Utopia - Playing God

Playing God
third in the Utopia series

The young recruit straightened his uniform as they entered the veterinarian building.  The man guiding them took them to the office and began explaining the purpose of this program.  There were papers everywhere and books open and stacked on top of one another, but besides the group of new recruits the office was empty.

The veterinarian recruit quickly raised his hand, “Do we get to see the animals, sir?”

Their guide started at the interruption, mostly because he had not expected to hear the heavily accented vowels of the Northernmost Quarter from a Scientific Research Corps cadet.  “Yes, if you’d like.”  As they entered the main part of the building the guide explained, “Today is one of the more exciting days here at the animal medical center.  One of the females is expected to have a highly anticipated cub, possibly the closest to the first living Saber-tooth Tiger this world has seen in a billion years.”

The recruit curiously approached a group of officers gathered around a small room’s entrance as the guide droned on about the program.  He inserted himself into the group, adjusting his glasses nervously.  Then he saw the most beautiful cat he’d ever seen.  She was long and lean and golden, though she was damp with sweat.  Her eyes were a reddish brown and they looked suspiciously on the intruders.  Her two canine teeth did not quite fit in her mouth, indicating the genetic alteration that had been taking place.

An older man picked up something from her side and she gave a low growl, but it was just a warning.  She soon laid her head back down.  The man turned and the recruit recognized him as the head vet.  “Captain Keag Overstreet, it’s a pleasure to meet you,” the recruit beamed and extended a hand.

Instead of shaking his hand, Captain Overstreet handed him the small bundle he was carrying, “You must be the new vet.  I read your file, Private Skapensen.  You’re one of the most promising recruits they’ve sent me yet.”  Skapensen grinned at the compliment, then looked down at the wriggling thing in his arms.  It was a newborn cub.  Her green eyes were barely open, but her nose sniffed for the familiar smell of her mother.  Instead she smelled the peculiar being holding her and wimpered.  Her canine teeth were quite large and curved like the cruel scimitars of ancient times, but they looked quite out of place on her adorable kitty face.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, too,” he addressed the furry thing.  The scientists in the doorway looked on with a mix of jealousy and confusion at the private’s behavior.  “What’s her name?” he asked.

The Captain laughed, “She hasn’t got one.  I’ll give you the honor.”

Skapensen held her up, so he could see what he might name her, instead he noticed the way her nose twitched, making her whiskers bounce.  What to name a Saber?  How about something old-school, like, “Leah!” he exclaimed.

Captain Forrest Skapensen was now printed on the door of the head veterinarian’s office.  The man himself was seated inside; stacks of papers littering his desk, his eyes wandering to the door to where the animals are, and his hand clutching his thick blond curls.

He sighed and turned his attention back to his paperwork.  His pen bounced in his hand.  Leah and Sergeant Patricks should be back from the research lab soon.  Headquarters had ordered that she undergo some tests before they release her into the wild.  Forrest’s head sank down onto his forearm which rested on his desk.  He would miss Leah, it was as if he had to send his daughter to college far away.  He would probably never see her again.  At least he would be able to raise her cub, Dagger.  He smiled at the thought.  The day he was born, one of the privates had remarked that sabers had dagger-breath.  That’s what they all called the cub now.  But he had to get the paperwork done.  He lifted his head and forced his attention to focus on the empty blanks and illegible writing.

Suddenly a private burst through the door, “Forrest!”

Forrest cleared his throat; the private was forgetting protocol.

The private straightened his uniform and stood at attention, “Captain Skaper-enson, sir!”

The captain smiled at how the private stumbled over his name, “At ease, private.  What do you have to report?”

The private forgot to be at ease, “Sergeant Patricks and Leah are back, sir.”

Forrest jumped up from his desk, bounding past the private and through the door.  It was no wonder his privates were always forgetting protocol.  “Sergeant!  How’d she do?”

Sergeant Patricks snapped to attention, but Forrest sped past him to the cage where Leah was.  She was asleep, her breathing was uneven due to the sedatives, but otherwise she looked fine.  “The brass said they completed all the tests and they give you their compliments on her care,” the sergeant reported, but then paused, trying to swallow his nervousness.

Captain Skapensen looked at the sergeant’s face and knew he had bad news.  “Anything else?” he questioned, trying to get Sergeant Patricks to spit it out already.

“They release her this afternoon.”

A grave silence fell, interrupted only by Leah’s heavy breathing.  This was the last time any of them would get to see her.  Forrest struggled to keep the tears inside his eyes.  All the other SRC members held their breath; they knew how much the cat meant to Captain Skapensen.  Forrest knelt down beside the cage and stuck his hand in, against protocol, but he didn’t care.  He laid his hand on her head, she just barely stirred from her sleep, almost acknowledging his presence.  One of the tears escaped, but he quickly brushed it away and stood.  He coughed to remind everyone that there was work to be done and turned back toward his office.  He needed to get the paperwork done and off his desk before the brass showed up to take her away.

Forrest watched the red blip on the screen as he had every day since they’d given it to him.  The officers at headquarters had gotten tired of him constantly calling to ask where the saber was and if she was ok, so they had requisitioned a monitor for him to track her progress himself.  It was the simplest one they had and the map really meant nothing to him, for he had no real concept of the geography outside of the city, but the blinking red dot moving across the screen meant everything to him.  It meant she was still alive and moving.

He had a little bit of paperwork to finish before a check-up appointment that afternoon, so he turned his gaze from the monitor to his desk.  It was amazing, really, that they had been so annoyed by his pestering that they had spent money on something so high-tech as a screen with live uplink to headquarters.  Not much of the Science Station’s money was spent on the veterinarian’s office.  He laughed.  He had to do so much paperwork because of that attitude that it really shouldn’t have been funny.  When the paperwork was finally done, he stood to file it in the appropriate folder and briefly glanced at the tracking screen.  He started, grabbing the screen and pulling it across his desk to get a better look.

The red blip was gone, instead a red message flashed across the screen, “Error: Signal Lost.”  Forrest gasped and grabbed his telephone.

“What’s going on? Why is the signal gone?” he demanded.

The secretary at headquarters addressed him curtly, “Captain Skapensen, it’s under control.  Let headquarters handle it.”  He hadn’t needed an introduction, the secretary knew that peculiar accent all too well.

“I want to talk to the colonel!” he exclaimed.  “I want to know what’s going on.”

Another voice answered him, but it wasn’t the colonel, “Captain Skapensen, we’ve got it under control.  We’ll be sending out a team to find her.”

“I volunteer!  I want to be on the team.”

“We’ll keep you under consideration.”

“No, that’s not good enough.  Let me talk to the colonel!”  The man on the other end hung up.  Forrest frowned and slammed the phone back in place.  He then shuffled through a file and found a little used form, onto which he jotted some information.  He opened the door and called out into the building, “Sergeant Patricks!”  The name reverberated through the building, and soon the man appeared, eyes wide and gasping for breath.

“Sergeant, I’m going to headquarters.  You are granted temporary rank of Captain and will take charge of this office effective immediately,” Captain Skapensen grabbed his hat and keys for one of the jeeps.

Captain Skapensen hardly ever went to headquarters; he was usually more valuable at his station and would send a sergeant to most meetings.  You could see any of the buildings on the compound from anywhere inside the perimeter, but headquarters stood out.  It was glass paneled like a skyscraper in the city, while the other buildings were all simple buildings covered in siding.  They looked like houses from the old times when houses sprawled out around multiple cities in suburbs.  He pulled into the vehicle lot and turned his keys over to the lot patrol.  He strode into the building like he knew where he was going.  He was a captain and therefore had security clearance, but they wouldn’t be happy if they found out he didn’t have orders to be there.  The large conference room where the top brass met could be found without too much trouble, and he went straight in.  The lights were low and huge maps of blinking lights lit up the walls.  He almost walked into another captain.

“Skapensen? What the hell are you doing here?” the captain addressed him abruptly. 

Skapensen was taken aback for a second.  He never let his men use any kind of obscenities when speaking in his office, not even minor ones.  He regained his muster and replied, “I’m here to volunteer for the saber search detail.”

The other captain sighed and threw up his hands, but before he could speak, big booming laughter filled the room.  Colonel Kiriakou Evans approached the two captains.  “We were wondering how long it was going to take you to get down here, Captain Skapensen.”

Captain Skapensen saluted his superior officer.  The two men, though they stood about the same height, were about as different as one could imagine.  The colonel’s uniform fit his broad shoulders and muscular arms exactly according to regulation, but the thin, almost spidery frame of the captain made his uniform hang at odd angles.  His pale skin, so pale it was almost purple in the artificial light, was completely opposite of the colonel’s dark complexion, from which his smile flashed like diamonds encased in obsidian.  “As you were, Captain.”

“Sir, I could be very useful to you.  I know the saber, and you need a veterinarian and medical officer along, too.”

The colonel held up his hand and shook his head, “Captain, we know your qualifications, and that’s why we have accepted your application to the team.”

Forrest’s smile looked as if it was going to pop off his face.  The other captain’s jaw dropped.  Forrest grabbed Colonel Evans’ hand and shook it vigorously, “Thank you very much, sir!”

The team was to leave in the morning and consisted of four people: Captain Forrest Skapensen veterinarian/medical officer, Sergeant Crowe Johnson animal movement expert, the other captain (an electronics expert named Ramsay Tavisham), and Major Levinia Farrar security/sharpshooter officer.  They had a briefing that night where the colonel explained to them their priorities on the mission, “Your number one priority, regardless of the goals of this mission, is to stay alive.  No one is safe in the wild.  The cat will be ruthless and will not hesitate to kill you.”

Skapenson’s hand shot up, “Sir!  In my experience with the sabers and their lion ancestors, they will only attack creatures human sized or larger when provoked.  I think the way we have the mission organized, we will not have any problems with attacks from Leah.”

“This is not just one of your cats, Captain.  Before release, every animal is altered from the docility that they learn in captivity to a more feral attitude more suited for life on the outside.  Please, do not interrupt me again.”

Forrest’s eyebrows furrowed as he slumped down into his chair.  Leah was his cat, and she would recognize him, wouldn’t she?  “Every animal is altered” didn’t sit well with him, and he wondered if there was something they weren’t telling him, something that the higher-ups in the government were not telling about life in the wild.  He tried to shrug it off that evening after the briefing.  He sat in headquarters mess hall with the rest of the team, but the nagging thoughts in his mind kept him from their conversation.  He also did not appreciate Captain Tavisham’s foul language.  When they were driving across the vast plains toward the location of Leah’s last blip, the strange feelings seemed to fill the expanse around him.

By the time they found the first evidence of Leah, Forrest had regained his usual excitement for the task at hand.  Leah had taken down an elderly buffalo and had left the extra meat to the coyotes and vultures.  It was pretty normal for a young cat of Leah’s size, and Forrest was pretty happy that his girl was doing so well out by herself.

They were able to track her fairly well, and Sergeant Johnson said they would catch up to her in a matter of days.  By the end of the fourth day, nothing of much excitement had happened, except that Forrest was thrilled to get to see this much of the natural environment.  As the sun was setting, they found evidence of another kill site.  Major Farrar suggested that they set up camp a little ways off in a thicker stand of trees for protection.  She and Tavisham took the jeep to set up for the night while Skapensen and Johnson investigated the kill site.

“She stopped here alright, but I don’t think this is her kill,” Crowe remarked as he stood from some marks he saw that Forrest couldn’t see in the dimming light.  “If I didn’t know any better, I’d say it was human.”

“The prey?” Skapensen’s eyes widened in horror.

“No, the killer.”

Skapensen gasped.  If humans were out hunting, that meant, “Someone lives out here?”

“I didn’t think it was possible, but it sure seems that way.  See how most of the blood is there under that tree?”  Sergeant Johnson turned around in circles, excitedly pointing to new clues and explaining their significance.  “It’s so obvious, I should have seen it immediately; but I was so sure that there was no human habitation outside the city.”

Forrest thought about the kind of people that would brave this environment every day.  Looking through the trees at the sun as it lowered toward the horizon, he decided that though this place was dangerous it must be an amazing place to make one’s home.  A strong breeze blew from the south and large black clouds encroached on the flaming sunset, painting exactly the irony of beauty and danger that made the wild so exciting.  “We should get to camp before dark,” he pondered aloud.

“You’re right, let’s go,” Sergeant Johnson agreed.

Soon the storm was full-blown and the team huddled in their tent, unable to sleep through the unfamiliar howling.  Thunder crashed in great sudden booms, and rain assaulted the tent from all sides.  Forrest listened to the fantastic noise.  Even though his education had explained to him how all the phenomenon that occurred in nature functioned, it was still extraordinary to see such things in action.

Suddenly, the whistle of the wind increased and another great noise joined it.  The sound seemed familiar to Forrest, but he couldn’t place it.

“Is that a train?” Tavisham asked.

“It can’t be,” Johnson replied, “We’re nowhere near any government train lines.”

It did sound like a train, and the noise approached as if they were on a subway platform and their train was arriving.  Forrest wondered how this could be, when he remembered one of the stories his grandfather told him about some of their ancestors from the old Great Plains.  “It’s a tornado!” he exclaimed.

“You sure?” panic sounded in Tavisham’s voice.

“Fairly positive,” Forrest replied.

“We’ve got to get out of this tent, then,” Farrar jumped out of her sleeping bag and headed for the door.  “otherwise this wind could pick us all up and dump us god knows where.”

They scrambled out of the tent and were immediately hit with the full force of the wind.  The Major’s hair flipped wildly about her face as she and Tavisham ran to the jeep to grab their most crucial supplies.  Johnson began trying to take the tent down, but soon it was blown away.  A green glow lit the sky and Forrest saw the tornado, a tall spinning spire of dark cloud that stood behind the trees.  The trees themselves crashed together in the fury of the wind.  As the branches began cracking and snapping off the trees, Forrest dived for a dip in the ground.  He landed flat on his face and put his hands on top of his head to protect himself from the fast-flying objects that littered the air.  The wind was not so strong down there, but he still felt it whipping across his backside.

The noise was terrific and the rain blew around in the fierce wind.  It seemed an eternity and with each breath, Forrest hoped that he would live to take another.  He felt the trees around him being uprooted and thrown to the ground.  When the wind finally began to subside, the rain began again as thick as a waterfall.  Forrest’s ditch quickly filled with water and he was forced to stand.  A wide, muddy path had been blazed beside him, and it seemed that it was truly a miracle that he hadn’t been killed by a falling tree or flying branch.  A strip of the woods had been torn apart, but the twisted and mangled trees beside it were still difficult to see through the pouring rain.

Johnson appeared on the opposite side of the path, and Forrest followed Johnson in the general direction of the jeep.  Johnson’s uniform was ripped and bloody in several places, and the thick rain obscured him as he jogged toward the jeep.  Forrest trained his attention on the ground in front of him.  As he went to step over yet another fallen tree, he noticed a red coloration in the puddles around it.  He paused and almost stumbled over backwards when he saw that it was Major Farrar.  Her head was bloodied and her neck was twisted to an odd angle.  There was nothing Forrest could do, for she was already dead.

A cry of agony and the Sergeant’s voice calling his name brought Forrest to the jeep.  A gigantic tree had crushed the back side of the jeep and Tavisham’s legs were pinned underneath the two.

“Get me out of here!” Tavisham screamed as Johnson tried in vain to calm him down.

Forrest bent over Tavisham to assess the damage.  “Get the first aid kit, if you can,” Forrest ordered the sergeant.  Tavisham’s left leg wasn’t too bad, cut off the branch that rested just above the knee and it would survive; but the right was almost completely severed by the twisted metal of the jeep that had cracked the bone about halfway up the shin.  His thoughts were interrupted by a short startled scream.  Tavisham panicked and screamed out every obscenity he could muster.  The last thing Forrest had been expecting to see at that moment stood over Sergeant Johnson’s fallen form.  She had gone for the jugular and blood trickled down her fangs.

“Leah?” it was a whisper among screams of agony, like a snowflake falling in a wildfire – crisp, refreshing.  The green blaze in her eyes may have flickered with recognition; but any acknowledgment of her former friend was soon gone with a sizzle, the vapor only adding to the smoke from the fire in her eyes.  She lunged in Forrest’s direction and he pressed himself against the tree.  The fierce saber slashed her victim mercilessly.  Forrest stumbled back from the carnage as Tavisham’s life was torn from his trapped body.  Then he climbed over the tree and left as quickly as he could.  His Leah was as good as dead.  Whatever rabid monster the government had turned her into had completely devoured the calm, collected tigress he once cared for.  Heartbroken and alone, Forrest just wanted to curl in a ball and cry; but he couldn’t.  He would find the people who lived here and warn them about Leah, the saber-tooth tiger.

The rain let up and the forest slowly crawled out of darkness into the morning.  Forrest soon found himself on the edge of a clearing. A small establishment of little log huts and animal hide tents occupied the space and the wind damage was apparent, but not devastating.  He heard voices coming from the tents father along.  He carefully approached the first little log cabin.

“I da!” a small voice exclaimed.  Forrest looked down and was confronted by a round-faced toddler.  “pwess-se?” he asked, extending a small mud pie in his tiny hands.

Forrest smiled, “Is that for me?  Thank you very much!”  He knelt down and accepted the present as the child giggled, his brown eyes sparkling with delight.  When Forrest looked up, a spear-head pointed at his face and several people had gathered around.

“Tobias, go to mommy,” the red-head girl wielding the spear gently commanded.  The boy wobbled over to a young lady whose dark features mirrored her son’s and whose rounded belly told that the young one would soon have a littler sibling.

“What are you doing here?” a gruff voice demanded, then the big man threw his hands up in the air and shouted to no one in particular, “and how did he get past our perimeter?”

“He’s a spy from the government!” a shifty woman accused, the pressure of her own spear causing Forrest to jump up.

“No, no, that’s not why I’m here,” he could feel their penetrating eyes trying to see the truth.  After he’d explained to them what had happened, as simply and as favoring to himself as possible, the sharp stone spear was handed off to a bent old man whose eyes stared at Forrest from their hiding spot behind his bushy grey eyebrows as the rest of the group drew away.  Only a few bits and pieces of their heated conversation reached Forrest, but it was soon apparent that they had decided to provide him shelter and a guide back to the science station in return for all his equipment.  The rest of the day was then spent retrieving the equipment and setting up a place for it to be stored.  He felt somewhat like a prisoner as he tried to help and he saw that the group functioned on a very strict merit-based hierarchy ranging from the strongest, smartest, and oldest down to feeble, young, and new.  As he watched the group dynamics he noticed a component missing.  In any society of a certain size there is always some form of medicine man or doctor, but he saw none.  When he asked about it, he was informed that their doctor had died a few months previously.  It was then that his work again became his passion.  He would be so invaluable to these people in every capacity possible that when he requested to stay and help the young mother deliver her child, they couldn’t refuse.

Coming eventually... Justifying the Mean