The thirty-seventh test subject had died when they pulled the plug on her life support. She had been an attempt at
neofelis nebulosa. Her skin was patterned appropriately, but her internal organs had rearranged themselves in such a way as to make her death inevitable. But she would not be missed; no one would lose much sleep over the disappearance of an unattractive schizophrenic vagrant.
Ivan Dmitryevich Zombovsky had worked hard on the project after that. Perhaps he had overworked himself, but he knew that after so many failures his financial backers would demand that the plug be pulled on the project. All of his research assistants had eventually left due to their lack of results--or due to revulsion at their failures. Only Ted Hardesty was left, and only because Hardesty had been expelled from the faculty of Chico State for a long list of academic impropriety. He, too, was on his last legs.
Together they ironed out most of the areas where the gene combination had been unsuccessful. They replaced their metabolic delivery system with the insertion of the genetic material into the cell through a capsid vector. By the time they had finished their revisions, their funding had been cut off and the owner of the laboratory had hired a collections agency.
With no test subjects, Zombovsky was left no choice except to perform the procedure on himself. Despite Hardesty's protestations, they had gone ahead with the procedure, but with the caveat that they would attempt to localize the combination to Zombovsky's arms.
Zombovsky had chosen
tremarctos ornatus as the organism whose DNA he'd attempt to assimilate. His father had been KGB, and had taken him hiking into the mountains of Colombia when he wasn't training FARC members. They had seen more than a few spectacled bears, and Zombovsky held a fondness for the creature.
They had no idea how long Zombovsky would be unconscious, but Hardesty refused to take any chances. He'd strapped Zombovsky into position on the infusion table and hooked him up to an array of medical equipment, including an IV in the event that he didn't wake up for a long while.
The last thing he saw before he went under was the light above his head blurring into four, then five lights.
Some time later, Zombovsky awoke. His retinas adjusted to the level of ambient light. He called out for Hardesty. The door into the room slammed against the wall, and he heard Hardesty's footsteps, but they slowed, and the man held fast just as Zombovsky's eyes resolved the image.
Hardesty looked over his body, his face a mixture of awe and revulsion. He backed away, slowly. He stopped at the edge of Zombovsky's vision; his head became an indistinct blob of color, more an impression than an image.
"Tell me." It was a command.
"It, ah...I don't know how to--"
"Did it WORK?" Zombovsky restrained himself. Yelling would do no good.
Hardesty chose his words carefully. "The capsid insertion appears to have been successful. I need to run some tests first to be sure the operation worked."
Zombovsky silently cursed the restraints that held his head in position. He also recognized their usefulness should unforseen consequences eventuate. "Then be quick about it, Ted."
"It will take only a moment." Zombovsky felt a sharp prick in his arm, and then the slight sting of alcohol. "I'll check the genetic markers for telomeres. Then we'll know."
It was silent save the hum of the atmospheric scrubbers and a torrent of clicks coming from Hardesty's keyboard; and then the whir of the lab's misappropriated industrial centrifuge.
Zombovsky saw Hardesty enter his field of vision. His face loomed large, as if painted on the sky.
"Your body has assmiliated the foreign DNA and reconstructed your cells to match. The operation was successful."
Zombovsky felt jubliant. "Then let me go, and we'll celebrate!" He thought Hardesty looked concerned, but ignored it as soon as the clasps over his wrists were relased. Free to look at last, he stared at his arms, and began to laugh.
"Look, Ivan. I can't be a part of this. It's--not right. We can't predict any consequences from what we're doing. What if this is the Pandora's Box of genetics?"
"Nonsense. Do you realize what this means? Transplants from any organism to any organism without fear of immune rejection. We can take genetic material from any living thing on earth and combine it with our own! The whole of evolutionary development, open to our use! Tim. There's a Nobel Prize with our names on it."
"I can't be a part of this. I'm sorry."
Suddenly Zombovsky was not so jubilant. "Don't let a little apprehension stop you. This is the greatest breakthrough in the history of medical science."
"It's not something mankind should be doing..."
But Zombovsky's eyes had glazed over; his gaze had drifted past Hardesty's shoulder to the counter behind him. Hardesty turned to look.
The last Alaskan salmon from the thirty-sixth test subject lay on the counter. He turned back to Zombovsky, but the scientist seemed off somehow. His stare was vacant; he scratched one hairy arm with his hand--with his paw-- and finally looked directly at Hardesty.
His scream was inhuman. It was the sound that medieval writers must have imagined when describing a banshee's wail. Hardesty barely had time to flinch before Zombovsky was upon him, knocking him to the floor and clawing viciously at his abdomen.
He grabbed him by the shoulders and attempted to throw him to the side, but Zombovsky was already through his skin. As he felt blood pulse out of a torn artery with each frantic heartbeat, Zombovsky ripped the intestines from his body with his paws and teeth. Mercifully, Hardesty fell into shock.
Zombovsky rolled off him. Blood and entrails dripped down Zombovsky's chin and pooled on the floor. He began to perceive an unplesant stench. His former colleague would exsanguinate, undoubtedly, and then others would come who had heard the screams, but that was incidental.
That he had finally achieved the realization of the dream for which he had fought so hard was not lost on him. Dozens of test subjects had died in the process, or had been euthanized after becoming chimeric abominations, but billions of dollars in expenses and decades of dedicated genetics research had yielded the ultimate prize: the manifestation of that hope held so fervently by mankind throughout the ages, and the one most fundamental founding principle of self-government by free peoples everywhere--
The right to bear arms.
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