Project Goal
When I was six, my grandmother led me into the woods and showed me my future.
(… Okay, so maybe it wasn't quite that dramatic. It always helps to have a killer opening hook though, right?)
She was an autodidact of the pine forests, my gran, and she knew more about the wild and wooly critters of our back forty than most wildlife biologists with prestigious four-year degrees. We packed sandwiches (sugar and butter on white bread), cheese (℅ the government), and a thermos of coffee almost as tall as I was (hers). The sun was still in bed with the quilts pulled over her head when we slipped out of the trailer, just like every other right-thinking soul on that foggy January morning. Nothing stirring but cats, and ghost children playing on the rusty swing-set out back.
I remember wondering why she didn't bring a flashlight, when the woods were so black and foreboding. I also remember that my toes were cold, my nose runny, and my attitude absolute shit. 5 AM is the end of the known world for a six-year old. Anything between midnight and 7 AM is silence and void; you might as well ask Schrodinger's Cat how the inside of that box is decorated.
Maybe she navigated by echolocation, or maybe she just had excellent night vision. Whatever her trick was, we did not get lost, wander into a slough, or become people-chow for rabid skunks, although we did smell a couple. Gran knew exactly where she was headed, and she didn't waver from her path until we got there, through briar and brush and what would become Grade-A Primo Tick-and-Snake Territory come April.
I have a pitch and a point and I am getting to them, I swear. Hang in there just a little further, guys.
For us, “there” turned out to be a post oak with an abandoned deer stand cobbled together in its branches. We scrabbled up, seated ourselves inside the blind, and waited, for what I didn't know. My gran knew, but she wasn't telling.
I fidgeted and hummed and shuffled so much it's a wonder it showed up at all. But it did, eventually, slipping in with the gunmetal light and the twittering of groggy birds. She didn't say a word, Gran. She just pointed, and I saw what there was to see.
According to most folks both professional and old-timer, panthers had vanished from our part of the world at least a hundred years earlier. Anyone who claimed otherwise was either touched-in-the-head-and-bless-their-hearts, or needed a new lens prescription, pronto. And yet there it was, moving through the mist like the memory of a thing, soundless and velvet-footed in the way that all cats are.
Watching that beautiful hunter pad by — a thing that, by all accounts, shouldn't have been but was, regardless of what humans believed — I had an epiphany, or the closest thing to an epiphany a six-year old could experience. This silent observation was what I had been made for. To study the private lives of the beasts, interfering as little as possible, watching with my breath fishboned in my throat — it was the only thing worth doing in the whole wide world.
As I said at the start, my fate was decided.
Since that pre-dawn moment almost twenty-five years ago, I've come a long way. I worked hard in school, earned a scholarship, attended the University of Florida, and received a degree in Wildlife Biology with a focus on Wildlife Conservation and Management. I got my PhD (only losing 90% of my sanity in the process), wrote a book, traveled the world from pole to pole. It has been a wild and fascinating ride, and if I thanked everyone whose help has gotten me to this stage, you'd either die of old age or boredom. My field is packed with passionate, talented, wonderful individuals.
But I feel like we could be doing more — so much more — and that's where my pitch comes in.
Recent advancements in both robotics and the field of uploading human consciousnesses into artificial bodies have made it possible to observe wildlife up close and completely undetected in ways unimaginable twenty or thirty years ago. One of the unfortunate truths of wildlife studies is that much of the time you are either watching all the action through a remote camera or interfering in their lives, however subtly. Your very humanness betrays you.
What if you could shed that imperfect human shell, as easily as slipping off a bulky winter coat? What if you could temporarily become an animal, walk among them, run with the legs of a stag or fly with the wings of a crane? How long have people dreamed of such things?
What if I told you it could happen tomorrow?
My knowledge of wildlife behavior and biology is unparalleled. Together with my partner in molecular robotics, Dr. Jay Butcher, we will build an artificial mammalian body, upload my consciousness into it, and study the lives of animals beneath their very snouts. All I am in need of is funding, time, and did I mention the funding? $5,000,000 may seem like a fabulous sum at first glance, but for what we're attempting to do, it is (as my Gran would say) coffee can money buried under the bois d'arc.
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Pledge $10 or more
10,508 Backers
AUTOGRAPHED ARTWORK. You will receive a rather lovely piece of autographed wildlife art from my good friend Sara Bowlen. Bowlen's paintings have been hailed “hallucinatory,” “grotesque,” and “alien messages from the world's wild places,” which tells you how cool her work is. Anything that divisive is worth looking into, right?
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Pledge $30 or more
525 Backers
ONE-YEAR SUBSCRIPTION TO NATURAL WORLD. One-year subscription to Natural World, the award-winning wildlife journal. Pretty self-explanatory.
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Pledge $100 or more
825 Backers
SIGNED COPY OF MY BOOK. I will send you a signed copy of my coffee table book, Form, Function, and the Art Of Vulpine Musculature, with photography by Seth Pallman. The folks at Arroyo Press did an amazing job with this thing. Impress your friends! Make your enemies jealous, or hit them over the head with it; it's a big damn book.
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Pledge $500 or more
1,575 Backers
SIGNED COPY OF DR. BUTCHER'S BOOK. Yes, this is that book, the one you read about in GQ and all the other glossies. It grows hair. It has eyes. And it can be yours, for the low, low contribution of $500.00.
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Pledge $1,000 or more
49 Backers
SIGNED MAQUETTE. We will send you one of the maquettes used in designing early prototypes of the robo-molecular animal bodies. We won't tell you what type you'll be getting; Dr. Butcher and I will choose one at our discretion. Aren't surprises fun?
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Pledge $100,000 or more
0 Backers
A DAY IN THE LAB. Spend a day observing Dr. Butcher and I as we work on a lab-grown robo-molecular animal body. Coordinates of the lab will be sent to you once the project is fully funded.
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Pledge $500,000 or more
0 Backers
ROBOT BODY. Dr. Butcher and I will design for you the animal body of your choosing. It will not have the neural upload capabilities, of course, but the bodies in of themselves are beautiful, priceless works of art. Why have a bearskin rug when you can have an imitation bear instead?
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Pledge $4,000,000 or more
1 Backer
A DAY IN THE FIELD. You will spend a day with me in the field, uploaded into the animal body of your choosing. It will probably be a controlled environment. This should not dissuade you, as the chance to uplink into another form is (if it needs saying) a once-in-a-lifetime experience.
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Comments
FurRealsKin69 on Mar 15, 2018
could this eventually be marketed for use outside the scientific community? Body modification? Like, LITERAL body modification?! OMFG
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TheNobodySpecial on Mar 20, 2018
Super-excited about the possibilities. We've witnessed some incredible leaps in neural uploading transfer technology recently, but I'm pretty sure most of those tests were done using android (ie humanoid) bodies. Com
bining that with the boom in cloning lab-grown biological matter? Revolutionary idea. I'm surprised nobody's attempted this already.
Also being a wolf for a day would be fuckin' sweet.
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Neighbour of the Beast on Mar 20, 2018
What the hell makes you think some random animal showing up in their territory bein' all HAY GUYS WHAT'S UP wouldn't interefere in their lives, dumbass? Any time you observe them, you're gonna be changing the outcome. End of story. If anything you have just come up with a way to somehow be MORE invasive than a remote camera or some douchebag in a jeep.
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JMTNT on Apr 2, 2018
Intriguing proposition. Like the first commenter, I'm interested in the ramifications for this technology outside the field of wildlife studies (although maybe not for the same reasons). Why on Earth would we stop there? Could this extend and enhance the quality of people's lives, much like the recent android boom?
At any rate, I'm interested to see where this project goes. Consider my donation in the proverbial mail.
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RunWulfWarrior on Oct 15, 2018
hott
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Update #1 • Apr 2, 2018
FAQ
You've got questions, I've got answers. Sort of.
Could this be used outside the field of wildlife studies? Well, obviously. So many of the technologies that currently shape our lives started out that way, after all. Entire communities could take to the skies as birds, gigantic mumurations of transferred souls coiling and uncoiling like sentient smoke. Undersea exploration would be changed forever. And yes, if you played your cards right, it's possible that you could prolong your life indefinitely. Very possible.
Exciting, but for the purposes of this initial experiment, we're sticking to the field of wildlife studies. If all goes well, I can't see why it wouldn't expand to other areas, eventually. For now, though, let's not put the wagon before the synthetic horse.
Update #2 • Jun 12, 2018
Moving Swiftly Along
Wow. Three months in and we're already at $300,000! I am not quite sure how we're going to get all those rewards out if you all somehow manage to fund this thing, but worrying don't get nothin' done that hoping couldn't do just as easily, as my Gran likes to say. I think our decision to stretch this campaign out past the usual length of time for such things is already paying dividends.
Update #3 • Jun 15, 2018
Funded!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Mother of God. Pocketbook of God. Some anonymous gazillionare philanthropist just matched our funding goal and then passed it by several thousand dollars. I'm speechless. I'm in tears. I am, rather surprisingly, completely and 100% sober.
Thank you. Every single person who contributed a dime, every soul who encouraged Dr. Butcher and I to start this drive, every teacher in my underfunded, backwater school who worked crappy hours for low pay just so I could get here.
People still believe in science. If nothing else proves it, look at our numbers.
Update #4 • Oct 20, 2018
The Fun Stuff
Sorry for the delay, everybody. I know a lot of you are really eager to hear what's going on with the project, but Gran's been ill and family comes first.
We finally made a decision on which animal to go with for the prototypes! Unsurprisingly to anybody who knows me, it's our old friend P. concolor, otherwise known as the North American puma. Dr. Butcher wanted something a bit smaller — a house cat, maybe, or an otter — but after several loud, spirited debates and one highly scientific coin flip, fate made the clear choice obvious.
This is where things get real. Stem cell grafting, robo-skeletal construction, the whole shebang. Growth vats are prepped and ready to go in less than a week. I am so glad to have this project occupying my time right now. Exciting stuff.
Update #5 • Nov 5, 2018
The Things You'll Always Remember
Have you ever held a vat-grown puma heart in your hands? Holy shit.
Update #6 • Jan 3, 2019
Nearing The Finish Line!
It has a titanium internal structure, a “brain” that looks like a nest of wires and gears tried to get nasty with a hard drive, most of its organs, and all of its musculature. All we're waiting on now is the skin, which is, y'know, pretty important.
I don't mean to sound flippant. I'm really not being flippant. It's just hard to not feel a little giddy when you're finishing construction on one of the most important scientific experiments since Ben Franklin decided to go fly a kite. Thank you all so much for giving us this chance. We couldn't have done it without your support.
Once the skin and fur are out of the vats, we should begin trial uplink runs. Maybe in a month or so? Fingers crossed.
Update #7 • Feb 1, 2019
Delay
Dr. Butcher here, temporarily taking over the keyboard for Dr. Reyes. Leslie's grandmother is in the hospital, which means that once again we're running into an unfortunate and unavoidable delay in the project timeline.
Construction on the cybernetic P. concolor body was completed a week ago. We had planned on moving ahead with the first neural upload immediately, pending finding a suitable test subject, but then the emergency with Dr. Reyes’ grandmother occurred. Grateful thanks for your continued patience. — JB
Update #8 • Mar 30, 2019
[no title]
They say updating while drunk isn't a good idea, but I'm apparntly not the greatest at good decision-making these days, as Dr. Butcher would inevitably tell you if he hadn't stormed out of the lab 2 hours ago mad as I've ever seen him. I cn type coherently and spell “inevitably” correctly on half a flask of scotch though, which should probably count for something.
Shit. I meant undoubtedly.
the project. The project has been on temporary hiatus, so there's not much to talk about on that front. However, we've got a test subject lined up and will be ready to rock and roll very very very soon, once one or two kinks are iorned out & arguments settled.
As said before, I am slightly inebriated. I am slightly inebriated (I just spelled inebriated right, twice) and more than slightly maudlin and it smells like a hospital in here and I want to tell all of you strangers who don't give a shit all about my Gran.
She could do the Lindy, the Foxtrot, the Jitterbug, and the Robot. She could whistle on a grass blade, gut a squirrl, coax a crawdad from its riverbank, and use an arc welder as well as any man born. She had boyfriends, girlfriends, and a tattoo of a panther across her left bicep. She was the seventh daughter of a drunk who beat his wife Saturday nights and pulled on church clothes Sunday mornings. She dipped snuff and kept a copy of Emily Post's Etiquette on her nightstand, next to the trashy romance novels and Reader's Digests.
When she was 11 she tracked a stray cur that had killed one of her family's goats seven miles home to its owner. They offered her a pair of shoes as recompense, but she told them, best as an 11-year old girl could, to go fuck themselves. She collected the cash they owed her pa, wished them all a Merry Christmas, and walked back home as barefoot as she had come.
She could use a rabbit's entrails to tell your future. She said one day I would leave our shithole town and dingy doublewide behind to do great things, and I believed her. I always believed her.
Update #9 • Apr 02, 2019
Completion
It's done. A test subject has successfully been uploaded to the synthetic P. concolor.
Subject was lucid, alert, and answered questions about her past history correctly when queried post-uploading. (Do you know your name? Age? Flick your ear twice if you remember who I am. Raise your right front paw if you remember the skeevy carnival in the Winn-Dixie parking lot you took me to when I was seven. Swish your tail three times if you remember bathing my sister and I in the kitchen sink when we were babies, the way the sun poured through the open window, the smell of Ivory soap.) She seemed quite comfortable in the P. con
color body, controlling it as if she had been born feline. No instability in the limbs. No mental confusion. No convulsions or incontinence or struggling for breath. All in all, a perfect neural transfer.
Dr. Butcher, if you happen to be reading this: Eat shit, darling.
I released the subject into the field just before sunup, at an undisclosed, heavily wooded location. Unfortunately, this may mean the end of the project, or at least my allowed involvement with it. She was equipped with no tracking device.
I apologize for any delays this fit of pique may cause, both with you all receiving your rewards and the forward movement of the research itself. Don't worry, though; all the rewards will be honored as swiftly as time and resources allow. Dr. Butcher will see to that, if I'm otherwise indisposed.
The forest where I released her is a protected one, particularly dense and rich with game; the odds of finding any creature that doesn't want to be found in it, especially one of the puma persuasion, are practically nil.
Swallowed up by the mist nose-to-tail-tip, like a Polaroid snapshot developing in reverse. One long last look, and then she was gone.
And You Shall Know Her by the Trail of Dead
The mobster has a gun pressed to Rack's forehead. The mobster has a god-shitting gun pressed to her partner's fucking forehead, and the only thing Rhye can do is watch and scream as the man smiles at her and pulls the trigger and blows Rack's perfect brains out from between his ears.
The Three Beautiful Raptor Sisters Page 6
