The Birth of the Abomination - a story and a beginning

[Shine]

The Birth of “the Abomination”


Shine entered the Amphitheater, walked to the presentation area, cleared his throat and began speaking.

“Listen up, folks, we’ve had a bit of an ‘industrial accident’ at the Underground Bunker, and I feel it only fair and responsible to let you all know about certain recent events. If you will permit me, I will read some prepared remarks.”

He pulled out a few pages of paper, put on his reading glasses, and began to speak…


Whiteoak was in the Underground Bunker, out-loading things from his medical storage device. There were several things he had set into trays to deal with later. He had collected several pieces of trobifant corpses, including additional samples of toxin glands that Sanders had not needed when he developed the anti-toxin after the expedition, several large sections of the bright red beetle shell, at least a dozen of the photo-electric dragonfly wings, and a couple of small trobifant crystals. He also had several large drazil skins, which he hoped to fashion into something akin to an invisibility suit, and one of their disruptor pistols.

There were also a couple of very old files that didn’t have file names for them. Outloading the first yielded a norn hand. Whiteoak gasped as he realized this was his hand that the predator had cut off in the Forumopolis war. He had forgotten that he had saved it. He knew it had been too badly damaged at the time to ever reattach, and the prosthetic worked wonderfully, even relaying sensation. Still it was his hand, and he couldn’t just discard it so it had stayed in storage until he had forgotten about it.

The next un-named file produced several long strands of what looked like hair.

“Boy, that doesn’t ring a bell.” Thought Whiteoak to himself

He ran several tests on the hairs, and the only thing that the initial test revealed was that the “hair” was not really hair, or at least not in any traditional mammalian sense. He tried to extract genetic material, and again, it seemed not to have earth based DNA type genetic material. He identified and extracted something that seemed close to a self-replicating protein polymer that could perhaps have sequences that might function in a similar way to genetic material. After preparing samples for higher level analysis, he carried them over to Sanders restricted lab to see if he could get permission to use some of the lab’s special equipment.

Sanders was at first hesitant, but as Whiteoak told the tale, the case intrigued him, so he gave the norn the OK. They put the samples into the tissue analyzer for processing. It was at that point that the security buzzer sounded and Sanders went to the intercom to see who was trying to get in touch with them. He spoke softly, as if he didn’t want Whiteoak to hear.

“You can finish the test from here, I’ll be right back” Sanders said as he headed out the door of the restricted lab.

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“Listen, Rat, I told you not to contact me here, I don’t really want to be doing business with you in the first place, if I didn’t need what you claim to have, I wouldn’t be”

“Yes, but I do have it don’t I” the large rodent creature responded, taking a piece of electrical circuitry out of his pocket and showing it to Sanders. “Here it is Ecclesiastes my friend.”

“We’re hardly on a first name basis ‘jimmy’ “ Sanders retorted with a sneer. “and we shall see if what you have really works. Follow me.”

They headed into the general lab and went to a sort of a machine that was at the end of the counter, down from where Whiteoak had been doing his outloading and cataloging. Next he turned the odd looking piece of equipment backside forward. It was about the size of one of those half size refrigerators in which they held samples, and lunch leftovers. He opened the rear access panel and inserted the circuit board into a set of clips, and fastened the connectors. Then, closing the access panel, he turned the machine back around. On the front there were two doors, one above the other. He opened one, and went to a cupboard and took out a coffee cup, and placed it into the open compartment. He shut the door, input some settings on the control panel, pushed some buttons, and…..

…after about a minute, there was a soft beep tone. Sanders opened the second door, and there was a coffee cup that looked exactly like the one that he had put into the first door. Opening the first door, he took out the original cup and compared them. The second was an exact replica of the first.

“Ah, yes” Sander sighed with satisfaction.

“See, I told you I could get, it, FOR THE RIGHT PRICE, hmmm? And it worked, right? So?… as we discussed?

You shall be paid, hold on to your hat, wait here, and do not touch a thing” he said, as he headed out. Turning back to Jimmy, he repeated, “I mean it, not a single blessed thing!!”

In the restricted lab, Whiteoak was looking over the test results with a look of amazement as Sanders came in. Sanders went to a picture frame on the wall and moved it aside to uncover a safe, and after opening it took out a small weapons case and stuffed it into a brown paper sack
“You didn’t see anything,” Sanders said to Whiteoak

“Actually, sir, I didn’t. Have a look here at this” he said, showing Sanders the printout. “Parasitian!! Or at least a high probability, nothing specific, but its consistent with that, and its not even close to anything else.”
Sanders grabbed the paper with intent curiosity. “No kiddin’?, where did you get that?”

“I’d forgotten, but in the Forumopolis war, some of Little Sister’s “hair” got caught in Obed’s armor, and I stored it. I didn’t know who or what she was then, it was just a curiosity, and frankly, sir, I had forgotten it. What a find, huh?”

Over in the general lab, Jimmy the Rat was staying true to his word, he had not touched a single thing; he had touched several things. He was looking over, Whiteoak’s stuff on the counter. He could tell that the “hairs” were something important, because the norn had obviously run so many tests on them. Taking several of the strands, he put them into the replicator to make copies for his own use. If they were that important, someone would undoubtedly pay nicely for them. However when he opened the door, instead on a nice copied pile of hairs, he discovered a pulsing pile of goo, that seemed to be growing as he looked at it. He poked at it with a pencil, and the goo sort of “jumped” out at Jimmy, and landed on his nose. This was a shock to the rodent, who grabbed the gel like substance and yanked it off his nose and tossed it. It landed on one of the trobifant crystals, and received a significant jolt of energy. It took off like a bouncing pile of silly putty, bounding around the counter, coming into contact with most of the things there. Jimmy backed out of the lab and shut the door. Seeing Sanders and Whiteoak coming down the hall he hurried to greet them. Taking the package, Jimmy said, “Good, good! It was nice doing business with you, got to go, late for an appointment.” And he headed out of the bunker, at a dead run.
Looking at each other, Sanders and Whiteoak simultaneously turned towards the lab and pushed through the door. There before them, hovering in the air, exchanging small lightening bolts with a trobifant crystal, was a truly bizarre sight.

The parasitian “hair” material had been damaged by the replication process, which was never designed for living organic material, and now lacked the complete set of the genetic materials needed to form a whole body, but it had retained an ability to acquire characteristics from its “victims” or in this case, the things it had come into contact with. The central “body” shape, consisted of a copy of Whiteoak’s hand and wrist, hand down, like a foot, but with a rudimentary Parasitian mouth on the palm. The top surface of the hand and the wrist were covered with a hard carapace shell like the trobifant beetle’s, complete with both air exchange openings, and auditory receptors (ears, but without the flaps). It had a small pair of the photoelectric dragonfly wings sprouting from the top of the wrist. A single googley eyeball stood atop of a thin wobbly neck that stuck out of the top of the hard shell tube. Protruding up from the top of the eye's lid was a rat nose with long “Little Sister” hairs for whiskers, except that they were red in color, like the top-knot hairs of a woodnorn. It was twirling the “hairs” around above the eyeball at great speed, and that, combined with the small beating dragonfly wings, gave it a helicopter like agility to hover and dart about. From the tips of the fingers it seemed to be shooting bolts of electricity (powered by the wing’s photocells). The eyeball swiveled to turn its gaze upon the two who had just entered the room. Whiteoak walked slowly towards it, making calm and friendly sounds as one might try to calm a stray dog. The creature shot out an electric discharge at him, which he just barely managed to avoid. Sanders grabbed the disruptor pistol, set it on stun, and shot the abomination.

After running tests on it over the next several days, it was determined that it had merged its original genetic material with that of the trobifants' and Whiteoak's, and was truly a thing of its own, medically resembling none of its parts. Somewhere between the replicator damage, the trobifant crystal’s energy bursts, and the disruptor blasts, it seemed to have lost the ability to acquire new traits on contact. It does however, quite apparently, respond to stimuli, and even “learn” through conditioning. Early on, it developed an attachment to Whiteoak, who it had imprinted on as “family”, and basically, it has an agreeable temperament. It has also been discovered that the creature has developed an obvious ”taste” for rodent flesh, and has worked quite well as an exterminator for the labs, and subsequently, at Obed’s coffee house. It’s an odd thing, this accidental creation, and it is still only an infant of sorts. Only time will tell what will come of this “Abomination”, which is what Whiteoak has humorously named it.

Needless to say, Jimmy the Rat is officially on the ASF’s sh't list…..

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?So? tell me what you think?