Date: Day 482 of Experiment 2A43ZX5. Year: 2052
Time: 0423
We have been observing the interaction between subject 1643 and Exp. 2A43ZX5 for almost exactly 7 days at this point. We have found a few things that require reporting. First the experiment has gone farther this time than ever before. Usually we see failure before the completion of day 3. Either there is a rejection of the host on either side, or they are just not compatible enough. In every case, we found a half formed embryo that showed sever malformations, once we opened up the egg.
That being said, we always had some sign of this happening. The subject would either find that he/she did not want to be in contact with the egg anymore, the egg would get very hard or brittle; or in one case, the subject actually became terribly ill and died after just 2 days of contact.
This is the first time we have had a subject that has made it past day six of contact. As you know, we have added in a genetic requirement that will take seven days of contact before the egg will hatch. This is a requirement made by the US government, to keep the creatures from running wild. This way, none of these creatures will be able to survive without regular contact with their handler. This system, if we can make it work, will require the creature to have one hour of physical contact with his handler every seven days, otherwise they will perish. So far, this has become a waiting game. In the next two hours and approximately fifteen minutes, we will see if we have finally had a success.
End Report.
Dr. Jared Stanson, Geneticist.
*******
Leaning back from the desk, Jared stared at the computer screen for a few minutes before hitting the send button at exactly, 0430 like he did every day. Rubbing his hands over his face he felt the hard stubble on his cheeks like sand paper tearing at his soft hands. He did not have the hands of a farmer. There were no callouses on his hands from hard work. Only the tips of his fingers were tough from tapping keys on a keyboard for 30 years.
Looking back at his desk, he focused on a photo to the side of his monitor. Pictured was a young girl. She was only four in that picture and she was missing both her top front teeth. He had been separated from his family ten years ago, when the gas riots began. They were put into a special underground housing project by the government and he had been thrown into a think tank to come up with ideas. How do you save a planet full of lazy people who are completely dependent on fossil fuels when the fossil fuels are gone?
His idea was to create and genetically modify and build a new beast of burden. His daughter had always loved dragons. Her favorite bedtime story was an old novel that he had since he was a child. They would read it together every night, since she was three years old. They had finished the book 9 times before they were separated. He had not seen her for over ten years. So, a little over a year ago, when all the other projects were not putting forth enough of an impact to fix the situation, he put forth his idea. To his surprise, he was not completely laughed out of the room.
Instead they had taken his idea very seriously. They had made several breakthroughs in the way of genetics in the past fifty years. Thus, here he sat, five minutes away from possibly creating a mythical beast which would be the main mode of transportation for most goods and services in the country. They would carry food and water and soldiers all over the place. The US would again be a military power. Assuming, of course that everything worked out as it should.
Jared was pulled from his reverie by one of his lab assistants rushing into the room in a panic. "Sir!" Her voice was shrill and high, "There is activity from the egg, sir!"
Standing, with a sigh, Jared could not bring himself to be excited. But, he dutifully moved into the observation room from his office. Directly ahead of him was a pane of glass which separated him from his experiment. On this side were several computers and machines that beeped and whined and printed out wavy patterned lines and symbols that people went to college for years just to understand. Crowded around the glass were his research assistants and other scientists.
On the other side of the glass was a simple room, all in white, with a cot for a bed and a TV as well as a shelf of books. Leaning against the side of the cot, while watching the TV was the room's sole living occupant. Jared could not recall his name, he only called the boy The Subject. He started to feel bad about it a few months ago, but got over it quickly, telling himself that he was keeping himself emotionally distant from the experiment.
The boy was only thirteen years old, he would turn fourteen in a few months if he had been processed correctly and his date of birth was correct in the system. The most important part was that he had already gone through puberty. This way his body had already gone through the changes to make him an adult. Otherwise the change later would be too much and would likely kill the creature growing in that egg.
Speaking of the egg, it was slowly rocking back and forth minutely. The movements were only barely enough to see with the naked eye, however there were three machines dedicated to reading any movement in the egg alone. One focused solely on movement of the shell; another, movement inside the shell and the last studied any vibration of the air surrounding the shell. All three were currently flashing red and green lights showing a lot of activity in all three areas.
The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
Stepping forward, Jared pressed the button next to the intercom so that he could speak to the subject. “The egg is likely to hatch soon. It would be a good idea to hold it in your hands until the shell cracks, that way you can see what is going on.” The boy reacted immediately to the whine of the intercom and smiled wide at this news.
“I finally get my pet then?!” He ecstatically said, while following the instructions he was given.
“That’s right, as long as you follow our directions it should work out. We do not want there to be another failure like last time.” A low blow by Jared. The Subject had cried for three days because he had rolled over in his sleep, breaking contact with the egg for six hours. The egg had died in that time and become useless. The contact could only be broken for one hour in every twenty-four hours or the loss of contact would be fatal. Once an egg had begun the hatching process it could not be paused or stopped.
The look on the subject’s face was both horrified and determined, as he picked up the egg and held it only inches from his face. It was not long before the egg began showing signs of cracking, near the top. As soon as the first crack showed, the lab assistants ran back to their machines and began shouting reports.
“Embryo is mobile inside the egg and seems fully formed!”
“Egg density has dropped over the last hour and shell has become thin and brittle!”
“Temperature of the egg has reached 92 degrees Farenheight…”
“Oxygen saturation in the room has been recorded at 83% and carbon dioxide…”
“Electronic fluctuations inside the egg being recorded are at level for high functioning nervous system…”
They continued like this, recording every minute detail, including how fast the subject was breathing and how the oxygen saturation changed in the room for each breath. This continued until the egg had split open and instead of an egg in his hands, now there was a sleek and shiny reptile sitting in the subject’s palms.
Thus, a dragon was born. The first of its kind. The coloration was uniform and a deep crimson over the whole body and head. There were two horns growing form his snout, much like a rhinoceros. There were also two horns growing from the creature’s forehead. They would grow out and curve around the sides of his head in the future. It had four legs proportionate to his body and wings growing out of his shoulders, though the wings were currently folded against his back. The tail extended out from behind the creature, half again his full length and ending in a spade shape that was hard and sharp on each side.
The dragon was currently nuzzling the boy, rubbing his face against the chin of the child, making cooing and purring noises. They had finally done it. After over a year and hundreds of failures, they had finally created a dragon. “Check and verify all saved info on the subject and the experiment. Verify all the files are saved properly and write up a schedule of known requirements and issues so that the experiment can be repeated.” Jared immediately called out, keeping the lab from celebrating. “We do not know yet if the creature will even survive the next two hours or two years. This is still a work in progress people.”
However what Jared did not know, was that there had been a person in his lab that was sabotaging his work. Many Hard core religious groups believed that cloning and doing things with genetics was both evil and blasphemy. One of his lab techs had been such a person. The other thing that he did not know was that even though they were in an underground base, they were not safe.
They stood in a room, four hundred feet below ground. Below that, there were several areas for sleeping and recreation, food prep and storage and the bathrooms. Below that was empty space for a few floors, just air surrounded by concrete before the basic systems down below. The water filtration, electricity generator and so on. And, nestled in with all of that automated machinery was a bomb.
Many of these religious groups had become violent in the past decade, taking the lives of government officials, scientists and even private citizens. If you advocated cloning, participated in cloning or received a cloned organ in an emergency transplant, you were a target of these people. The experiments that Jared was running was high on their list of transgressions worth killing for. For this reason, one of the young lab assistants sat in his room on the floor below and prayed for a few moments before pulling out a small radio transmitter.
He believed that he would be able to stop these abominations from ever being created and set upon the world if he just blew them all up. So, he would die, but he would die for God. That was a worthy reason to give one’s life yes? What he did not know was that every six seconds, every computer and machine was backed up to a hard drive that was set to disseminate all of the information on them in the event of any kind of emergency.
In this way, the young man failed, without realizing it, the moment he pushed the button and the bomb went off. When the explosion went off, the lab techs were still celebrating quietly. Jared’s last though in this world was of his daughter, before the electric generator went critical and exploded, essentially vaporizing the two floors above it. However it had been a full four seconds after the bomb went off before the generator blew. That gave the hard drive located in the lab plenty of time to upload all of its information on the internet and send it to every major laboratory in the country and then every major lab in the rest of the world.
Thus began the age of dragons, as every laboratory in the world with the capability began manufacturing as many eggs as they could. They were paired up with presidents, kings and military personnel. These would be the new status symbols. These would be the new weapons. And, a few short decades after that, the dragon wars began and the world was destroyed anyway. Taken back to the age of swords and axes, technology too long destroyed and made illegal. The labs were abandoned, the dragons procreating like any normal animals.
The whole world was sent to a time of myth and legend. A time of knights and dragons. And it was not a world that you would have wanted to live in. The dragon wars sent civilization spiraling down to the point that it was hard to make it past the age of twenty unless you signed up for the military. The world was run by the Dragon Lords and their armies.
This is the world that went on for over two-hundred years, before James, was born. James, who will go on to live a fantastic life, full of adventure and sorrow, was born in the year 2245. And the day he became a man, was the day the world began to change for everyone. Whether it would be for the good of the people or not, was still to be seen. Because in the year 2261, when James turned 16… He found a dragon egg.