ii. The Next Step

Gerald was pleased to see Maria becoming the pet of the facility, and more pleased that she did reserve her brightest smiles and prettiest flowers for him. What pleased him most was that she seemed nearly normal health-wise; the treatment he had developed was far more effective than what the doctors on Earth had been able to offer, stopping or even reversing the disease instead of merely slowing its progress. However, he remained all too aware that the Heal Units were a temporary therapy, and the Servers seemed to work no better on Earth than the vaguely related Artificial Chaos robots did. He had decided to start among some of the lower classes of animals for his immortality research. Many fish and reptiles lived for considerable lengths of time and a number of lizards had the ability to regenerate tails, or more rarely, even limbs they had lost. Fish in quantity were not really feasible on the ARK, but he had managed to set up a few tanks of starfish - a single arm, with an implanted bit of nerve tissue, could regrow into an entire starfish. The presence of the chaos emerald, or a gadget he had created that radiated energy generated by chaos drives could do the same without the nerve disk.

He was no longer working alone either, the importance of the project had resulted in him being assigned a team of researchers. One, a geneticist, had isolated a set of genes in the chaos cells that seemed to collect and focus chaos energy. He and Gerald spliced it into a set of lizard embryos and carefully incubated the eggs. They used the Cnemidophorus lizards he had chosen for the Heal Unit research; as an entirely female race, the Desert Grassland Whiptails have fairly homogenous genes (barring spontaneous mutations, individual specimens are clones of their mother), and he had good data on both normal and immune-altered specimens. The "chaos lamp" as his drive-powered radiator had been nicknamed, shared space on top of the cage with the UV lamp. About half of the embryos failed to develop, for various reasons which were duly recorded after necropsy; the remaining eight hatched into normal-looking lizards. Two refused to eat, one dying of dehydration and starvation as it burned up its remaining yolk sac despite attempts to feed it (also recorded in detail after necropsy), the other also refusing attempts to force-feed it but gaining weight and growing along with the rest of the clutch. The other six turned their attentions gleefully to the tiny crickets and mealworms (beheaded, as Gerald had discovered the things had a nasty bite and didn't want the dinner eating the lizards) and grew apace. Actually two grew more than apace and by the end of the third month those two and the one that had never yet been seen eating were nearly twice the length and bulk of the others.

Those three were separated from the others and tests indicated they had the most response to and absorption of chaos energy. Two others also absorbed the energy but what their bodies did with it was unclear. The last three showed no evidence of either the energy absorption or the genes that should have been commingled with their own. Gerald focused on the three with the best response, labeling them "active" Chaos lizards due to their bodies' utilization of the energy, while turning the others over to his fellow researchers. The plan was to see if the genes were passed on in the ones that had absorbed them, and try modifying the eggs of the ones that had not transformed. The researchers also had hopes that the "passive" Chaos lizards might show enhanced lifespans. But at this point they were useless to Gerald, who was still more interested in the healing applications that might prove of benefit to Maria.

The active Chaos lizards were kept apart, in a separate lab with the original chaos lamp. They had ID numbers, befitting their experimental status, but Maria - who loved looking at the animals but had no idea of their potential importance to her own future - named them Izzy, Lizzy and Fred. Lizzy got to be about two feet long and then started showing signs of distress; neither Gerald nor the other researchers had ever seen any indication that she was eating, although she had been observed to drink on occasion. Gerald realized that the chaos lamp was no longer producing much output. A fresh drive, and Lizzy started thriving anew. The trio were now all three times the normal size for their species.

Over the next five years, a number of other splicing experiments were attempted with various lizard species and even a few rats. They managed, in fact, to get one of the rats to regrow a surgically removed tail; the others were either a (genetically) immune-suppressed variety and or receiving the NIDS toxin. The chaos DNA had variable effects, a few ended up with nearly normal function despite their faulty genetics, the rest had lesser effects except for one that remained completely immune-suppressed and one which died of the NIDS toxin. Maria, now 8, put an end to the physical healing tests by stealing Silver, the rat whose tail had been docked. She knew the ARK's systems well enough to cut the cameras off in the research lab for just long enough to accomplish the deed - and cut them back on before the security could become alarmed by the absence. She hid her prize quite well for nearly two weeks of frantic searching on behalf of her grandfather and his team - rats loose in a space station were no joke; if the escapee chewed the wrong cable there might be serious consequences. Gerald only found out what had become of his subject when Maria came running into his office to show him that Silver's tail was now back to half its original length. After a lecture that was perhaps not as severe as it ought to have been, Silver's cage was transferred into Maria's room - and soon attached to a rather larger play area so he'd have a "safe" area to explore. He was hers on the condition that he STAY in his area and not be allowed to run loose.

Meanwhile Maria's play area had also expanded considerably. After several reporters asked a few too many questions about secret space flights, the space version of the Alternate Research had been expanded into a proper Space Colony. The medical wing was expanded and new researchers invited to study weightless and reduced-gravity therapies. The living quarters were vastly expanded and the population increased to about 500 people, mostly with jobs related to running and maintaining the colony, or individuals researching space and how to live in it. Maria and Gerald had both been pleased when Gerald Jr. and his wife Angela managed to get permission to come. They had gotten up to the ARK only twice since Maria had moved up there and much as she loved "taking care of Grandfather" she missed her parents too.

As for the original Chaos lizards: the ones that had not "accepted" the gene splice produced most of the subsequent research eggs and died at a not unexpected 4-5 years of age. The passive Chaos lizards, including those from subsequent altered clutches, all proved to be sterile; they laid eggs but those eggs never reached an embryonated stage. The active Chaos lizards were normally fertile. Both types exhibited enhanced healing and appendage regeneration - the actives faster than the passives - but as the average lifespan was 4½ to 7 years, it was still too soon to determine if they would outlive the norm for the species. The active chaos lizards had also all ended up about 4 times the size of the passives which were the normal length for the species (two-three inches of body plus three times that length of tail). The exception was the one that had still, in over five years, never been seen to actually eat. Maria had changed Lizzy's name, deciding it sounded too childish (a solemn pronouncement made at the grand old age of five) and renamed her Biolizard "because she's a lizard in a biogolical experiment." Gerald had pointed out that the other lizards were also biological experiments which earned him a pitying look and the explanation that "Grandfather, they can't all be named Biolizard." Gerald had nodded meekly and agreed that no, they couldn't all have the same name, while the other researchers smothered their laughter in the background.

Since that time, whether due to her new name or not the Biolizard had grown to the body size of a young alligator, retaining a whiptail's proportionate tail length while adding an uncommon length to her neck as well. Her legs, however, had not strengthened in proportion to her growth; she could barely stand up, and was unable to walk, but she could slither with the speed of a snake when she chose to. She had been transferred to a special room with a sunken floor. The door opened onto a railed walkway that encircled the central stone-cut pit, with a gated ladder leading down. A ring of chaos lamps edged the walkway providing both light and nourishment to the creature. After excavating this new room, the Gizoid mostly divided its time between assisting Gerald in the main labs and helping to expand the colony, but occasionally Gerald brought it in to help with the Biolizard. Unfortunately, although the Professor duly entered in the Project: Shadow notes that the creature had occasional fits of aggression, he failed to realize that such fits only occurred in the Gizoid's presence.