ii. Dealing with Doom
Gerald spent the morning in his private lab trying to formulate plans. A faint, almost last-ditch hope that he wouldn't be able to find a hedgehog sample lurked almost unnoticed in the back of his mind as he called up the tissue lists. The first several pages listed not merely the "usual" laboratory species but a variety of other animals, a few plants... He realized rather belatedly what his artificial Chaos cells actually were when his eye caught the word "Chao" in the list. No wonder they look like the water god's avatar, that's supposed to have been an altered Chao. He paged through the list and wasn't certain whether to be pleased or shocked to find all the "people" on the planet in the final category - Humanoids. He wasn't certain the dokan samples were legal; he knew the human samples were not.
But "hedgehog" was there, both the fist-sized spiky insectivore in the Animal category, and the 3½-foot-tall, intelligent dokan hedgehog in the Humanoid category. He pulled both types, the "real" fist-sized spiky hedgehog was to be his ostensible research specimen if anyone asked; and he was curious about the genetic comparison between the two - were they actually related, as humans were to monkeys, or were the similarities of appearance some odd convergence of unrelated species? He also searched for - and somewhat to his surprise actually found - a study on the genetics of the dokan hedgehogs' "curl gene". It appeared to actually be a set of several linked genes, and on investigation the ARK sample did possess them.
Gerald wasn't sure if this luck - finding everything he was looking for actually available - was the devil paving his way to hell or a sign that this was truly the work he was meant to be doing...but for Maria's sake he'd sit in the fires for eternity if he had to. He filled out the forms that would have the samples removed from deep storage and sent to the freezer in the Project: Shadow labs; the samples were labeled only numerically, so no one would know by looking anything other than that they were reserved by Professor Gerald Robotnik. Two days later, he got the message that the samples had arrived. At that point, the mysterious messenger returned...
Gerald was standing again at the observation window. He'd just shooed Maria away from it, telling her she was going to be late for school, but found himself lingering after she'd hugged him goodbye. The Earth was about half full today, the shadowed side of the planet lit by the glow of human cities to the north and the fewer sparkles of the dokan cities in the southern section. The dokan settlements were less visible from this distance because they tended to scatter their houses in villages or smaller groupings, and they had better night vision than humans and used fewer and dimmer lights in their streets.
"So, do you accept our offer?" Again, the deep voice came from behind him. He turned and saw the alien projection in the same area it had occupied before. He noted idly that the projection seemed much better defined today, the details clearly visible. The starfishy being had scaly-looking skin and although the arms were uniformly black, the skin around the red and gold eye was purple with a red star-shaped mark.
"Well," said Gerald cautiously, "as I understood it: you were offering your aid to design this Ultimate creature I've been assigned to create. As reparation for the attack on the shuttle. Do you want nothing in return?"
"The knowledge we give in reparation," answered the deep voice. Any trace of an accent or uncertainty was gone. "You will need more than that to create it, and for that we ask only a trifle; a few rocks from your planet that we do not have on our comet."
"Rocks?" queried Gerald. "I'm no geologist, but I suppose I could get some rocks. I presume you want a particular type or types?"
"Yes, but there is no rush. We will not need them until the next pass of our comet past your Earth, and the creature we create can be instructed to collect them by then.
"This is the deal, then: we give you the knowledge you lack in reparation for the shuttle; we further provide the materials you lack to create this creature in exchange for the creature collecting a set selection of rocks from your planet."
"What sort of selection?" Gerald was still suspicious.
"Crystals, I believe you call them, rocks that light can shine through, in different colors."
"Crystals, or gems? Some gems have a high value to humans." Not that that was a problem, Gerald was rich enough to buy whatever kind of gems the aliens wanted. But it just seemed too...simple. Too easy.
"Gems are used in...jewelry, are they not? These crystals are not that type of stone."
Gerald looked back out the window, remembering Maria teasing for stories of life on Earth - she didn't remember anything about living there. If he could not find a cure she would never go back again, but be confined to the ARK her whole life. The crystals should be no problem, he said firmly to himself, even if they did turn out to be gemstones. "All right. I accept your offer and promise that if the creature is viable, it will collect the stones for you."
"Good. You have an airlock in your lab; I will join you there at this time tomorrow."
"What!" Gerald yelped. "You can't dock with the ARK! Someone will-"
"No one will detect our approach. You will make sure the lab is not being monitored." And the projection vanished. Gerald stood wondering if he knew what he'd gotten himself into, then went to the computer station to review the security camera logs. Suspecting that the creature would reappear in the same area, he'd slipped a muffling device over the microphone of the camera in the observation room shortly after its initial visit. He wasn't concerned about the muffler being discovered - the sound recordings were only listened to if suspicious activities were noted visually, and there was unlikely to be anything going on in that room. Had he deactivated the sound, the computer would have sounded an alarm; but it was not programmed to determine clarity, only if sound data were being received. He pulled up the sound files and was pleased to discover that the muffler had worked, you could hear voices but there was no way to tell what was being said - and the alien's projected form was again out of the camera's range. He began making the alterations to the camera in his lab, looping the last week or so of footage so it would be received as a new recording. Then he went to pick up the hedgehog samples and take them to his lab, and start collecting the other equipment he'd need.