trying to see more clearly and to put myself in a monkey frame of mind.
Among the hey-let’s-play-God crowd that worked in the deepest bunkers of
Wyvern, the most exciting and most generously funded research had included
a project intended to enhance both human and animal intelligence, as
well as human agility, speed, sight, hearing, sense of smell, and
longevity. This was to be accomplished by transferring selected genetic
material not just from one person to another but from species to
species.
Although my mother was brilliant, a genius, she was not trust me on this a
mad scientist. As a theoretical geneticist, she didn’t spend much time
in laboratories. Her workplace was inside her skull, and her mind was as
elaborately equipped as the combined research facilities of all the
universities in the country. She kept to her office at Ashdon College,
only occasionally venturing into a lab, supported by government grants,
doing the heavy thinking while other scientists did the heavy lifting.
She set out not to destroy humanity but to save it, and I am convinced
that for a long time she didn’t know the reckless and malevolent
purposes to which those at Wyvern were applying her theories.
Transferring genetic material from one species into another. In the hope
of creating a super race. In an insane quest for the perfect,
unstoppable soldier. Smart beasts of myriad design bred for future
battlefields. Weird biological weapons as tiny as a virus or as large as
a grizzly bear.
Dear God.
Personally, all this makes me nostalgic for the good old days when the
most ambitious big-brain types were content with dreaming up
city-busting nuclear bombs, satellite-mounted particle-beam death rays,
and nerve gas that causes its victims to turn inside out the way
caterpillars do when cruel little boys sprinkle salt on them.
For these experiments, animals were easily obtained, because they
generally can’t afford to hire first-rate attorneys to prevent
themselves from being exploited, but, surprisingly, human subjects were
readily available, as well. Soldiers courts-martialed for particularly
savage murders and condemned to life sentences were offered the choice
of rotting in maximum-security military prisons or earning a measure of
freedom by participating in this secret enterprise.
Then something went wrong.
Big time.
In all human endeavors, something inevitably goes woefully wrong.
Some say this is because the universe is inherently chaotic. Others say
this is because we are a species that has fallen from the grace of God.
Whatever the reason, among humankind, for every Moe there are thousands
of Curlys and Larrys.
The delivery system used to ferry new genetic material into the cells of
research subjects to insert it in their DNA chains was a retrovirus
brilliantly conceived by my mom, Wisteria Jane Snow, who somehow still
had time to make terrific chocolate-chip cookies. This engineered
retrovirus was designed to be fragile, crippled that is, sterileand
benign, merely a living tool that would do exactly what was wanted of
it.
Once having done its job, it was supposed to die. But it soon mutated
into a hardy, rapidly reproducing, infectious bug that could be passed
in bodily fluids through simple skin contact, causing genetic change
instead of disease. These microorganisms captured random sequences of
DNA from numerous species in the lab, transporting them into the bodies
of the project scientists, who for a while remained unaware that they
were being slowly but profoundly altered. Physically, mentally,
emotionally altered. Before they understood what was happening to them
and why, some Wyvern scientists began to change … to have a lot in
common with the research animals in their cages.
A couple years ago, this process suddenly became obvious when a violent
episode occurred in the labs. No one has explained to me exactly what
happened. People killed one another in a bizarre, savage confrontation.
The experimental animals either escaped or were purposefully released by
people who felt a strange kinship with them.
Among those animals were rhesus monkeys whose intelligence had been
substantially enhanced. Although I’d thought intelligence was related to
brain size and to the number of folds in the surface of the brain, these
rhesuses didn’t have enlarged craniums, except for a few telltale
characteristics, they resembled ordinary members of their species.