Genetic Sins, Chapter 1.
Prologue...
There is only one thing more interesting to humans than controlling flight, predicting and controlling weather, or even controlling massively complicated machines as they hurl through space many thousands of miles away. The one thing more interesting than all these things is controlling human evolution. Messing with natures most guarded secrets. It wasn't enough to merely map out every single human genome that existed within a humans DNA, for humans would eventually come to want more. And want more they did. Now that they had mapped out the chromosomes that made up our DNA, the blueprint on which every function, tissue, fibre, nerve, and bone fragement is created, it was time to do something with that map. This map would eventually lead us to break barriers previously thought to be unbreakable. By splicing DNA from a mouse and a rat, a Chimera was formed. A Chimera is a generic term given to any animal produced from two different animal's DNA. Four parent cells were taken, two fertilized eggs, or early embryos, fused together. Each population of cells keeps it's own character and the resulting animal is a creative mix of the two, having mis-matched parts. First portrayed in Greek mythology as an animal that had a lion's head, a goat's body, and a serpent's tail, these creatures are no longer myths. Of course, there aren't any lion-headed, goat-bodied, serpent-tailed animals walking the streets yet, but with mankinds penchant for taking everything to the limit, and pushing nature's limits until nature pushes back, it won't be long until all kinds of animals are fused together, creating beasts that horror writers haven't even thought of.
With a successful merge between a rat and a mouse, scientists were excited to the point of absurdity. Sitting around a conference table after the success of the creation, they jokingly yelled out mixes of animals that they'd like to try.
"An elephant with a spider's eight legs!" One said, laughingly.
"A cat with the behaviour patterns of a dog." Stated another.
"Penguins will now experience flight, when we merge them with eagles!"
"A human, and a dog."
The laughter stopped.
Everyone had thought of creating sub human animals, 95 percent human, 5 percent some other animal, but to actually suggest it was to imply that it was actually possible. No one had really given it deep thought before, or, if they had, they hadn't shared it with anyone else, for fear of being ridiculed. Now that it was out in the open, however, it had a certain appeal. To successfully merge a human, with some kind of animal, breaking the laws and boundaries known to man for so long to be unbreakable, it was quite tempting. If they did this, they would be famous throughout the world. Bill Gates would be nothing compared to what wealth they would aquire. Of course, no man survived in the annals of history on wealth alone, so if they pulled this off, it would be one of mankinds greatest steppingstones to controlling one of natures mose closely guarded secrets. It would put them in the history books forever, long after Christopher Columbus stopped being taught in boring Social Studies classes. It was very tempting indeed. Most were either afraid of the outcome, some were unable to believe that it could be done, others just refused to take part for moral and ethical reasons, but whatever the cause, only a few select scientists, Zoologists, and genome specialists were picked to attempt to create a fusion of human and animal.
It was to be done in private, completely cut off from the public. No one could know what the government was doing. It took many months, but with the quality of the few men and women working on it, backed by a nearly unlimited black government budget, the first successful human based Chimera was finally born. Created in a test tube, then grown in the womb of a woman that would never live to see her "baby", the Chimera was allowed to grow. With every scientist holding their breath over the couple weeks it took to grow it, knowing they could lose the Chimera at any time, it was a welcome relief when the baby was delivered. Well, delivered wasn't quite right. More like, the stomach of the woman carrying the Chimera was viciously slashed open to get at the prized creation. Once "delivered" though, the small team of experts finally viewed what was thought to be impossible only a year before.
They had created the world's first human/dog Chimera, and though it seemed the scientists had reached the deepest, most darkest secrets of nature, the door they had opened with that creation lead to something bigger than they could imagine...
