Your name is David Lark. Friends call you Dave. A few years ago you were working with Hasbio, a bio-tech head engineer for mid-level projects. That was before of course the incident that changed not just your employment status but also the world. Your team was close to getting the fluffy pony perfected, it had been in the works and once the project required your team’s attention the final design was beginning to manifest. Your team would be tasked with making small changes in behavior and programmed thought processes. Up until that point most of the work had been done with CRISPR also known as CAS-9, a state of the art gene modification tool. CRISPR had already been used to make things like alfalfa that produces spider silk, or goat’s milk that contains spider silk; really just a lot of experiments involving spider silk. Hasbio naturally saw the potential of precise genetic fenegaling and decided to capitalize on a popular television show by beginning designs on the world’s first biotoy. We started by honing in on the size, we found that the approximate size of a small-medium adult wombat performed best in our focus group studies. Think of the wombat as being the chassis of a car, its the important jumping off point that sets your scale. Our problems began when trying to recreate the ponies in the visual art style of an animated cartoon. This is not what science was supposed to be used for. [insert Jeff Goldblum quote]
We spliced the shit out of those wombat genes. So many failures, so many times we essentially made a creature that couldn’t live, CRISPR is precise but the creation of a new organism entirely was still pushing the boundaries on what we could do with genetics. Some cow, horse of course, opossums for the instincts to carry young on their back, pig to give them an omnivorous and varied diet without introducing unwanted side effects like we found with the bear, then there were the narwal and pigeon traits that we had to slide in to satisfy the parameters that required pegassi and unicorns to be available. Last but most troubling was the human genes needed to develop an advanced set of vocal cords for human language, and of course the muscles and nerves in between that and the now enhanced brain to make use of the new assets.
At that point the team upstairs had solidified a creature. It could live, albeit with help at the time. It could walk, but not well. It could give birth and have sex but not take care of young. It was like when they popped out the mare would just be confused and walk away. This was in part because they had not inserted an instinct for foals to make noise when they are born. Even if it was in there was no telling that the mother would care.
That’s when they were passed down to your team and we continuously performed experiments and observations in order to pinpoint behavioral issues and address them through a mixture of heavy conditioning and genetic modification. Our progress was pretty inspiring. Got the mares to care for their young and the foals to indicate stress by making noise. Speech was hard to perfect but with enough splicing from mutated human genes we got it damn close. They still continuously talked like babies but the guys upstairs said that was ideal for marketing. As we fixed many of the more crucial issues other ones appeared. The “smarty” syndrome was something that was going to be addressed next in our project. Then the “enfie babbeh” and “poopie babbeh” prejudice and abuse was going to be rectified. Next would be bowel control and improving the efficiency of their digestive tract which would not only give them more nutrients and less waste after meals, but would also make them less likely to accidentally spill their bowels. After that we may have gone on to fix their obsession with spaghetti which contrary to popular belief was not intentional but a strange side effect of the bubbling gene cauldron we were stirring and adding to. None of that came to fruition, instead PETA got involved.
Look you’re a scientist, you do think you may have tread over an ethical line while working with Hasbio but you’re a rational, compassionate person and have nothing against advocacy for animal rights. That being said, fuck PETA, they ruined your existence in a multitude of ways. We had a whistleblower which fine, whatever I guess that is a given being this close to essentially playing God, but when what we were doing got to PETA they took what activist circles call “extreme direct action”. They fucking bombed the place. Killed maybe 230 fluffies while trying to “rescue” the 100 or so you lived. Thank goodness it happened on a weekend, the only thing worse than losing your job and having your name on an industry black-list, would be all of that and also having to be covered in fluffy gore and perhaps face the ire of PETA directly. Hasbio and the other industry giants have been good to their former employees, our names weren’t released to the press and no individual on the black list has a description next to them, anyone looking at it wouldn’t be able to know why any single person was on there. There was no way you could keep your job when the PR nightmare that was the Fluffy-Pony reveal was directly from your facility, your team was in possession of them, and you simply knew too much to stay for an interview. You and the rest of R&D were purged. We all signed an NDA and never said anything to anyone. Purged and thrown under the rug simultaneously so Hasbio could say that they were sorry, took responsibility, and now could sell accessories for an unfinished product.
You had to go back to the outskirts of west Atlanta, you had some buddies who could give you a roof and a place to park your truck. The area was pretty forested and fairly rural-looking for a community so close to the largest city in the state. You couldn’t find a job for shit, anyone who had ties to Habio was pretty much a no-go for any employer. You could flip burgers but fuck that you have a degree and work experience. It’s a shame that the work experience you have has tainted your life. You are unemployed and you keep busy. You were begging for a while on the freeway until you made some connections. Now you run drugs and the money is pretty good for the time and effort. Your job is simply knowing people, who has what and when. You still have your Tacoma and plenty of time to drive it so you cart around contraband from area to are. Sometimes you go as far as Carrolton but most of the time you are pretty local. You’ve been getting bored of course, sitting around with not much extra cash and a whole lot of time. One day you were changing the oil on your truck out back, doing it yourself saves a shit ton of money in the long term, and you heard something that made your spine tingle. A sound that you haven’t heard in years and for a damn good reason.
“Cum hewd, Smarty find bestest nummies and housie ova dere!”