He sat in a still silence, staring at a group of three monitors, each lined up against one another to create one elongated screen. He was typing away at the keyboard, little clicking noises sounding off as he studied his work and looked between each of the lit faces before him. Aside from this, all was quiet in the relatively small room.
The first monitor, the one farthest to his left, contained an array of statistical looking data for whatever it was he was working on. It contained an array of things from pie charts to line graphs to just clumps of numbers being calculated out on an open document. The third screen, the one farthest to his right, was just a large clump of seemingly meaningless letters. He was slowly scrolling through this screen, reading through each and every letter carefully before typing down something on the second, middle screen. This monitor was merely an open document with notes on different groups of letters. There were bunches that were labeled as simply as 'eye color' or 'scale color' while there were others that were labeled more complex concepts like 'frontal lobe size'.
As he was continuing his research into the random array of letters, he heard the door to his room open up, the large, rounded ears to the sides of his head twitching in response. He swiftly turned his head, his eyes filled with a level of seriousness that was impossible to stop as he was far too deep in whatever he was studying. He eyed the being before him, a massive, orange red, white underbelly, black striped tiger that could easily shred him, a tiny, white underbelly, grey koala, to bits if they had wanted to. Fortunately, he knew this tiger, and he also knew that this tiger would work for him until they were free to go. He tilted his head in curiosity at the nervousness that his determined stare seemed to give this hulking, predatory creature, a slight chuckle emanating from deep within him before he became irritated at the stunned silence.
"Yes? What is it? Why have you disturbed my work?" He had an eerily calm voice that had a thread of a threat to it as his blackened eyes narrowed at the being before him. The tiger flinched before stuttering out a quick response. "S-some of the eggs are, um, h-hatching, Dr. Eucalyptus."
A wicked grin grew across his face as he spoke once again in regard to what his staff member had mentioned. "Finally. It's been nearly two months. Show me which clutch is hatching." He stood from his seat and walked over to the tiger before following said character down a hall towards one of the many incubation rooms in the building. The walk was filled with tension as the tiger's tail swished back and forth in discomfort, causing a mischievous smile to cross his face.
As they continued on, the only sound being the echo of their feet against the tile flooring, he realized where he was in the facility as he grew even more excited than before, his eyes glittering with a menacing sheen. "The burmese pythons. Excellent." His eagerness grew as he made his way to one of the enclosures, looking into it to see that some of the serpents were indeed hatching. The first one to hatch seemed shy about coming out, but, with time, eventually began exploring its enclosure. Rather than being like a normal, wild burmese python, this snake had four short yet sturdy limbs aiding in its curious search around the environment.
After letting it bathe in the warm, red light for a while, letting it settle into its habitat, letting more of the snakes hatch, he suddenly directed the tiger to grab one of the slithering serpents. He took a moment to just stand and study the specimen, noticing it was a pale, blank yellow with a white underbelly and bright red eyes, a patternless albino. As he was staring at it, it released a decent hiss as if to scare him off. He merely chuckled at this as he tilted his head and he called for another one of his employees to aid in the next step.
Another creature, one a bit smaller than the tiger and with a pale golden coat, a lion, entered the room and was directed to grab both the head and the tail of the snake presently being held. They did as they were told and held the wriggling creature in place as their boss pulled out a measuring tape as the snake was pulled carefully in two different directions. He put his ruler right up against the serpent's side, studying the length before finally putting it down and writing in his notebook what he identified the length of this particular individual to be. He then ordered for the specimen to be placed back in the enclosure so that he could measure the next serpent to be picked up. He continued this until every last snake was properly measured, ignoring how much they hissed and squirmed and fought.
"All a healthy size, which is good. These should survive longer than the last batch." He was mostly speaking aloud to himself as he took notes on the visual health of each limbed serpent, his mind distracted for a moment in the study of his new collection. Afterall, he had struggled with keeping his test subjects alive for some odd reason. While the lifespan and been increasing with each passing clutch, it was still an irritation to be having these issues so far into the project.
It wasn't long before he swiftly ordered one of his employees to grab a needle and a bag of what appeared to be tiny computer chips smaller than his fingertips. By no means did he consider himself good in the field of computer hardware and software, but he did a decent enough job at the tracking devices that he didn't see a need to improve upon them nor find someone else to better them. Afterall, why fix something that isn't broken.
He then ordered another command towards the remaining staff member who quickly brought a cart like that of what surgeons used and placed it right next to him, allowing his other employee to set the items on top of it. He briefly spoke into a tiny mic he had attached to his shirt, ordering more of his workers to join the show as he had one of the two present workers pick up one of the snakes from the incubation chamber below. It didn't take long for everything to be set in place as he grabbed the needle and sucked up one of the microchips into the syringe.
When he had first attempted to inject tracking devices beneath the skin of his subjects he had accidentally killed a few as he was unfamiliar with this process, but, eventually, he had gotten accustomed to this task as he slaughtered fewer and fewer of his precious creations. Now practically none passed away at all as he had obtained the skill of identifying how deep the needle was inside his subjects just from visuals alone.
Once he was ready, two of his employees stepped forward with the first snake, one pinning the limbs and the other holding the head still so that he could aim at the neck without causing major injuries. As he pierced through scale and skin, an agonized, shrill scream escaped the small creature's mouth, causing some of his workers to flinch. He had done the same when he first heard the painful sounds that his work created, but he pushed past this so that he could accomplish his little passion project. Now he was completely unfazed by the sounds as he merely continued onward, pushing past the crawling sensations on his back and the tingling sensations in his stomach.
Determination filled his eyes as he finished up the first creature and slid out the needle, shooing his employee away with his hand to go place it in its new enclosure as another worker brought up the next subject. This continued on until every last burmese python was given their own tracking chip, each one giving off the same tormented screeches that reverberated around the room and caused discomfort in many of his employees. It wasn't long before every last hatchling was whisked away to their new enclosures to be properly monitored, which is exactly what he left to do as soon as the chipping process was complete as he was eager to see the reactions of his creations.
He returned to his little room, his three monitors up and running still. Once he sat down in his office chair, swivelling it towards the screens and wheeling it closer to the desk, he began adjusting his left screen. He cleared away everything that was present on it except for a single window that showed what appeared to be different camera feeds. He looked through each bit of footage from the security cameras, looking for the newly placed burmese pythons to identify the different reactions to the sudden change in environment and the tracking devices beneath the skin. Once he found the group, he zoomed in on each isolated individual to study the varied behaviors.
As he studied each of his projects he made notes on his middle monitor about each unique reaction. There were a few that struggled, strained, and fought the entire time as they attempted many times to escape, and he took note that these were more likely to survive as shown by past analysis. The ones that curled up in fright and showed weaknesses like that were often the ones to die off first, which made sense in his mind as he believed the fighters had stronger survival instincts which provided for a greater will to live.
As he was continuing his study of his subjects, he noticed one in particular that was acting different, one that was seeking comfort. While it was showing symptoms of weakness by crying and acting full of fear, it was also showing a sign of potential social desire by cradling its tail. He looked down at the notes he had written earlier, flipping through the pages of his journal, and identified the individual as BPPb989S172. He put it down in his computer to keep a close eye on this particular burmese python as he looked for similar actions by the other subjects only to find that it was the only one.
He leaned back in his chair, slightly frustrated by the lack of social desire from the other snakes, one of his hands passing over his face as he rubbed at his black eyes. It was frustrating to have so many failures and close calls only to suddenly now have the closest thing to a high level sentient being like the land mammals around him. It was incredibly irritating to have done so much work only to have one subject present with the signs of success.
Granted, he had succeeded multiple times with crocodilians, but that was easy as these creatures were already somewhat social. Burmese pythons, and most other snakes, were a bit trickier as they were far less social than alligators and crocodiles. Furthermore, he had to genetically engineer legs back into serpents and bypass a few instincts through other alterations. It was far more of a challenge, but he loved it. After all, if he didn't enjoy this then he would have never started this little passion project.
After studying his serpentine subjects for a while, he eventually leaned back into his chair and sighed. He had spent hours doing this only to find that only the one subject was presenting with the unique potential of high level sentience. He sat still, staring blankly at the camera footage for a while before standing up and walking over to one of the walls. Once he had reached it, he pressed one of the tiles, causing a part of the wall to fall out and reveal a bed. He crawled into the comforting, warm sheets as he allowed his mind to calm down and he fell into a restful slumber.