Geneticide: Scientific Curiosity
The Genome Effect: Part 1
By: W.O.L.F 0013

"Monsters we are, least monsters we become."
-- Anonymous

Quite a few things had gone wrong today.  My credit code bounced, Sarah refused to go out with me again and, to top it all off, a freaking dog woman moved in across the street.  If living next to a clone wasn't bad enough, now I have to keep a pooper scoop around just to keep my lawn from dying.

People would often ask me why I hated the people that have been transformed but I had never dignified that with an answer.  To me it seemed that the people who were transformed by the bomb were already dead and anyone who said otherwise was obviously stupid.  Never once have I looked into an animal man's eyes and saw intelligence.  All that was there was a mockup conscience created by instinct.

Whenever this subject is brought up, I get mad.

Despite all that, I was in a pretty good mood.  One of the reasons is that someone high up in the government, a man named Caligo, was now backing me on my requests for using one of those freaky animal people in some experiments. The second reason is that I made a rather important scientific discovery that would most certainly get me a raise.  But as of now, I'm going to settle on writing about it in my scientific journal.

After about an hour of surfing the Omega net and visiting Pro Humanity online I decided it was time to start working on my scientific journal.  So after adjusting my glasses, I brought up the file and began typing:

Dr. Ian Flint's journal: July 2nd 2026.

Today I finally figured out how it was all done.  As I wrote earlier, every scientist at the lab was certain that the new ore we got a few years ago was somehow responsible for the Geneticide Plague as I call it.

After weeks of messing with that stuff I had almost given up on that theory. It just didn't seem to have any effect on organic molecules.  Then it finally hit me.  We had all tested the radiation coming from that ore.  It was indeed harmless.   But no one ever thought how the background radiation might effect the radiation from the ore.  It seemed silly to me at first but the more I thought about it the more it began to bug me. 

I paused for a moment to take off my glasses.  Despite the fact that it was easier for me to see with them on, I could no longer wear them.  They had become quite uncomfortable and were beginning to hurt a little.  It was actually quite odd because I had never had a problem with them before that. 

When we mixed some powdered uranium into a powdered version of the ore, we exposed the combined radiation to twenty lab rats and then took a cell sample to view under an electron microscope.  What we found answered most of the mysteries that had plagued us for the past few months.  We found that the combined radiation somehow alters DNA randomly. That part wasn't so surprising.  What was very unexpected was the effect the radiation had on mitochondria.  I won't go into to much detail but suffice to say the mitochondria was working on overtime converting the radiation into raw energy. That is how the changes are possible but the exact mechanics of the change are still beyond my under standing.

I paused once again, this time because of a sharp stabbing pain near my spine. I quickly stood up and began running to the bathroom.  Everything around me was spinning quickly and I nearly fell on several occasions.  I made my way into the bathroom by pure will and grabbed hold of the counter to steady myself.  My vision was blurring so I couldn't see very well as I looked into the mirror.  The face staring back at me was not my own but rather that of a twisted freak. At that moment, a painful stabbing sensation in my face caused my arms to give out and I fell to the floor hitting my head on the bathroom sink.

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I don't know how long I was out but the first thing I sensed when I started coming around was a dripping sound.  As I opened my eyes I found that something large and white was obstructing my view. 

"So doctor how do you like it?" said a voice I had never heard before.

Confused and rather scared, I quickly turned my head back and forth and screamed, "Who are you and what are you doing in my house."

The voice laughed and then responded with, "Your house, doctor? I do believe you hit your head too hard."

As my eye's adjusted to the dark, I realized that this indeed wasn't my house. I also discovered that I was being held upright by a pole and some chains. Through the darkness, I could also make out that I was on a platform of some sort.

The voice once again pierced the darkness and asked once again, "How do you like it."

Angry and confused I sternly snarled, "HOW DARE YOU PLAY MIND GAMES WITH ME! What in the world am I supposed to like?  And, why have you brought me here?" I hadn't noticed until then that my voice was somewhat smaller, higher pitched and that even when I yelled it seemed pitiful.

"Such a temper doctor," said a young Caucasian male no older than 23.  I couldn't see his face but he was a large young man dressed in an intricate black military-style outfit and a black cape.  It was hard to see his face but I was able to make out a blue "C" tattoo around his left eye. I was also able to see that his hair matched his black outfit perfectly.

"I really would have thought that a doctor would have figured it out by now," said the dark young man "but then again you're legally no longer a doctor."

"WHAT?" I screamed with a startled tone. "What do you mean"

"You really haven't figured it out yet have you?"  he said as he reached toward his pocket and took out what looked like a remote control.  He pushed a button on the remote and I felt myself suddenly turning around. Once I was fully turned around, I found myself facing a mirror.  What I saw simply couldn't have been real.  I was a humanoid lab rat.  My body was covered with white fur except for my tail.  My eyes were a menacing dark red.  In fact my entire body seemed more rat-like than it did human. 

My gaze fell back on the beady red eyes in the mirror. I had always hated eyes like that but now they were my own.  No matter how hard I looked into those eyes, I couldn't see an ounce of human intelligence.  It was for that reason that I couldn't break my gaze from my reflection and for the first time in years I began to cry.

"I see that your surprised doctor.  Just so you know you really can't blame me for this, it was your sloppiness in your experiment yesterday that caused this," the man in black said in a mocking tone. "But don't you worry, we'll make sure that no one ever discovers what you have become."

Despite my shock, that last bit was just too threatening to ignore. Apparently he saw my concern in my face and answered, "You knew to much for us to just leave you alone and you made such a convincing argument for a human lab rat that I just couldn't resist such an opportunity." At that the man in black turned around and began walking away.

After my situation began to sink in, I began yelling out "You can't do this to me. I'm a doctor, a human being…"

At that I heard the man in black turn around and say "Doctor, I really don't care" and on that final note he resumed walking away, laughing

Forward to Part 2
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Write to W.O.L.F wolf0013@aol.com