by FREDERICA VON McTOAST-HYPHEN, Alternate Reality News Service People Writer
New York's prestigious Alhambra-Sclerotic Dinner is an annual event where the city's elite gather to congratulate themselves on maintaining their fortunes in the face of the socialist hordes that are sometimes referred to as "the people." This year, patrons, who were raising funds for orphaned dolphins, were horrified when the main speaker, Carl "Cal" Rorschach, exploded on the podium.
"He didn't exactly explode," explained coroner trainee Alicia Pouty. "Over the years, Mister Rorschach had undergone a number of surgical procedures - grafts and transplants and such. His body rejected them all at the same time. Violently."
How violently? Members of the fashionable gerontocracy who had paid $250,000 per couple for the privilege of sitting directly in front of the head table were sprayed with skin and blood from a skin graft on Rorschach's upper chest and arms from a burn he had received in a tragic Crepe Suzettes accident.
Olivia de van den Gurrgglle, heiress to the de van den Gurrgglle non-spill cup fortune, was horrified to find that what she had believed to be an olive from her martini was actually an eyeball. At least, we believe she must have been horrified. "It was saltier than I would have expected," was all de van den Gurrgglle would say of the experience.
Derivatives [private information]aire Gerhardt "Even I Don't Understand What I Do, But I Am Filthy Rich Because Of It" Spumoni had to be rushed to hospital when one of Rorschach's fingers flew halfway across the room straight into his eye. He was too sedated to answer questions, but Edwina Scaramondo, Spumoni's "date," giggled and said, "It was like the finger had a homing device in it, you know? Fwoosh! - it went straight for Gerhardt - I mean, Mister Spumoni's eye."
Six other patrons were hit by flying fingers, but not so badly that they needed medical attention. One of them, on condition of anonymity, remarked, "It was outrageous! Nobody gives Spellman Hearst-Gates the finger! Nobody!"
It was believed that Rorschach's liver - at least the fourth that he had had transplanted in the last decade - also left his body, but, since people were eating pate at the time, nobody noticed. At least, nobody admitted to noticing.
The human immune system often rejects organ transplants from the body in much the same way that INS officers often reject people with vaguely foreign sounding names from the country. However, coroner trainee Pouty said that that could not be what had happened in this case.
"Mister Rorschach had a Fun Clone," she explained, "so his body wouldn't reject any new parts because they essentially came from him."
Fun Clones are genetic reproductions of individuals that are identical in every detail save one: they are created without brains. Some wags have suggested that their main purpose is to supply Washington with a steady stream of politicians, but there has only been one documented case of that happening, and the Representative from Ohio only served three terms. The real purpose of having a Fun Clone of oneself is to harvest it for body parts.
"It's not much fun being a Fun Clone," the radical environmental group Greenwar said in a press release. "Without consciousness, how can you appreciate the finer things in life? Good conversation? Poetry? World Wrestling Entertainment? Creating Fun Clones as organ banks is a horrible perversion of science.
"But, aah, we had nothing to do with Rorschach's death."
Although no group has taken responsibility for Rorschach's death, Greenwar is one of three groups that have denied responsibility for it. Man's Dominion, a radical Christian group is another.
"We don't like to think of them as Fun Clones," Father Samuel Augustus Samuels stated. "We prefer to think of them as Human Body Banks That Are an Abomination in the Sight of God. Not that we're judging.
"But, aah, we had nothing to do with Mister Rorschach's death, either."
In addition, the American Association of Registered Podiatrists sent out a statement that read, in part: "We had nothing to do with the death of Carl Rorschach. We probably would not have become suspects, but, because everybody thinks we're a bunch of perverts, we feel the need to defend ourselves even before any accusations are made. Our mothers were so proud we became doctors - if they only knew!"
"This was not natural," coroner in training Pouty claimed. "I found traces of nanobots in Mister Rorschach's bloodstream. I suspect their purpose was to make his body reject all of the transplanted material at the same time.
"It was murder. I don't know how foul it was - I mean, it was pretty foul, I guess. Maybe even largely foul. Not most foul, but largely foul. It was messy, though. It was...murder most messy!"
The investigation continues.