Fisher Science

Fisher Science

Backstory

It is strange to think back to the beginning for Fisher. He had existed for two years prior to the event. Existed, that is an apt description. Two years he had spent blissfully ignorant of the world at large as a mundane squirrel in a town called Valdosta. Back then who he was, and why he was on this planet didn’t matter so much as the instinctual urges of his purely animalistic nature. Panic had overridden all his sense when the light from the strange human struck him, rendering his body inert, but leaving his mind racing, reeling with the vague possibilities that lay in store for him; the irony was that his mind couldn’t comprehend what was about to befall him, but it soon would. Later, Fisher would piece together what had happened. He never found out the name of the strange looking human, or the other that had been strapped into the same machine as he was. In his work, the man referred to himself as a genius, and other names that seemed to be preening an already overlarge ego. It was in the man’s designs that he was going to create a device to convert everyday animals into servants to work in the world undetected. There were papers, essays, volumes up on volumes detailing the process.

Stage one was a method to increase the longevity of his minions. Not only would it reduce the cost of having to replacing minions due to old age, but it also would give him the opportunity for them to develop skill far beyond their natural capabilities.

Stage two was supposed to be a test of the machine’s capabilities to transfer intelligence from one animal to another, a proof of concept. Fisher read through the scientist notes about the “swaps” he made, with varying degrees of success. Cats that became canaries, dogs that became gerbils and other combinations of even more disturbing varieties were catalogued as test subjects.

From what he could surmise, Fisher had been part of Stage three; the merging of a higher intelligence with an animal. That night he found himself strapped into a machine across the room from another human in a similar predicament. The human seemed out of it, Fisher expected him to be struggling, but the man’s head lolled to the side as his vague, unfocused, expression implied that the scientist had done something to him to secure his unwilling cooperation. Lightning flashed across the ceiling of the room as the whine of the equipment filled the room, Fisher’s mind raced as his senses were overburdened with input. The last thing he remembered was a final audible pop.

Then everything began to make fucking sense.

Strange thoughts and concepts flooded his mind like someone had cracked his skull open and poured them in. They made no sense to him and then immediately he gained understanding. He was curled up in his nest, on the verge of sleep. Instead of sleeping the view from his nest changed. Tiny, almost imperceptive, clear lines began to spin like spider silk in fractal patterns; slow at first, but gaining speed and complexity by the second. Finally, the entire world around him was encased in a crystalline construction, and without warning it shattered as memories he did not have rushed around him, swirling into a maelstrom of noise and color.

On some level he wanted it to all stop, but that was just a quiet whisper now.

He looked up; he couldn’t help it, and saw the stars in the sky glittering like tiny motes of light on an inky black backdrop. As he stared at the stars above, he saw that between the stars were more stars, and between those were planets, black holes, phenomena that made and unmade the universe as he now knew it. He finally understood now.

Of the forces of the universe, he was one now. He just had to figure out which.

Fisher Science was the first thing he read when he woke. It was embossed on a piece of equipment next to him. It was the first words he saw and comprehended. It was special, so he adopted it as his name. The lab had changed, gone was the other human strapped in the machine, and the mad man was busying over bits and paper before noticing that Fisher had woken.

It didn’t take long for him to notice though, and he gleefully went about testing Fisher. It seemed he was testing his intellect, and obedience. Whatever the man had planned, it had failed. Fisher felt no loyalty to the man, and only followed along so he wouldn’t catch on; he found it would be better to keep up appearances while he got his bearings. Whatever the madman was looking for, he found it. Gleefully he clapped his hands together, and cackled. He made comments about advancing to the “next stage” but then got this glint in his eye.

Fearing that the madman may have been suspicious of him, Fisher stood stock still while the man commented about all the “wonderful things” he might glean from the autopsy of the prototype. Fisher feared that his life was going to be short lived, but as the man reach forward for him, he noticed the man’s hand shake, and so did the man.

Sleep… sleep to calm the mind, steady the hand, and reinvigorate his curiosity. The dissection would wait till tomorrow. He ordered Fisher to stay put and closed the cage on him while he shut the lab down for the night, never assuming that Fisher merely followed the order out of stark terror rather than enforced loyalty.

When the lights went out, Fisher’s mind shot off at a feverish pace. Opening the cage was easy, he could only guess that the madman thought that his nonexistent domination would keep him in place; he had gotten sloppy. Unfortunately, the man’s security around the lab was much stronger. The doors and windows had locks on them that Fisher couldn’t shift. Even with his new intelligence, he found himself stuck like an animal, cursing his physical inadequacies. Things were looking dire, the only option he had was to try and subdue the madman, a lofty goal indeed. It was that or let himself be cut open for the man’s amusement and curiosity. Finding no exit possible, Fisher retreated to his cage so as to not raise suspicion, and waited for the man to return the next day.

The madman came back, humming some obnoxious tune under his breath, the next morning. He greeted Fisher in a sickeningly sweet voice, almost cooing over what he was about to brutally murder. Fisher kept to the back of his cage while the man donned an apron, grabbed a scalpel, and opened Fisher’s cage.

Fisher’s plan was brutally simple. People instinctively jump back when something flies at their face. Like a shot, Fisher flew out of the cage towards the man’s chest, if he was lucky he could get the man to fall back and knock himself cold on the floor. There were two things he didn’t take into account. The first being the man’s scalpel as the man threw his arms up reflexively causing the man to stab himself in the face with it. The second was the table behind the madman which he brained himself with a sickening crunch, leaving a smear of blood on its edge. The man crumpled to the floor as blood began to pool about the wound in his head. Tentatively Fisher checked the man’s pulse, and found that it was fading fast. Fisher’s plan had been, from the start, to survive. He had expected the man to knock himself out, but if he bled out, then it was the sad cost of the struggle between him and the madman.

He almost left then and there, but a thought crawled into his mind. The man was dead, the place seems set up that it doesn’t get many visitors, and he had a wealth of information at his fingertips. At least he should stick around to find out what the man was doing, and perhaps scrounge up something useful.

It proved to be the most illuminating thing he could have done.

In addition to the notes on the project he was part of, Fisher found books upon books on various subjects, some on mundane topics like physics, computers, and electronics, while others had names that his new vocabulary couldn’t place. There were Books on Automata, Metatropi, Epikrato, Apokalypsi, and Exelixi. He found them intriguing, but glossed over some more than others. He was looking for stuff he could find useful. When he wasn’t reading and figuring out the madman’s writings, he had found a small refrigerator in the back of the room. It had fruits and nuts, probably for Fisher or whatever the stage four creatures would have been; Fisher lived off of it for weeks.

It was also during this time, he discovered the wonder of coffee. Humans apparently made drinks from it, but Fisher was forced to nibble at the grounds. They were terribly bitter, but let him stay up much later reading before falling down in exhaustion. He found himself eating the stuff out of habit, perhaps a human trait that had passed over, he could never tell.

Fisher knew his time in the lab was limited, and that the stench of the madman’s corpse would attract attention soon. He went to work putting the new knowledge he had picked up to use. He found a small metal clamshell tin, using it as a base Fisher took the madman’s cellphone and cannibalized it for parts. As he worked, he ate coffee grounds, and as he ate coffee grounds his work began to bend and distort what many learned professors would call laws of physics.

He was at an advantage; he had spent most of his life blissfully unaware of these concepts, so he just went on ignoring them as long as it worked.

The device was done after two days of strenuous work. The pointed it at one of the locks on the windows and pressed a button on its small keypad. The device emitted a chirp, and the lock clicked to the open position. His small furry muzzle broke out into a smile, the first he had since his uplifting.

He spared no time in getting out of the lab. With only his P.A.D. (Portable Accessibility Device) and a small bag of grounds, he left the building back into the world, a changed squirrel. Fisher didn’t want to stay in Valdosta. If the madman had friends, he didn’t want them to find him. He had run across one of the man’s notes; something of a conundrum the man had been working on the side. He had circled the city of Atlanta on the map and scrawled to the side, “No metas?” Fisher had found some obscure references to vampires and werewolves in the man’s notes; given the madman’s general mentality, he was pretty certain the man was cracked on this one. But still, no metas would probably be a good thing. With some quick work, he found a bus leaving to Atlanta, and stowed away.

Just him, his P.A.D., some provisions, and a hope that Atlanta will let him find the answers he seeks.

Sheet:Fisher Science