Information

Orel
Legacy Name: Orel

The Common Experiment #625
Owner: Paula

Age: 11 years, 11 months, 1 week

Born: May 18th, 2012

Adopted: 5 years, 5 months, 4 weeks ago

Adopted: October 28th, 2018

This pet has been nominated for the Pet Spotlight!

Statistics

• Level: 118
   
• Strength: 293
   
• Defense: 292
   
• Speed: 292
   
• Health: 293
   
• HP: 290/293
   
• Intelligence: 119
   
• Books Read: 119
• Food Eaten: 149
• Job: Professional Lab Cleaner

Holding the capped vial up to the window, I flick it sharply; in the lab’s wavering light, the cloudy precipitate crashes out of solution. In cold bemusement, I watch a snaking tendril bloom and rise from the solid, trembling as it struggles to find biotic shape. This trial’s findings–mayhaps troubling to a more… ethical eye–pique my interest, whet my taste for the unknown.

I take a pen, quickly scrawl some notes into the fresh workbook. Precipitate bloom shows similarities to early crawler trials, warrants greater investigation to forming viable life. Under observation to track further development.

How simple it is: to breathe life into potions and elixirs of science, a twisted amalgam of the chemical world. If science proves itself to yield monsters, who am I to deny its true nature? It is better to forge on: to bring forth the terrors that cold knowledge yearns to bring–to grant it the hot, heady pulse of life itself.

Knowledge, after all, is power. Those who fear knowledge are those who fear power itself, those who know that they are weak–unworthy of the strength granted by the discerning intellect.

Fear is a pitiable instinct, almost laughable. Some live ruled by it, their march of progress reduced to a dull animalistic scrabble clattering on the rumbling tarmac of existence. Their science is slow to learn, bumbling its way around needless boundaries and foolish restraint.

Their weakness shows in their ignorance… and I tire of their excuses.

There is so much to learn, to grasp at. There is no reason to find pause.

None.

In the dull metal of the lab bench, my masked visage dimly reflects–the shapes and colors all muddied to the point of indistinct. The dinged, corroded surface can hardly form a clear image; it couldn’t show a true form on the brightest day–I’m almost more fond of it for the fact. The disrepair of the building feels fitting, somehow; there’s a kind of quiet thrill to its being overlooked, in pushing the boundaries of knowledge without prying eyes. Being obscured from view–especially bureaucratic oversight–and being privy to secrets known by no other is its own reward, its own grasping at power.

That said, a faint flicker of annoyance arises at the thought of scientific bureaucracy as I survey the lab room; none of it is up to code, but it accomplishes what it needs to. Bureaucrats are their own breed of ineffectual coward. Imagine what I could do with a cutting-edge facility at my disposal.

I soundlessly chuckle to myself as I set this new trial aside, an addition to my gallery of horrors; this grimy, nearly defunct fume hood houses the budding progeny, giving time to them to fulfill their potential. I tug repeatedly at the door of the hood; it doesn’t cooperate until several hard yanks. When the phenomena outgrow these vials and tubes, they move elsewhere in the lab: to crude tanks, cryogenic tubes, specimen chambers.

I tidy the main lab room as best I can before heading to the main specimens wing. Though the lab surfaces are pockmocked with numerous chemical splatters–patinated in burnt rusts, murky teals, and gunmetal grays–I carefully tend to the space. I wipe down the mildewed residues from cracking walls, sterilize the lab benches, and shuffle away excess reagents and wastes into the proper containers; maybe it seems foolhardy–this methodical cleaning–but there’s a time and place for propriety, especially in securing investigational integrity.

Once the cleanup is complete, I swiftly navigate the twists and turns of the lab; I must visit my menagerie of science’s creatures, ensure that they are in good health. The fast-paced routines are like clockwork, broken into specific tasks on specific days of the week.

I linger before one of the crude observation rooms; I put my hand up to the glass of the dingy window. The room itself is clean enough, but its contents are messy and chaotic; the floor is strewn with crude dolls, littered with storybooks and sketches of legends of old. Sweet, timid Zojja slinks out from the back corner from beneath a blanket, pads out to the window with cat-soft steps; she’s in her usual form, a leggy deep purple beast with two columns of three silver-white eyes each. Her skin is akin to a scaleless snake, smoothly matte; the movement of muscle and tendon alike beneath sinuously ripples the skin.

Father, is that you? Her telepathic voice is soft and gentle, almost hesitant; her long ears flick in acknowledgement.

“Yes, little one. Hello to you, darling.”

Her mind hums back, a high, excited note of recognition.

This creature?

When I first discovered her, studying her was nothing short of fascinating; she was an unknown, an untapped font of knowledge. She’s a marvel in all regards: the way she grew, the speed at which she learned, the limits of her capabilities. Full grown–test tube synthesis to adulthood–in a month; even learned to fully communicate in three different languages in that time, all from storybooks. She demonstrated pathokinesis, shapeshifting, enhanced regeneration, and elemental manipulation abilities shortly after completing her maturation period.

I still fondly remember the early anatomical studies, in collecting the data and taking the necessary samples.

Harrowing as it was, it was a truly glorious time for learning.

-

Scalpel in one hand, I place the other softly on her flank and speak softly to her. “I do this because I have to.”

A soundless panic emanates from her mind. She’s heavily sedated–the drug cocktail derived from the chemical panel tests–to keep her calm during the exploratory procedure, but her confusion is thick in the air.

I make the first incision down her chest and abdomen, violet skin parting to reveal yellowed fat, silvery muscle, and bright white tendon. The blood flows over my gloved hands, the indigo hue almost blackened under the operating table lights. The stench of viscera is rank in the air, undeniable.

The telepathic scream seems to shake the room, the hanging lights precariously swinging.

I probe deeper, slice open the muscle to visualize the cross section. I feel her body involuntarily twitch as I cut down to the bone. The bone is almost crystalline, shining almost pearlescent in the surgical field. I cut down through the sternum, the bones cracking and creaking as I maneuver about. Once exposed, the heart pulses in the expected one-two rhythm, the specialized tissue displaying an unusual sheen.

The muscles fibers quiver, begin to rejoin and knit together; I slash them again to keep my view unobstructed. On their own, my instruments rattle on their sterile trays. The ground itself trembles, the lights flickering as the air grows heavy and tense.

Stop, stop. Her inner voice is frantic, fearful. You need to stop.

I brush off her words. Curious. The specimen’s body lacks all gastrointestinal mechanisms, as well as lacks respiratory machinery–her need for sustenance and breath must be different. Based on the bare, porous nature of the skin, dermal intake is highly plausible.

Y-you’re hurting me! The air quivers, as if tensing within restraint.

The muscle fibers attempt to twine together again.

I cut again.

This time, they don’t cleanly part before the scalpel’s edge; they bristle and stand on end, swarming over the blade and over my hands.

“I need to do this.”

No, no you don’t! The shadow of the creature seems to move with a will of its own, crouched on the defensive. It bristles in aggression, its head low and eyes pitched into a contemptuous glare. The shadow begins to shift form into a looming beast with jagged spines along its back and a toothy maw hanging open at the neck. How… how could you be such a monster? The accusation is steely and pointed, but terrified at its core.

“I do this because I am your father, because I care about you.” My tone is harsh, almost cruel. “Would you deny me the chance to learn, if you truly loved me?”

The creature seems to fall quiet; the muscle fibers fall away from my fingers. Are you… my father? Her inquisitive voice seems to ponder the question for a second. The shadow beast seems to retreat, diminishing in size.

I seize the moment to cut again, this time at the abdominal lining; the tissue almost seems to recoil, then relax. A telepathic shriek sounds once more before she falls silent, almost too quiet–as if bent and cowed.

Typically, I’d stitch up the specimen, but–given her regeneration–this is as good as any to study her healing. I return her to her chamber wounded, set up a camera to more carefully capture the course of her recovery.

-

As enlightening my studies were, the recordings struck concern even into my heart. As expected, she healed quickly–the wounds were hearsay within less than an hour–yet she disabled the camera exactly once the wounds were resolved and she fell asleep, without awareness of the camera’s existence nor any idea of where it was.

Though I repeated my surgical explorations, I never replicated her creation–perhaps a rare moment of restraint. Time and time again, the observational recordings only stopped as soon as all scientific gleanings were “complete”. As if she knew of my love of learning, as if she knew what she represented.

The logical conclusion is that her species bends reality to their whim.

Her wish was safety, comfort, privacy, to be loved… and she secured it for herself. She remained the jewel of my creations, a kind of surrogate daughter–one besotted with fairytales and larger-than-life heroes.

It is fortunate that she wishes for a kind reality, for quiet creature comforts and stories of yore.

Yet she is… dangerous; she simply doesn’t know she is.

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