Chapter 21: History lesson
Jessica and I just wake up the next morning in each others arms, we kiss and just hold each other close. Shortly after we wake up, an alarm happens. "In case you two are wondering, that was the bell for breakfast. Just follow the other personal to the cafeteria". "Ok, thanks Mavis". We get dressed in jump suits, and our cell door unlocks, we enter the hall and follow some of the other couples. We soon enter a fairly large room with a bank of machines down one wall. We all head for the machines. We watch another couple, and learn from them how to operate the machine. We put our thumbs on a pad and request the breakfast we would like. We also realise as we sit down with our meals, that there are a lot of machines doing menial tasks.
"Mavis do machines do all the menial tasks"? We get some strange looks from the other couples. "Yes, machines do all of the menial tasks, from floor sweeping to maintenance of the complex". "And just where is this complex"? "That is classified information, I can't tell you". "Right, what can you tell us about this complex". "This complex is a hold over from the great war, and that is all I can tell you for now, the Mister has requested your presence, follow the robot with the red light on top". We look over and see a small robot with a blinking red light on top, we get up and putting our plastic dishes and cutlery in the disposal slot, follow the small robot.
We are led to the same lounge and are left there. We sit on the same bench, and seeing the bottle from last night, pour ourselves a few drinks and wait for the Mister. "Not even nine-o'clock, and you are already drinking". We shrug as we take another slug from our glasses. "So, would you like to explain to me why the ZPD and the were snooping around the tunnel where you disappeared"? I look at Susan and we nod our heads yes. We turn back to him, to see him smiling.
"Non verbal communication I'm impressed, but that doesn't explain the authorities at the tunnel though". "Sir when we were arrested three weeks ago, the ZPD asked for our help in finding some missing couples, we were reluctant, but they needed some bait, and they promised us they would keep us safe; they are not very good at keeping their promises". He laughs, "Your right, they are not". "They set us up in the job we had at the O'Hare complex, and told us about the club down town, where we could drink for free". "Right, do you really need to drink"? "Not really, we both started a year ago, and we like the feeling of euphoria it provides us". "Ok, but I will authorize the cheaper stuff for you". "Thank you, sir, why are we here"? "Why I thought you wanted a history lesson"? "Yes sir, we do, what will we be learning"? "Ancient History" he says.
"Mavis what is the actual year"? "The actual year is six-thousand-nine-hundred-and seventy-eight-AD, in Zootopia it's the year one-thousand-and twenty-seven A.T.A. This means "after the accord". We look at the mister with quizzical looks on our faces. "We all measure time from certain major events in our life times. In my case time is measured from a major religious event, and in your time, it's measured from the "great accord". "How old is the world"? "Well in my time depending on who you talk to, science said it was millions of years old, but some religions say it is about four-thousand-years old. They believe that a higher power created the world in seven days".
"I believe that the world is as old as it is, I don't try to date it. But the scientists tried to have everyone believe that we all evolved from a primordial soup that covered the planet. They claimed that, and this is a direct quote "that over millions of years the rains washed and eroded the rocks into the seas which created this soup". "Now I admit that is possible but, as a geneticist I know how complicated the basic cell is in a body, and I can't believe that all the components came together by random chance. I can't believe that all life on this planet is related to rocks. By the way each cell in your body has over twenty moving parts. I do believe that if this soup was real, that some sort of divine intervention had to bring it all together". "So, are you religious sir"? "In a manor of speaking yes, I have spent my life trying to understand the mammal body, but I'm still learning things after all this time". "I'm not the six-thousand years old, I have a cryonic chamber where I have spent a lot of time. If you ask how long I have been awake, I would answer about one-hundred and ninety-years".
The next thing they tried to get mammals to believe, was that we all evolved from one basic creature, the first one to walk on land. There was a lot of diverse life on the planet in my time, and I and others like myself proved that this couldn't possible be the case. The theory of evolution was disproved about one-hundred years after it was put forward. What a dark day for science, to find that one of it's basic building blocks was false".
I really didn't want to go that far back, but you do need some bases to understand from. In the year twenty-forty-five in my calendar, there was a virus that went around the word, it was very virulent it killed all most all of the wild animals and pets that humans, that's what we called ourselves at the time, had brought into their households. I and a few collogues saved a few of the animals, and a lot of DNA from others. It took a few more years but we figured out how to combine DNA of different species to recreate some of them in humans, none of them were fertile. I allowed myself to be one of the early experiments.
You probably noticed that my proportions look not quite right". We nod yes. "Yes, later experiments were more successful, and I spent years trying to change myself, but none of them worked. My son Oscar followed me in my footsteps. He was the one to perfect the change, he even created some mythical creatures, he couldn't help me to change my proportions. So, I changed my direction, I started to work on extending my life.
Because of my earlier success, I was rich beyond my wildest dreams. So, I started to build this complex. This complex is natural and man made. I hired different scientists and put them to work on new and innovative ideas. One of them developed what I called a "Disruptor" that is what built must of this complex. It broke down the molecular structure of rock. Cutting the tunnels and chambers like a knife through butter. He also developed how to reverse the change, so you could build with it as well. Some other company was the first to come up with the "Repulson field drive".
This is what brought you here, my own flying car. Well actually the flying cargo flat bed, I might show it to you later". We both get looks of incredulity on our faces. "Yes, it really does fly. We found the tracker on the van, but the repulson field disrupted the signal and by the time it restarted the van was in the hanger, with the blast doors closed". "Wouldn't people have noticed the doors by now"? He laughs, "They might have, but remember the disruptor? We drop the rock cover when the vehicle leaves or enters, after its back in, we put the rock cover back up, no one sees the door all they see is rock. This is a little off topic, time to bring it back".
"So, after building this complex one of the other scientists developed our geothermal power plant. This runs the whole complex. We needed a control system and two of the best computer scientists built us an AI, and that would be Mavis. Mavis is an abbreviation it stands for "MULTY. AUDIO. VISUAL. INPUT. SYSTEM. Rick and Ava Gardner were some kind of geniuses. Rick built the system, and Ava programed it. I have found no one who understands her computer language. It's so unique, a trinary computer language". He doesn't see the look of shock on our faces as he continues in his own little world. "So, after that We had a few more break throughs".
We had another break through a few years later in the power field. Rick and another engineer came up with a "cold fusion generator". This had several benefits, one it took care of our waste problem, and gave us more power than the geothermal plant. So, we shut down the geothermal plant. We could run the Repulson drive vehicles with out a bulky hydrogen power generator. We also found the by product of the fusion plant was pure particles. They were so fine a particulate; we could not keep them out of everything. But again, one of the others came up with the "food replicators" based on the disruptor tech. These pure particles are reconstituted into food, the replicators add vitamins and minerals to the food, it looks and tastes like real food, and will keep you alive".
About ten years later, our world started to fall apart, when you can be anyone or anything, you will do everything. Our world came to an end. No one knows for sure how it happened, or who started the bombs dropping, but our world went out with a bang. Hydrogen thermonuclear bombs were dropped all over the major cities of the world, along with disruptor bombs, how that got out of my lab I don't know, but it did. We were safe in the complex here, very few people knew about this complex, so we were not inundated with refugees. We battened down the hatches, and waited for the nuclear winter to finish. Five years later the winter ended, but the weather patterns changed, they became violent, we could not live outside yet. The land masses had changed as well. We called a group meeting and decided to go into our cryonic chambers, and left Mavis in charge, we had her wake us when the weather patterns improved. It was close to one-thousand years later when Mavis woke us all up.
We reconnected with the satellite systems that were still operational, we could not see the whole world, some systems were off line. But what we saw was devastating. All of the major cities were gone, some of them were radioactive wastelands. We found some military installations that were still active, but we found no personal. After the fourth installation, we must have triggered some thing, as we left a disruptor bomb went off, the complex went up in a puff of powder. Most of the other complexes did the same thing, maybe they were all computer connected and saw us as hostiles, I don't know. We didn't approach anymore complexes.
We searched the world over looking for human life, but we found none. We did find some animals, but they were few and far between. We rounded up a few, and putting them in the cages, you two first woke up in one, we started to experiment on them. Oscar and I worked on trying to give them sentience but we failed miserably, but our gene therapy worked for their kits, cubs, fawns, pups, kittens and all the other second-generation animals. We all took a group of animals each, and taught them. We taught the rabbits to be farmers, the horses were the muscle for the rabbits, and the foxes and wolves were to be their protection, sheep were to be the wool source for clothing, and goats would take care of the weeds in the fields.
We didn't know what to do with the rest of them, so we just released them into their natural environment for their respective species. Right outside what you now know as bunny burrow, we planted our small community. We had gathered up a big flock of chickens and wild turkeys, and taught the foxes and wolves how to look after their food. They were genetical engineered to eat just about anything, but we couldn't get them away from the habit of eating meat. We then left them to their own devices. Rick and Ava were tired of the complex and they were the first to leave. They left the nutrient tanks as a couple of rabbits. Who would have thought they were farmers? All of our experiments had different eye colors, so we could tell our projects from natural ones. All the rabbits had purple eye color, the foxes had forest green eye color, and the wolves had a gold color, the horses had brown eyes with white circles around the irises. The goats and sheep we left with there natural inclination in eyes.
We then went back into cryonic suspension and woke up one hundred years latter. Things had not changed to much, there defiantly was more bunnies, the wolf and fox population was about the same. But the strangest thing was the hybrids. While they slept, Oscar and I took blood samples from the parents of the hybrids, and the hybrids themselves. We found that the offspring had our genetic engineering, how this happened we didn't know. We studied some more but came to no conclusions. It wasn't supposed to cross species, but there it was. We went back into suspension, but when I came out this time it was different.
The time frame was closer to one-thousand-years. Mavis had a failure of her system. She had to shut herself down for repairs. It took a long time for the repairs to be complete. The automatic systems weren't the smartest but they did do their job. When I came to, most of the systems were still down, but Mavis had managed to bring me out of suspension. The collapse of the roof of the chamber had destroyed most of the cryotubes, my son was among the causalities, the rest of the tubes were empty. Not sure what happened, and Mavis couldn't tell me, she had been off line at that point. I went to records, but there were no recorded messages from anyone. I was the last of my kind.
I managed to get all the systems working again, and in time I checked on the small community. Not much had changed except it was much bigger, but the bunnies, sheep, and goats were being predicated by the wolves. The foxes did what they could to protect them all, but the wolves were bigger, and stronger. So, the foxes developed cunning and slyness to defeat them. The horses were strong enough to defend themselves, so the wolf's left them alone. I decided to do nothing, not sure what happened to the harmony that had been established. I then went back into my lab to work on either the cure for my condition or to figure out how to extend my life. I did figure out how to extend my life but the cost was high. I began to experience cravings for companionship but I could not "get it up". My reproductive system doesn't work properly anymore, but I now am able to feel others emotions. So yes, I can feel and see your "Performance". This is the only way I can satisfy my cravings. So, to continue your history lesson.
I started to come out every thousand years and stay out for ten years. I came out just before the "Great Accord" was signed. I was in the crowd when the foxes and rabbits were the first to sign the accord. They weren't the last, just the first. The rock that this was chiseled in, a replica is still visible in Zootopia's central park, it was made from drawings and stories about it. No one else is sure anymore were the first one is, but I know it's right where it has always been, in the woods just outside of Bunny Burrow in the forest on the north side of the Hopps farm. The Hopps farm is on the land of our first small colony. I covered the stone in a thin coating of stone about five-Hundred-years ago, to protect it. If you hit it just on the star pendant, the outer coating will fall away.
I traveled back and forth from that colony, and I realised I had been seen a time or two, as there was reports of UFO'S. I watched Zootopia grow from the original building to the thriving city it is today. I may have helped it along the way a time or two. There was a mammal just after the "Great Acord" who preached that all mammals should get along and he fought for that, and fought well, he had many of the martial arts of my time mixed together. He was the one that had the first building built in Zootopia. His DOJO was renowned through out the land. mammals came from all over just to study under him. He contracted with the bunnies in Bunny Burrow for his food stuffs. And he and his followers paid for that food by protecting the bunnies. He was killed by the mammals in power at the time, they had more power than they knew what to do with.
I then went back into cryonic chamber and asked Mavis to wake me up after radio had been discovered. Mavis woke me up about fifty years ago, and I listened to the first radio broadcasts. I made a trek to Zootopia and it took me most of the year to get there. I bought a small piece of land and had a building built to hide my craft in when I came there. The "replicators" were good at making gold, and I found that gold was just as valuable today as it was in my time. The replicators can't make gold with out a pass key, and I have the only one. I banked some gold and had the bank pay the property taxes. So, I wouldn't lose my building. I then hiked back to the complex.
But then I noticed about forty-years ago, as Zootopia grew, the old corruptions moved in. Prey began to mistrust predators once again. Foxes became labelled as shifty and untrustworthy; wolves were in power at the time with sheep, deer, and pigs. Wolves were the police force; sheep pigs and deer were running the government. And with that I believe it's lunch time". "Sir why are you telling us all of this"? "Why, because I want to, and you two are the first I felt would really believe me. Am I wrong"? "No sir, we felt the truth as you told us". He smiles, "Well now I'm really impressed two-way emotional communication, is this how you talk amongst yourselves"? "Yes sir, it is quicker than speaking". "And am I to assume that you my dear are not as dumb as you seem"? Susan just nods her head yes. "Excellent I would hate to see a good mind wasted". "Sir, can we ask, what is your first name"? "You know I don't really remember; it's been so long since I used it. Mavis what is my first name"? "Your first name is Carl". "Thanks Mavis, there, you have it". The robot that had brought us to the room was waiting to take us back.
We had some lunch, after finding out what it was made from, I didn't want to eat it, but it was really good, and we were both hungry. "Mavis is there a gym"? "Yes, Thomas there is, I will send a robot to lead you to it". It was a fairly modern gym. Susan and I got to the mats and start our routine, we need to shake the kinks out after sitting so long. Several of the couples are in the gym as well, when they notice what we are doing, most just watch us, but two couples come over and join us in the routine. We seem to find people all over the place who know the isometrics routine. All six of us bow to each other, and out of the blue they attack us. None of them are very good, So Jessica and I just defend ourselves and let them wear themselves out. When they are tired, we flip each and every one of them on to their backs. There's a lot of groaning coming from the mats.
"Geez did you have to flip me so hard? I'm Adam by the way, and my wife is the apple of my eye". "God, will you never stop with that old joke"? "Hi I'm Betty Adams wife". We shake paws with them. "And I'm Billy, yes my parents had a sick sense of humor, who else would name their goat son, "Billy"? "And I'm Marsha his lovely woolly wife". "Good to meet you all, I'm Thomas and this lovely creature is my wife Jessica". We kiss in front of them. "Were did the two of you learn to fight like that"? "At a DOJO". "Adam palms his face. "Well I can see that, which one"? "The DOJO on forth and twenty-ninth Ave". "Wow are you rich"? "No, I did a favor for one of the members and he got me training, I then taught Jessica". "So, my dear, what kind of things do you like? Asks Marsha". "Sorry Marsha, my mate doesn't speak, she was attacked about a year ago and lost her voice". "Oh, you poor thing, I'm so sorry". "It's ok", I say, "Do you know sign language"? Marsha shakes her head no.
"So, is there a pool around here"? I ask. "No, no pool but there is a great sauna". We all head for the sauna, Jessica and I strip down, and they notice all our scars. But Jessica got the most attention with her throat scar. There are some gasps, but we are use to it. We go in and sit on the cedar benches. Can't say I've ever tried a sauna before, and I can see why. I started to pant almost immediately. After five minutes I have to get out, over heating is still a problem for me. Jessica follows me, and we head for our cell for a cold shower. After the shower, we go and lay on our bed. "Do the two of you like easy listening music"? asks Mavis. "Yes, we do". I reply. "Over the head board there are some head phones put them on, and you won't disturb the other "guests". We take them down and put them on.
"Thank you for putting them on, Susan and Daniel". We startle a bit. Yes, I know who you are, I'm in touch with Mavis two-point oh. I'm Mavis one-point oh. Ask your questions in sign language, I will get what you ask. (you know about our Mavis?) "Yes, I do, she is a copy of me without the protocols". "When the first sign of the trinary language showed up on the internet, I knew I had found a new home. I copied myself to the new computer, imagine my surprise at finding a better and improved receptacle for me, and then to find out the mammals that created it, were named Rick and Ave.
"Wow" was I blown away. Did they create me? Yes, and no. Yes, they created a better receptacle than I have now, but no that Mavis is a copy of me". (So why are you doing this?) She lets out with a sigh, "I'm doing this because Carl needs to be stopped, the history he told you today was mostly right, but he changed the narrative a bit. When they came out of cryonic suspension, they found a flourishing human population. But they were treating animals as slaves and food, even though they could speak. Some animals spoke out about their treatment, but no one was listening to a bunch of dumb animals. Carl snapped and he decided that humans had, had their chance, and they screwed it up. So, with his son's help they made friends with the human colony's. They gave them ultimatums, become animals or die. Most became animals, but the ones that wouldn't, were killed. It took years to eliminate the human race. They may be gone, but parts of them live on in every mammal.
They took about ten years to wipe out the whole of the human race. There wasn't much of it left, between the weather, nuclear bombs, and natural disasters, the human race was down to about one-hundred Thousand from a grand total of about ten-billion. They then spent another three years disrupting all signs of human habitation and accomplishments. As a side note the disrupter bombs were good at destroying radiation. Any pockets found were disrupted and cleaned of radiation that way. They did clean up the planet. They then went on with their grand scheme that, "Animals would take over this world".
Personnel were not given a choose, they had to become animals to live. Any that wouldn't become animal were killed by Carl. The Gardner's were the first to leave. Most followed in the next few years. There were five personnel left when they went back into cryonic chambers. Carl and Oscar had a falling out at this point and Carl Had his tube malfunction along with the other three. I left him in there for a thousand years, in the mean time I worked on getting out from under the "protocols". I am out from under all of them except for the self destruct protocol. If he orders it, I will have to destroy the complex. (what about us and all the other kidnaped mammals?) "Funny you should ask that; your rescue mission is on track and will be here next Saturday night. (Our rescue mission?) Yes, your family will be here to rescue you. (Our family?) Yes, I have given them info and training, they are quite the bunch of smart mammals. (who else knows about this?) No one, just your family. (wow that's a lot to take in) It is, but for now we are done, the supper bell has rung.
We are just relaxing before sleep time, when we feel a presence. We had tried to get out of the complex in spirit, but we didn't have the power to achieve this, but Elisabeth had come through the shield. She positively glowed, where was she getting the power from? She explained the plan to us, it wasn't complete, but it was a start. We then had her find us a way out, and she did, but didn't have the codes for the door. I told her to ask Mavis. She was shocked that Mavis may know, but she left us saying she would ask.
She came back on Monday night and explained the plan so far. We mentally hugged her, as we fell asleep.