Hanami – Chapter 23
Splinter cleared his throat, "I believe your contact with Professor Perry predates our own. Our initial feeling for him had been friendship, but certain recent events have called his sincerity into question."
"He packed you in boxes!" Mikey wailed.
Splinter raised a silencing hand toward Michelangelo. "Maybe it would be best to continue the tale?"
Cabbage nodded.
"Prof. Perry was the only reason my sisters and I survived the purges that followed the first panicked year of experimentation. The experiments and their results had already decimated the sections' populations. Mostly all that remained were the control groups of 'non-hostile' species: some turtles, some frogs, mice, a random handful, really."
"Since no threats had been made to the government and no mutants had suddenly surfaced, TGRI's interest in chemical 56X was beginning to wane. Skilled personnel were moved back to defense projects. Funding for project 56X faced drastic cut backs."
"Prof. Perry argued that it was far too soon to terminate the mutant experiments. He felt that while our physical abilities were well charted, TGRI had neglected to study our minds. He proposed that each one of the four in the several remaining control groups be subjected to rigorous study in one of four subjects: biological science, traditional "engineering" science, world languages and literature, and the fine arts."
"It took some doing, but his proposal went through, with the caveat: the creatures were to be destroyed after a term of 2 years."
"Now, I don't know what Prof. Perry told the other control groups, but I do know what he told my sisters and I. Our lives depended on one thing alone: money. If we wished to live, we had to prove to TGRI that we were worth more alive than dead."
"We were moved into a real room. They gave us our first real beds. The humans hammered us with aptitude tests in that first week. They explained to us that our training would allow us to work, and if we worked then we would be spared. Mind you, as the budget was thinned over the course of the years, the human promises about working for our lives changed in tone. They were monitoring all the test groups, you see. Whenever the money ran low, they'd kill off the group whose test scores were the lowest."
"It ceased to be 'train to be valuable' and evolved into 'train to be the best.' At the end of the two-year term of Perry's experiment, only my sisters and I were left. We had years to go before we would be of any substantial use to TGRI, but our progress was such that Prof. Perry was able to buy us more time."
"I had been chosen to tackle the biological sciences: human and veterinary medicine, chemistry as it relates to pharmacology, microbiology, and research practices. It was an awful lot to learn, but then there was nothing else for me to do – and you'd be amazed how studious you can be when some one's threatening your family. It was thought that I would be the mutant who contributed the most to TGRI. After all, I could work in the very labs that spawned me. I was safe to be trusted with top-secret project information, because I was not allowed to speak to any but my tutors and Dr. Perry, and if the human knew about my sisters and I, they already had security clearance to anything I may have seen. But mostly the largest reason: I was disposable. I could be put into dangerous situations that no normal human would accept without TGRI needing to pay exorbitant amounts of money. I worked for the food I ate, the medical attention I received, the room I shared with my sisters, and the privilege of breathing."
"ThreeSee tested highest in engineering sciences: physics, math, electrical engineering, fluid dynamics, computer sciences. They used her for everything from plumbing repair to generating schematics for security systems. She also earned her keep the same way I did: with the money she saved the company."
"Shima has attained fluency in more languages than I can count. All her literature studies made her an excellent writer. The sad thing is that they used her for a glorified secretary. Translators are highly paid professionals -- especially ones who can look at complicated scientific research papers and convert them accurately into another language. TGRI did have government contracts; it's true. However, the company was a privately owned research firm. Their scientists were almost constantly trying to publish their results. The more people who knew about TGRI, particularly in the international circles of the scientific community, the higher TGRI's stock prices. They eventually expanded her duties to editing the papers to be published in English in addition to all her translation work. Shima became the sole channel for publishable papers leaving TGRI."
"TwoSee. The artist. The trained musician. You'd think that she would be the one whose inability to make money would have earned us all a trip to 'Mr. Happy-Needle." Cabbage shook her head. "She was so paranoid about not being able to pull her weight. I mean; we were all scared. Prof. Perry made it clear as crystal that it was the earning power of the GROUP that determined our lifespan." She looked up with a bewildered expression. "But Perry had thought of that: how to make an artist who does not exist in the real world make money. He sold off the property rights to her musical compositions. He sold her original paintings, her sculptures, and, heh, even her counterfeits of the old masters. And he was clever about it. Since no one was ever going to meet the artist, anyone who bought her work, well, they could take credit for it, couldn't they? She's good, you know. Good enough that aspiring artists with enough money and enough need for a reputation were willing to pay obscene amounts to have one of her pieces on their resume."
Mike spoke up, "But I didn't think aspiring artists had money."
"They did when they sold my sister's work as their own. That alone usually covered the cost of them buying it themselves. Then they had a reputation, and that's apparently a suitable substitute for talent in the art world."
"She ended up out-earning us all. Prof. Perry convinced TGRI that we were in fact more valuable alive. Killing us would have been killing the goose that laid the golden egg. His way was not the easy way, and we did run into trouble eventually, but by then we had survived for seventeen years."