VAINGLORY

1

Back ina day, one evening in January 1970, our hero was sitting at home in his fathers house. Our hero was remarkably bored which was a particularly common occurrence. Our hero is me, Nax, which is short for Nathaxniel. Its my friends that nick-named me Nax although currently I have no friends. The individuals that I used to call my friends are stupid and dumb.

In January 1970, my problem was not that I did not have any friends. In January 1970 my problem was that I did not know what the meaning of life was. One day this problem became so prominent in my mind that whilst sitting in my room in my fathers house I let out a remarkably loud sigh.

Upon hearing my sigh, my father said to me ‘Nathaxniel, you must stop sighing’, and upon hearing this response to my sigh I reminded myself that my father was indeed a wise man. He always used to say to me:

“Son, there is one thing in life that I know for sure and that is that you are unique.”

“There is only one you.”

This fact is something that I believed strongly.

2

A couple of moments passed that very same evening and something changed within myself as I took it upon myself to do something about my problem. It was after those couple of moments passed that I took it upon myself to find the meaning of life.

It was my father that I went to first to ask ‘what is the meaning of life’ and he responded that he did not know and did not care, and that I should never ask him another damned-fool question like that again.

This response did not defeat me and after some short brainstorming I realised that my best course of action was to ask Google, as Google was also a particularly wise man.

Soon after this realisation I summoned my laptop and Google search revealed to me a total of one hundred pages of answers. It was immediately apparent after reading the first few pages of results that the most mainstream answers were in the first pages. The sentiments I uncovered were similar to the sentiments of my stupid and idiotic ex-friends, and as such I realised that in order to uncover the real truth I must go to the very last result on the very last page.

On this last result on the last page there was merely a number, which looked exactly like a phone number.

3

After staring at the phone number for a while it occured to me that it was definitely a phone number.

The notion of me calling an ostensibly random number I had found on the internet made me particularly uneasy as I had at that time what can be described as a crippling general sense of anxiety.

It was after a few minutes of staring at the number and deliberating what to do next that I decided my best course of action was to in fact not call the number lest a cosmic sign goaded me into calling it.

Instead I went into my bed.

4

It was at about noon the following day when I was waking up and ruminating on the events of the previous evening that my phone started ringing. Under normal circumstances that is something I would ignore, dismissing as my ex-friends trying to contact me. However, these circumstances were not normal and as such I took it upon myself to look at who was calling my phone.

It was to my shock and amazement that the number that was calling me was the number from Google.

Taking that to be a cosmic sign I self administered some xanax from my large bag of xanax and answered the phone.

“Hello?” I said.

The other party told me to meet them down the road from my fathers house, which was a secure location. They made sure to make it abundantly clear to me that I am not followed whilst making my way to the location.

It was my intrigue that took control over my apprehension and after making sure to grab all of my xanax I headed out.

5

The journey was to be carried out on foot as I did not have any motor vehicle or bike and as such the journey was shaping up to be quite formidable.

Despite interactions between myself and strangers making me anxious and the journey’s road being significantly populated, there were more than enough xanax in my large bag of xanax to cover the whole ordeal.

Some short way through my journey, however, a policeman took it upon himself to make an issue of me as I looked particularly shady. After he saw me self administer another bar at the beginning of our interaction he detained me for possession of what he found to be a large amount of drugs.

From the way he was ravenously looking at my bag of xanax, it occured to me that perhaps his newfound interest was in the xanax itself. After some negotiating I managed to get out of the situation and receive only a slap on the wrist.

Unfortunately he also confiscated ninety-nine percent of my xanax, save for enough to last the rest of the journey which I had stashed away using some sleight of hand.

6

The journey was now mostly complete and I was nearly at the secure location when I felt the presence of another individual tailing behind me.

This was a doubly unfortunate situation as I had also now used the remainder of my xanax.

After taking a minute to pull myself together I recalled a particularly secret shortcut to the location that only I knew and ran particularly fast through it to get away from my pursuer.

The fact that only I knew that shortcut gave me confidence arriving into the secure location as it appeared to me that I had solved a problem that only I could solve.

7

After waiting at the secure location for a short while a hooded individual approached me and said:

“You made it”

It was obvious to me given this statement that this guy was the guy from the phone.

“You did not have to run from me” laughed the guy.

It was obvious to me given this follow-up statement that this guy was also the guy who was tailing me and this fact made me quite uneasy.

After he pulled back his hoodie things became even more strange. As I looked upon this individual my fathers words echoed in my head.

‘There is only one you’

This fact was clearly untrue as the person who was looking back at me… was me.

“You took our secret shortcut, thats good”, he said.

“What is going on” I said to him, or perhaps to myself.

“We are clones”, he said.

“We have to find the origin clone. He has has the answers”

The fact that there were now two of me gave me confidence to proceed.

8

On our way to the location of the origin clone we ran into some trouble from the police. It appeared that the policeman from earlier was back for what he thought would be another fix of drugs.

It was hard for me to blame him as being out of xanax, I was missing it also.

We managed to shake him using some diversion tactics that my clone had, but it only gave us a headstart in running away before the policemen started gunning for us.

9

It occured to the both of us that we werent able to get away unless we split up.

An idea came to my clone to give himself up in my stead and as such he went towards the police car.

Unfortunately the policeman shot him as the xanax had gotten into his brain. The policeman must have taken all of my xanax at once and exacerbated one of the two side-effects of xanax:

One of the side effects was a significant increase in animalistic virility, which I had learned to control over my extended use. It had escaped me at that time what the second side effect was as I was too stressed to remember.

Now that my clone was dead it was up to me to find the answers myself. The shock of my clones murder gave me the wake up I needed to continue.

10

Miraculously I was able to reach my destination - the home of the OG clone.

“Hello!” I shouted, to no response.

Desperate for answers I burst through the door to find an individual who looked identical to me dead in the living room.

It was upon staring at this dead OG clone that all hope was lost of finding answers. It had now been a long time since I had some xanax to calm my anxiety and as such I had to look deep inside myself to find peace. There was nothing in the house but a fridge full of food and I did not have it in me to leave which led me to stay there for a long while.

After both a whole month of me living there and a whole month of no xanax I started having flashbacks to events that happened before my story began. One flashback in particular made me realise something.

11 (The flashback)

“Nax ur such an asshole”

“nu-uh”

“Yeah, you are. All u do is take xanax and call us idiots.”

12

Once I came back to my senses I realised what I had been missing all along and it all came together in my mind:

It was in fact me who created clones of myself, making me the OG clone - I was the OG clone all along!

The reason I forgot was because of the other side-effect of xanax:

Memory loss.

It must have been the fact that I stopped taking the xanax for all that time that made me remember what all the clone business was about.

13 (January 1990 - Present Day)

“wow so you created clones of yourself just to prove us wrong”

“yeah”

“bloody ell. typical nax”

“haha”

“so what is the meaning of life then do u reckon?”

“ummm...”

"..."

“dont make clones”

the end.