The clone conundrum

"Hey Max" Ari called out.

Max sputtered. Since when had Ari felt familiar enough to greet her like that? And wasn't he dead?

"How are you alive?" Max couldn't help but ask, surreal as all of this was.

"Well, technically, I have never died. But I suppose you are talking about Ari in general. In which case, have no fear. I'm not a zombie. Just a clone."

"A clone!"

"Don't be anti clone here Max, most of the people you know are clones! Didn't you ever wonder about their wildly fluctuating characterizations- I mean opinions?"

"Umm…" truthfully, Max's world was so rapidly changing, and with such strange things becoming the norm, that she had simply stopped paying attention to it all.

"Wait! Most of the people I know! I would think I would have noticed that drastic!"

"Max. You live with a telekinetic, who messes with people for fun."

"Angel wouldn't do that to me!"

"That's what Angel wants you to believe. Truthfully, the name Angel, is a title, given to telekinetic clones. And there are a lot of them running around, and not all of them have wings."

"What?"

"Your Angel is the third winged Angel, as the previous two have died. One in Antarctica, and another in that Hurricane. Of course, you don't remember, you think you saved her, because that's what she wants you to think. "

"I- I don't believe you."

"Why does Fang have so many followers on his blog? Why are people so easy to draw into cults? Why are scientists allowed to experiment with genetics, without protest from the public. Either someone very rich is privately funding all of this, or the government is in the know."

"Ari, you sound like one of those crazy conspiracy theorists from TV!"

"Have you ever heard the saying truth is stranger than fiction?"

"You have a voice in your head, right? It tells you to save the world?"

Max nods, unsure of how he even found out about that.

"I have one. And Angel has one. Its from other Angels. Jeb may or may not have one. It's a bit hard to tell. He may have gone kind of crazy, as you might have been able to tell, from his insistence you will save the world."

"How is that Crazy?"

"Max, what exactly are bird kids going to save the world from?"

"Itex?"

"That was more on Fang then anything you did. And how exactly did it save the entire world? Did it really stop anything? What about that time you went to Africa and saw that weird stuff happening in a tent, and left never to talk about it again?"

That was an uncomfortable level of insight into her life.

"Are you spying on me?" Max accused.

"I suppose I should have introduced myself properly. I'm Ari Angel."

"But you are male!"

"How sexist Max, did you really think all the Angels would be females? Or that all clones would be born Equal? No, while physical appearances can be modified after the fact, the odds of getting exactly the same person from the same people are incredibly low.

The chances that you would be born as you are about one in 400 trillion. There is so many little variations of DNA mixing, to make different people. Of course, they have gotten better over the years, with a lot of time to study it, and add bird DNA, which was a key to creating more efficient and exact clones then natural birth."

"Where are you going with this?"

"You are still the original Max. You have been manipulated a lot, but even though your Angel may not want you to remember this, the subconscious does not quite forget. Jeb may be crazy, but even crazy people can be right. If that's the case, you need information. Knowledge is power. So remember this."

Ari turned around and stared directly into her eyes.

"Ask yourself, are the people around me, really who I think they are? And are my thoughts mine? Investigate, if you in any way suspect the answer is no."

Max doesn't remember, what Ari said to her at the end, and later forgets the conversation, or seeing him back from the dead, but sometimes, she hears a voice in the back of her head, telling her to Investigate.

Max feels trapped in a love triangle between a stalker, and someone who she thought of as a brother, and Angel feels more and more unpredictable by the day, and something pricks at the back of her mind.

"Are the people around me who I thought they were?"

But there seem to be bigger crisis to tackle.

"Are the thoughts in my head mine?"

Cults, are becoming a big problem now, and she doesn't know what to do, and the problems just seem to be unrelenting. She misses the days where she was on the run. For they were simpler times.

"Investigate" the voice says.

But she never does.

There never seems to be any time.

Written, because the Maximum ride story at times, would probably make more sense at times as a brainwashing battle between psychic manipulators.

Like, I like the concepts and characters Maximum Ride it is built on, but it has more hanging plot threads then a t-shirt that hung outside for five years, during which it was attacked by the elements, scissors, and a bored cat batting at it.

So sitting down, and trying to figure out what to do with it, is a bit like trying to write a long story with Ventus in it, from kingdom hearts.

I like Ven, I really do, but his place in it can be so hard to figure out for me to figure out what to do with. Like, apparently he was from the time of the keyblade wars. And was an apprentice to Xehanort. And is still younger than Terra and Aqua. And is also amnesic, and has his darkness with Sora's face running around, due to heart bonding when Sora was a baby. Also, Xehanort is a time traveler. Is that how he had time to train Ven, while also having Ven be from the keyblade wars? Or maybe Ven is a clone, from the Ven of the keyblade wars.

Ven broke himself rather then become the X blade, and Vanitus has a lot of darkness to him, where Sora and Roxas do not have a lot. And maybe, Vanitus is made of both Vens darkness and the darkness potential newborn Sora had, but didn't quite grow into. That Ven broke himself, worries me, because how is he going to ballance himself, with two halfs himself hating each other that much. What does that say about Ventus mental state before he was divided?

I guess we might find out in the game, unlike the plot threads of Maximum ride, which seems to have lost the point somewhere in a sandstorm of ideas not fully realized?

What was happening in Africa? What became of that assassin that tried to shoot them out of the air? What is Angel's game? What exactly were bird kids supposed to be saving the world from again, and how were they supposed to accomplish it?

I sure don't know.