Tingle - Pounded In The Butt By My Own Butt

POUNDED IN THE BUTT BY MY OWN BUTT

By Chuck Tingle

Where does the miracle of science end and magic begin? Some people would say never, t hat magic is nothing more than something we cant quite understand yet, but eventually will. Just beca use a force seems mysterious and exotic, doesnt mean that it cant be quantified later on.

As a young researcher, I havent been around in my field long enough to see any of these enormous changes take place, but I like to remind myself about things in the present that must have seemed like magic to those in the past. Electricity alone could have been framed in another way decades ago, considered the result of hours upon hours of careful black magic.

Of course, I know better. Magic isnt real , nor the various mystical trappings that come along with it; love at first sight or luck, just to name a few.

Im a staunch skeptic, as anyone else with my job (a research assistant at Rubble Biological Labs) should be.

But even a hardline skeptic like me cant help but feel a little twinge of magic in the air when they first hear the news about Huntertuck Island.

The now-private island was recently purchased by a rather eccentric billionaire, who immediately went to work doing clone research and creating several living copies of himself . At first, the news of the small island colony was met by various scoffs of doubt, but as time went on and evidence was presented, the finding s were quickly regarded as scientific truth.

Of course, there are a whole slew of ethical arguments to be addressed here, especially because the clones were not exact replicas, but rather mutants of the original sample, biologically programmed to be less intelligent worker drones. These drones were then used to build and entirely new infrastructure on the island.

I was ecstatic. Finally, the first massive shift in biology, and I am poised on the front lines of progress.

But once the breakthroughs on Huntertuck Island became regarded as scientific fact, the ability to recreate such incredible results was quickly locke d up tight.

I cant blame them. A fter all, once we have the ability to create these worker drone clones, the business potential is almost unlimited. The entire industry would be a goldmine, redefining the entire worlds economy.

Of course, the government was quick to step in and put a stop to all of this. Regardless of what a league of worker drone clones could do for progress, there were just too many people getting worked up about the human rights of such mindless creatures.

Maybe they had a point, maybe not, but it was an absolutely fascinating new discovery, none the less.

Here at Rubble Biological Labs, weve taken a balanced approach to moving forward. Weve used the e arly results from Huntertuck Island to create the basis of our experiments, but started over completely with the rest of the research. To describe it another way, weve taken a photo of their finished puzzle, and now we are working hard to pu t all of the pieces back into the right place.

Thanks to a massive loophole, all of our research is perfectly legal, so long as we dont use any exact copies of the Huntertuck method, and as long as we arent hiring any outside test subjects. The only people that we are allowed to test on are ourselves.

As intimidating as it could be to have a potential clone running around out there in the world, its really not that hard to volunteer for experimentation because, to this day, none of the experiments have yielded any living results. That is, until today.

I walked into work that morning like I would on any other day, swiping my key card through the laboratory reader and walking passed as the door automatically opens with a soft hiss. I say hello to the security guards and contin ue down a long hallway into the depths of the facility, until I reach lab 243, a highly secretive and high clearance area. I swipe my card again, and enter.

Kirk! Shouts one of my co lleagues, Dr. Porter, as he sees me . He opens his arms wide and stands up from his row of computers to greet me with a warm hug. Todays the big day.

I know! I say with a laugh. Im up to bat.

Dr. Porter motions me over to his lead computer and types in a few quick commands, a bright blue display of cloning schematics popping up onto his computer screen.

My eyes go wide the second that I see what he has planned. Oh, whoa!

Its great isnt it? Dr. Porter offers with an excited smile.

The cloning process, on the surface, is fairly simple to accomplish, but not in the way that we want to do it. Anyone can extract some DNA and place it into an egg, creating a new version of you at birth that will take nine months to gestate and then come out as a beautiful bouncing baby.

However, for our practical application of cloning worker drones, or and other specified job for that matter, we need our clones to emerge at the same age as the subject. In other words, Im a twenty two year old man, and we need my worker drone to be as well. The problem with this is that the rapid, a lmost instantaneous, cell growth is far from stable. Instead of fully complete clones, we have been creating strange and disturbing piles of lifeless flesh, or worse.

If I wasnt so interested in science and human progress then I would be horrified, but instead I find myself in utter fascination with every passing experiment. Of course, some positive r esults would be great, but each failed trial is just another brick in the road towards a result.

Lately, we have been trying to keep the rapid cell growth stable by combining the DNA with small markers from various animals, as well as taking them from different, specific regions of the human body. Todays trial, which I have been randomly selected for as the subject, is going to take DNA fro m my brain, my ass, and a hawk.

What a combination! I say aloud with a laugh.

Dr. Porter shrugs. Last time I was in there we tried my arm, my lung and a catfish.

And? I question, curiously.

We got a very creepy balloon-type- thing flopping around. Dr. Porter shrugs. Had to put it down immediately.

When I hear stuff like that, it makes me slightly nervous about the way that weve started playing god here at Rubble Laboratories. On one hand, I really do understand the history making applica tion of what we have going here, but on the other, it can be a little unsettling sometimes.

I leave and meet with our resident nurses for some time, who take all of the required samples from my body while Dr. Porter prepares the hawk . Six hours later, we meet back in the lab.

Hows it looking? I ask Dr. Porter.

Good, very good. He nods. The DNA has been synthetized and is already inside the egg.

I look out through a large glass window before us that stares into a sterilized chamber, completely white and almost entirely empty other than a table, a large synthetic egg, and some injection equipment.

Its already in? I ask, excitedly . For how long?

Ten minutes. Dr. Porter says. Should be ready to come out any minute now.

Normally, the gestation period takes no longer than ten minutes, so if we dont see any results soon, our chances of success go down drastically.

I lean forward, peering into the chamber with rapt attention. Im used to failure by now, but that doesnt mean that moments like this are any less tense.

The seconds turn into minutes, and soon Dr. Porter and I are relaxed, talking to one another about the next genetic combination that were going to try. Its over.

The fact that there was no result at all was probably because of the brain cells. Says Dr. Porter. Its just to delicate of an organ, we never get what we are looking for when we add that to the cocktail.

I dont know. I start, I think that the brain is our only chance. We need to look at whatever is happening in the bird DNA . Other birds have had great results but the hawk is just not happening for some reason.