Immortality: The Ingenious Experiment of Director 24-T

I'm still not sure what the fuck I just watched. All I know is that it's not natural, and it's not right. One thing's for certain: never, EVER go to a website with a .prc extension. I'm grouping them all in this because I can't remember what the website was called, only that these videos were only a few of the several thousand on the site.

I'm getting ahead of myself. I need to start from the beginning.

I like science. I love to learn about biological structures and the various systems of the animal kingdom. So, you could say I'm even an aspiring biologist. I'm in several environmental groups which study the animals thriving in the grasslands of North America and South America. The animals I'm more interested in are mammals, the highest evolved species known to exist. So when a well-known animal biologist made the acquaintance of one of the mammal groups a few years ago, I naturally gravitated toward him.

This biologist, the Russian Terrence Talis Karrakowitz, wanted us to aid him in finding a bison. Simple enough; we occasionally visited Yellowstone to see them. Seeing one, he was immediately pleased and, after only five minutes of examination, we were promptly kicked out. Why so?

Because Dr. K 'milked' a bull.

The random act not only startled the park officials, but startled us. What the hell was he trying to accomplish? He was detained for all of two hours. The park not only let him keep his 'sample', they apologized to him for the inconvenience. The group and I had no idea what was going on, and weren't given an answer, since Dr. K immediately left without us. When we next heard from him, he was in Moscow and thanking us for our aid via letter. The man doesn't believe in computers.

Now that the back-story is out of the way, I can tell you the real story.

About a week ago, Dr. K sent me a letter:

"Hello, Daniel!

'Thanks to the sample I retrieved during my brief stint in America, I've been able to do tremendous furthering of my research into the evolutionary habits of mammals! This is my thanks to you and the entirity of (the environmental group involved) for your help in this!'



Hopefully you can share in my joy for my discoveries!

Scientifically, Dr. Terrence Talis Karrakowitz

Me being me, I went to this website, to see what I could have possibly helped. Evolutionary habits, he'd said. I hadn't had the faintest idea what he could've meant, but that piqued my curiousity some more.

The website, For the Good of Mankind (name not shared with the link, believe me I tried), was a collection of data from animals and plants and bacteria, organized into tabs of many, many different groups. Some entries appeared in multiple groups; ironically, I never found bison in my searching.

These groups were composed of plants, animals, and bacteria that shared similar qualities. One such group compared the distinct orders of animals to each other, suggesting some may be related to others more closely than is currently known. Many, many times the words "missing links" came up. At first, I thought Dr. K was going to start debating the existence of Bigfoot, but as the explaination went on, it was made clear that he was referring to several animals. Not Bigfoot, but missing links between similar genus of animals. For example, there is a link between the dog and the wolf that he talks about at great length. Many of these groups talk about their missing links, and what they are.

Are you confused yet? Wondering what the point is yet? I'm getting to that.

One tab, labeled 'TPSF-PT67' caught my eye. After reading about these supposed missing links for a while, I was willing to try something new. The title of the page is an abbreviation for 'The Philosopher's Stone Formula - Proto Type 67'. What the fuck, I thought to myself, what is going on? Does he think his work is the 'gold' of biology? I quickly realized that he didn't mean 'gold' as much as he meant 'transmutation'.

'The distinction between all life has been extended and extended over the course of eternity. Many theories have been presented as to where life started; God created it, the planet grew it, the Primordial Ooze, etc. The theory of evolution holds true to my mind. Too many similarities exist within beings for it to be ignored. Too many connections would have to be implied as coincidence. '

'How far back does life go? How far have species' of this planet come from the beginning? '

'I am a man of science. It is my goal to get to the bottom of this. TPSF will show me where I should look for the beginning of life.'

Holy shit. That's why he has this weird fascination with links between genus. He wants to move backwards through them, to find where it began...

But how? The tab had a video on it. ''A 37-hour long video. ''My curiousity had exceeded any previous boundary and I clicked on it.

The video showed a grey wolf, obviously pregnant and in labor. Over the growls and wimpers the wolf gave, Dr. K's voice spoke: "This wolf is a third-generation inheritor of the gene TPSF-PT67. Proving my theory true about the process of 'de-evolution', this wolf should give birth to a canis ignis, a previously-unacknowledged intermediate between the wolf and the dog." The wimpers continued, and I skipped around the video, watching as the wolf slowly gave birth to another hound-like animal. This animal had very small ears, as opposed to the wolf's adapted wider and bigger ears. The muzzle was slightly more elongated, and its shrieks sounded less like a wolf and more like...what exactly?

Dr. K's voice spoke again. "This 'de-evolution' proves that there is a common ancestor to life. The fact that my TPSF gene works the exact same way on every lifeform tested means that the effect, stripping away the adaptations that evolution has created, is targeting the same gene in each lifeform. I've finally tuned it so it doesn't eliminate the adaptation potential entirely, because when I do the latter, it eliminates the 'memory' of each previous adaptation, therefore eliminating the ability to 'de-evolve' in the creature's lineage. Also proving my 'common ancestor' breakthrough is the fact that each animal with its adaptation potential destroyed in this way with give birth to a stillborn, generic bundle of mass of 99.999% similarity, regardless of the germination method therein. Horses, elephants, komodo dragons, turkeys, frogs, even annelids and sponges! Always a single bundle of unrealized potential."

The video proceeded to show several of these bundles, each an amorphous blob unrelatable in form to the animal it came from. All were pictures, sparing me the process of watching how this stuff came out of a horse, much less a sponge.

"Therefore, Proto Type-67 is the perfect formula."

More videos afterward documented the progress of several lines of animals, though only several featured unknown or even extinct animals being re-realized. None got to any conclusion, some several hundred hours in length, as if Dr. K simply tacked the new onto the old.

But apparently he reached some conclusion.

On the aptly-named Conclusions tab, only three videos occupied the page. The first, oddly, was a documentary on aphids. The second, an explaination of the Primordial Ooze theory. The third, an oddly static-filled video.

After watching the first two, I watched the third. Dr. K's voice spoke, but very quietly. The camera was taping a small expanse, a little grove of some sort dotted with fruit-bearing trees. Unlike the other videos, where he spoke over the events happening, this video was recording him talking to...another person.

"Hello, Eve," Dr. K spoke. The person across from him was naked.

"Hello, Director."

"Please tell me what you are, Eve. Tell the people of my world what you are."

The woman, Eve, spoke directly to the camera. "I am the Director's crowning achievement. I am the result of the beginning of life." Slowly, it dawned upon me what I was watching.

"I am Eve, the first of my kind."

Dr. K had gone to the very beginning.

"I come from the hands of my creator, the Director."

He found the beginning of life. Except...

"What have I proven by your creation, Eve?"

"That there is no true 'beginning', only 'renewal'."

What?

"There is no beginning, and there is no end. There is only continuation."

My head began reeling. I couldn't process what was being implied here.

Dr. K proudly addressed the camera himself. "Yes, I, Terrence Talis Karrakowitz, have just found the beginning of life itself! Humanity is the end of the cycle, which will renew itself when our time is up!" He held up several pictures to the camera, each of a humanoid looking more and more primal until an ape-like human appeared. "Eve's 'progenitors' are what we see as ours! I've solved the mystery of life itself!"

The video ended, and my power went out. Due to an auto-clear feature on my computer, I can never go back to the site.

I'm still not sure what the fuck I just watched. All I know is that it's not natural, and it's not right. One thing's for certain: never, EVER go to a website with a .prc extension.