ATTA BOY

I posted this yesterday as a comment over at 100 Words or Les Nessman, and now it’s time to inflict it on you.

The theme for the day was “judge.” I will admit to stealing the idea for the post itself from Terry Bisson’s brilliant short story “macs.” That story, and many other excellent pieces of Bisson’s short fiction, is available in his second such collection, In the Upper Room and Other Likely Stories. I recommend that book to you, along with his first collection, Bears Discover Fire and Other Stories.

Anyway, the piece, which clocks in at exactly 100 words:

Somehow, they were able to find a few scraps of DNA amidst the smoking wreckage.

It wasn’t much, but they didn’t need much. The hardest part was making sure it was the right DNA, with so many possibilities.

They made two thousand seven hundred fifty two clones. Each one a perfect Muhammad Atta, down to the cell structure. Each one handed over to the family of a Trade Center victim.

Each family had thirty days to dispose of their “Atta-Boy,” in whatever manner they wished.

Amazing what kind of justice you get when the judge has a Molecular Biology degree.