by Luca Braña
He looked back at his head scientist to notice the man looking at him with a raised eyebrow.
“I have a feeling we will be here for a few hours, Doctor, might as well talk business over refreshments,” he said lightly, his previous anger and exasperation left behind.
After a minute, a request for entrance appeared in Mr. Whale’s terminal. Once granted entry, his secretary opened the door and paused enough to give her boss a respectful nod, entered, elegantly carrying herself even as she balanced a tray full of snacks and drinks for the two men.
“By your leave, sir,” she said, raising an eyebrow and winking at him, to which Mr. Whale replied with a nod of gratitude. Turning to leave, she looked at the scientist who had been watching her like a hawk the entire time.
“Doctor,” she said in the same polite, friendly tone, nodding at him before slipping out. Turning his attention back towards his superior, he noted how the man seemed more relaxed after seeing the woman.
“Well, let’s get down to business,” the scientist said as he poured himself a cup of soda. “As you know, the great discovery I referred to was about Subject 444’s incredulous increase in power and I believe I’ll be able to find the source of his newfound strength. Despite his claimed hate for us, he was willing to give genetic samples for us to study,” the doctor explained, taking a sip of his drink.
“After having a look, I arrived at a hypothetical conclusion that the creation of a ‘Limit Break’ serum would be possible, using the same enzymes and substances present in his blood that weren’t there before, to force a state of being like what he experienced, hopefully increasing the target’s own powers,” Dr. Gacha said, waiting to see if his boss had questions about his explanation.
“Can this method apply to any child that has already awakened?” Mr. Whale asked.
The scientist shook his head. “It’s too early to make assumptions, for all we know, it might only work on him. More in-depth studies are necessary, but so far, I am optimistic in finding a useful application for this discovery,” Dr. Gacha explained.
“I would like you to direct as much personnel as needed for that line of research. Dr. Gacha, your reasoning is sound, and I like the direction this project will take if your research proves fruitful.” The businessman set his empty cup down on the table. “We have much to gain from that possibility, can you imagine the monsters those children will be once they reach their full potential? We’ll have an army that could single-handedly take over the entire world and even the Creator would have to respect that.”
“Now,” Mr. Whale continued, “I have a proposition, one I’ve been contemplating since the project started and we saw results, but it always stayed a low priority… until now.”
“Concerning genetics, science is not my area of expertise, I only really know the basics, but what do you think about the possibility of mass cloning? Starting with clones of that child, you could make it so they are already awakened and in possession of that ‘Limit Break.’ We could completely skip the first phases of the project and go straight to the most important ones, wouldn’t we save a lot of time that way?” Mr. Whale asked, which made Dr. Gacha blink in surprise.
“Hmm… I must admit, Mr. Whale, sometimes an outsider’s perspective can be useful,” the head scientist said with approval, face still neutral as he pondered his boss’s suggestion. “If we can find out how to properly clone each of the strongest subjects… If we resort to cloning, the secrecy of the project would be kept, the loyalty of the subjects would gradually increase as more and more trustworthy ones are born, not to mention it would be much easier than to start from scratch every time.” The scientist’s face changed the slightest into one of wonder as he considered the possibilities.
“Very well. I will officially request a small increase in budget for the creation of two additional science teams. A smaller one led by me, whose focus will be on engineering a special serum that should, in theory, give the same level of power boost that Subject 444 experienced, and a larger group whose task will be set on researching the existing subjects’ genes to make an embryo with those powers activated, and engineer cloning facilities to facilitate the study and production of future clones,” Dr. Gacha said, earning a nod from Mr. Whale, who had started typing on the console in his desk.
“Put this larger budget to good use, you may do as you wish as long as you get results, for now… We need to discuss the next phase of the current project, I have ideas on how we can try to get the children on our side…” Mr. Whale said, beginning his own plans for the other topic of their meeting. Dr. Gacha listened intently to the man’s explanations, adding his own expertise when he felt it needed it or asking questions when necessary. They already had a plan down for the next step, but it never hurt to be extra prepared.
2
After Dr. Gacha excused himself to focus on his own projects, Mr. Whale exhaled as he pondered the fate of Project R.N.G. At first, it used to be a mere fancy of thought, an increasingly desperate worry about humanity’s future, but nothing much he really could do about it. Until he met Dr. Gacha, that is.
It had been several years ago, way before Project R.N.G. was put into motion.
Mr. Whale was a wealthy businessman, part of the worldwide GACHA Conglomerate, however, at an area unrelated to his current one of top-secret scientific research. The GACHA Conglomerate is a huge company, having stakes in businesses all across the globe.
Mr. Whale had climbed all the way up the entertainment sector of the company, working tirelessly so that he maximized the company’s earnings and the citizens got the best entertainment money could produce. Movie theaters, amusement parks, film production, video game consoles, virtual reality, investments in cultural festivals, music and even more… exotic, but still within the law, forms of entertainment. He had dedicated himself to make sure his area of the company excelled, and he liked to believe that he did a great job as he landed himself a position on the Board, which consisted of the owners of the GACHA Conglomerate.
However, even as he was living a happy, fun, and wealthy life, he still couldn’t help but worry. As a child, he was told about the Creator, Luni, the beautiful but powerful being that lived on the moon who had created and protected their universe. Many revered her as a goddess even when she declared that praying to her was a waste of faith as she could not hear prayers.
As he grew up, many class lectures focused on everything humanity knew about their Creator, how she came to be, how she introduced herself to the world, the times she saved humanity from great catastrophes and, her personality—how not to offend her and what Luni liked and disliked. Because of those classes, Mr. Whale always held a fear, deep down, of her turning on them and destroying everything the humans worked for.
And it would be easy, too, for even the strongest human being on their planet knows they wouldn’t stand a chance against her, even if they threw all their technological might, their armies, their weapons of mass destruction, their strongest mages and super humans and even creatures of legend… It would do nothing but annoy her further. It was a sobering thought to know their combined power would amount to next to nothing against her if she ever got rid of humanity.
He had studied her behavior over the last few millennia, ever since she had revealed her existence to the world in a historic occurrence that had marked the start of the New Age. Back then, she had been pleasant and often came down to explain many things to humanity—amongst them, the laws of science and a few universal truths. It was interesting to Mr. Whale that she always matched her clothes with the current fashions so her clothes during those first appearances seemed much more divine and regal than the casual set she seemed to prefer these days.
Many gods and goddesses had foolishly challenged her during the first century, claiming that she was nothing but a farce. They were all put in their place. For most, a simple display of power, the sheer might of a Creator was enough to persuade them. Others, however, blindly tried to kill her and were met with the
ir own doom. It surprised the humans that actual gods—beings so far above them that the very nature and laws of the world obeyed them—had no chance against Luni, either.
That was another interesting piece of their history. Humanity had always believed until then that the gods were beings of ultimate power who were immaterial and almost never graced the world with their presence, and when they did, it would be with some physical medium, like an animal or plant. The sudden appearance of the ultimate being, plus the many gods who challenged her and got destroyed had been a turning point for civilization. Many religions disappeared, many countries rioted, and some went to war over the mere existence of a being so powerful.
Many humans had, during this chaotic period, tried to beg the Creator for aid in their wars or to stop it somehow, but she had declared that she would never interfere in wars between citizens, saying they needed to rely and have faith in their own strength rather than relying on hers. She would protect them against cosmic threats they had no chance of beating but would not interfere in wars.
When the battling ceased, thanks to many treaties and exhaustion, the world finally knew peace. Humans and the many other species lived in harmony for the past four millennia. There were many, many times where the world came close to its end and the wars started all over again, but some way, somehow, everything always turned out all right. During those periods of peace, Luni made many appearances, almost always to provide entertainment.
They soon discovered that she loved to amuse people—making them smile, laugh, and struck speechless in awe for her. For over two millennia, she dominated the entertainment sector of the world. Most people would rather expect her next move than think about their own lives, it was a source of escapism for many and Luni always had a huge grin on her face when performing her shows.
To the keen historic, however, they would quickly notice a pattern in her behavior. As the years went by, many conflicts happened because of her existence and involvement. People would openly discuss her, both in favor and against, and as humanity’s own technology and imagination grew, Luni’s presence in entertainment seemed to lessen. Other species who were content with staying connected with nature and only using human technology as a necessity flocked to the human cities to see newer forms of entertainment.
That seemed to frustrate the Creator despite knowing her mere existence kept her in the top level of popularity, both good and bad worldwide. With the Internet, she soon created blogs and humanity had access to what was essentially a diary of her life, and the true reason for her increasing frustration was clear to those who cared to search for it.
Her job was not just the creator of their world, the protector of a single planet, but rather, of the entire universe. Humanity learned early on that the universe was a very enormous place, which was a severe underestimation. Luni’s attention was always turned to the most distant corners of the universe, as she had once declared in a post about what her ‘job’ entails. Whenever she described a massive threat, she always sounded angry and agitated, which is even more obvious during her video posts.
There were many posts where she is in a good mood, many of them discussed her personal assistant, the succubus known as Lilith, while the rest described games, ideas, philosophies, and new creations she thought would be useful for humanity. However, the number of those positive posts were decreasing in relation to her neutral or agitated ones. To make matters more worrisome, it had been roughly five years since she last made an appearance. She used to appear regularly—going to festivals, visiting hospitals, beaches, game events… Now she spent all her time rolled up on the moon.
For someone like Mr. Whale who is deeply fearful of the Creator, that was a bad sign. A normal human might snap, yell, break things and in the worst of cases, become physically violent. He always tried to make sure his employees had plenty of downtime to avoid this happening and he was generally successful in preventing stress tantrums. Imagining what a Creator might do if they snap from stress, however… It was a frightening thought.
He started reaching out to others, both on social media and in his private and business life. On his own blogs, he occasionally made posts showing concern for Luni’s state of mind and what would happen if she were to ever snap from stress. In his private life he tried searching for countermeasures, reaching out to the government, business rivals and even mercenary companies to see if anything could be done to stop her if she ever went on a rampage.
When those approaches yielded nothing fruitful, he reached out to the other directors of the GACHA Conglomerate, knowing full well that if anyone had any countermeasure for a rogue Creator, it would likely be the military-tech branch. That meeting had resulted in some other directors laughing at him, calling him paranoid, but once he presented his proof, likening it to a normal human and how probable it was for them to snap once a certain threshold passed, this thing became more serious.
To his disappointment, however, all that it had accomplished was ruining everyone’s day. The military branch leader declared that even with their strongest weapons they couldn’t even scratch Luni. He had explained that the best they could hope to accomplish was a battle of attrition: throwing everything they had at her and hope it bought enough time to evacuate civilians and hopefully bring the Creator back to her senses. Even with powerful mages, the chances they had of surviving against a Creator’s manipulation of reality were very slim.
That meeting had ended with a somber tone, everyone praying that something like that never happened. It had left a bad taste in Mr. Whale’s mouth, knowing that the entire universe’s continued existence depended on the ultimate being’s mood swings.
It should have been easy for him, since he was in charge of the entertainment branch of the company, to come up with ways that Luni could relieve her stress, but aside from the occasional blog posts, she had ceased contact with the people.
What was strange was that Luni’s assistant also stopped answering messages. In the past, when Luni wasn’t available to manage her social accounts, the succubus often took care of it instead. She maintained her own social media, filled with provocative content, including running a small side business of love advice for couples. Lilith had a very large fan base of her own, mostly because of her nature and openness to share just about anything.
Lilith had made succubuses famous, the previous stigma and hatred towards the demonic species was completely gone by end of the year 1500. She was known to be even more social than her master. The fact she went silent as well only added to his worry that something was deeply wrong and would eventually reach them.
He bought a large plot of land and prepared for the worst even though he knew it would amount to nothing since Luni’s inevitable blowup would impact the whole planet. It was one of the darkest periods of his life. Because he could not find a way, any way to counter the Creator in case she went mad, he resigned to a life of anxiety and expected the worst. It was like nothing he did mattered anymore; all of his accomplishments were just a temporary relief from the certain doom that soon would claim their world. However, even in the pits of his depression, he never gave up his search and eventually, something miraculous happened.
Dr. Gacha came into his life.
It had almost seemed like a joke; a mysterious scientist with their company’s same name appearing out of a dark alley and offering him the opportunity of a lifetime: a way to stop Luni, a countermeasure, a way out. All that the proclaimed scientist required was access to ridiculous amounts of funding, staff both professional and amoral enough to not care about any experiments done, and a facility to work his theory out.
As proof for his concept of ‘hidden genetic power,’ he presented Mr. Whale his pet, a white kitten with gold eyes. The businessman was doubtful of his claims, but the stone-faced doctor merely replied that his daughter, as he called the cat, could defeat entire armies on her own, easily equaling and eventually surpassing the strongest warriors of the world.
Then the cat turned into
a feline-girl and made lightning surround her body. That convinced him that the doctor’s vision had truth to it, but he needed to test it out first—you never accept a business deal without insurance and so, to ensure that the doctor was not just an overly proud dad, he went to the strongest mercenary band he knew of, asked for their twenty strongest members and told them to beat up the feline.
The mercenaries laughed and asked if he was serious, despite the large sum of money he offered. They thought Mr. Whale had finally gone insane from his paranoia but complied. They met the cat, Shiro, in her animal form and laughed again. When she transformed and fried the first mercenary with a bolt of lightning, they didn’t find the situation very funny anymore.
The demonstration ended as the last mercenary fell to the ground, writhing in pain. The girl smiled triumphantly at her father. She hadn’t even broken a sweat, in fact, it looked like she was just getting started. The mercenaries had resentfully given the girl their respects and retired with their money.
Dr. Gacha then explained the rest of his reasoning. His plan was to make an entire army of hundreds of thousands of people who had undergone the ‘awakening’ as he seemed to call it.
Mr. Whale used the large plot of land he had bought for the initial lab where Dr. Gacha conducted his beginning experiments, funding it with his own money. After results began to pour in, he presented it to the director’s board, got even more funding and the rest is history. The gigantic facility that is the HQ of Project R.N.G. is proof of the efforts they went through to get the positive results they did… Regardless of the means they used to arrive at them.
If everything worked out as planned, then they would have the means of possibly stopping the Creator when she eventually snapped, they could protect not just humanity, but the entire world, possibly even the entire universe. No matter the costs, they would be successful. The future depended on them.