Hybrid Zone Recognition

by C. E. Glines

  The next generation hybrids were more advanced than their predecessors. From the new gene combinations created, the children had abilities not seen in either hybrid parent. And, where the originals had only one or two traits, their children had any number of traits. Beyond that, the individual traits themselves had been magnified so that the abilities of the offspring far exceeded that of their parents.

  The second generation hybrids had also avoided the problems that plagued their parents. Unlike the original man-made hybrids, their creation produced a stable DNA structure that perfectly blended the human and animal genes. In general, the next generation of hybrids possessed heightened senses and were stronger and faster than anyone had thought possible. Vampires and werewolves they were not, but they were dang close to Hollywood’s version of shape shifters and mutants.

  I tuned back in just in time to watch Mr. Randall dial up the crazy.

  “All of this genetic manipulation will be our doom,” Randall cried vehemently.

  Both I and Miranda involuntarily pulled back in disgust as a drop of his spittle splatted against the lens of the television camera. The reporter wasn’t fazed in the least. She soldiered on in that professional demeanor she possessed.

  “You are not concerned then, that the potential benefits to human kind, through our increased knowledge of human DNA and its operation, will be lost through your efforts?”

  He looked dumbfounded. I didn’t think he understood her question. I knew what she was saying. The better you knew how something functioned, the easier it was to fix when things went wrong.

  “We should not be altering human DNA,” he tried again. “God does not approve—”

  “You have proof then?” she said, cutting him off.

  Again, with the deer in the headlights look.

  “Mr. Randall? You just stated that God did not approve of genetic alteration. Do you have proof of your claim?”

  I high fived Miranda across the table. The reporter lady was nailing his butt to the wall. Randall was fuming. It was great.

  Mr. Randall yanked off his mike and stormed off the set.

  What a loser.

  Miranda mirrored my thoughts when she held up her left hand with her thumb and forefinger creating an L. Then she flipped it and shot at the screen where he had been. If only it was that easy.

  The reporter lady did not seem surprised by his swift departure. I was pretty sure it was what she’d been going for, all the better to emphasize his insaneness. But it was risky for her and the news organization she worked for. I didn’t recall the press being a big fan of hybridization. One might wonder why she was taking such a hard line with this story.

  “As with any other news organization, reported facts must be supported by evidence. As Mr. Randall cannot produce evidence of his claim that God is against genetic manipulation of the human genome, we must believe it to be merely his opinion and not a fact.”

  I couldn’t have said it better myself.

  “Any new developments regarding these events will be reported as speedily and accurately as possible. In the meantime, please join us tonight at eight for an in depth look at the history of the HCF and genetic manipulation.”

  Miranda picked up the remote and turned the TV off. “Think that will be worth watching?” she asked.

  I shrugged. Didn’t we already know the history?

  It all started about forty years ago when a company called Biometrics announced to the world that it had successfully implemented the integration of animal DNA into the human genome. For proprietary reasons, they refused to release their research, but they did parade their results, a series of human animal hybrids, in front of the cameras for all to see. As might be expected, by the time the news conference was over, the proverbial scat had hit the fan.

  Three primary schools of thought regarding genetic engineering developed fairly quickly after that. There were those that hated it, those that didn’t care one way or the other, and those that did everything they could to sign up. It was astounding the number of people that thought having a tail would be “groovy.”

  Protests pretty much became an everyday occurrence. Some were in support of the hybrids, but most were against. People didn’t understand the process and fear of a mutant epidemic began to spread. As the fear grew, the protests turned violent. Federal troops had to be called in to maintain the peace in a lot of large cities throughout America.

  The Federal crackdown on protests caused more unrest in the populace. Americans needed somewhere to channel their fear and anxiety. That translated into the majority of the people in the nation becoming survivalists. As the people learned to do things for themselves again, grow their own food, make their own clothes, etc., there was almost an undercurrent of revolution in the country. It was a strange time in American history.

  All the uncertainty and fear circulating around also spurred the growth of local militias. Gun sales skyrocketed. By the 1980s, statistics showed that almost every household in America owned at least one gun.

  Then there were the foreign governments insistent on getting access to the technology while simultaneously accusing the US of both heinous crimes against humanity and seeking total world domination. They didn’t accept that this was the work of a few scientists not under government control. Even allies of the US began to question the government’s motives.

  With Americans armed to the hilt and on the verge of civil war, and the rest of the world in an uproar, the president decided to step in. In an unprecedented move, under the heading of “Homeland Security,” the president ordered the seizure of Biometrics. He established the HCF to dissemble Biometrics, and the world was told that both the research and the hybrids had been terminated. Congress then followed suit by passing laws that banned genetic manipulation for anything other than medical research.

  Until recently, the HCF had faded from public consciousness to largely exist in internet searches for the latest conspiracy theories. Given the public’s fascination with the supernatural, there were some doozies out there.

  “You know,” Miranda drawled, “the history that we think we know, came from the same government that told the rest of the world that hybrids didn’t exist anymore.” She paused, letting the thought hang in the air.

  “Your point?” I asked.

  “It might be interesting to watch. Maybe she knows something that we don’t.”

  I hoped not. I kind of liked her in your face style and her level headedness. I didn’t want her to disappear like the scientists originally involved in the creation of hybrids. Who knew where the government had sequestered them away. As we sat here, their existence was slowly being scrubbed from the history books.

  “Well, if she knows something, I hope she doesn’t report it,” I said.

  “Too dangerous?”

  I thought about the recent escalation of extremist activity and the spotlight that was now trained on the HCF. Whatever part of the government that had worked at pushing the HCF into history wasn’t going to be happy about the latest developments. “Little bit,” I nodded.

  “Still, I think I’ll watch,” Miranda said thoughtfully. “Maybe they’ll mention the Colony.”

  “God, I hope not,” I breathed. That was the last thing any of us needed.

  The Colony, as we referred to it, was where the supposedly terminated hybrids were housed. But that only happened recently. I didn’t know where they’d been before. I also had no explanation for the rationale behind choosing to place the Colony in New Orleans. Other than it must have been decided by a paper pusher or someone with a soft spot for New Orleans.

  The exact location they had chosen to establish the Colony was on land that had been decimated by Hurricane Katrina. The city didn’t have the funds to fight the encroaching wildlife or fix the damaged infrastructure and was happy to sell the land to the government.

  At least they’d had the good sense to let someone who knew what they were doing design the facility. Excluding Kenny, it did a good job o
f keeping the hybrids in and everyone else out. It helped that the facility was rumored to be a Centers for Disease Control outpost for quarantine of individuals with horrific, highly contagious diseases. The flesh eating bacteria was a particular favorite of the bloggers.

  I thought this explained why the crowds Randall managed to gather for the protests in New Orleans weren’t all that big. Nowadays, normal humans wouldn’t go near the place. The extremists, however, had no such qualms. They were becoming a constant source of irritation. But extremists were never normal, were they?

  Being that it was New Orleans, it could have been that the government wanted an easy way to explain away any lapses in security. It wouldn’t be that hard to blame the overconsumption of alcohol or voodoo practices for any strange sightings. Strange sightings were something New Orleans was never short of.

  One time, I actually saw a picture of Kenny on the cover of one of the local rags. I framed it and gave it to him for his birthday. I couldn’t tell by his response if he liked it or not.

  “You think Randall will ever turn his attention back to exposing the Colony?” Miranda asked.

  I walked my dishes over to the sink and started to wash them. She set hers in the sink next to mine. That was the deal. Whoever didn’t cook had to clean. Consequently, we ate out a lot.

  “He might. He was really intent on it before.” It would not be good if he succeeded. There was no telling what fiction he might report as truth.

  She nodded, recalling last year’s incidences. “Last year we got lucky. If that hurricane hadn’t been in the vicinity, who knows what might have happened,” she said and absentmindedly picked up a drying towel.

  I noticed that she was about to participate in the cleaning, but I wasn’t going to call her attention to the fact. Hey, the gumbo was good, but she was a messy cook.

  She frowned as she dried the first dish and put it away. “If he does come back, he’s going to be madder than a hornet after that interview.”

  I eyed her over the skillet I was scrubbing. Madder than a hornet? When had she ever even seen a hornet?

  “They’ll just increase security,” I assured her. “No way would they let him get in. There’s too much at stake.”

  I might have sounded confident, but I wasn’t sure the officials in charge of the HCF were ready for all this. I didn’t even have confidence that they were aware of the potential powder keg that existed. Which was why I was glad that, all in all, it wasn’t that hard to contain the inhabitants of the Colony. Certain determined teenage hybrids notwithstanding.

  The hybrid population as a whole was small, and they knew more than anyone what the stakes were. They also knew why the population was now down to less than five hundred. It hadn’t started out that small. Humans could do really bad things when they were scared.

  “Even so,” she said. “It’d probably be best if we wrapped up our work here sooner rather than later.”

  I was thinking the same thing. Securing our exit before any more trouble had a chance to brew via the extremists or the government. I did not want to be caught in a government cover up or the government deciding to cut its losses and start over by torching the whole place, inhabitants and related scientists included. Would our government do that? Certain factions would.

  Regardless of the rhetoric fed to the public, I knew the government had no intention of ridding the world of hybrids. What would the public do if they found out their government had been lying to them all this time?

  “Agreed,” I said as I watched her put away more dishes. “I do not want to be the target of America’s wrath.”

  “You’d be the bigger target.”

  She was right. If what I did for the HCF became known to the public, it would definitely make me a target. I was the one conducting all the research for the HCF. And, it was my name stamped on the reports. Which was why I was using the HCF’s directive’s regarding my work as more like guidelines than hard and fast rules.

  The heads of the HCF had no interest in studying the first generation of hybrids that were rapidly dying off. They insisted on limiting the scope of my work to the second generation hybrids. Idiot bureaucrats. Since the second generation was directly descended from the first, it was important to know why the first generation was dying prematurely. Seemed like common sense to me, but whatever.

  Despite the HCF, I had discovered that the first generation’s transformations had begun to affect more than the targeted areas, unleashing a massive rejection backlash in their bodies. It had even affected gametes, which was not normally the case with mutations to adult DNA.

  It was the successful mutation of gametes, if you wanted to phrase it that way, that allowed the second generation to exist at all. But they were more than existing, by every indicator, they were thriving. Most had reached their teen years, and I was warily anticipating the arrival of the third generation any time now. What with teenagers being teenagers, plus the added bonus of insufficient parental supervision.

  Oh, there was government security in the form of guards and rules and such. But teenagers had been thwarting lockdown since the dawn of time. I didn’t think they were going to stop now. If anything, their special skills aided them in their great escapes. Kenny was a prime example of that.

  I was quite certain he shouldn’t have been able to leave the compound, but he did. Regularly. From what I had observed recently, he wasn’t the only one. It was clear they were becoming restless. Nobody liked a cage, no matter how gilded.

  And if they escaped and this whole thing went south…with my job description? I’d be right in the crosshairs. I already was for someone.

  “One last sample to get and then we are out of here,” I said.

  “You said it, sister,” she replied emphatically and hung up the drying towel. Then she realized what she’d done. “Hey! You let me dry and put away the dishes without saying a word!”

  “I said words,” I replied sheepishly. In conversation, but still words.

  She huffed out of the kitchen, leaving me to finish alone. Unfortunately, this meant I would be cleaning the pots alone. It would help if she would pick the right size pot to begin with and quit having to transfer to bigger pots. It was like the three bears of cooking in here.

  I began scooping the gumbo into the storage container. It was true that I hated cleaning, but the gumbo had been worth it, and it would taste even better tomorrow.

  She returned a few minutes later intent on ignoring me and carrying her laptop, which she plunked down on the table. She sat down with her back to me. Maybe she really was upset.

  “Did you upload the newest list yet?” she asked coolly.

  “Check your email.”

  I needed a penance offering. Good thing I’d picked up a carrot cake on the way home. It was still on the entrance table in the foyer with everything else I’d dropped when I came in. Yeah, I wasn’t so good at the homemaker thing.

  “Be back in a sec,” I told her. I didn’t take offense to her cold silence. It’d only make what was coming all the sweeter.

  Returning with the distinctive box in hand, I detected her eyes following my prize. Just like I knew they would. This cake was no ordinary cake. It was from the bakery Cake Queens, which, in my expert opinion, was just this side of heaven.

  I made a production of rummaging around for plates and forks. Then took longer looking for the cake knife. I heard her sigh and smiled at her disparaging of my acting skills.

  “Just cut the cake already and give me your I’m sorry gift,” she grumbled.

  I set the piece of cake beside her. “I offer cake for my transgression,” I said solemnly. “Though, I’m not sure of its validity, seeing as how I’m not really sorry. Maybe I should just eat your piece too.”

  She quickly confiscated the plate before I could reach it.

  Apology made, or at least a close approximation of one, I picked up my plate and began to eat.

  “Your apologies stink,” she said, picking up the fork I’d prov
ided. “Good thing you know how to pick a bakery.”

  “Oh my god, it’s so good, isn’t it?” I moaned.

  She couldn’t respond. Her eyes were closed in carroty cream cheese bliss. If you needed an explanation for such a display, it would be fair to assume there was no help for you. After a few seconds, she opened her eyes and resumed eating.

  “Did you find the file?” I asked her.

  She nodded.

  As my research partner, she did most of the leg work of typing my notes into a format the HCF would accept. What we were currently working on was our second objective on this project, cataloging potential hybrid traits. That included which traits were dominant, how they influenced one another, what combinations of genes produced the most viable hybrids, etc.

  From the work I had already done, it was apparent that some species DNA seemed to coexist or merge with human DNA better than others. The government wanted to know why, how and which ones. That was also my job. Basically, I was your modern day Dr. Frankenstein but with updated technology. And the fact that I didn’t actually create anything.

  “Did you receive their latest memo?” she asked.

  “You mean the breeding program?” I said skeptically.

  “That would be the one. I take it you don’t approve.”

  “Do you?” I asked with raised eyebrows.

  “Not even a little. In fact, I’m seriously beginning to question the validity of our being here at all.”

  She wasn’t the only one, I thought, nodding my agreement.

  Did they really not see anything wrong with forced breeding? It was almost as if they had relegated the hybrids to the status of lab animal. I knew the bureaucrats at the HCF had hopes that the third generation would produce an even greater variety of traits that were viable. And, apparently, if left to them, in largely predictable combinations.

  So what was the purpose behind a bunch of politicians wanting made to order hybrids? The military I could understand, but politicians? The possible answers to that question made me very uneasy.

  With this new breeding program dictate they had issued, the HCF had crossed another line. It was one of many they had crossed in recent days. The sudden change in direction at the HCF left me wanting to know exactly who was in charge. I also wondered if the rest of the government knew what the HCF was up to.