the episode to the Military City of Cecchignola, where the barracks of which Groglio was general was located-. Groglio's secretary, of course, had intercepted it and delivered it to him which he now was hiding.
You've done your job,
he said to the secretary, who was actually a soldier quivering to finish his 12 months of naja. He felt guilty for concealing a missive without registering it. Groglio was like that, awe-inspiring, and no one could afford to refute him.
Shall I put it on record that we lost her?
suggested the secretary.
Do you want to clean toilets like your father?
replied Groglio.
John's was just one of the most recent cases that Groglio had covered up, the last in order. It was rare for him to beat up a recruit, but this one had made him so nervous that he had acted without realizing it. So he took the letter to his unadorned office and hid it in a drawer. On the walls was only a picture of President of the Republic, Carlo Azeglio Ciampi. A dry plant was to his right, and next to it a glass case with three flags: the Italian, European and NATO flags. A white, quilted leather armchair sat near a corner, behind a shelf. Above the pedestal stood a bronze bust: it depicted Giuseppe Galliano, a lieutenant colonel in the Royal Army who died during the Battle of Adua in 1896. Above the cherry wood desk was a picture of a little girl, about a year old, with chubby red cheeks, smiling at him. It was Annalisa, his daughter.
A few days later, General Groglio heard a voice coming from the doorway from which the secretary was settling his insecurity. From the chatter he recognized that it was a snilz. That's what he called the conscientious objectors, who came once a month to get their 250 euros monthly pay for services they then did not perform. These were services like sitting in an office filling out crossword puzzles, getting coffee, or, for those who served in nursing homes, betting on which elderly person would die first. Wasn't it better to get rid of this conscientious objection nonsense? Who on earth had introduced it, he wondered, wishing he had it in his hands to fix it.
The snilz guy was also persistent in an odd way. He had, in fact, just asked if the registered mail sent by Giovanni Zacharias had arrived, because it was now several days old. The freshly well-trained secretary replied that he had not received anything.
Groglio came forward, although he did not feel like it.
Do you have any problems?
Nothing to worry about, sir. The objector asks if a registered letter has arrived.
The young man, Simone Polveroni, moved aside from the secretary's desk.
Giovanni is my friend, and he had asked me if it had arrived.
Simone now knew everything, that Groglio had beaten his friend, and that he wanted to make a complaint.
This is not your business. Keep cleaning poop in the nursing home.
Simone, an objector in his final year of college, hoping to get ahead of the time for graduation with ambitions for what he wanted to achieve later, would have loved to retort, but he knew better than to bother Groglio. Fortunately, the phone in the office rang. It was his father, also an army general.
Now Groglio's goal was to get the man away, and make sure that the secretary was calm and wouldn’t blow the whistle. He motioned the secretary to come to the office, so as to safeguard appearances, while Simone waited in the hallway.
What did he ask you?
Nothing, sir. He knew something, though.
Nothing happened.
Groglio, clenching the stamped sheet to withdraw the miniscule monthly 250 euros, could not have known that Simone, was informed of everything, trying to defend Giovanni.
Before leaving, Simone checked the incoming mail in the protocol register-he was also doing that same service at the ASL as an objector, and noticed that there was Giovanni Zaccaria's letter, with his name marked as the sender, but it had been crossed out.
Groglio knew that word of his act had spread. But no one was going to blow the whistle. Unless that demented objector Simone Polveroni wanted to get into trouble.
2
Simone
Simone was not a notoriously altruistic guy. While locked in his solipsistic territory of study and goals to be achieved It struck him that a friend, with whom he had gone to college with, might have been used in this way. And who knows how many other abuses General Groglio had perpetrated. Oddly enough, this thought emerged just now, on the morning he was to graduate. This was the day when his years of study in genetics would pay off. Five years spent in his university dormitory, consisting only of a bunk, a desk, and a bathroom. When he showered, he had to be careful not to flood the carpet. The summer was scorching, and so he had placed a fan over the window in front of an ice-cold bottle. It was his personal air conditioning.
In five years, Simone Polveroni had completed all his exams with dignified rigor at La Sapienza University, known for being hands-off : either you survive, or you're out. It was a jungle, and he liked to cling to the vines. In his time there, he completed all the exams, getting only thirty with honors.
He remembered the afternoon when he unwillingly passed off the entire biophysics assignment to a girl, with the hope that she would be there, and for that he was reprimanded by a professor he admired, Anthony Barhiona. It was a situation he hated, being scolded, because he had always loved being dutiful as a student. Even if he didn't have someone to show his school grades to, or someone who would congratulate him on his graduation, he was fulfilled in his goal.
Shear by the past, it led him to be unaccountable for his successes or failures, living nonchalantly in the present. He had no parents to tell anything to, to confide in. No grandparents who would give him gratuity for his achievements, or who would pay for his university housing or buy him a car, like a rich friend of his who received a motorcycle as a gift.- No vacation after graduation.
While quietly brilliant, Simone had never told anyone what this degree was supposed to lead him to.
He was not a practicing Catholic, just enough to take communion that nuns with whom he grew up with in an orphanage imposed on him when he was nine years old, with his confirmation at 12.
He wondered now, who knows why, what his mother was doing right now, and whether she would be proud of him. He often wondered why his parents had abandoned him, wondered if it was the right thing to do, or feared temptation. Perhaps they were poor and would not have known how to care for him. He knew well what it took to make ends meet. He would also have liked to say that the nuns had treated him badly, and maybe pity on his situation could win over some girls, but that was not the case. He had never got adopted, because the nuns had gotten used to him, and every time a family came to claim him, he chose to stay there instead. Sister Licia raised him, and was equal to a mother to him. He had even invited her to the graduation. She said she would be there, but then phoned the night before on the grounds that another infant had been abandoned and she had to take care of him. Simone had inquired about this, as if she wanted to romanticize her situation.
Angel House was the name of his orphanage, which already restored a sense of security. At least that was how she had always felt.
Perhaps that was why he had majored in genetics, to give a rational explanation for actions that were not just behavioral, but sedimented in people's DNA. Perhaps that DNA was possible to modify.
In his senior year of college, he rushed, and also served as a conscientious objector in the morning, to speed up the timing of what he would perform later.
He was not loitering like his friends who were the sons of doctors or politicians, now in charge of companies just because, having finished their political careers, they were placed there.
Simone had obtained housing through scholarships. The 6,000 euros a year that the university awarded to him was the result of his sweat, evenings spent studying, and maybe having a few beers with other students in the shared kitchen.
He had been assigned a larger room because the one he was staying in was a single. In the double room, which he had obtained by begging the allocation officer, there was an empty bed.
He wanted to tower over all the delinquents who came out of the orphanage. Years of sacrifice spent eating vegetables and beans and other cheap foods. He had meat barely once a week, and never dessert, except maybe on Sundays. He saw the sea for the first time when he was nineteen, just entering college. He also understood the rigor the nuns imposed. Funds were scarce and could not suffice to cover everyone on vacation. He had grown accustomed to that rigor, only by the ages of seventeen and eighteen, he no longer accepted it, and he wanted to leave.
At least he had the good fortune to have a surname that was not as common as those of other foundlings. Polveroni was chosen because, when it was abandoned in the exhibits wheel on its cover hovered dust.
He often counted the other orphans of the Angel House in the annals. –It was a name that remained after the closing of the orphanages in 2006, replaced by group homes that nevertheless maintained the same tenor. All of them had become either delinquents, or ended up working as mechanics or factory workers. He did not understand why he had not followed that path, why he had deviated from the others, wanting to study. No one had gone beyond high school. He then began to believe that his willpower was a genetic disposition because he had checked the entire yearbook from 1970 up until then, and none of the foundlings had graduated. How was it possible that he had this drive? The idea began to foster that he had some scholarly ancestor, and that one of those genes had been passed down to him. After all, the theory of transmigration of genes from generation to generation, not physical but psychic genes, was corroborated by several studies. He himself had explored it in depth in the Neuro-engineering exam, but as far firm evidence, there was none.
Who knows, maybe after winning the Nobel, he would devote himself to these studies.
In college, he began winning scholarships, and with those, supported himself all the way. 6,000 euros a year, plus paid housing, and free food. Coming from a situation where the state adopts its children. Of that he was proud, it being the first money he had earned through his abilities.
Next to the bed was a sterilizer, where the cleaning woman was arranging the quarters. He did not know how to tie his tie, and went out while the woman in the room hustled around, moving objects. Simone got help from a friend who was lazing around in the shared kitchen.
Do you tie the knot?
You're in denial,
he quipped.
Every time, I forget how to do it.
I can tell you have no worldly life.
The friend fixed his knot, and as he finished, Simone heard a hollow thud