Part Three
“Not actually a fluffy in the technical sense, but close enough. As for what I did…that’s not really something I can explain without more context.”
Ian stared at the malformed creature. There were some normal fluffy characteristics, but only a few stray scraps of pink fluff clung to the creature. It was significantly bigger than a fluffy, and had two more limbs, although only the original four legs and tail were placed in a normal configuration, and the extra legs(?) jutted out at strange angles. As he watched, six eyes, two front-facing like normal and the remaining four scattered randomly around the creature’s skull, opened. The eyes were…shockingly normal, but that somehow made it even more unsettling.
Ian wasn’t really a fluffy person, as he’d always preferred normal animals, but seeing what had been done to this one was sickening. He knew fluffies were prone to mutation, but there was no way that was natural. This was intentional, and judging from the tears in the creature’s eyes, horrible.
“Why?”
“No other options. Look, I need you to help, I don’t have enough time to get this done on my own. I’ll handle the difficult work, so just take care of what you can.”
Ian looked around the makeshift laboratory, trying to find anything that looked remotely familiar. Most of the equipment was clearly improvised, but there were a few pieces of technology he knew how to operate, and there were copious piles of instructions. Clearly, Sandler had been preparing for a long time.
As he worked, he noticed using some esoteric machine to do something to the eye he’d brought. Glancing up for a moment, she noticed his stare.
“Stop wasting time. I’ll explain what you want to know while we work.”
“What did you do to the fluffy?” Ian asked, looking for something he could do to help.
"Long, long story. I guess I can start from the beginning, since this is going to take a while.
“So, back when your I worked at Hasbio, me and your uncle Irving met, and we realized pretty quickly that there was some-”
“Wait, I thought you worked in the bio-engineering department. Wasn’t he in marketing?”
Sandler glared at him, and sighed. "So were all but two of the other employees in the department. Hasbio corporate had interesting qualification requirements, and most of the time looking good in a lab coat and being able to speak in marketing terms sufficed. Part of the reason the fluffy project ended up being so fucked.
"Anyway, Irving wasn’t in marketing. Hell, he didn’t even work for Hasbio. He worked for some kind of whistle-blowing organization, trying to get dirt on the fuckers. Honestly, at the time I knew the whole organization reeked, but I needed money at the time, and I was a stupid kid back then. Insufferable, too. Had a bad God Complex.
"Regardless, Irving and I, we did some investigating. Mostly him, since I was more interested in fame and fortune than the underbelly of a toy company. But he was the only other person in the project who was worth talking to, so we spent a lot of time chatting. Reason we got engaged, actually. There was never any romance involved, but if two lovers giggle and kiss while whispering, it’s remarkable how little anyone wants to listen to what they’re saying.
"At some point we caught wind of a certain project, called it something stupid like Suds or something soap related because Hasbio had all the imagination of a carp. A planned obsolescence protocol for the fluffy project. I wasn’t involved, obviously, since I’d already threatened to burn the lab down if they kept bastardizing my work, but it definitely made me plan my exit sooner than originally intended.
"If those imbeciles were working on some kind of biological agent to reduce the lifespan of a chimaera, even one with as little human DNA as fluffies, I wasn’t going to stick around for the backlash. Good move on my part, since everyone who stuck around for that project ended up dead. Shame, really, there were a couple of good people working there, kept us up to speed on the project.
"Well, up until the PETA incident, and for about another year or so after, they made no progress. Closest thing they got just caused bowel problems, which aren’t even noticeable on the released fluffies. We kept tabs on it anyway, though, just in case.
"That ended up being a good call. See, the project took off when they got their hands on a certain sample. Some kind of mutant fluffy called Abbadon, presumably because someone didn’t have a way with names or a sense of style. Abbadon was…interesting. In a bad way.
“So they used this mutant to make the virus?” Ian asked, wondering when she’d get to the point.
"Virus? It’s not a virus. If it was a virus we’d be way less screwed. Anyway, I’m getting to the there. Abbadon was radically different from naturally occurring life. Hell, we only have his word that he was ever a fluffy to begin with. Alien is an understatement. Who, or what, ever made that thing was a lot more capable of bio-engineering than we are, if that’s even applicable, considering that Abbadon wasn’t even strictly biological.
"They found him when a fluffy mill called for emergency aid. Apparently he broke in and started massacring the fluffies, but didn’t really seem to care about anything else. Anyway, the capture effort was botched beyond belief. I never saw the official numbers but something like sixty people died before they managed to subdue him. Should’ve just let him kill the fluffies, but Hasbio still had deep pockets and a lot of influence back then, so they could make things happen.
"Now, most of the information I have on the specifics of Abbadon’s body are hearsay, but it wasn’t something you’d ever see naturally, at least not on Earth. Most of his features weren’t anything remarkable, unless you consider both an exoskeleton and an endoskeleton that took six months to cut through so they could remove a limb.
“No, what was interesting was his cellular makeup. Well, cellular isn’t entirely accurate either. Not quite biological, but not quite mechanical. Apparently his cells could continue to operate without nutrients, oxygen, or light for up to seventeen days before undergoing hibernation.”
“So how did this lead to our current situation?”
"I was getting to that. See, Hasbio promptly sent a sample to the lab working on the, ugh, Suds project. Trying to find some kind of alien pathogen they could use or something. Needless to say, this didn’t have a positive outcome. Turns out just being separated from his body didn’t mean his body parts stopped functioning.
"Half of the research team died when they opened the container. Turns out Abbadon could control parts of his body and mutate them further. We still don’t know how. They only found this out after they’d scattered most of the creature’s body around the world; the fucker knew how to hide his ace. Luckily destroying his brain stopped them, or we’d be in even more trouble right now.
“Turns out that the mutation ability didn’t stop though, it just continued on a cellular and more disorganized level. But it was enough for even the Hasbio team to create a pathogen that would meet their criteria. Far surpassed them, actually. That’s how we ended up here.”
“Random mutation doesn’t make creating a controlled pathogen easier.”
“True. But it wasn’t random mutation. The cells seemed to understand what the engineers were trying to create, and did most of the work on their own. The pathogenic cells can even camouflage themselves to be indistinguishable from the host’s cells and avoid provoking any immune response. Why and how, I don’t know. Irving said some kind of extra-dimensional entity meddling, but personally I think it was Satan. Could be the same thing, honestly.”
“Right. How come there wasn’t ever an outbreak before?”
“I think that has more to do with Abbadon’s psyche than anything else. He wanted to kill fluffies. Exclusively fluffies. But when he started seeing humans as a threat…”
“And the eye is from him, isn’t it?”
“Of course. Irving couldn’t bring it to me in person, not without drawing attention we can’t afford. Hasbio has been trying to solve the problem, but they’re fucking incompetent, and would rather let the world die than admit they created a potentially apocalyptic outbreak. So they’ve been hunting me and everyone else who knew about the incident. As for Irving, well, the accident with his wife and kid wasn’t very accidental.”
“So what does the fluffy have to do with this?”
"Without the original source I couldn’t recreate Abbadon, but I could get reasonably close. Unfortunately I didn’t have access to the original genetic information, or to any of the files, so I’ve been trying to fill in gaps the best I can. It hasn’t been easy; half of his genetic information doesn’t even use the same nucleotides as terrestrial life.
“But I could get close, and the closer I could get, the less time I’d need to get there once I had the sample I needed. Now that I have the unmodified cells I can get Sunset close enough to hopefully be able to control the scattered cells like Abbadon could, at least partially. With the amount of mutations in the new strain, it won’t be perfect, but it’ll be the best shot we have at reducing the damage.”
“So that why…”
“Yes. That’s why I turned my last friend’s life into a living hell.”
“That’s…”
“She asked me to. She wasn’t exactly a fluffy, she was the final product, not the unfinished released version. Much more intelligent, much less mal-adapted. She understood what was going on, and she knew the consequences of what we’re doing.”
“I’m sorry.”
“So am I. Regardless, we need to hurry. We don’t have time.”
“Just one more question.”
“Yes?”
“If we succeed…what kind of damage are we looking at?”
“I don’t know.”
…
Sunset was feeling impatient. How much longer was this going to take? Couldn’t they work faster? She would’ve ground her teeth in frustration if she’d had any left, or could move. The frustration was actually welcome, however. Compared to the endless despair, anger felt so good.
She dozed off for a moment. The anticipation had been making it even harder to sleep than the pain. But she didn’t resent the loss of the brief peace of sleep. Because somehow, the suffering was so much more tolerable, now that the end was in sight.
Part Five (End)
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This story reminded me of when I was thinking about the movie ‘splice’ and picturing Hasbio as a government proxy for creating the hyrbid life form.
Then my brain got distracted remembering a scene from a sequel where the male version was banging prostitutes and they were exploding soon after but picturing this with fluffies. xD