Chapter 5:
The following day, when Simon wakes up, he watches us practice and spar. "Can you teach me that exercise routine you are doing"? "Sure, Simon, just follow what we do but in reverse." I go to the glass, and we start the routine over. Simon follows along well; he needs minimal direction from me. By the end of it, we crawl back into bed and pretend to wake up. Simon comes across and showers with us. Betty gets a little frisky with Simon; he now has a place to hang his towel.
Simon goes back to the data and asks questions of me all day. I nod yes, no, and if I don't raise my head, he knows it means maybe. All the information I give him smooths out the rough edges of the data. Then, later in the afternoon, he takes us all for more testing, Treadmill running. Some collars with sensors are wrapped around our necks before we start to run. We get on the treadmill and do an easy lope. After fifteen minutes, Simon increases the speed; he incrementally increases the pace until we are running flat out. Some other base personnel had come in to watch us. They wrote on their clipboards as we ran. After about an hour of this, we all jump off and lay there panting. More notes are written on clipboards.
Jessica and Betty have leashes snapped onto the collars as they are dragged out of the room. I growl at them as they do so. "Relax, Thomas; they are only going for a physical exam. Let's get you back to observation and clean you up." I whine as I push into his leg. After the second shower of the day, I curl up like I'm going to sleep. As I settle, I separate myself and go to Jessica. I watch the examinations of Betty and Jessica. I want to hurt the techs as they violate my mate and Betty with their probes. Both tell me to stand down; this was to be expected. They release them a bit later, and they are brought back. I bound to my mate and lick her face as she does the same to me. A leash is snapped onto me, and now it's my turn.
They knock me out with some gas. I guess they figured I was going to attack them or that males were more aggressive. They hadn't knocked out Betty or Jessica. I separate myself before I pass out and watch them collect their samples from me, including a sperm sample. As I had cut the vas deference, they did it with a needle to my testies. The gas is stopped, and I'm allowed to wake up. I throw up on the head technician as he stands in front of me. It serves him right. Groggily and on wobbly legs, I'm led back to observation. Jessica comes to me and curls around me as I curl up and lay down. The clean scent of my mate is in my nose as I fall asleep.
Jessica gets me to wake up as the food is pushed under the door. I'm still a bit under the influence of the gas, but I get up and eat with them. Simon comes in a little later for another blood sample from me. I guess it was unusual for someone to show the effects of the gas still. Simon then plays ball with us for a while. Betty rolls into his lap for another belly rub and scratch at the end of the ball play. Simon scratches and rubs her. He may have massaged a sensitive part of her anatomy as she moans with pleasure. Unfortunately, he didn't do it long enough for Betty. As he removes his hand, she whines with her need. He smiles down at her, "Tit-for-tat beautiful." Betty huffs as she gets up and then presents herself to Simon. She turns her head and smiles at him. Simon turns red and can't leave the room quick enough. We all chuckle as he does so.
The next day, Simon follows the same routine as the day before. He exercises with us, then pretends to wake up. Simon looks around for his MP3 player, but it seems to have gone missing. He shrugs and comes over to shower with us. Betty gets a wicked evil grin as she stalks over to him. Simon puts his hand out and tells her, "not this morning, beautiful." Betty pouts, and Simon laughs to see it. We all get cleaned up, and Betty still gets him with a towel hanger again. Simon dresses and finishes correlating and adding yesterday's research to his own and heads out for the meeting.
The three of us lay down as if to sleep. Jessica and I separate ourselves and go to the meeting. Betty watches the meeting from the room's camera. She has infiltrated almost all of the base systems. Except for the high-security areas, but she was working on those. This is our first look at the commodore. He's a product of military training. His mind has a no-nonsense sort of feel and is very structured. Not in a good way, I think. Four more generals sit around the table, four tech guys and Simon. Simon has laid out his laptop and fired it up. He turns to the commodore and begins his presentation.
"Let's get the big ones out of the way. Yes, they are sentient; they are genetically modified human beings." "Human beings? How are they human"? asks the commodore. "Fifty percent of their DNA is human, forty percent is a fox, and ten percent is unknown. We have extracted their DNA and run it through all our machines, and all of them say they are humans who have been modified. Come on, when have you ever seen breasts on foxes. They have both breasts and teats. And as far as I can tell without actually getting one of the females pregnant, I would say they all function as intended." "Keep your personal feelings out of this, doctor; just present the facts." Says the general.
"Right, sir, internally they have human organs, and the placement is the same as us, even down to the fact they have an appendix. Normal foxes do not have breasts or an appendix. Their joints and bone structures are different from fox's joints and bones because they can walk upright. There is more wear and tear on their hip joints in the forward front position of the socket." "Are you saying they can walk upright"? "Yes, they can walk upright; in fact, the wear on their joints says that they spend most of their time in the upright position." "So why haven't they shown us this"? "General, if you had a death sentence hanging over your head, would you show what you can do"? "No, I probably wouldn't."
"They also have retractable claws like a cat. So far in the distant past, we can't say for sure how far back if a cat and a dog mated, the offspring would have been the fox, like we have today. They don't have retractable claws as these three have." "Are there any other differences to foxes we have now"? "Yes, sir, I have seen this kind of work before, well, this theorized work.
While I was at school, my roommate was Oscar Chapman. He had so many ideas on modifying genetic code that I helped him with the math. Wow, was that ever interesting. Our guest lecturer that semester was his father. The whole class was shocked when this lion walked into the lecture hall. His proportions were a bit wrong. He looked more human than a lion. Oscar took notes but whispered that his dad was wrong on several fronts, and he was sure he could do better. He was a bit of a breast man, and I'm sure the lady foxes are his work. The math I helped him with says so." Are there more modifications you can find"?
"Yes, Sir, Our teeth are like swiss cheese on a molecular level. Theirs is more like solid stone. So tooth decay is not a worry for them. I'm not saying they can't get it, but it is doubtful. I certainly wouldn't want to get on their bad side with such strong teeth.
Their skeletal bone structure is more flexible than ours. Which makes them stronger than ours." "How can flexible bones be stronger than ours." "General Lisky, if your bones were to flex like theirs, your strength would be increased by about twenty percent. And your ligaments, muscles, and tendons would not separate from your bones under stress."
"Their reproductive anatomy is different from a fox and is more human-like. The clitoris is more into the vagina and rests on the bottom of the vaginal canal. It is where the males "Knot" will enter and lock them both together. I have seen that his "Knot" pulsing has set her off a second and third time." There is some chuckling from around the room. Even the commodore has a smile on his face. "Hey, it's scientific research. I'm sure the ones watching the camera have seen this as well. The cameras did follow them while they were in the act of mating."
A few heads turn toward two technicians in the room. They both turn red with embarrassment and say nothing. "The red female fox was initially thought to be a second mate of the arctic fox, but she is still a virgin. So, I looked up fox behavior and learned that foxes are "one and done"; they mate for life." "So, would you like to mate with her, Simon"? Simon deflates and looks at the table. Then lifting his head, he glares daggers at the general. Finally, he sighs and goes for the honest approach. "Yes, Dad, I would like to mate with the red fox. But that is not why you brought me on board, and I can control myself." "Well, a little more control is required, "Son." "NO," YOU LOST THAT RIGHT TO CALL ME YOUR "SON" BACK WHEN I WAS FIFTEEN." The commodore speaks up. "We are all well aware of your sexual orientation; Dr. Conley, can we bring this conversation back to the current matter"? Simon deflates and continues with the matter at hand." Simon brings himself under control; it wouldn't look good if he had a seizure now. After a few deep breaths, he begins again.
"Their brains are two hemispheres just like us, but the mated pair have more connections between the hemispheres. So, they could be more intelligent and faster than any human alive at this point. Their stamina on the treadmill proved this. They would have set a world record in the ten-k run if they ran a marathon. Up against a wild wolf, they would have been able to outrun him. Even against a horse, they would have beat the horse as well, just not on the sprint. But over a long distance, they would take a horse. As for the devices in their heads, I believe that they are transceivers." Pandemonium breaks out around the room at this pronouncement. "Are you telling us they can communicate? What about the other devices by their kidneys"? "I believe, sir, this is where I step into science fiction. Because of the plumbing around these devices, I believe they are cold fusion reactors." I thought I would get howls of disbelief, but there was Stoney silence from around the room.
General Wilkens smiles at me. "You are quite right, Dr. Conley. They are cold fusion reactors but on a miniature scale. We have just received the plans for the cold fusion reactor from our person at Carl Chapman's underground complex. Quite the achievement on his part. The language to run this reactor is based on a new computer language. It's a trinary computer language, and so far, no one has been able to make heads or tails of it."
"How big is this reactor"? asks Simon. This reactor is about the size of a bread box and can put out one-point-twenty-one gigawatts of power." "If you did the math, doctor, how much power would you say these reactors they carry could put out"? Simon does some quick math based on conjecture and arrives at a figure. "If I had to guess, these small reactors could operate this whole base theoretically." "Can they explode, Dr."? asks general Barker. "No, Sir, they are cold fusion; if the process is interrupted, they would just stop producing power."
"So, how dangerous are they to us, doctor"? "None, sir; I believe that we are looking at the evolution of the human species." "That is more out there than believing in cold fusion." "I believe that they are from the future, sir." "You believe, or you were told, doctor"? With that, the general brings out Simon's MP3 player he had been using. "The tech boys have looked over this device and found something extraordinary with it, David"?
"Right, sir, when I looked it over, I found that it had circuits for the reception of radio signals. These new circuits are beautiful and have a very ordered symmetry to them. From what I have observed, I guess that some nanobot rewired this device. It still acts as an MP3 player, but the circuits are on a much smaller scale. I checked its memory storage and found I could put up to one terabit of music onto it. I don't know how this compression happened, but if I were a gambling man, I would say it now operates on this new trinary computer language of the cold fusion reactor." "Care to comment on that, doctor"?
Simon deflates, "Yes, sir, they told me when and where they are from." At that moment, the MP3 player starts to vibrate and flash out a code. "Well, isn't that strange, I may be a little rusty at my morse code, but I'm sure it's asking us to hook a speaker up to it, David"? "Sir, it will take me a few minutes to get one." "Do it, David; I want to hear what they have to say." David runs from the room, looking for a speaker. There is an uncomfortable silence around the room as they wait for David to return.
David comes back with a set of speakers from a computer down the hall. He's breathing hard as he comes back in and hooks it up to the player. A high, nasally monotone voice comes out of the speaker. "GREETINGS EARTHLING, TAKE US TO YOUR LEADERS." There is stunned silence around the room when laughter comes out of the speaker. Thomas starts to talk. "I've always wanted to use that statement. After watching all those science fiction moves from the fifties, sixties, and seventies, I thought it appropriate to use it now. We don't want to go to your leaders; they would probably believe us as much as if a unicorn showed up and asked to be petted by them. So, to clear up some of the mystery, my name is Thomas, my mate is Jessica, and our friend's name is Betty." "So why are you here"? We are here to make sure time flows as it should. And yes, we are from the future, approximately five thousand years in the future. We had to come back to avoid the grandfather paradox.
"If you are human, what happens to us all"? I'm sorry to say general; The whole world will be enveloped in a nuclear winter after the bombs drop in six years. The winter will last for about five years. But the severe weather patterns will last for close to one thousand years. You know that humans have been changed in the lab; well, the whole human race will be changed in about a thousand years. And humans, as you know yourselves, will cease to exist. Animals will rise out of the ashes. Instead of skin color, language, or religious beliefs separating or starting wars, species discrimination will start some actions. Some of us have it worse than others, but all in all, we do work out our differences." Not that there is war in our time. The last action was about sixty years ago when a nation of lions decided the great accord did not apply to them, and they went on a conquering spree. The whole world's military quickly quashed this action. We have peace through cooperation, not based on mutual destruction." "Now I know you're pulling my leg. Humans have never got along." "True, but we have peace nonetheless."
How are you able to communicate without a time lag? There has to be a time lag in this device." "There is a time lag in the device. It is measured in nanoseconds, not seconds. But the device is not how I'm able to converse with you. I'm standing in the room with you in my astral body. If you show fingers around the room, I can tell you how many you are holding up." David seeing the camera in the room, jumps up and disconnects it. "Oh, very good, I never thought of that, but if you bring a detector from level two, you will find I'm in the corner of the room." "Technician Raith, would you kindly get a detector from level two"? Jeremy Raith runs out of the room for a detector.
"So, I'm sure you have many questions about my society and where I'm from. I was born about an hour east of a place called Bunny Burrow. I live in a city about two hundred miles northwest of there. I was born like any other mammal. Bunny Burrow is about where Yakima is, and Zootopia is about where the Okanogan national forest is. The continents will be changed drastically. The center of this continent will fall, and the ocean off the California coast will rise. L.A. will not fall into the sea, though it is destroyed when the new mountain range forms. The nuclear bombs will change the axis tilt of the earth. The earth will now only tilt about ten degrees off its axis. This allows for very temperate zones to be established. There will be a green belt around the earth's equator. This will be the rainforest zone. The growing area will extend north from about the thirtieth parallel to the sixty-fifth parallel. The further north you go, the seasons get stronger until you are in a frozen wasteland. This ice is used as a road for most of the year. It is always frozen. Some breakup does occur, but it doesn't last long."
"So how did you manage to time travel"? "We time traveled by using the Menushions stellar wormhole drive. It is broken, and If the Menushions figured out how it could be used to travel in time, we would all be their playthings." "Who or what are the Menushions"? "The little green men Simon studied several years ago are the Menushions. They are a hive mind and felt us studying them." They will be the ones to destroy us in six years. They have poisoned the minds of all the world leaders. Not sure who launches the first missle, but we all do in the end."
Technician Raith comes back into the room with a beeping detector. He points it around the room until it beeps at the corner of the room I'm standing in. I move around the room, and he follows me with the detector. He steps to the corner of the room I'm standing in. He then runs his hand through me. "Sir, I can feel a cold spot in this corner of the room." "Thank you, Tyler Raith; you may sit down." "Are you satisfied, commodore"?
"I am; what are we to do with you, Thomas"? "Well, you could let us live." "Did we at anytime say we were going to kill you"? "Your track record, sir, says you will, once we are no longer any use to you." "So, are you useful to me now"? "We could be. For limited mobility around the lower base, we will fix the X-32 and get it to flight-worthy status." "How do you know about the X-32"? "Sir, it's in the hanger of the moon base in our time. Kind of ingenious to have a cloak around that base." "We have no cloak around the moon base." "Then I guess that will be one more thing I will be giving you." "Alright, I will give you your freedom of the lover base in exchange for the repairs of the X-32. If there's nothing else, this meeting is adjourned." Everyone gets up to leave. "General Hamon, could you stay for a bit"? The General sits back down.
When they are alone, "Do you trust him in what he says, Mark"? "Not as far as I could throw him." "Whew, that's a relief. I thought I was the only one. He does know more about this base than he lets on, I'm sure of it. Keep a close eye on them all, Mark." "I will, sir." "Do you think your son will stay objective when it comes to the three of them"? "Well, for two of them anyway. I believe he has fallen for the red one and would like to make her his own." The commodore chuckles. "Do we allow him to have the chance, do you think"? "NO, that's too much like bestiality to me." "Relax, Marc; I'm not suggesting we do. Alright, carry on, I really hope he can do as he says." "He will sir, I'm sure of it he is so confident in himself." "He is, isn't he"? They both get up and vacate the room.
Author's note:
Sorry for the long delay everyone. But I had a computer meltdown. My fifteen-year-old hard drive Released its magic smoke, and I lost everything. my backups were incomplete, so I lost the last seven chapters I had completed. i will post them as i rebuild them. Again sorry for the long delay.