A collection of unremarkable raccoons, young and indiscernible from their siblings, are only differentiated through a series of physicals. Chosen for a combination of early physical development and general health, a raccoon was removed from an otherwise useless litter. Perfected through decades of strenuous, costly trial and error, the surgical process to imbue a feral animal with consciousness and human ergonomic capabilities wasted little biological matter, and early signs of failure would quickly trigger a halting of the procedure, such that the subject could be harvested for their useful matter before being discarded.
Procedures were conducted in iterations. A series of successful surgeries collected for study and testing over the years of their youth, then discarded into adulthood as physical and mental deterioration became apparent. A final procedure was conducted to complete batch 89 before the process would undergo further iteration. The surgical procedures would assimilate all the learnings, the infrequent successes and vast failures, of batch 88, and slowly, a new iteration would be born as batch 89 was undergoing external experimentation and study.
All life maintained certain mental capabilities, though, through surgical enhancements, the raccoon found his mental proficiency expanded. Through careful, though non-tentative, neurological section and resection, particular portions of grey matter were replaced with bleeding edge machinery. These devices did not think for him, they merely amplified cerebral pathways, thus granting newfound cognitive capabilities.
Wide-eyed, the raccoon stared out at the surgery room, cleanly-dressed, sweat-soaked-browed, careful-handed, ever-precise workers sorting, cleaning, rearranging, removing, and adding to his inner and outer form, enhancing the former with subcutaneous and intramuscular organ prosthetics, and yielding the latter to the former in the form of epidermal platings.
Intelligence neither benumbed agony nor granted bulwark against newfound despair. Metrics of completion for this surgery, however measured, were obfuscated from its recipient, and with abundant straps restraining his limbs, torso, and head, his wide, wandering eyes, when not subjected to blinding lights or other assessments, were his only recourse and comfort.
Hours passed, until every inch of every gown, glove, cap, light, loupe, cabinet, drawer, table, container, jar, glass, cup, bowl, scalpel, clamp, and syringe was studied dozens of times over by their subject, and every cut was stitched up, every bone was set back into place, and every ounce of useful information was divined and recorded from the torturous procedure.
Existence was granted to one's self and others through intelligence. Memory and contemplation. Through the pain, of which the raccoon desired to neither remember nor contemplate, he was granted existence. Or more so, it was foisted onto him. He had yet to discern a worthy enough cause to denote the act of granting life and the faculties to understand it a gift.
Memories of his prior self were hazy, awash in mnemonic fog, circulating in his mind and intermixing during every moment they spent not actively being carefully discerned and dissected by their owner. Emotions were the natural emergences from these muddled recollections, thoughts of dread and discomfort halted solely by short, frequently interrupted stints of sleep brought about by total exhaustion. Memories of starvation wrought by infrequent feeding times, and disgust at the carrion of those who succumbed to the unlivable conditions.
Much of this facility could be extrapolated from the singular room he was born in. Vast metallic walls and hallways, soft shudderings and reverberations from unknown manners of work throughout the building, and an unceasing dreariness pervading every living thing throughout the area, both conscious or otherwise. Decades of work branded the faculty with weary, tired eyes. Intelligent minds combined with unforgiving work ethics granting failure after failure, the singular source of determination and resilience remaining within the facility being its leader.
Often, that man came wandering through the halls and living spaces of the almost wholly neglected animals, dressed in spitefully opulent garbs, his unfocused eyes betraying a mind deep in thought, and his gait oscillating between sprightly and wan depending on the success of the day's experiments. He spoke to the captive animals, confiding in them a unique sense of secrecy, or postulating the way forward for the next experiments as the weak, unintelligent creatures recoiled in fright at his sheer presence. The various musings of his creator were lost to the raccoon, the memories rendered indiscernible due to an, at the time, underdeveloped hippocampus.
Everything at this facility revolved around that man, the faculty abiding by his every whim, his presence demanding a unique attentiveness from staff and subject alike. Now granted intelligence, was the raccoon now subject to a similar requirement? He seemed no more capable or demanding than the scientists and surgeons that were commanded by his diktats.
Insight came in tandem with intelligence. Insight to see beyond one's condition. Currently, the raccoon's reality was punctuated by migraines, aching muscles, and slowly healing bones. Every involuntary movement of his muscles excited the wounds, sending throbbing aches reverberating through his body. His intelligence granted him no hope, but rather sent pangs of regret through his youthful mind. Regret that he'd survived over his litter mates, and been granted this torment as his reward.
To be truly intelligent is to think beyond one's base desires, and here, on the cold, sterilized steel of the surgery table, he found no difficulty in overcoming his inert survival instinct. The same instinct that drew him to steal food from his brethren, to subsist despite the abhorrent, incomprehensible conditions, abandoned him here, replaced by self-destructive intellect.
The raccoon was freed from the surgery table and carried to a new holding room. There was a unique carefulness in the way the scientists carried him, wary about perturbing his prosthetics or opening any internal stitchings. This chamber, though less compacted than the area of his birth, was no less dour. Dim lights adorned the ceiling, perpetually humming and illuminating the room and its many cages, the adjacent to his own container of which were empty, while others contained species unlikely to distress the proper experiments.
He was placed into his new cage, locked again behind unbreakable bars, his fur stained deep with blood, and his body twitching as he knelt there. His wide eyes gazed out through the closed metallic lattice, his existence measured solely by suffering.