TheKookroach
Experienced
- Joined
- Mar 14, 2012
- Posts
- 46
He wasn't Human.
And at the same time, he was ... because they made him that way.
Physically, he appeared human. But genetically, he was ... something entirely different. In an underground facility so secret that it made Area 51 look like a visitor's information booth, scientists referred to the ship as "The Ark". Found below 400 feet of packed ice in Antarctica, the craft was incredible. But even more incredible than the ship was what was inside it: ten thousand biological samples, vials of DNA, each one seeming to come from a different specie of animal ... extra terrestrial animal.
Over sixty years, in the facility referred to only as The Factory, dozens of evolutionary biologists and other scientists manipulated the samples. Hundreds of experiments were attempted; hundreds of experiments failed. Ultimately, the biologists were able to use embryos from a variety of Earthling mammals in conjunction with the alien DNA to bring forth life. And while the creatures that came to life appeared to be no different than the Earthling creatures from whom their embryos originated, they were very much genetically alien.
And they could talk to one another, not with a common language per se, but through a combination of sounds, body language, and -- it was theorized -- some form of telepathy. How ever it was happening, the alien creatures were communicating, informing one another of their surroundings, even teaching one another how to escape their enclosures. On a dozen different occasions over the four decades of successful live births, the hybrids were able to teach one another how to use their various limbs to manipulate latches, locks, switches, and more to initiate escape attempts.
Scientist were in awe of this ability. Their government and military overlords most definitely were not. On many occasions, the project was nearly terminated and all of the hybrids destroyed. Eventually, though, a new Chief Researcher convinced his superiors that there was one way to definitively learn about the hybrids: create a human hybrid, a creature they could talk to.
The discussion, debate, fighting, and negotiating lasted more than a decade before the decision was made to proceed. An abandoned military facility was refitted and the lab was moved to it, twelve floors below the Nevada desert. On the surface, it appeared as no more than a former military air strip now being used as a weapons testing range. But below the brown sand and shrub was The Factory, a facility more secure than even the CDC's safest germ testing facilities.
"Adam" -- also called TS22, the twenty-second attempt at a human hybrid -- had been born only six years ago, but he was already as mature, biologically, physically, mentally, and sexually, as a two decade old human male. He was educated in English, and by his third year of life, he was holding lengthy conversations with his minders about science, biology, astronomy, and more.
And while his minders found him incredible, the Suits didn't. They wanted to know where his ship had come from, why it had been sent here, what the DNA samples were for, and whether the samples were part of a colonization attempt or a displacement project intended to remove the planet's dominant species ... humans!
Adam tried to be helpful; he never held anything back from his inquisitors. He simply didn't know what they wanted to know.
What he did know, of course, was that he was a prisoner -- a lab animal -- and that once his scientists, or the men and women pulling their strings, no longer had a purpose for him, he would be destroyed. Killed. So, he used the ability he'd held back from his minders -- the same but much more advanced telepathy that all of his kind held -- and he convinced the on-duty security staff that he needed to go for a walk ... outside.
He spent three days walking, running, riding; and now, he was ...who knows where, at the edge of a small town as the sun fell beyond it. He was hungry and cold and exhausted...
...and horny.
Something -- nature -- was driving him to breed. And everything about him seemed to be pushing to make it happen as soon as possible. He headed down into the town, his mind set on locating a mate, the human mother of his beyond-human children.
Despite his education in The Factory, Adam didn't know a lot about human society. He'd been taught what his minders thought would help him explain his people to them, which of course had done nothing for them in the end. And yet he easily understood that the laughing and singing and carrying on in the little town was some form of a celebration, a festival ... and females were all about!
Adam knew he was different, genetically, than these humanfemales but he also knew it didn't matter; genetically, they were different, but biologically, everything worked the same way, and while he couldn't be certain, his instinct told him that their different DNAs were, somehow, compatible.
They will produce my kind, he somehow knew.
But as he waded into the every thickening crowd, Adam suddenly realized he knew nothing of Human breeding rituals. He'd never heard of courtship or dating or one night stands or lasting relationships or marriage or any of this. All he knew was that, biologically, he was a male, they were female, and he needed them to come together.
Back at The Factory, he'd been able to manipulate his male minders into practically walking him out of the top secret facility, just with a thought and a few polite words. Will that work here...? With a female...?
Adam continued into the festivities, searching for the right female. Who is right...? he wondered. A slight smile spread upon his lips. He breathed in deeply ... and found the air full of pheromones. He spun, back tracked, took in another breath, a turned again. He pushed through the crowd, breathing deeply again, then again, then ... he hesitated, and turned to look directly into the face of a woman gently gyrating alone to the music of the band on a stage behind him.
She met his gaze and smiled. She looked him up and down; her smile widened. "Hey. How you doin'?"
"You're ovulating," he said bluntly. "Would you like to breed with me and produce my off--"
He never saw the slap coming. He teetered at the blow, taking a step back. It was the first time anyone had ever laid a hand on him in such a way. His face stung and his eyes filled with tears of pain and shock. He blinked them away, and when he looked back to the woman ... she was gone, her back to him as she faded into the crowd.
That's not the way, he thought to himself. What now?
Adam simply didn't have the knowledge about how to go about finding a mate. And then, directly before him, he found his first clues. A male and female -- obviously a mating couple -- were pressed close to one another as they emerged from a doorway; their mouths were together and played their hands over one another in ways that Adam was sure was part of a mating ritual as the woman was exuding pheromones stronger even than the woman who'd smacked him silly.
He watched them head out into the crowd occupying a blocked off street, then entered the door they'd emerged from. Inside, there was loud music and laughter; people were writhing about in the middle of the room -- dancing, Adam had heard it called by one of his more entertaining minders -- and all about the place, males and females were hefting glasses of liquid to their mouths that seemed to vary in color and container type but all had one thing in common that Adam could smell: ethyl alcohol.
(OOC: looking for a woman to "breed" with and become a key player; a human civilian male, possibly a reporter hot on the story of the government mobilization that was talking place across much of the Western US, or friend of the woman above or some other interested party; a government agent, leading the search for him; and others. PM me with your ideas.)
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