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We knew it was going to be expensive but once we came up with the idea we knew we had to do it. We started by collecting DNA from John, Paul, George, and Ringo. Out of all of them, who do you think was the toughest to dig up? Turns out it was Ringo, who’s got some pretty weird fans. We had back-up samples of DNA taken from museum artifacts, which were easy enough to get a hold of. But Ringo’s DNA was always too damaged, which is not an indictment of his lifestyle, just the truth about the way DNA decays on various objects. And digging him up proved very difficult, in large part because of a cult that sits at his grave side twenty-four seven. But we managed to trick them into abandoning the place for a day, by infiltrating their organization, getting into their upper-level management, adjusting a few of their corporate tax holdings, and announcing a fake tribute concert half-way around the globe. They all went in protest, leaving behind what they thought were loyal members to guard the grave. But it was us, and we got the DNA samples we needed, and then some. In fact, we took a whole foot. We had planned on taking a hand, but then it was pointed out that Ringo was a drummer, and his hands were probably the most important– and thus worshiped– part of his body. Also, we deduced that the DNA in Ringo’s hand might be too damaged, itself, owing to all the blisters her regularly got in the recording studio. So we left the hands, and took a foot. However, even this caused some controversy amongst us, as the foot is itself used for the hi-hat pedal and the bass pedal. We argued for hours, with some of us insisting it didn’t matter, since he was going to be buried again and no one would be the wiser, and still others suggesting that this cult could one day, conceivably, dig up Ringo’s body and find the foot missing. Of course they’d never trace it back to us. Indeed, if our plans came to fruition, one of the side effects would be the dissolution of this cult altogether (a minor side effect, and not a guaranteed one, but highly probable, and accounting for only about thirty or forty lines of code in our prediction engine). But if things did not go as predicted, there was a chance this cult could dig up Ringo, find the foot missing, assume it had something to do with something spiritual, lop off their own feet, and embark on a globe-sweeping journey to remove the bass-pedal track from every Beatles record, tape, cd, and mp3 in existence. We had at least 15 chaos mathematicians working with us that that time, and they all agreed (!) that since nothing can be predicted with 100% accuracy, the only sure thing was that things would go exactly as we thought they would, which had an exact 0% chance of happening. So, in the end, we decided to take the foot, and leave behind a fake. Several of us volunteered to sacrifice their own foot for the fake, and that’s when we realized our group had been infiltrated by members of the Ringo Graveside cult, who had joined us to avoid a schism which was burgeoning thanks to some members wanting to dig the poor man up. Others did not want him to be dug up, but recognized that there might be other organizations that did want to dig him up. The ones in the cult who wanted to dig up Ringo put forward the idea to infiltrate our group, ostensibly to stop us from digging him up, but really to partake in the exhumation. A careful check of our minutes from the graveside event show that these were the same people who had argued vehemently against taking one of his hands, but were just as vehement about taking one of his feet and leaving a decoy in its place. Turns out the cult members who wanted to create a pro-exhumation faction had themselves suffered a schism, with one side wanting to dig up Ringo, and the other side wanting to swap one of his body parts for their own. But they couldn’t decide who’s body part amongst them should be swapped, so they decided to let fate determine it, by infiltrating our group and volunteering for the foot swap. Why not a hand swap? They all had identity tattoos on their hands– three, actually: one from the grave side protection cult, one from the dig-him-up faction, and one from the body-part-swap schism. We asked them why they used tattoos on their hands to identify themselves, and they said it was to avoid anyone sneaking into their cult. When we pointed out that we had snuck into their cult, they pointed out that they had allowed us to do so to support the factionalism and the schism. We felt very stupid at the point. But we got the DNA, and that was what was important. The rest was cloning the Beatles, cloning the audience at their Ed Sullivan show performance, and raising the clones in environments identical to what they’d each grown up in, then setting up a reenactment of the show. It went pretty well. We got the whole thing on video, but this time in color. Worth it.
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