I could still taste the road. The distilled taste of miles of dust and roadkill just to get to the place clung to my tongue. The tang of mechanical elevator lubrication now only added to it. We kept descending. Almost five minutes straight down now. To my left was the General, behind him The Twins in matching military grade jumpsuits. They had no grade insignia on display. But then again neither did the General. Nor did I. It was that sort of mission, that sort of place.
Apparently I was chosen for this because of some recent wet work I did in Iran. We pulled it off with such alacricity that from what NIA could gather post mission the Iranians actually believed the guards died of natural causes and the materials we grabbed weren't noticed missing until three weeks later and subsequently blamed on the false flag deep operator we had posing as a drunken maintenance worker. Poor guy was going to suffer a few years rotting in an Iranian jail for his apparent incompetance, but that's what the price of loyalty to bitch America is all about ain't it. I still had to find out what bitch America had in store for me this time.
"Suddenly we'd like to leave your island, Mr. Han-man", The Twins said in unison, smirking ironically.
"What are you guys, psychic?"
"Psychic? What do you think we do here, voodoo? It's pheromones chief. The fucking pheromones are steaming off you. Besides we read your profile. Bruce Lee fan. Kind of obvious, no?"
"We'll get you up to speed as soon as we can Colonel. I'll tell you this much, we're working on the approaching biological singularity down here. The Twins here are genetically modified."
"Modified?" I asked.
The Twin closest to me raised his hand, spread his fingers. Webbing. Motherfucker had webbing. And still smirking.
"What are you a fish?"
"Fish? We're mammals colonel." The smirk again.
"Ah. Of course." I started to wonder what extreme level of batshit operation I am now neck deep in.
The elevator doors opened. In front of me was a handpainted sign. 'Welcome to The Undisclosed Location.' Military humor. You get used to it, eventually.
"So you are like North Korea and those cloned glowing cats then?"
A chuckle erupted around the table. "Colonel, the North Koreans are so far behind in their research it makes their nuclear program look viable. Jong is basically playing in the dark. He got some info through an operative at a Japanese biotech firm. He's playing in the shallow end of the pool trying to get a reaction from us. Fucking glow in the dark kittens..." Chuckles and murmurs.
"Look, here's who knows about this. The Japanese. They want no part of it, other than providing us with some technology. They are let's say cultural opposed to mucking with the genome. Probably something to do with their Shinto heritage, thier homogeniousness, who the fuck knows. That's why they're on the headlong rush into robotics and AI. They're trying to get to the technological singularity."
"Good luck with that.." one of The Twins mumbled.
"The North Koreans know about it through the aforementioned leak we had in Japan. We've shut that hole down and what the NK's know is pretty rudimentary. They've tried to peddle the information to the Iranians and the Russians, both who so far think it's straight of Kim Il Jong's imagination. One benefit of having a bat crazy opponent I suppose."
"And the Isrealis."
"The Isrealis know?"
"Yes. Of course. Like the Japanese they really don't want a part of it, but they're willing to help us."
"And Al Queda."
"What?"
"You didn't really think Osama hates us for our freedoms do you?"
"No of course not. But I've read the psych profiles, it's obvious that..."
"Faked."
"What? Faked? Those were 1-a level documents."
"Faked."
"OBL uncovered the information when he was doing construction work on a facility in the Saudi desert. He's definitely on a holy jihad, but against our biotech work. Has nothing to do with the Saudi regime or oil. But it offends his concept of Islam for sure."
"How does this not get out?"
"Look, we carefully vette what's released here. We change it just enough that it makes the oil and the imperialism seem relevant and rational causes for Al Queda. Of course we can't get clean up all the direct Arabic, but quite honestly those in the Islamic countries who champion his cause whitewash that stuff themselves. They think he's nuts, but since most of his rhetoric is already out the fucking window it fits. All together it's a NLP."
"NLP? Sorry General I'm not familiar with that acronym."
"Neat Little Package. It's a term our psy-op corp uses. Mix truth, lies, misdirection to create an NLP. Like building 7. Enough conspiracy nuts spout it that we don't even have to address it, people just assume the theory is nuts because the same guy that is spreading says the Apollo missions were faked. No credibility."
"I see." We all know why Building 7 was pulled in this room obviously. Or at least I thought I did. I leaned back in the chair. "So why am I here."
"We are going to go into some wet work with our operatives here", nodding at The Twins, "and we need an experienced hand."
"Evolution is accelerating. It's just sheer number theory at this point. Population is exploding, the chances for genome mutations increase exponetially. We need to take advantage of that before the population levels out. It's exploring all the available genomic space of our species and the next. We want to guide that. Use that."
"The next species? Beyond humans? Fuck why don't you clone a neaderthal then."
"What makes you think we haven't."
I waited for the smiles. They didn't come.
"The Neanderthals are a dead end. Nature told us that. We didn't need to clone them, the computer models told us as much. We did pick up some disease resistance, some more robust digestive processes and enhanced muscular tissue performance from the genome and utilized what we could, but that was about it."
"So what do these guys do. I mean other then the webbing and smelling stuff."
Double smirk. Saw that coming boys and didn't need a pimped out nose to tell me that.
"The Twins have a lung capacity similar to water mammals - dolphins and such. Have the ability to operate underwater for extended periods of time. Heightened pheremone sensitivity..."
"You'd be suprised by how much information humans transmit, Colonel." Twin Wider Smirk said.
"Increased strength and endurance. Some slight cognitive intelligence increases as well - as a factor of scale."
"That's it?"
"We're not X-men Colonel. This isn't a comic book. We're not impervious to bullets and we can't shoot laser beams out of our ass. Manipulating the genome is a incremetal and dangerous thing. When it's successful the benefits are slight. When it fails, well..."
Copyright © 2010 Brian Donnelly.