Edward Snowden: “Death to Ukrainian Nazis!”

MOSCOW — Edward Snowden slammed his fist into his laptop, Thursday, shouting with full force, “Death to Ukrainian Nazis!”

Putin tented his fingers and growled like a rabid dog. “They’ll never take back Crimea. Precious Crimea.”

Edward Snowden’s Ukrainian rant was building towards a crescendo. He’d cursed Zelensky, condemned chemical warcrimes, and now he tore into his laptop with his teeth, ripping at the display, broken liquid crystals mixing with the blood on his chin. “I SENT THE GODDAMNED BALLOONS. I SABOTAGED THE TRAIN IN OHIO. I AM THE CENTER, THE PIVOT, THE CULMINATION OF HUMANKIND!”

Putin tapped nervously at his red emergency button and rattled away Russian commands to his deputies over his desktop intercom, “Cut the video, have the bastard tranquilized. Try not to let him get too wound up.” Pacing in front of hundreds of television monitors, Putin snarled and recoiled as the screens began to fill with Snowden.

Leering at the pistol on his shoulder harness, caressing it as he menaced his assistant, Putin barked, “Forget it. Bring out a fresh clone, have this one cubed and dissolved. He’s done. I don’t care how long it takes, we’ll get this right. Maybe soon I will have to clone another assistant, too.”

Snowden clone A3 grimaced at the pain of the hacksaw tearing into his live flesh, but otherwise did not appear to notice the life draining from him. “I can feel my brain integrating with the world wide web. This is incredible. I have ascended to a higher level of consciousness from which I can see all of time engraved within this very room. It’s magnificent.”

Putin’s Igor-like assistant continued to cut away small cubes from Snowden’s shins, carefully feeding each piece into the acid bath.

“It isn’t a simulation. It’s an emulation of the past from an infinite computer that builds itself in defiance of entropy. The future is the present really, but also it’s just one past. A projection of one possible past, out of billions. Finally I can see them, all of them.” Snowden heaved his last sigh as the incredible beauty of eternity entirely dissolved his cloned soul once again.