It started out innocuous enough. io9 Social Editor Autumn Kelly was thinking about the trailer for the new film Auggie, a Her-like exploration of a man’s relationship with a semi-sentient AI AR personality, and asked the staff if we would bone our clones.
Not everyone was around when the topic was broached but most everyone who was had no issue with the idea of getting down with a mirror image of themselves. (A big exception: James Whitbrook, who said “I was very not into clone bone, I want that to be known.”) But look, there are lots of issues with boning your clone. Like ethical and semantical kinds.
Can they, a product of your DNA and presumably made by an evil government assassin agency or giant organ harvesting corporation, consent? Are they sentient? Do they count as human beings?
Would they really be a clone if they grew up in a lab and weren’t subject to the same external factors as yours? Or would they be more like a genetically identical sibling? A kind of twin, but from a presumably large womb-like tube in the compound run by the aforementioned agency or corporation?
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Is having sex with your clone masturbation? Is it incest? Is it both?
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Is consensual sex with a partner and your clone a threesome?
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Is it all under the umbrella of a hitherto unnamed sexual act? If it is, can I propose it be called clex?
Can we then be like “Remember Bob? Yeah, his clone tracked him down and now it’s nonstop clex and we’re really concerned because this feels like some form of narcissism, but like technically it is another person and we should probably support them because the Clex Law just passed and they’re both consenting adults and it’s not our business.”
Will there be clex marches? Clex Pride parades? Clex Awareness Month? Will Texas outlaw clex so clone partners have to move to another state or Ireland which just legalised it? Will someone write a really terrible movie attempting to support clex rights that uses a lot of analogies to other currently possible marginalised groups? Will we all meet for drinks after the movie to discuss how far it went or how appropriative it was? Will someone cry?
Will we watch with pride when a clone becomes president, their partner by their side, and their source material softly weeping because not only did they lose out on the presidency to their clone, but also their clone left them for a younger clone and that’s just fucked up, man.
Head on over to our socials on Twitter and Gizmodo Australia on Facebook and have your say. To bone or not to bone? That is the question.