Lexx is a unique television show that has spawned a worldwide network of fans.  And nowhere is Lexx's unique brand of looniness more evident than on the SciFi Channel's Lexx billboard, by all accounts one of the liveliest message boards in the genre.  A whole subculture has grown up on the Lexx bboard, centered around a fanfiction/role play game that is played by, but by no means limited to, women lusting after Kai:  in short, the Clone Game.

What do you do when confronted by a character who is dead, therefore without wants, needs, or motivations of any kind?  At least, this is what the creators of Lexx, the Supreme Beans of Salter Street Films, Ltd. Have told us repeatedly, while at the same time teasing us mercilessly with glimpses into Kai's personality beneath that icy dead exterior.

Well, one way is to clone that character into one that possesses all the qualities that made the original so attractive, plus one more --- a capacity for living emotion and virtual physical interaction.  It's a combination that has had the women of SciFi's Lexx bboard clamoring for a clone of their own.  To date, nearly a hundred clones have been handed out to female and male members of the bboard, including many Xev and Stan clones.

A little bboard history is in order.  The Lexx bboard at scifi.com is relatively young, only a little over a year old.  In its early days, a distinctive online subculture began to form, centered around a series of fanfiction stories that were posted on Fridays, the day Lexx aired in the U.S.  These stories, begun by Remma, but soon farmed out to the other women of Lexx, came to be called the Chocolate Tradition, and they have three rules:  they must feature Kai, innuendo, and chocolate, not necessarily in that order.  In the year since they began, only two Fridays have not seen a Chocolate Tradition (CT) story.  (Imagine the reaction when it was discovered that there is a Chocolate Lake in Halifax, Nova Scotia.)

In addition to the Chocolate Tradition, another Friday tradition sprang up, that of the Lexx Bar, originally a peacemaking effort between Lexxians and Farscape fans.  Every Friday, no matter what, a member of the bboard opens the Lexx Bar with a post to the bboard, despite the fact that Lexx is now airing on Monday at SciFi.  It's a celebration of Lexx and the end of the week, and anyone is welcome to open the bar (usually by breaking a window or knocking down the virtual door to get inside, since no one can remember that the key is always under the doormat).  Whoever opens the bar serves as virtual bartender and short order cook, and the Lexx Bar has hosted many a raucous pie fight, drunken brawl, sentimental songfest, animal rampage, troll bashing, and all around hullaballoo.

Soon after these traditions became a regular feature, one night in the #lexx chatroom at scifi.com, a man who goes by the nick Ayrton dubbed the women of Lexx the APEC:  The All Powerful Estrogen Cloud.  The group adopted the motto "Only real men can breathe the cloud" (to which some of us appended "and survive").  In time, a male equivalent grew up,taking the name of ORAL:  Overly Rowdy APEC Lovers, populated by some very brave men.  The only requirement for membership in either group has always been dedicated drooling for a Lexx character of the member's choice.

In their fac fiction stories, the women of APEC soon created the APEC Castle as a reaction to the many detractors who were then posting derogatory comments about Lexx on the bboard.  These creatures became known as a race of trolls whose sole aim is to destroy the Lexxian landscape of fandom.  The Castle itself grew to include virtual living quarters, a library, a Great Hall, a communcal kitchen, and eventually, a cloning lab, which was run by Micromary, the Queen of Clones.  The MistressofDoom suggested cloning Kai in chat one night, and Micromary created the first "batch" of twelve.  It took her a month to "cook" them up, and they were handed out in chat and in the Lexx Bar.

It was inevitable that the Chocolate Tradition stories would branch out into stories about the Kai clones, and a whole new tradition sprang up:  Clone Fiction (CF) as opposed to Fan Fiction (FF) about the original Lexx characters.  Clone Fiction stories chronicle the exploits of the various clones, usually but now always the Kai clones.  Each clone has a number designation to show his or her "birth" order, but many of the Kai clones have been given nicknames to reflect the personalities they develop and the particular interests of the people who have them:  Kai2, the first clone to appear in fiction became MyKai by default; others followed, with names like CowboyKai, TechnoKai, YeoZaaKai, DiscoKai, DarkKai, GothiKai, and many, many more.  Still other clones who appear regularaly in clone fictions have retained their number designations as their names:  TrsKai21, Kai13, Kai10, etc.

Several of the clone nicks have been registered on the Lexx bboard and now post as themselves, creating threads that are every bit as quirky and unpredictable as the television show that inspired their creation.  Troll wars have been fought and won, beloved mistresses rescued from dire straits, steamy romances begun, innocent encounters with the law withstood, theme parks and supermarkets visited with unexpected consequences, new sports undertaken (the current sport of choice is troll golfing off the APEC Castle battlements, points scored for trolls hit), and throughout it all, much chocolate has been consumed in the heat of passion.

In the dry deserts of hiatus and the prickly jungles of inexplicable SciFi programming, clone fiction/role play has been a particular godsend to the fans of the Lexx bboard.  And it has been a way to explore the Lexx characters, particularly Kai's own peculiar one, set free from any hint of canon.

In this spirit, plans are being made to create a website and an archive for the clone stories, with an interactive database that will allow any fan who wishes to participate and research the background and traditions that make up the game.  By the time this appears in print, the fans of the game hope that APEC and ORAL will have a site of their own in which this particular Lexx universe will continue to evolve in its own inimitable way.