Post by Sen on Nov 25, 2023 7:08:20 GMT -5
The year is 987. Deep within the earth of Hatchi lies a bunker that is unknown if name, location and origin by most barring a few of the highest ranking scientists. Day in and day out these scientists toil away unbeknownst to most of the population above on a singular goal; a goal which achieved could mean the key to ending the Saiyan menace on their home. What is that goal you ask? Its quite simple really: design the perfect undercover operative to infiltrate Saiyan society and eliminate them from within. But what are they willing to do to get there?...
"Canis!" The elderly Tuffle slammed his notes down on the table. "I hope that doodling will help us finish this up before the deadline..." Mikan was a dead serious man, but it was understandable. He was the senior most officer on the Genesis Project, and had the most to lose if it failed. "Sorry, Mikan... I was just, uh, finishing up on the report from our last test. Things are looking more promising here." A half truth. More promising than their last subjects, but still destined to fail. "Well, hurry it up would you..." Canis looked over his shoulder as Mikan walked away, before bringing his pen back down onto the paper.
For roughly three years Mikan, I and a few others have been working on a top secret project: create their own Saiyan. With several volunteered infants, the team had injected various Saiyan DNA strands into them, hoping to morph them into some sort of Saiyan-Tuffle hybrid that would be able to seamlessly blend into Saiyan society. 'Why not just kidnap a Saiyan child?' Good question. The same one I had when I first signed onto the task. The answer is a bit complicated.
You see, there are strong differences between Saiyans and Tuffles. The superficial ones like appearances are well understood by now, but the deeper, mental differences are still up for debate. One obvious example is the lust that Saiyans have for battle that must Tuffles don't share. Is this something biological? Or is it born from their environment? While, Project Genesis was just as much about finding the answers to these questions as it was producing a Saiyan imposter.
The Tuffles working on Project Genesis wanted a 'Tuffle slate' if you would, as they believed it would be easier to work on, and the volunteered babies were easier to work with than stolen ones. Of course the parents were told that the experiments were nothing serious and they'd have their children back in no time. If they knew the truth would they still be so eager? What Tuffle wanted a Saiyan child coming back home with them?
Well, none of the parents would have to worry about that at least, as none of the children would be coming home at all. The early phases of Project Genesis had be marred with horrible mutations that went beyond the scope of what anyone on board could have possibly expected. The 'Chimeras' as the lab assistants had gone to calling them looking like something out a science fiction novel, which resulted in unfortunate by necessary euthanizations.
It's a sad situation, but the babies are giving their lives to a good cause... even if they don't know it. I hope that those who read this will understand as I have come to. I expect your next question will be something along the lines of: Well, what the Hell is causing all the problems? I wish I had a good answer for that one too, but alas. I suppose it might be best to start with our first subject and work from there. Maybe if you get the whole story you'll understand.
In 984 Project Genesis was officially greenlit. Mikan was given the task of modifying a Tuffle child so that they might one day fit into Saiyan society. Mikan, who actually started as a psychologist (Don't let anyone know I told you) was chosen by the government as they believed such a task could be achieved with simple mental manipulation. The first boy brought in was before my time, though the horror stories that came from him are still told today.
Auckle he was called. Five years old, which at the time was believed to be plenty young for this sort of thing. Auckle had some sort of learning disability; something wrong with his writing if I recall, and the parents were told that he was going to be given special training to help him. So they dropped him off and so commenced the brainwashing.
Something that's important to keep in mind was that Mikan at this point was already quite disillusioned with psychology and behavioral neuroscience. He believed that the differences between species such as the Tuffles and Saiyans were rooted very strongly in their genetic make up rather than any sort of training or learned behavior. I mentioned this because... well, some others here speculate that Mikan may have set Auckles up for failure, to press for other means of manipulation.
The mind of Auckles was already fragile to begin with, and Mikan immediately got to work tearing it apart. After just a week he had forgotten most of the memories in his live, with Mikan determined to implant new ones through a combination of hypnotism and a potent mix of hallucinogens. The problem was that poor Auckles now had two personalities fighting against each other within the same brain. At first he was said to be wild, but over time that diminishing until he stopped speaking all together. I don't know what happened to him after that.
In any case, Mikan used the failure of the project as evidence that things needed to change. He believed that a deeper, genetic manipulation was required in order to achieve our false Saiyan. To be honest I'm not quite sure how he pulled it off given how poorly the first test went, but Mikan must have powerful friends in office that pushed things ahead. I was brought in around 985, as one of the foremost experts of genetics in our country.
Now I should state at this point that unlike Mikan my mind is not quite made up in regards to neurodevelopment. While I do agree that genetics play a role I'm not quite certain I can rule it as the key determining factor as Mikan does, though any time I have tried to bring this up with him we always end up in a heated debate. He rues my youth I think; I have achieved more in my twenty five years than he has in his sixty. But alas I digress...
So, back to my introduction. When the scope of the project was expanded to genetic manipulation I was hired straight from the center. Though I would have been one of the youngest department heads in the center's history if I took the job I felt as though this opportunity was one that I couldn't afford to pass up. Who doesn't want to be one of the saviors of our great people? Lord knows that something has to be done about the Saiyans, even if don't always agree with some of the more drastic propositions brought up over dinner.
At the time it was Mikan alone who ran things; not even an assistant in sight. He was in charge of the interviews as well... powerful friends again? There were two others brought along with me: Josta, who is of my age and Lanzo, who is between myself and Mikan. I was familiar with Josta from the center, though I wouldn't call him a friend. He majored in biochemistry (through he also minored in botany... can you believe it?) though I did quite enjoy reading his thesis.
Lanzo was, as you can expect, also from the center, though he was before my time. He's a practicing (or was) neurosurgeon who worked mostly in the disputed lands if you can believe that. He has a number of successful operations on Saiyan brains which is why they must have brought him on. There were a number of other candidates who I believed would have been suitable for our task, but Mikan was very frugal with his budget allotment. Makes me wonder what he's really doing with our money...
Anyway, he choose to hire on a few assistants instead of more qualified scientists, putting more of the burden on us. I think he likes it that way; clearly he had a hard time giving up what little control he did to us. Any more and he might not have survived I think. Despite our differences we have the same goal in heart, and when things are going well we work good together. If only things went well more often...
The first boy we all worked on together was Angelo; he was three. Over the course of our experiments we have come to realize that the younger a child is, the more likely they are to take to our modifications. Like with Auckles, Angelo was another disabled boy, though in this case it was physical. An accident left him paralyzed from the waist down, and his parents were told that there was a new, experimental surgery that might restore his legs to function.
We opened the boy up and implanted select Saiyan DNA strands on various receptors, hoping to modify the develop of the boy into something more Saiyan like. At this point you've probably figured out a pretty big problem in our work: how do we quickly view the development of a Tuffle child, when maturation takes nearly twenty years? Well, that's something we thought on a lot.
We developed a gel-like substance we named Aevium, which was designed to accelerate aging. With small doses applied to the skin we were able to create wrinkles in just a few minutes, but we needed more. Submerging the subject in Aevium and leaving them in for hours could accelerate aging by years, but there were side effects. We knew going into this that the extreme accelerated aging would likely kill the subjects, but if we could get a sneak peak into the future using it then we were prepared to accept the consequences.
Things went wrong for us almost immediately. The Aevium did it's job and turned the near infant into a near man, but it's not the sort of man we were looking for. His body was deformed beyond repair; the receptors were unable to interpret between Saiyan and Tuffle DNA, leaving the boy half Tuffle half Saiyan in all the wrong sorts of ways. If you must have example then here is one: he had bones the size of a Saiyan, but the muscle and skin of a Tuffle. The bones ripped right through his body with ease... it was a difficult sight.
But we made a valuable insight: we needed to find a way to block of the Tuffle developmental paths so that the Saiyan ones could override what was there. Next was Rinat, a boy of just eleven months. We wanted to start small this time, so we chose to modify only one genetic variant: his hair. Things went much better this time, as we managed to successful shut off key parts of his Tuffle DNA to allow the Saiyan installation to flourish: Rinat developed with tall, dark hair as we hoped he would.
Of course the extreme Aevium dosages still meant that the subject expired, but we learnt a lot from Rinat. Our last subject was Pote, who had his ups and downs. We tried to be more aggressive with the modifications that we made, but we discovered that trying to switch off too many pathways at once always leads to a shutdown. Certain pathways are fixed from conception; even if you give them another path to go down, the simply don't know the way.
And that's when it hit us: we need to go younger. We need to go to the youngest possible point: conception. Rather than trying to modify pre-existing pathways we need to be in charge of creating them ourselves. Truth be told it was Josta's idea, though it took myself backing him up to actually force Mikan to accept it. For him it was not a debate of science but of morals and ethics; he questioned whether or not a child that young could even still be considered a Tuffle if they went through with their plan.
But in the end we got our way, and so we met Roli and Tay. Roli is a captain in the army, while Tay works as an accountant for a law firm. We put up an add for couples who had been struggling to conceive, and the two answered within a fortnight. So we brought them in and told them some yadda yadda so they'd sign the papers.
It started off with Tay's genetic code, located within one of her eggs. It's hard to explain, but from this point on things just... they started to work for us. It's sort like the difference between trying to write on paper that's already been written on, versus writing on a blank page. With the egg in front of us we could easily make all of the modifications we wanted. When it came time to put Roli's code in we... well, we basically just override everything he was providing.
Things seemed to be going well, until... well, the baby started to weaken. I'm not sure what it is, but somewhere along the way development halted and it looks like the baby might not make it. The couple are trying to keep their hopes high, though being confined to this bunker has definitely put them on edge. Vitals have remained steady for the past few days at least, so that's some good news. They told me they gave the child a name: Sentinel. I hope he makes it. For all our sake.
WC: 2,331
"Canis!" The elderly Tuffle slammed his notes down on the table. "I hope that doodling will help us finish this up before the deadline..." Mikan was a dead serious man, but it was understandable. He was the senior most officer on the Genesis Project, and had the most to lose if it failed. "Sorry, Mikan... I was just, uh, finishing up on the report from our last test. Things are looking more promising here." A half truth. More promising than their last subjects, but still destined to fail. "Well, hurry it up would you..." Canis looked over his shoulder as Mikan walked away, before bringing his pen back down onto the paper.
For roughly three years Mikan, I and a few others have been working on a top secret project: create their own Saiyan. With several volunteered infants, the team had injected various Saiyan DNA strands into them, hoping to morph them into some sort of Saiyan-Tuffle hybrid that would be able to seamlessly blend into Saiyan society. 'Why not just kidnap a Saiyan child?' Good question. The same one I had when I first signed onto the task. The answer is a bit complicated.
You see, there are strong differences between Saiyans and Tuffles. The superficial ones like appearances are well understood by now, but the deeper, mental differences are still up for debate. One obvious example is the lust that Saiyans have for battle that must Tuffles don't share. Is this something biological? Or is it born from their environment? While, Project Genesis was just as much about finding the answers to these questions as it was producing a Saiyan imposter.
The Tuffles working on Project Genesis wanted a 'Tuffle slate' if you would, as they believed it would be easier to work on, and the volunteered babies were easier to work with than stolen ones. Of course the parents were told that the experiments were nothing serious and they'd have their children back in no time. If they knew the truth would they still be so eager? What Tuffle wanted a Saiyan child coming back home with them?
Well, none of the parents would have to worry about that at least, as none of the children would be coming home at all. The early phases of Project Genesis had be marred with horrible mutations that went beyond the scope of what anyone on board could have possibly expected. The 'Chimeras' as the lab assistants had gone to calling them looking like something out a science fiction novel, which resulted in unfortunate by necessary euthanizations.
It's a sad situation, but the babies are giving their lives to a good cause... even if they don't know it. I hope that those who read this will understand as I have come to. I expect your next question will be something along the lines of: Well, what the Hell is causing all the problems? I wish I had a good answer for that one too, but alas. I suppose it might be best to start with our first subject and work from there. Maybe if you get the whole story you'll understand.
In 984 Project Genesis was officially greenlit. Mikan was given the task of modifying a Tuffle child so that they might one day fit into Saiyan society. Mikan, who actually started as a psychologist (Don't let anyone know I told you) was chosen by the government as they believed such a task could be achieved with simple mental manipulation. The first boy brought in was before my time, though the horror stories that came from him are still told today.
Auckle he was called. Five years old, which at the time was believed to be plenty young for this sort of thing. Auckle had some sort of learning disability; something wrong with his writing if I recall, and the parents were told that he was going to be given special training to help him. So they dropped him off and so commenced the brainwashing.
Something that's important to keep in mind was that Mikan at this point was already quite disillusioned with psychology and behavioral neuroscience. He believed that the differences between species such as the Tuffles and Saiyans were rooted very strongly in their genetic make up rather than any sort of training or learned behavior. I mentioned this because... well, some others here speculate that Mikan may have set Auckles up for failure, to press for other means of manipulation.
The mind of Auckles was already fragile to begin with, and Mikan immediately got to work tearing it apart. After just a week he had forgotten most of the memories in his live, with Mikan determined to implant new ones through a combination of hypnotism and a potent mix of hallucinogens. The problem was that poor Auckles now had two personalities fighting against each other within the same brain. At first he was said to be wild, but over time that diminishing until he stopped speaking all together. I don't know what happened to him after that.
In any case, Mikan used the failure of the project as evidence that things needed to change. He believed that a deeper, genetic manipulation was required in order to achieve our false Saiyan. To be honest I'm not quite sure how he pulled it off given how poorly the first test went, but Mikan must have powerful friends in office that pushed things ahead. I was brought in around 985, as one of the foremost experts of genetics in our country.
Now I should state at this point that unlike Mikan my mind is not quite made up in regards to neurodevelopment. While I do agree that genetics play a role I'm not quite certain I can rule it as the key determining factor as Mikan does, though any time I have tried to bring this up with him we always end up in a heated debate. He rues my youth I think; I have achieved more in my twenty five years than he has in his sixty. But alas I digress...
So, back to my introduction. When the scope of the project was expanded to genetic manipulation I was hired straight from the center. Though I would have been one of the youngest department heads in the center's history if I took the job I felt as though this opportunity was one that I couldn't afford to pass up. Who doesn't want to be one of the saviors of our great people? Lord knows that something has to be done about the Saiyans, even if don't always agree with some of the more drastic propositions brought up over dinner.
At the time it was Mikan alone who ran things; not even an assistant in sight. He was in charge of the interviews as well... powerful friends again? There were two others brought along with me: Josta, who is of my age and Lanzo, who is between myself and Mikan. I was familiar with Josta from the center, though I wouldn't call him a friend. He majored in biochemistry (through he also minored in botany... can you believe it?) though I did quite enjoy reading his thesis.
Lanzo was, as you can expect, also from the center, though he was before my time. He's a practicing (or was) neurosurgeon who worked mostly in the disputed lands if you can believe that. He has a number of successful operations on Saiyan brains which is why they must have brought him on. There were a number of other candidates who I believed would have been suitable for our task, but Mikan was very frugal with his budget allotment. Makes me wonder what he's really doing with our money...
Anyway, he choose to hire on a few assistants instead of more qualified scientists, putting more of the burden on us. I think he likes it that way; clearly he had a hard time giving up what little control he did to us. Any more and he might not have survived I think. Despite our differences we have the same goal in heart, and when things are going well we work good together. If only things went well more often...
The first boy we all worked on together was Angelo; he was three. Over the course of our experiments we have come to realize that the younger a child is, the more likely they are to take to our modifications. Like with Auckles, Angelo was another disabled boy, though in this case it was physical. An accident left him paralyzed from the waist down, and his parents were told that there was a new, experimental surgery that might restore his legs to function.
We opened the boy up and implanted select Saiyan DNA strands on various receptors, hoping to modify the develop of the boy into something more Saiyan like. At this point you've probably figured out a pretty big problem in our work: how do we quickly view the development of a Tuffle child, when maturation takes nearly twenty years? Well, that's something we thought on a lot.
We developed a gel-like substance we named Aevium, which was designed to accelerate aging. With small doses applied to the skin we were able to create wrinkles in just a few minutes, but we needed more. Submerging the subject in Aevium and leaving them in for hours could accelerate aging by years, but there were side effects. We knew going into this that the extreme accelerated aging would likely kill the subjects, but if we could get a sneak peak into the future using it then we were prepared to accept the consequences.
Things went wrong for us almost immediately. The Aevium did it's job and turned the near infant into a near man, but it's not the sort of man we were looking for. His body was deformed beyond repair; the receptors were unable to interpret between Saiyan and Tuffle DNA, leaving the boy half Tuffle half Saiyan in all the wrong sorts of ways. If you must have example then here is one: he had bones the size of a Saiyan, but the muscle and skin of a Tuffle. The bones ripped right through his body with ease... it was a difficult sight.
But we made a valuable insight: we needed to find a way to block of the Tuffle developmental paths so that the Saiyan ones could override what was there. Next was Rinat, a boy of just eleven months. We wanted to start small this time, so we chose to modify only one genetic variant: his hair. Things went much better this time, as we managed to successful shut off key parts of his Tuffle DNA to allow the Saiyan installation to flourish: Rinat developed with tall, dark hair as we hoped he would.
Of course the extreme Aevium dosages still meant that the subject expired, but we learnt a lot from Rinat. Our last subject was Pote, who had his ups and downs. We tried to be more aggressive with the modifications that we made, but we discovered that trying to switch off too many pathways at once always leads to a shutdown. Certain pathways are fixed from conception; even if you give them another path to go down, the simply don't know the way.
And that's when it hit us: we need to go younger. We need to go to the youngest possible point: conception. Rather than trying to modify pre-existing pathways we need to be in charge of creating them ourselves. Truth be told it was Josta's idea, though it took myself backing him up to actually force Mikan to accept it. For him it was not a debate of science but of morals and ethics; he questioned whether or not a child that young could even still be considered a Tuffle if they went through with their plan.
But in the end we got our way, and so we met Roli and Tay. Roli is a captain in the army, while Tay works as an accountant for a law firm. We put up an add for couples who had been struggling to conceive, and the two answered within a fortnight. So we brought them in and told them some yadda yadda so they'd sign the papers.
It started off with Tay's genetic code, located within one of her eggs. It's hard to explain, but from this point on things just... they started to work for us. It's sort like the difference between trying to write on paper that's already been written on, versus writing on a blank page. With the egg in front of us we could easily make all of the modifications we wanted. When it came time to put Roli's code in we... well, we basically just override everything he was providing.
Things seemed to be going well, until... well, the baby started to weaken. I'm not sure what it is, but somewhere along the way development halted and it looks like the baby might not make it. The couple are trying to keep their hopes high, though being confined to this bunker has definitely put them on edge. Vitals have remained steady for the past few days at least, so that's some good news. They told me they gave the child a name: Sentinel. I hope he makes it. For all our sake.
WC: 2,331