WARNING: If it is illegal for you to be reading these stories or you find them disgusting or immoral, please refrain from reading further. Must be 18+ to read! Any characters, places, or people depicted in this story is entirely in the fantasy and imagination of the writer and in no way reflects his/her personal morals or beliefs when relating to relationships between minors and adults. Any people, places, or actions depicted in this story that reflect real life events or situations is entirely by accident or coincidence.

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Chapter Nine

 

        To say Miles and Sean were unusual would be an understatement; but then what could one expect of those who sit around all day writing a service manual for the universe. The cat group were physicists. Miles and Sean had both been published scientists in their previous lives on the subject of quantum entanglement. Hence, they claimed to understand the actual mechanism by which we were all able to communicate on a mental level. Sean tried to give me what he considered the `dummies' version during our mental dialogue. A couple of minutes in and I gave up, telling him it was useless. From the small amount I could glean, when they split our DNA apart to add in the bits of animal material, the cells they used for our chimera transformations were still connected on a quantum level. Even my explanation may not be correct. Anyway, with a small amount of effort, we could send electric impulses from one side of the split to the other. The explanation for the ability to communicate outside our own morphological group to others is where it became almost more philosophy than science. Suffice it to day, the cat's intellect was on a different level from ours.

        The other cat partners, Gunter and Devon, were involved in developing a particle beam weapon which recharged from coalescing molecules out of the atmosphere. The things they did on this level bordered on magic, it seemed.

        We stayed for a short visit, talking mostly mentally with verbal small talk thrown in for the ever-present cameras. As we prepared to go on to our next destination, Miles once again warned us about the dogs. He said they will try to capture the demeanor of your thoughts. While we are around them only think about pleasant things, things in life that make us happiest. We thanked Miles and Sean and continued to level 33; our goal was to make it all the way to L35 today.

 

 

        Reggie was the youngest of the raccoon chimeras, and as such, it was his duty to greet any daytime guests. We got off the lift and stood in the L33 hub waiting expectantly. On the other floors, somebody had been close by to investigate anybody who came out of the lift. After what seemed like a long time, Reggie came stumbling out of a hallway rubbing his eyes and yawning.

        "Oh yeah, the wolves..." he said, yawning again, "Robert said y'all might show up." Reggie had a drawl that sounded a lot like southern US. He was short, even for one of their breed, at about 91cm. While I was looking him over, I noticed the badge he had on his shirt. It said Global Research and Engineering Group; apparently the focus had been officially shifted from being solely about genetics. That would explain physicists, ecologists, information technologies, psychologists and, if I heard correctly about the otters, researchers of psychic phenomena.

"Robert...*yaaaawwwnnn*...said to give you this, it will answer most of your questions" he said staring at us blankly. "Oh, and if you need anything else. Come after midnight. Common courtesy and all..."

        "Oh yes, do forgive us. We'll be on our way so you can get back to sleep" I said. Without so much as a goodbye he shuffled back into the dark hallway and disappeared. We all took a minute to prepare for the next leg of our journey; only happy thoughts.

 

 

        "Oh hi!" said an overly cheerful Simon, whose genetic donor must have been a cocker spaniel, "glad you came by to see us and happy to have you onboard with GREG."

        I thought about my love song game with Michael and poured as much saccharine into my voice as possible and said, "Oh gosh yes, we're so happy to meet you, too."

        Michael sounded simply giddy when he asked "What kind of work do you all do here?"

        "Well, we wrote all the psychological training manuals for the staff, and if anything goes wrong, we are responsible for behavioral modifications and retraining" Simon said.

        "Interesting" I said "but I can't see why there would be such a need for your specialty. Isn't everybody pretty much happy here?"

        "You would think that, wouldn't you? But everybody has a dark shadow somewhere. You, Henry, for instance. I can feel the happiness you give off, but beneath that I feel there is something hidden."

        "Oh, you have me there" I said, "meeting new people makes me very nervous. How perceptive of you."

        "Hmmm. Maybe that's all it is, but I'm not..."

        "Ay Dios mio" Diego feigned excitement over a framed print on the wall "did one of you do this?"

        "Actually, that's one of mine" Simon said, proudly.

        "Oh, it's so good" Diego said "it must have taken you days..."

        "I assure you; it took him weeks; Simon is nothing if not fastidious about his art" a brown Labrador retriever said.

        "Gentlemen, may I introduce my partner, Travis" said Simon. "Travis, this is Henry and...I'm afraid I didn't get your names."

        "The art lover is Diego, and my partner is Michael" I said.

        "Someone here is harboring very bad feelings" Travis said.

        "Oh, I'm sorry, it's just that Henry promised we could go back up to our level for lunch, and it's already almost an hour past time" Michael said in a quick-thinking save.

        "Yes, it's true" I said "We won't keep you fellows, we were just stopping by the different levels getting introduced to everybody."

        "Ah, very well, when you come back, I'll introduce you to Denis and Rafael, the other members of our group. Well, if Rafael is not in retraining, anyway" he said chuckling to himself.

        "Come on Diego, lets pop down and introduce ourselves to the otters so we can get back up and have a late lunch" I said. We casually stepped into the lift and smiled and waved as the doors closed.

        I let out a huge sigh of relief once we were in motion; glad to be away from the dogs.

        "The bad feelings were from me, I'm sorry" Diego said, "All I could think about was Simon talking about retraining and poor Viktor, wherever he is."

 

 

"Hello Henry" the otter said as soon as the door opened, "You can call me Tarka."

"Tarka?" I repeated slowly "like the book, Tarka the Otter?"

"Yes" he chuckled "they gave me a new body, so I took on a new persona. My human name was Thomas Willis. Since I'm no longer strictly human, I'm now Tarka."

"Even more intriguing" I said, "As in `The Amazing Thomas' the television mentalist?"

"Yes, small world isn't it?" he said.

"But I had heard that `The Amazing Thomas' had died of spontaneous combustion. It was all over the news" I said.

"Now, there's something truly intriguing" Tarka said, "a person who actually believes what the news media reports." He burst into laughter.

"Here is my partner now, gentlemen, Otto" said Tarka. Otto bowed to us. Tarka made flashed a hand symbol to Otto and the latter moved off into one of the hallways. Tarka remained silent for a few awkward moments, then nodded to himself and said "We can talk now. Take a look at this."

He showed us to a monitor showing the four of us in an innocuous conversation where we had been standing, however it was obviously not real. I'd heard of deep fakes but this one was near perfection. We followed Tarka down the hall to the giant water world Kaz had told us about. This giant room, like the one above on the bear's level had no cameras. Tarka explained that although we all had innate mental communication abilities stemming from the chimerization process, his team had discovered it originally and boosted the ability with the help of Robert and Rickey.

"We actually used some of your genetic blueprints, Henry, to isolate the neurons which were emitting the frequencies. Then Otto and I worked with Robbie and Ricky to reprogram the chimera robotics to enhance that area. It did create some unexpected side-effects, such as the extra abilities of Diego and Vadym."

"What do you know about the...things...on level 50?" Diego asked.

"Not much, unfortunately, mostly hearsay. The level seems to be shielded. Some seem to think it's inhabited by aliens. Others say its rejects; chimera experiments that went wrong. I'm not sure what to believe. I can't see why they would keep a failed experiment alive..." his thought faded out. "We don't have much more time. Otto can only fake it for so long. I'd like you to come back, I can train you to shield your minds and project such an image of happiness even the dogs will think you have rainbows shooting out of your arses."

"We'd like that" I said "by the way, Diego and Vadym can penetrate that shield on level 50."

Tarka raised an eyebrow. "Then you must come back...soon. Come let me show you out" he said. We went back to the hub area and Tarka arranged us to match the positions of the deep fake and counted down with his fingers like a TV producer, three, two and then picked up the conversation in progress on the screen.

"and it's been really good to meet you gentlemen. I do hope you'll come visit us when you fancy a swim."

"Absolutely" I said "maybe sooner than later. I haven't had a good swimming session in ages."

With that, we made our way back on the lift and up to our level.

 

 

Lukas joined us while we ate our late lunch/early dinner. He had been in sessions with Dr. Wilson all day.

"I think I've really made progress" he said. Mentally, he said "Wilson threatened to `throw me to the dogs', what do you think that means?"

"It means something you don't want to happen. You need to quickly convince him that you've accepted your fate or it could be fatal to you" I replied.

"I almost have accepted it" he thought "it just hard knowing I'll never see my family or my Hans again."

"I can't replace your family or Hans, but I'll be there for you" Diego sent.

"I know, just give me time" Lukas replied.

"How did it go, meeting the others" Lukas asked.

"Very good, they all seem a nice enough bunch" I said, mentally adding "Except for the dogs, but Kazymyr says they are getting subliminal obedience training."

"Michael and I are going to watch a movie before we turn in, anyone care to come along?" I asked.

"No" Diego said, "I'm going to work on getting Lukas used to his new life."

 

 

The movie I chose for tonight was `Braveheart'. "You are so bad" Michael thought. "My first choice was `Scanners' but its not in the queue" I said. "You know this doesn't end well" Michael thought. "I know" I answered "but who's to say our story will, either?"

 

Lambodara 10/13/20

lambodara@protonmail.com

All comments and feedback are welcome.