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Everything was so…. Middling.
It was hard to explain.
All the senses are, were, had always been, numbed. Monochromatic. The tangible equivalent of beige. Taste was bland and bitter. Sound was muted. Sight was blurred. Half of the time, touch was simply numb, and smell was nonexistent.
It was floating, it knew that much. All it had ever known was this oily liquid it had been submerged in for who knew how long. It also knew it was in some sort of… room? Maybe a container? Either way, it sometimes felt a part of its body slightly bump a cold, smooth barrier. It had determined the barrier surrounded it completely, and it was a very tight space.
The barrier was....clear. In the spotty waking moments it had had over time, it had caught glimpses of the space that was outside of the container. Its vision was warped, but it could see when one of the little moving things came close.
They all looked very similar, some had white bodies and legs, with little round heads. Some had larger, yellow bodies, with no discernable head. When they got close, they seemed to study it, standing still and tilting their heads back and forth for a while, but never touching the barrier, and never letting it out.
It hated them.
They had put it in here, when it was much smaller. It had ‘lived’ in this cramped space for what must have been a lifetime and a half, if constant wavering in and out of semi-consciousness could be called living. Sometimes, the yellow things dumped some kind of dark grey liquid in the container, which caused its insides to feel like they were burning. Sometimes it was struck with electricity. Whenever that happened, no matter how hard it tried, no matter how loudly its muddled brain screamed at it to flee, it couldn’t move. It had to sit and endure the pain.
It was going to leave soon.
Its senses may have been clouded, but its mind had been able to develop despite being unconscious half the time. The little white and yellow creatures had a structure, a schedule, one it had been studying and memorizing. It had learned when the best time would be to move, as it had been slowly learning how to move its body.
The first few times it had moved, some sort of alarm had been set off and it had been put to sleep for a while, but it knew better now. Now it would wait until there was a lull in the activity outside of the container, and then slightly move a new muscle. It had started from its tail, working its way up its body to its head, one muscle at a time, figuring out what itself felt like. It had discovered that its own body was long and coiled. It could feel a sort of fur or feathers that covered almost all of its skin, which ended in a large, fanned tail. Its face seemed to have some sort of giant hard covering, which it realized it could move slightly.
On the day it moved its heavy, loose lower jaw, the things outside the barrier noticed. It couldn’t hear them very well through the viscous liquid, but one that had happened to glance at it pointed with a limb and made a shrieking sound. The others all looked up, and they all started to scramble. It had been put to sleep soon after.
When it woke again, it was sluggishly astonished to see it was alone. The room outside of the barrier was empty,and dark, for the first time it could remember.
For a while, it simply contemplated this new situation. It stayed still, wary that there might be something waiting for it to move, ready to put it back under. After an age, it determined nothing was out there, and chanced a slight movement.
Nothing happened.
It moved a little more, this time it twitched one of its two stubby arms.
Again, nothing.
With a herculean effort, it tried to open its eyes fully. For the first time, its vision started to come into true focus, and it could see everything around it. In front of it was a semicircular array of white and grey boxes, with long black wires and blinking lights all over them.
The room around it seemed dark, but as it looked around, it was as if its eyes were providing a light of their own, pushing back the shadows and filling in the details of the room before it.
It could see in darkness.
It tried moving a bit more, and its entire body shifted, causing its head to flop around and hit the invisible barrier in front of it with a thunk.
Then, all hell broke loose.
Darkly colored creatures poured out of the doors to either side of the barrier, holding up small, complicated looking objects and pointing them at it. More of the things ran in after them, shouting and shrieking. The sound echoed around it, overwhelming it, and it started to struggle, although weakly.
So loud, so loud, so LOUD, LOUD LOUD LOUD LOUD LO-
Suddenly, it felt tired, its vision starting to swim. They were putting it to sleep again.
It watched them scramble and skitter around frantically as its mind started to darken.
Its last coherent thoughts repeated like a dirge.
It would escape.
It would.
It would tear this…. this place, this awful, hellish place it was trapped in…. to shreds.
And it. Would. Be. Free.
[CREATE NEW FILE?]
[Y]^ [N]
[NEW FILE CREATED]
[FILE TITLE: TITANUS]
[ENTRY SIX, DATE XX/XX/XXXX]
[It really is an absolutely gorgeous creature. And I don't just mean in genetic design, although I'll touch on that too. But it truly has earned its name. Titanus Aphroditois. A combination of the genus and species names of two of its largest gene donors, but to me it is completely new. It looks nothing like any of its genetic contributors, but that is to be expected.
Titanus' plumage is vibrant, ranging in color from violet, to a brilliant pink, to an almost vermilion red. Its vestigial hands are a remnant of its past iterations- we have declared them fit to keep, as amputating them could cause stress to its passive radioactive healing. Ah, I cannot talk about that or I may go on a tangent. It's a marvel of modern science, something out of my wildest dreams!
But I digress. Its size is impressive enough, but I believe its most impressive physical feature is its huge, double-reinforced skull. It is a mixture of a thick outer carapace, tipped with two sharp, lance-like horns, and huge, flat teeth. So different from the crushing jaws of the Bobbit worm- one of its genetic donors- yet that is exactly what its skull was evolved from. Titanus' vertebrae and spinal muscles are incredibly strong and flexible, allowing it to- theoretically -sit the front half of its body upright, and look around with ease. We've weighed its head to be almost a ton by itself.
Ah, if only I could one day be able to see it awake, and using its wonderful, strong body… but alas, we scientists are not going to be allowed to see it after it is grown to full size. Titanus will be sent to a military facility, and trained to obey the commands of the personnel there. For now, I am content with knowing I was part of the team that created it, just as Blake is… proud of raising that mangy ball of fur and static. I wonder, how could the director ever think this beautiful creature- this wonder of science -would ever go into a "rampage" as he puts it? No, I believe MML8 is unneeded. I can tell from the time I have spent creating Titanus, monitoring its brain activity, cultivating it to be fully grown, that it is a gentle giant. It means no harm, but sadly, that is what it was created for.
Oh, the time, the time! I've gotten distracted, it's time to check on Titanus again. The alarms are going off, but I believe it's just a drill.]
[END OF ENTRY]
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[POWERING DOWN….]
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