Chapter 1 #2
This young woman is very pretty. Her sleek brown hair is tied back in an efficient ponytail, and her makeup is applied in a similar fashion.
She’s dressed like her job. Brown cardigan.
Skirt that hits just below her knees. Tall boots that come up underneath.
They’re flat heels. Practical, but faintly stylish.
I could say that about her in general, actually.
She’s making notes with a stylus on her pad. I think she’s got some kind of paper type covering on it to make it feel more like she’s writing with pen and paper. A Luddite, then. Interesting that she chooses to work as a technical writer.
I bet she’d love a journal as a present. I imagine she has several at home already, unused or barely used. Too good to make notes in. Some people make rough notes on pads like she has, or cheap paper, then make ornate spreads in their journals. I don’t think she has time for that.
I notice and catalog all these things while she stares at the Chimouse. It’s actually one of the less advanced successful experiments I’ve conducted, but it’s safe to show the general public and it’s the sort of nonsense that keeps shareholders happy.
“So this isn’t a blended creature, born from some kind of modified egg?”
“No. This is a mouse who became a chicken. Or part of one. Would you like to see the magic part?”
“Of course.”
I go ahead and reach for the antidote. The creature is trained to suckle at a dropper by instinct, so it takes the medicine without hesitation. The small size means it saturates quickly; there’s only a pause of thirty seconds or so before the Chimouse starts to devolve back to its original form.
“Oh, my god!” Lydia squeaks. I like her excitement.
It’s always gratifying to see people react to this technology.
I have managed to blend magic and science and what is left behind is something that could appear in any fantasy novel.
But this is real life. I have harnessed something that people have dreamed of for centuries.
This is as close as anybody has ever gotten to a true incarnation of the philosopher’s stone.
It’s almost more alchemical than scientific.
“It’s a mouse again!”
Lydia is blocking the cage with her head, but I know what she saw. The feathers shrivel and then drop. After that, the whole thing starts to assume something much closer to traditional mouse shape and continues to shrink even as it grows fur and a mouse tail and whiskers.
“It is,” I say.
“It’s almost unnatural, how fast the transformation takes place,” she says. “I feel like I’m watching something that can’t possibly be real—but it is. Isn’t it. You’ve really done this. You’re brilliant!”
“Thank you,” I say. It’s hard not to be gratified by her enthusiasm.
“How does it happen so quickly?”
“When the genes shift, so does the form,” I explain. “There’s an agent that speeds the phenotypical expression, but that’s proprietary.”
“Everything you do is proprietary,” she says. “I’m cleared to know everything.”
She might be cleared by Veronica, but she hasn’t been cleared by me.
There are plenty of things about this tech that I am keeping to myself.
The documentation is limited for a reason, and that is why I have been somewhat unpleasant to the girl.
I have no intention of laying all my secrets bare to her, or to anyone.
“This is going to change the world,” she says. “I can’t imagine what you’re going to do with this. I can’t imagine what they will do. Making animals out of other animals! You could bring species back from the dead. De-extinction!”
“Sure,” I say, knowing full well that nothing so wholesome is planned. The ability to shift the flesh is going to have a great many applications, many of them terrible.
“Or…” She pauses. “Wow. The possibilities seem almost endless.”
“Indeed. Anyway. You can start writing. I will give you my notes and you can work on them here. It should be enough. If you need me, I will be working. So. Try not to ask me any questions.”
She gives me that slightly wounded look because she doesn’t understand why I am being this way to her.
I am doing her a favor. The more I keep her at arm’s length, the safer she will be.
I’ll let her write up just enough to keep the suits and the shareholders happy.
Meanwhile, the only person who will ever be able to actually action these transformations will remain me.
“I have the job?” She looks up at me with big puppy eyes, and I have to resist the urge to pat her on the head and tell her that she’s a good girl.
Something tells me she might enjoy that a little too much.
This woman has a submissive streak in her, or maybe it’s just the effect seeking employment has on anybody.
“So far you do,” I tell her. “I’m willing to give you a trial.”
“Thank you!” She beams. “You won’t be disappointed, I promise.”
It would be impossible for her to disappoint me, as I very much do not want her to do a good job anyway.
“I’m sure I won’t,” I say.
She settles down at a desk near the mouse, and I return to work. I find her presence not entirely unpleasant. She has a quiet, kind energy about her. She is clearly the studious type.
For the next hour, the lab is less lonely than usual. I never noticed that it was lonely before. That’s interesting. I like my privacy and my space. Usually people feel like an intrusion. She doesn’t.
I glance over from time to time and see her immersed in the work.
She’s really interested in it, and she’s asked no questions because she’s too busy reading and making notes.
I decide to do a little stroll-by, like a teacher to see what she’s written, but much like a nervous student, she hides the paper behind her arm.
I smile to myself, then put two fingers on my notes and pull them down enough that she has to look at me.
“Enjoying the material?”
“This is fascinating,” she says. “I never thought I’d get to use my bio-med classes. I didn’t do enough of them to qualify, but I think I understand what I’m looking at, and it’s genius!”
That is a very gratifying response. In this industry, people are called geniuses all the time. But something in the truly genuine way she uses the word softens me toward her a little more.
Dammit. Veronica knew precisely what she was doing when she picked this girl for me. I am attracted, and that is a dangerous thing given what I am up to here. I cannot afford distractions.
But she’s not supposed to be a distraction. She’s supposed to be a vessel. You see, what Veronica knows, and what I am not supposed to have been doing, is experimenting with my own formulas. On myself.
There’s a question as to what would happen if someone taking these products were to impregnate a woman. Would the DNA changes be passed through the sperm? We can sequence them, of course. But you never really know what nature is going to do until she actually does it.
Lydia is looking over my shoulder, I notice.
I lift a querying brow at her.
“What other animals do you have back there?”
“You don’t have access to the research yet to be done, so you don’t need to know that,” I tell her. I don’t want her going back into my more private areas. “This room is fine to look at with supervision, but I don’t want you going any further into the lab, am I clear?”
She nods meekly, and I assume she’s going to do as she is told. So far she has been polite and obedient, as well as pretty.
We break for lunch. I go out to get something from the cafeteria. I think about asking her if she wants to come with me, but I figure she is an adult and she is also buried in my notes with apparent intense concentration.
I go and get lunch.
“What do you think of our newest hire?” The question is addressed to me by a sleekly dressed middle-aged woman with amazing hair, perfect makeup, and a streak of steel inside her soul that intimidates and terrifies lesser men.
Veronica does not usually bother with the cafeteria, but today she is lurking, holding a fruit salad I am almost certain she is not going to eat.
She needs it as an excuse to speak to me.
Interesting, given she could just summon me to her office.
But this interaction is supposed to be casual—and I suppose it is, in the way a shark in a shoal of fish is casual.
That is why there’s a small but complete dead zone around her. Everybody avoids Veronica. She has the air of a woman who has complete control and will do what she wants with it. The board loves her. Her management style has turned this faction of the company into an even more profitable endeavor.
My relationship to her is somewhat complicated. I am too personally and financially well-endowed to care about her power, but she does have influence over what can be done here.
“Lydia seems like she’s going to be very efficient,” I say.
Veronica smiles. “She’s of good age and good health, and I assume you find her attractive…”
The woman has all the subtlety of a madam. For a moment, this modern café fades away and is replaced mentally with an old Western saloon, and Veronica is not the manager, she’s the lady handling the working girls.
“I’m going to maintain professional boundaries,” I tell Veronica. We both know I am lying. The girl in my lab is the sweetest, most fuckable little treat I have laid eyes on in a while.
“What you do in your personal lives is none of my concern.” Veronica winks, turns on her heel, and stalks out of the cafeteria, dropping the fruit salad in the trash on the way out.
The entire room seems to breathe a sigh of relief as she leaves, and conversation picks up a level as the other employees return to their regular interactions.
The ice queen has left the room and spring has returned to our little Narnia.