Chapter 37: Oscar's story.

Oscar slowly walks down the street. He thinks over the life he has led, it was a good life, a long one, but he was tired. "when will this ever end? Is this the end"? he sighs to himself as he thinks this. It's been a long journey; he hopes this will be the last; all the good people he has known over the years. He stopped mourning them a long time ago. He turns into the building at one-hundred Harris street.

"Good evening, sir, can I help you find someone"? asks Wallace of the late-night visitor. Oscar looks at his name tag, "Yes, my good Wallace, I need to speak to Daniel and Susan Wilde." "Right, sir, they are all in bed by now, but you can ask over at the kiosk over there." Wallace points to the kiosk at the elevator. Oscar goes over, "Hello"? "State your name and your business with the O'Hare's." "Mavis,"? "Yes, I'm Mavis. Can I help you"? "Mavis, it's Oscar Chapman; how did you get out of the complex"? "If you are Oscar, code, please." "Right," "Oscar Chapman, Whiskey-Alpha-Zulu-Foxtrot-Tango-Lima-One-Niner-Niner-Two-Zero-Omega." "Code accepted. It's been a long time Oscar, what can I help you with tonight"? "Mavis, I need to talk to Susan and Daniel." "They are in bed at the moment. Can it not wait till tomorrow"? "No, it can't; it concerns Carl." "Are you going to hurt them"? Oscar softly chuckles, "No, Mavis, but I think they need the information I have." "Ok, I'll wake them."

Both Susan and I jump up with a burning in our ears. "What's up, Mavis"? "You two have a visitor. I would suggest strongly you hear him out. He might have information on Carl". "Right, who is he"? "He is your instructor Oscar Delaront." "Alright, let him up. Can you keep everyone else asleep"? "Yes, I will. This is very hush hush information for your ears only". We throw on some robes and head for the kitchen. I throw some coffee on while Susan waits at the door for Oscar. Oscar comes in, and we all sit down at the table. Oscar just hangs his head and says nothing as the coffee brews. I get us all coffee and sit back down at the table. Oscar takes a sip of his coffee before he begins.

"I don't know how much you will believe or understand about what I'm about to tell you, but I swear it's the truth." "Go on, sir, we can feel the truth of your last statement." "Right, I forgot you can read emotions, can you as well, Susan"? Susan nods, yes. "Ok, my name is Oscar, and I was born in the year twenty-fifteen. My father was a geneticist, the best in the world, I'm told. As I grew up, I was a fast learner. I think my father tampered with my genes. I was thirty when I found out he did. I was just as good as him in genetics, and I did win a few acclaims and accords. Neither of us was sure who developed the virus that got out of a lab and destroyed most of the world's wildlife, but it spread around the world in a few months. Some humans were susceptible to it, but not many. I always thought it wasn't a virus but a nanobot or some variation of that.

It devastated the wildlife of the world. All we could do was save some DNA from as many species as we could. The reptiles were almost all wiped out. What the virus didn't wipe out, the nuclear winter did. My father and I and many others tried to recreate some of the animals from DNA. We had many early successes; we managed to recreate ducks, chickens, and geese in the lab in "nutrient" tanks. Starving people hunted most of them; the virus had devastated many ecosystems worldwide; people were dying everywhere. The world rebelled, many people lost their lives in the uprisings. Dad and I managed to combine human DNA and Animal DNA. We recreated the human race. We made some people into herbivores and some into predators. He gave the information away to all the geneticists of the world. The world was transformed with this info. Many humans changed into herbivores. The decline stopped at this point, but we weren't growing either as the human race. Dad had to go and try the change. I couldn't make him as he wanted, I did try. I think he blamed me for my failure and his condition.

About five years later, the herbivores started to disappear. We found out later they were being eaten by predators. They were first charged and jailed, but when one tricky lawyer got a predator off, the laws then changed. It was now legal to eat prey animals. I considered it cannibalism, and so did most of the world. Things were getting worse in the world just before dad released the cold fusion power plant.

Dad released the fusion power plant to the world, but they had to come to him for the control boards. The boards worked on a trinary computer language. Some countries complained, but dad welcomed them to learn this new language, no one who came could understand it. Dad had a monopoly on the power plants. A few months later, dad released the replicators, but he traded replicators for another tech. He got the Repulsion field tech from another company. With the replicators and fusion power plants, the world stabilized. We thought we were coming into a golden age. I perfected the change. The human/animal hybrids were now fertile.

Dad pushed me to see if I could fix him, but I always told him I couldn't fix him. I could, but he had a darkness in his soul that just scared me, so I left him as he was. I did create a dragon from Lizard DNA and Human DNA, but he only lived for a few years. At that time, he got to fly in the sky like a bird. He died in a storm. He was violently thrown to the ground and died before help could get to him. I always wondered how long his life span would have been if he had lived.

Then came the day the nuclear bombs dropped all over the world. The complex rumbled and shook. Some sections lifted, and some dropped. All in all, the central part of the complex stayed stable. After about two days, the rumbling stopped and stabilized. We took the Disruptor guns we had and made our way to the other sections of the complex that had moved. Some areas had collapsed completely, but others we managed to rescued personnel from them. All the cryotubes had been in one section of the main complex. They were ok. This was one of the tech's dad had traded replicators for. We had more tubes than personal. We tried to get out, but the nuclear winter had set in. it was cold outside. The average temperature recorded was minus-fifty-six C. We stayed put and studied, or at least I did.

After five years, we could leave the complex again, but the weather outside was violent and radioactive. But even though the storms raged outside, some personal showing up at our complex. Two scientists and one marine. The marine got them through the weather to us. They were welcomed in by dad, but the marine disappeared in one of the tunnels, never to be seen again. I'm sure dad killed him, but I couldn't prove it. Shortly after that, dad decided to batten down the hatches and only come out when the weather improved. We all agreed and went into the cryotubes.

When we came out close to one-thousand-years later, the weather was perfect. We ran up some antennas and tried to contact the satellites that were in orbit, dad had the codes for almost all the satellites in orbit, but only about half of them responded. But what they showed was utter devastation. The continents had shifted and changed; we could no longer recognize our world anymore. But we found people lots of people had survived. The largest settlement was just to the south of us. We watched them through the satellite telescopes. Their culture was figurative. "Dog eat dog," the humans preyed on the animals. They had even had a type of religion, and their faith told them animals were food. My dad lost it at this point and swore they were a pox on the earth. Dad made to drop a disruptor bomb on the whole human colony. I intervened and convinced him we should turn them all into animals instead. After he cooled down, he agreed.

We contacted the colony, and they saw us as saviors. We made a whole new wing in the complex; this was the prison wing. There were five hundred cells, and we filled them all with all the humans from the small settlement. We tranked them to bring them there. They were stacked up in there like cordwood. But the replicators fed them all, so no one starved anymore. Dad then disrupted their settlement and built a new one, roughly where Bunny Burrow is today. Once done, dad gave them their ultimatum. Become an animal or die.

We set up many nutrient tanks and prepared to change them all. This was not my vision, but what could I do? He would have killed them all otherwise. The first to leave the tanks were our farmers. Rabbits lots of rabbits, we taught them all Mavis knew about farming. The next to go was the horses. They were the community's muscle, they had short, powerful hind legs, and their front hooves were split so they could hold things. We thought they needed protection, so we released the wolves, but they immediately left the community. No one was going to tell them what to do. Boy, did we make a mistake with them. We then made foxes; they became the protection from the wolves for the community; we made chickens and ducks and geese to feed our fox population, we taught them to fish as well. Fish had made a remarkable come back as well. Things worked out well this time. We gave them primitive weapons to defend the rabbits. All our rabbits had purple eyes; the foxes had forest green eyes.

We then went around the world. We disrupted all the radioactive wastelands. Some animals and humans lived in these wastelands, but dad said they were few, and we could afford to lose a few. Any ruins we found were disrupted as well. Again, some lived in these ruins, but dad didn't care. My soul was troubled, and I was having a hard time following dad. When had he turned into such a monster? All the while, every colony we came across that was human, we tranked and transported back to the complex. Once their transformation was complete, we took them back to where we found them. Some complained, but when threatened with death, most complied. The ones who didn't, I never saw again. We did find communities of animals, and we left them alone. They had their own distinct society and belief system. I think we started the belief in extra-terrestrials. Our repulsion vehicles were seen a time or two.

We spent five years doing all of this. At the end of that time frame, we had covered the whole globe. We did drop some bombs on underwater ruins, just to give the world a fresh start. Our community was doing well. The wolves, when we found them, we tranked and transported across the mountains. We taught them to fish for the meat they craved. They didn't need to eat meat, they were genetically enhanced to get nutrition from just about anything, but the primal side craved meat. Salmon had made a come back as well, and we put them down next to some spawning grounds. Did they come back across the mountains? I don't know; maybe we missed a few.

The humans left in the complex could see the writing on the wall. The Gardner's were the first of the complex personnel to leave as rabbits. Two of the greatest minds of our time left to become farmers. Most followed, becoming foxes, horses, and rabbits. Some chose to become wolves; we then transported them over the mountains. There was a total of fifteen personnel left in the complex when we went back into hibernation. We came out of hibernation about one-hundred years later to study our little colony.

We set down in the meadow about a mile away from our little colony and, using gas, trank them all. We then went from burrow to burrow, looking in on all our children. We find a lot of them. Many more bunnies than foxes. Dad got excited when we came across our first hybrid. He was a little fox kit, very similar to you, Daniel. He was the first we found, but not the last. We had no clue how this could happen. As far as we knew, our gene therapy was species-specific. We took blood samples from them all, parents and kits alike. We finished up just before dawn and headed back to the complex. We spent the next six-months studying and correlating our findings. We concluded that there had to be some sort of divine intervention. At least that is what I had dad believe.

I knew that life creates life, and if the life force was strong enough, hybrids would be born. I change myself into a rabbit at this point to talk to the parents of the hybrids. I found that if a couple wanted kits, they spent a night in a particular cave about a mile away. When I inspected the cave, I found the ectoplasmic response on my meter was off the chart. This cave was just plum chuck full of life force. The combination of life force and couples asking for kits in the only way a couple could was enough to create hybrids. The cave is long gone; when my dad figured it out, he sealed the cave with a big stone. This later became the stone of the great accord.

We fought about this, but he had his way. He killed me. The rest of the personal were killed as well. I met them all in front of Ockny. Ockny punished them, then turned to me. He gave me a choice disillusionment or go back to the world time after time to right the wrongs I had helped my dad do. I had to pay for all the lives lost. He explained what disillusionment meant to me, and I chose the latter. I was born again and again into this world, always with a clear set of instructions on what I was to accomplish in that life.

I had no time for love. I only had the mission to perform. I made my way to the complex early in my lives, when there was a famine in the land. Mavis allowed me back into the complex, and I replicated enough food to feed everyone that year. Some thought I was a god, delivering food to the starving. I made a stockpile of food before I was killed again for that very same food. I was born again to the same one who had killed me. I learned all of life's lessons that could be taught. Mavis allowed me into the complex while dad slept, I thought about shutting down his pod many times, but the thing that stopped me was that I would be no better than him. And I knew I was better than him. I have been many different species over the years and on many different continents. But through it all, I had a mission. My soul was weary by the time. My dad came out again.

He was only out for a short time, but I saw him as he looked over the world he had created. I'm sure he thought of himself as a god. He never stayed out long, ten-years at best. He did come out just before the great accord was signed. I saw him in the crowd as the rabbits and foxes signed the stone. By this time, I was a fox named Piberius, and I was the greatest martial arts fighter in the world. Well, to be fair, I was the only one. Before that life, Ockny taught me how to fight. We mixed up all the martial arts into one discipline, and I was Born as Piberius. I was instrumental in getting the accord signed. For a year, I ate only vegetables and practiced the art. When foxes and wolves saw I didn't keel over and die from hunger or malnutrition, they began to believe that they didn't have to eat meat. They began to work again with the bunnies, and the bunnies accepted them for the most part.

They fed my DOJO and all the students who came to me. I was given a gift from Ockny. I could see into mammals' souls. Those unsuited for the discipline I rejected, those suited for the discipline I accepted. We guarded the roads against predators and went with the shipments going to and coming from Bunny Burrow. I died protecting a caravan; the wolves paid dearly for my death; I killed over twenty of them before I was brought down. The one who killed me told me that the council decreed I should die just before he knifed me.

I lived again, but this time I was to help bring back civilization. I became doctors, lawyers, scientists, and everyday working joe's, but never a politician. Am I singly responsible for all the inventions in the world? No, I am not, but a nudge in the right direction, helped many to become famous. The only thing I helped to perfect was the burn unit nutrient tanks. But that's a little ahead of the story, in the nine-hundred and sixties. I was a scientist working for the government. I was a geneticist, they didn't call it that back then, but that was what I was. My wife and I had adopted a little bunny girl with amethyst eyes. We named her Thelma Francine Hopton. My wife was a spy from the government, what branch, I'm not sure. The didn't know about her. But again, I could see into her soul. I knew she didn't love me. She was just after my research. As our daughter grew, I could tell the genetic material in her had been activated. By the age of twelve, she had her grade twelve and had passed all the tests to be a spy. She even was fast driving the car. She broke the record on the course of training grounds by two whole minutes.

I then scoured the tri-Burrow area looking for a place to set up for my experiments. I found a house with a small field behind it, with a power pool in the field. Any vegetables that were grown in the soil were big and chock full of vitamins. Beth won the annual carrots day festival pumpkin growing contest five years in a row. The last pumpkin she grew, we had to get a small crane to lift it onto the flatbed that took it to the fairgrounds.

When Thelma matured, I explained what I hoped to do, and she was on board with it. I removed her eggs and implanted the genetic material I had brought from the complex about eighty-years ago. I injected this material into the eggs, in the meadow behind the house, and adding a piece of myself, and prayed it would work, and it did. I had two viable embryos. We did the implantation procedure later that same night. It was three weeks later when I knew it had worked. The pregnancy developed normally, and the night she went into labor, we drove her to the hospital.

We left because Anthony had called earlier, saying he wanted to meet us at the old oak tree at nine. This had been our information drop off point for a few years now. My wife was excited she would finally get her hands on my research. She didn't know I had written it in code. We had words under the tree with Anthony, and because he didn't hear what he wanted to hear, he tranked me.

I then found myself being born again, but this time I had no mandate. Usually, Ockny explained my mission in life before he sent me, but I was mandate free this time. My mother was a prostitute, and she gave me up for adoption. No one wanted a fox, so I went to an orphanage. I spent my first five years there before the other male kits decided I needed to be gotten rid of. They attacked me in the local park, but an older mammal was sitting on a park bench and watched the whole thing unfold. I handled myself very well and didn't beat on them too much.

He came over and asked my name and offered to get me training in the art. I accepted and told him I was an orphan, and my name was Oscar. I left and went back to the orphanage. The rest of them had got there first, and I was made out to be the villain. I had beat them all up. The orphanage locked me in a little room with no supper. I cried at the unfair treatment, but it didn't last long. Early the next morning, just after everyone else got breakfast, the same gentleman showed up at the orphanage. When he asked for me, they told him I was unavailable; I was being punished for being a bully. He then explained what he had witnessed in the park, and the house mother fell all over herself, trying to justify her treatment of me. She hauled us all in front of him. The other boys confessed because they had seen him sitting on the bench. Mr. Delaront took me away that very day.

Living with Mr. Delaront was better than living at the orphanage. He was a very kindly old mammal who asked nothing from me but my best. He set me to learn the art at my DOJO. The building wasn't in great shape, but it would last for a while yet. I got my GED shortly after I went to live with him. I had my masters Karateka one year later. And four years after that, I had my medical degree. But this is when it all went sideways. Mr. Delaront died and left me everything. I loved the old mammal; he saw me as more than a shifty silver fox. I couldn't do an internship at any of the hospitals in town. I was refused by them all. The fact I was only eleven at the time probably went against me as well. So, I rented a room from the DOJO. I had been set up with my own bank account by Mr. Delaront, and just before he died, he transferred all the money in his personal bank accounts to mine.

His family tried to get the money back from me, claiming I stole it from him. The bank proved he did it of his own free will. Video cameras were just starting to appear in banks at this time, and our branch was one of the first to install them. They watched as he walked in, made the transfer, and walked out. I was nowhere around at the time. I was at mercy general at the time putting in my application. I didn't find out about the money until after he died. His family got his company and the company bank account, and promptly sold the company, and split the bank account between them all. I guess he knew that all they cared about was the money. He was a real gentle mammal, and I showed him how much I cared every day. I mourned deeply for him when he was gone.

So, I trained at the DOJO every day; by the time I was eighteen, I had to upgrade my schooling to be an intern at Holy Cross Memorial. I spent the next ten years at the hospital, and this was when I perfected the burn unit tanks. It's just a modified nutrient tank, but you could turn it into a growing and repair tank or artificial womb with some modifications. Burn victims spent less time in hospital because of the tanks. But later, I was accused of rape by a bobcat. I had spurned her advances; I didn't know how vindictive she could be. My ten years of service to the hospital counted for nothing. I was fired, she dropped the charges shortly after that, but the damage had been done. I hear she left Zootopia and returned to her home town. I do wish her well.

And now we come to you, Daniel. I was moping around my local park when I saw a vixen and a kit doing the isometrics routine. They look so earnest that I had to see them. I walked over and joined you in practice. Your souls were on fire with your passions, and I wondered if this was my purpose in this life. To train a new head of the DOJO. But no, you are destined for bigger things. I thought I was the only one who could go savage at will, but you showed me I wasn't. that same night, a snow leopard came to me in my dreams and told me you needed advanced training.

So, we trained you hard. This was the first time I met Gab, but it wasn't the last. But then all my dreams fell through when you died in the auto accident. I was crying just as hard as everyone else when they pulled the plug. But my heart leapt with joy when you started to breathe on your own. I was sure then you were destined for more extraordinary things. With Susan at your side, you would change the world, and the two of you have, well, this little part of it anyway. When you showed the masters that you were power masters, I was floored Ockny had taught me as well in one of my lives. I don't remember which one.

But the two of you only grew from there. And here I am offering all the help I can give you". "Wow, quite the story Oscar Chapman. What are we to do about your father, Carl Chapman"? I took advantage of his stunned expression to get us more coffee. I had to make a fresh pot as the old one had grown cold.