Notes from the Mad Science Lab: Cuddles Versus Facehugger

One of my friends... Well, okay, he's not exactly a friend.

One of my fellow researchers... Well, okay, there isn't too much fellowship there.

One of my rivals... Yes, that about covers it. A few weeks back, one of my rivals stayed up late watching every single Alien movie ever made. (He may also have been drinking at the time.) When he was done, he went back to his laboratory (with, I suspect, a drink still in his hand) and fired up his gene sequencer.

Five days later, the pills he'd been taking finally wore off, and he dragged himself to bed and slept for three days straight -- but not before sending me the results of his work, for independent verification. That, after all, is how the scientific process works: you share your results so that others can check them for errors, or confirm your conclusions. In this case, Doctor X (not his real name) believed that he had successfully created a being which reproduced the life cycle (though not the full acid-for-blood physiology) of the Xenomorph from the movies. So, naturally, he sent it to me in order to have a competent scientist check his results.

Or possibly he was just trying to kill me.

Either way, the package arrived intact, and I brought it down to the lab. Naturally, I placed it in the Cryptozoo and left orders for my assistant, Jeffries, to open it up and situate it near the buffadillo pen.

Now, Jeffries is in most ways an exemplary assistant. However, he has an enthusiastic interest -- actually, more of a monomaniacal obsession -- with safety precautions. Everything he does for me requires, at the very least, three times as long as it would have for any of my previous assistants. I firmly believe that were he ever to be placed in charge of OSHA, in less than two weeks his elaborate and comprehensive safety requirements would paralyze all production within the continental United States. Still, this is his only noteworthy flaw, and he has remained under my tutelage for at least twice as long as any of his predecessors, so I am willing to grant him a little leeway.

And, when he reported that the egg was in place, I was fully confident that the arrangements were just as he had said. He is nothing if not meticulous. And, I wish to be clear, what happened next was in no way his fault. Jeffries is not responsible for the physical maintenance of the Cryptozoo, nor does he monitor Cuddles.

So the fact that Cuddles broke the door which separates his area from the rest of the cryptozoo, made a beeline for the buffadillo pen, and for his troubles received a faceful of genetically-engineered prototype Xenomorph can not, in any way, be blamed on Jeffries. No, that responsibility falls squarely on the now-rotting shoulders of Mr. Howell, my cryptozookeeper. Naturally, I would fire the knave, but it's more than little bit too late for that now. You see, the Xenomorph was designed to gestate inside a living host of approximately human mass. And, so far as I can tell, it worked very much as designed.

Cuddles, however, is undead. And now so is the small-but-mobile worm that burst from his chest. I am, of course, deeply disappointed.

Oh, I'm not worried about the buffadillos; I can create more of them. Nor am I especially concerned about Mr. Howell, who clearly deserved his fate. And Cuddles, of course, is fine -- one more hole makes no difference to the zombie velociraptor. No, the true tragedy is that owing to its experience with Cuddles, I will not be able to see if the Xenomorph would have have grown into a full-sized warrior-drone.

Also, I have a foot-long undead worm rattling around in the vents and pipes that surround the cryptozoo.

Have no fear on that account, however. Jeffries has promised to capture the beast... just as soon as he can figure out how to do so safely.

Notes from the Mad Science Lab: Scruffy 2.0

A while back, as you may or may not recall, my neighbors' dog Scruffy managed to dig his way into the vents for the crypto-zoo. This was a costly mistake for him, since Cuddles or one of his friends found the dog shortly after his landing.

However, I couldn't simply leave it at that. Out of the goodness of my heart - well, okay, in order to avoid any troublesome public accusations and possible legal action - I cloned Scruffy and sent him home. Since I didn't want a repeat of the incident - well, okay, and because I can't resist tinkering - I gave Scruffy 2.0 human-level intelligence, so I could explain his situation and tell him to stay away from my yard. Well, okay, I gave him my idea of human-level intelligence... that is to say, close to my own, and outstripping his nominal owners by several orders of magnitude.

Well, guess what? Today Scruffy dropped by my yard again. And he dug down just far enough to trigger my alarms. (I added them after his progenitor's misadventure, and the dog really shouldn't have known they were there. That he figured it out, I take as a clear tribute to my own skill at genetic manipulation.) He was sitting beside the hole, waiting for me, when I came out of the house.

So I invited him inside. It isn't every day one meets an intellectual equal, after all - and the main house doesn't give away any of my secrets, anyway.

Scruffy wants my help. His opinion of his, erm, "owners" - well, it isn't any better than my opinion of them. He'd been tutoring their ten-year-old son in dimensional convergence equations, until the boy had come and told him that they would have to stop because dogs couldn't talk, let alone do physics. The boy had learned this from his parents, and Scruffy... took offense.

Now he wants my help. He says, to be blunt, that I owe it to him for making him this way. Frankly, I think he ought to be grateful about that, rather than demanding; but it's worth considering that he knows enough to make real trouble for me if he puts his mind to it. And what he's asking isn't so much, really. He says he can take care of the mother and father, and impersonate them well enough that nobody will even notice for years. He's already hacked their computers, so he's probably right about that - and he doesn't need my help for it, in any case. No, what he wants me for is to take over the care and schooling of "his boy" - their son.

That's a bit of a problem. I mean, I already have a son. I don't need two. And I don't particularly need an apprentice, especially one who's younger than most of my minions. Training him, and keeping up with the paperwork for homeschooling, would be a big drain on my time and energy... though I could always create artificial tutors, I suppose.

The alternative is to do away with Scruffy 2.0 before he has a chance to reveal me or to implement his plan. That might be tricky, depending on what preparations the dog has made...

Drat. I should have implanted some sort of tracking/observation device while he was still in the growth tank. Oh, well - too late now. Lesson learned.

Meanwhile, I've asked Scruffy to coax the boy over to my house. If he impresses me, then most of these considerations are moot: I'll teach him, and Scruffy 2.0 can do whatever he feels is necessary. But if he's just an ordinary boy, we're going to have a problem.

Notes from the Mad Science Lab: Scruffy Meets His Destiny

One of the neighbors dropped by yesterday afternoon. Apparently their dog Scruffy is missing. Mr. Neighbor wanted to know if I'd seen the dog or knew anything about it.

Now, this was not just an innocent inquiry. Scruffy has a long history of defecating in my yard - despite having a perfectly good yard of his own, I might add. On several occasions he's gotten out, and when he does he comes straight to my house and either starts digging around outside the windows, or barking loudly just outside the house. I have long suspected that Scruffy smells something from the Mad Science Lab, since he mainly does his damage near the hidden vents for the crypto-zoo.

I assured my neighbor that I had not seen scruffy, and - more to the point - that I had not done anything to harm his dog. After a couple of reiterations, he went away. I don't think he was completely satisfied, but he left.

Yesterday evening, I went back outside and looked around the yard. There was, of course, no sign of Scruffy himself, but I could see where he'd been digging. Sure enough, it was over by the vents of the crypto-zoo. And after a bit more looking, I found that Scruffy had unearthed one of the vent covers... which meant that there was a non-zero chance that the idiotic mutt had slid down into the crypto-zoo.

I placed a sentry-bot just inside the vent. (After all, if Scruffy had fallen in, he may have cleared a path where something else could come out. The sentry bot is equipped with sensors and a limited range of weapons. As a last resort, it will blow itself up and seal the vent that way.) Then I put the grate back in place, and replaced screen that conceals it.

Scruffy was indeed in the crypto-zoo. He'd fallen into the cavern with Cuddles and his friends. I'm not sure which of them got to Scruffy first, but they obviously thought I'd started offering them Labrador Snacks. Fortunately, there was enough left for my purposes - in this case, cloning.

Scruffy 2.0 is still in the vats, but he's coming along nicely. (I can't send him over as a puppy; I'm discreetly replacing a full-grown dog, after all. So he has to go through a bit of artificial aging, and that requires both growth accelerators and a nutrient bath rich enough that the process doesn't starve the poor beast.)

Since I'd be a fool to pass up an opportunity like this, I've taken some steps to make sure that Scruffy 2.0 has no desire to visit my home. To start with, I tinkered with his genes before I grew the clone; given a few months to assimilate his new life, the dog will have human-level intelligence. (He'll probably be smarter than my neighbors, not that that would be any great feat.) Once he's able to communicate, I can explain how he came by his remarkable intelligence; I'm sure he'll be sufficiently grateful that he'll leave my lawn alone. Failing that, I can at least explain why it's a bad idea to dig in the vicinity of my home; revealing the fate of his first incarnation should do the trick nicely.

Introducing Our New Mascot

I've decided that this blog needs a mascot. After long nights of thinking over what sort of animal would best represent the sort of discussion that goes on here, and further of weeks of experimentation in my secret laboratory, I am pleased to present...


Cuddles the Zombie Velociraptor
Art by Billy Browning

Cuddles is, of course, a prototype. I hope to have an entire army of zombie velociraptors ready in time for the next election. They also may be employed more discreetly: against people who tell you to smile when you're in a bad mood, people who can't manage to park their cartoonishly oversized vehicles, and anyone who's rude to legal secretaries or college professors.

At present, Cuddles lives... er, "dwells"... in a large artificial cavern off the southern end of the crypto-zoo beneath my lab. He shares this space with Dropgator (a genetically engineered crossbreeding of an alligator and a drop bear) and Deathscratch the Cybernetic Sloth.

On a completely[1] unrelated note, the position of crypto-zookeeper has opened up again, and none of my current minions will risk having their heads eaten feel qualified to take over. If you're interested in applying for the job, please feel free to post your resume in the comments.

[1] No, really, I promise, there's no connection at all. Hey, would an evil genius lie to you?