Post by dodoman1 on Mar 29, 2013 3:02:05 GMT
The three beasts were enormous, easily seven times the height of the agent and the overseer, able to look down on them from the roof of the facility where the two stood. Their bloated, flabby bodies were elevated high above the ground by their four stilt-like legs, which bent surreally in six places before terminating in a single ragged ground-scraping nail. Their bulbous heads sported large drooping flaps of flesh on either side of a gaping mouth filled with blunt bony protrusions.
One of them slowly turned and faced the agent, making eye contact and groaning deeply. The agent could read no emotion in its wholly alien eyes.
"Amazing, are they not?" the overseer asked.
The agent turned to face him.
"This is what you called me in to see?" asked the agent. "What am I seeing here?"
"A new species," said the overseer with pride. "The first stable family unit of our most recent designed species."
"Why was I not informed of this?" the agent asked, irritated.
"Why would we release the news before we were sure of our success? Public failures do not represent us well."
The agent was silent. He agreed.
The two watched the beasts aimlessly stilt-walk across the artificial habitat for a few minutes. Their groans and bellows echoed across the open field and sky.
"What are they?" the agent asked quietly. "What are they designed from?"
"A long-extinct form of life," the overseer said, "Like nothing else that walks among us today. Resurrected from recovered DNA fragments and genetically altered to better suit our needs."
"What are 'our needs', exactly?"
The overseer turned towards the agent happily.
"Would you like to take a closer look at our new species?" the overseer asked. "I will explain it to you in the habitation field."
The agent stared ahead.
"Fine," he said.
The two of them reentered the facility and descended to the ground floor, exiting into the artificial habitat. The beasts looked down at them passively before wandering across the field in the other direction.
"These creatures," said the overseer, gesturing towards the three beasts, "Will be the ultimate food source."
The agent scoffed. "Who would want to eat something so disgusting-looking?"
"Laugh now, if you wish," said the overseer. "But these beasts are an incredible potential food supply. They are able to produce a nutrient-rich fluid in great quantities, and their bodies are a vast source of meat."
One of the beasts began to slowly approach the agent and the overseer. The agent watched it nervously, without turning away from the overseer.
"Not only that," the overseer continued, "But their skins are far different from ours, as you can see. Our bodies are brittle, but theirs are able to heal rapidly. Our next objective is to breed a specimen that can regenerate excised muscle tissue."
The beast stopped ten yards away from the agent and the overseer. The agent and overseer turned and regarded it. The other two beasts stared ahead with blank eyes and gaping mouths.
"Imagine how many of society's problems that would solve," the overseer said.
"Yes," the agent said. "If anyone agrees to eat it."
The beast began scraping the dirt beneath it with its right front limb. It scraped across the ground, leaving a furrow in its path, before picking its limb up and dragging it in a new direction. The agent and the overseer watched its diggings silently.
After several minutes, the beast stopped digging. It backed away from its handiwork. The agent and the overseer stepped forward.
"Interesting," the overseer said, kneeling down to inspect the furrows.
"Is this normal behavior?" asked the agent.
"It is nothing I have ever seen before."
The two of them looked down at the furrows for a time. The beasts lowed monotonously in front of them.
"They look almost like letters," the agent pointed out.
The overseer did not respond.
"I said they almost-"
"I heard what you said," the overseer responded.
"Do you think they could be letters?"
"Impossible," the overseer said, without looking up at the agent. "Where could these creatures have learned to read and write?"
"You said they were resurrected from recovered DNA fragments?" the agent asked suspiciously.
The overseer stood up straight. "What are you suggesting?"
"I am not a scientist," the agent said, "So please correct me if I'm wrong, but would it be possible for these creatures to have retained some memory of their ancestors' lives? And just as pressingly, could their ancestors have been intelligent?"
"I certainly hope not," said the overseer. His antennae twitched.