I DO actually write...

Here’s the first of my 100 fic challenge series (see link at right): 100 Kinds of Mutts (needs a new title)

(the rest of the series may be found at my profile and works on Fictionpress)

My summary on Fictionpress: Set in a time when an elite class of soldier has been developed. They are perfect: superior to humans in nearly every way. Then one kills a human... and normality goes to hell...

written 11/16/07

001 – Beginnings

“Lidlum, the break room is supposed to be for breaks.”

Charles Lidlum looked up from the stack of folders before him. He smiled a little, pushing his glasses back onto his nose. Peter Scotts fell into a couch with a sigh. His long, spidery frame was bent awkwardly across the cushions. Lidlum was a little jealous. One of the youngest men ever to advance to his position and he still had to deal with short jokes. But Scotts was one of the good ones. The tall man waved his hand at the folders.

“Whatcha got all that in here for?”

“Looking for mistakes.” Lidlum squinted at the carbon copy he was holding. Whoever had written the original had atrocious handwriting and the smudged lines of the copy had made it even more illegible. Scotts laughed. He sounded tired.

“Don’t do it, Lidlum” He had pulled off his lab coat and bundled it under his head like a pillow. His sandy hair drifted over his face. Jealousy nipped at Lidlum again. Handsome was another thing he would never be. Not even if this all worked out the way it should.

“You’ll find one and there’ll be twenty more waiting to jump out and bite you in the ass,” Scotts concluded sagely, his arm draped over his face. Lidlum smiled, but it was a small smile. He had already noticed. For every successful outcome of an experiment, it seemed as though there had been a thousand failures.

He wasn’t interested in the successes: they had what they had. He wanted to make sure that they didn’t make the same mistakes again. Or anything similar. A repeat of the mouse incident would be the downfall of the company. They had warded off the media that time. Lidlum doubted they could do it again.

They had been trying to make mice smarter, so they had been manipulating together mouse and monkey brain DNA matter. It was working fine, except that there were some strange symptoms from the mice. Their toes were becoming prehensile and things like that. Then some idiot that wasn’t paying attention allowed an unauthorized breeding and the resulting embryo was a revolting mouse-monkey hybrid that would have killed its tiny mother had it not been aborted. The DNA mixing technique was declared unsatisfactory and it had been back to square one.

It was an example of carelessness and lack of foresight. Lidlum did not intend for it to happen again. Not with what he had in mind. Now, if only he could get someone to listen…