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Idea. Testing. Test Subject. Failure...or is it?

Genetics. The very consept that interests humans around the world. Enhancement that could change our lives forever. It started with embryo enhancement of animals. One man, retired General Daymon Skoyt, has created an idea that could change our lives forever. But in order to make his idea a reality, he tried different stages. First, human embryo enhancement. Most of his test subjects lived, but they lived in custody to keep from becoming dangerous, unstoppable criminals. Invincible criminals. Then, the idea was forced into a reality when the voters from below protested. Already born humans desperately wanted what the embryo enhanced humans had. Enhancement. So Daymon Skyot turned to Energy Enhancement, a more practal stage that formed around human gesture. The amount of energy that one human produced was the amount of power that huamn  could create. Strength enhancement. Brain. Speed. And so much more. General Daymon was ready to open to the public before he was brutally challenged by his investors and several lawyers. Test Subjects, they demanded. Prove your theory. Prove you are correct. Daymon Skoyt was faced with failure when his test subject animal died. He recreated and redesigned. He worked tyerlessly to try and perfect his desgin that was sure to change the world. He faced defeated and failure over and over again until the whole pound was nearly emptied. One last futual try brought him face to face with distruction. His try on a canine, a German Shepard, brought his the greatest joy he had ever found in a lifetime. The test subject had survived, and it was the strongest, fastest, smartest, and just greatest living German Shepard, or just canine ever. Daymon knew his testing had worked, so he tried it again and again on other animals, training them and selling them to advanced hunters and army wives he knew could control their power. One of the several lawyers and another of the investors questioned this, wondering if these test subjects could not only strengthen the world,  but destroy it all together. Daymon wavered this conseption and completely ignored it. His Genetic Enhancement Project couldn't possible fail! Finally, before it could be released to the public, they had to try one more test subject. General Daymon excitedly began to prepare another animal testing but the investors and lawyers disasembled it. They told him human. Living human flesh and bone. And heart. If a human could survive the process of enhancement, then go on to achieve powers if you will, and greater strengths, then he could finally release the injection of fluids to the public. Hurriedly, Daymon realized that the voters were getting annoyed with waiting, and threated to retract their greater pull on his company, Skoyt Genetics. Absentmindedly, he raced to find a test subject. Why, he thought, what other than my own and only daughter...

 

 

There was knocking on my door just as I had completedly created my music set. I was going to invite my band over tonight to show them it and practice. Stardom, I thought. That's all my boyfriend Alex talked about. Stardom and achievement of our greatest goals.

"Dad!" I called, knowing it was the retired General himself on the other side of my pale, painted white doors. "I'm done my homework!"

With that, my father entered. He looked a lot like Ian Malcolm from Jurassic Park, only stronger built and lighter skin. His wire-framed glasses hung slightly off his nose and his sea green eyes pireced like lazer beams into mine. Smiling, he said. "Alice. Honey. How are you tonight?"

"Good...?" I answered, confusion coating my tone like a thick coat of glue. Was I misunderstanding Dad's sudden happiness, or was it just that he was angry at me and trying to calm down? That's what he usually did when he was mad; he smiled and asked how I was, then screamed at me for doing something wrong. But, no screaming followed. For a moment, there was just silence. I liked the silence coming from  him; half the time he was either yelling at me, or telling me to do my homework and leave him the heck alone. He was always doing his stupid research, about Genetics. Constantly at night, just before bed, he would lecture me about the Genetics, and what he was doing for his next project. I didn't find it boring, but Dad didn't make it exciting. He sort of slated it, as thought it were another project of his.

"Great!" he said finally, jolting me out of my thoughts. "I have a proposition to make, if you will accept it from your dear old father."

Totally confused, I answered, "Yeah, quick. I'm fourteen, Dad. You know that. I always have stuff to do. And yeah, by the way, Alex and Timber and the guys are coming over tonight to work on band practice. Is that okay?"

Father grimaced, and I knew instantly it was going to be canceled. "You'll have to cancel it," he said softly, just as I predicted. "You've been chosen to do something heroic!"

Heroic? When was Dad this knight-ish? I was confused still, expressing it by giving him The Face. The Face was a face Dad and I made up when we didn't understand each other. Like when he was talking Genetics at night, I just gave him The Face, and he explained throroly. "What's that, Dad?"

"Genetics!" he answered cheerfully, absentmindedly reminding me of Ian Malcolm himself. "The very consecpt that got me my Company in the first place! Remember that Genetic Human Enhancement Project I have been working on for the past year?" I nodded. I remembered it was almost released to the public, and all my friends and all the guys were already lined up for it. Except Alex, of course. He would rather have his nose in a book than be Genetically Enhanced anyway. "My investors, encluding your friend's father Mr. Halben, and several of my lawyers have demanded a Human Testing on someone. I can't just release it to the public, then have a few people die because it's not ready. We have to do a final human testing in order to release it to the public."

"Yeah, okay," I said in a bored tone. Basically he had just said the same thing over and over again. You don't need to be a rocket scientist, or in this case, a Genetist, to figure out you need a Human Testing to release the product to humans. Man, my father was dumb sometimes. "What does this nonsense have to do with me?" I shuddered, contemplating what the answer was. Me? No way.

He said exactly what I hoped he wouldn't. "I want to have you as my first and amazing human Test Subject!" I just stared. "Isn't it amazing?" he went on. "You'll be famous! Isn't that what you've always wanted? The first enhanced person in history! You'll be stronger, faster, smarter, and countless other things! If someone makes fun of you, just flip 'em!" he paused, not admiring my befuddled expression. "Don't you know what this means? It's going to be..."

I cut him off. "Dad, this is you and your company's problem. You always look at the upside and possitive things like they are the only things. What about the downside? What about the negitive things? What if the project fails and I die? I'm only fourteen, Dad, and I don't plan on dying any time soon." I sighed negitively. "And besides; what if I do die? You dare practice a newly invented source on your own daughter?"

"Your the only one I can trust to do it..." he muttered softly, hating my comtempt. I suddenly felt terrible and ashamed of what I said, then fought the feeling.

"Fine," I said through clenched hands turned to fists and pursed lips. I gritted my teeth. "But if I die, then your paying for my funeral and your completely shuttin' down your project."

"Thank you!!" he cried and slipped cheerfully from the room, like when Ian Malcolm was proved right, only so much happier. I loved my Dad dearly but I didn't know what he was getting me in to.

 

 

"Hello?!" I cried into Dad's metal-encased lab. "Hello?! I'm here?"

I'd only been down to Dad's lab once in my life, but I had been too young to remember. I just remembered it resembled the metal lab in Fantastic Four. The one in the apartment building. I was begining to think my life was building around Fantastic Four, my Dad's favorite movie, and the reason he got interested in Enhancement and Genetics. The first day he watched it was the day my life changed forever.

Dad popped up from behind his stainless steel operating table. His Jurassic Park hairdo resembled Ian Malcolm so much, I half expected him to jump out from behind the operating table with flare in hand. But, nooo. Dad had something in his hand, but it wasn't a flare. It was a steel wrench that he was no carefully placing in his tool kit Mom had got him for his birthday. That was before she died...

"Hey!" he laughed loudly, his booming voice echoing off the steel and metal walls. "You came!" he checked his watch halfheartedly. "Early, too."

"Early?" I whispered and checked my watch more fluently. Yes, he was correct. It was 7:30, and I was supposed to be there at 8:00.

"Nevermind, then," he coughed. "It's fine. I was expecting you would be late, so I fixed everything so that it would last longer! Ha!"

"Wow, Dad, this place is sweet."

"Thanks!" he muttered softly after, "Whatever that means."

I ignored his commented and walked fluidly over to the operating table. "Doing any operating, lately?" I joked, wondering if this was where I would be tortured tonight.

I was, unfortuntely, correct. "No operating, sorry. This is the table where you will be, I appologize, strapped down to the table and be, my appologizes again, injected."

"Will it be painful?" I inquired, wondering aloud.

"Perhaphs," he said cheerfully. "I've never tried it on myself, don't forget. Why don't you ask the animals?" he pointed to the animal cages and laughed.

"I guess so," I murmured when I saw the size of the needle. All of this strangely reminded me of the new Incredible Hulk movie, which I had seen last night. When the weird Army Guy was injected with that stuff to make him stronger and faster and stuff. I didn't want to endure the pain he experienced. Not at all. But, alas, I must accept to please my own father I must take place of a Movie Character. If that's what he is...

"Up you go!" Dad inturrpted my thoughts.

"Excuse me?"

"Up," he said. "On the table."

"Seriously?" I gasped. "Thought you were 'idding."

"Nope," he smiled cheerfully again. "If it's painful, remember, your doing your old man a favor." he kissed me on the forehead. "Good luck, sweetie."

I almost cried then. Dad had never called me sweetie. At least in a long time. Eagerly, I climbed up onto the stainless-steel operating table and Dad pressed a button. Metal handcuffs snapped onto my wrists. The cuffs were already too tight. I gasped as pain hit my ankels as the cuffs tightened on them, too.

"Sorry," Dad whispered once more, as he pressed three buttons to start up the machine.

The Project was incredibly painful. As soon as Dad pressed tubes to my head and to other parts of my body, he pressed ten needles into different parts as well. Fluids raced through the tubes and into my system, making me feel weird and disorienatated. Pain spasamed in all parts of my body, especially my wrists and ankels. I gasped as the last needle hit me, especially painful. Then, it was like Dad hit me with a three hundred pound block. I screamed and closed my eyes, and pain whisled through me. I felt tears streak down my face. I waited Dad to wipe them, as he had always done, but he did no such thing. I couldn't open my eyes to see him, but I managed to stop screaming. The machine wirred on, and I felt something strange claim me, as though I were about to die. A tingling sensation. No. Please, God, no. Don't let me die. Don't let my father kill me!

The machine kept wirring, and pain kept coming. More and more fluids raced into my body. I hurriedly bit my lip and cried out as blood sprang from it. Then came the spinning and falling sensation. I felt as though my whole body were on fire, and they were burning me on the stakes at the Salem Witch Trials, and they were flinging my burning body into a hole off a cliff. I closed my eyes again, begging it to be over. With a final scream, I heard an explosion and I blacked out.

Author's Note

Wow... =)

Reviews

[Thinker1]

Sigh... It is just like you to have your father be similar to Ian... some things never change.... Anyway, please write more! Keep it coming!

[Kira]

Oooooooooooh. Well I love it when I go through the whole trouble of writing a book and get comments, because everyone loves comments, so here ya go.

A few small changes like grammar and font size should be in order--I was reading with my nose almost touching the computer screen. (One 'need glasses' quip and I'll punch you in the nose.) The storyline was definitely intriguing, but it might have been broken into, maybe the italicized paragraphs as the prologue, the rest as chapter 1. Obviously she lived, but...must get this review over with so I can read the next chapter!