Project Genesis

Project Genesis, they called it. Names like that were always the fault of someone who was religious or who read too much fiction. Genesis, meaning 'origin', because this project was going to be the origin of new life as humanity knew it. Frankly, Mary thought it was all very over the top and it would all be buried in the annals of history as a failure. Trying to edit the human genome to eradicate the propensity for cancer was no mean feat, and after all these years of failure, Mary had pretty much given up. She had just been in yet another meeting with the funding board, who were basically at the point of cutting the funds for good. Most of her colleagues had already quit and moved on to other things. In fact, the only people left were her long time friend and fellow mad-man Victor, and some shady government agent called Jones who had wanted to use her research to effectively weaponise cancer. Jones was kept around because he was, now, the only one left who funded this whole thing. "It's funny," Mary was saying to Victor as they sat in their lab chain-smoking and looking at a giant petri dish containing their latest failure. "Most of what we create ends up looking like a giant cancer." The three foot high glass dome contained a gelatinous white blob that jiggled about. Another donated fetus, wasted.

"Why're you talking all weird?" Mary scolded Victor, flinging a pen at him and scowling. She was only half joking. "We're all out of funding because you smoke those damn Cubans like some kind of movie character... But you're right, one more stimulus for the road," she said, getting to her feet and straightening out her skirt. It was too tight but she was too stubborn to admit she wasn't a svelte youth anymore. "Ol' blobby here looks like it's raring to go." The blob was still jiggling about.

"Nah, I'm good," Mary replied, shaking her head at both Victor and the jiggly-puff ball in the petri dish. "I still have to find that malt whisky you hid, remember? It's needed right now." She said her goodbyes to Victor, then grabbed the whisky bottle which she had told Victor she never found, and went to look at her final creation. She had never cared about any of the live human trials they'd been doing - her moral compass was a bit askew - but all of a sudden she wondered if this thing could feel anything at all. "Well, here's to death," said Mary glumly, holding up the bottle and taking a swig. "Your death, my career's death, and the continuing death of countless humans because of a problem we couldn't fix."

Mary wasn't some soft teen who got drunk off of a couple of sips of whisky. If anything, at her age, it just made her drowsy, with the cigarettes, calming her into further sleepiness. Heh, she hadn't had a waking dream since she was young, but she could have sworn that blobby was growing arms and legs and a really giant... "Holy shit," yelped Mary as she stumbled backwards and fell on her ass. "Holy shit... Holy shit... Holy shit!" Was this really happening? Had she finally lost her marbles?!

Mary's eyes widened and she shirked away from whatever this thing was. "Jesus Christ... You're ugly," she squawked, scrabbling around for a scalpel and holding it out to the little creature. Oh no, had her experiments led to the creation of an abomination? Though, after she got used to its horribly placid skin and bloody red eyes, it was... Kind of cute. But that was probably just her ovaries screaming at her. Apart from those features, and the tail, it certainly resembled a normal human baby...

Oh Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, her ovaries were screeching at her to pick the baby up and smother it with coochy coochy coos. Mary got a strange feeling that those huge, gooey eyes were just some kind of trick, as they were at odds with the rest of her body. Oh, but her limbs had that adorable stumpy pudginess of a young bairn. Ugh, she couldn't decide what to do. With the scalpel held up high in one hand, the other reach over and prodded the creature's leg. It's skin was a little firmer, but the flesh beneath felt squidgy just like a baby.

Mary was horrified, and froze up thinking what to do. This discovery was... Mind blowing. She had to record everything down, but she got the feeling that none of this should be seen by anyone else, in case... Well, she'd seen plenty of movies and shows where scientific freaks had been horribly used by bad people. Like Eleven from Stranger Things. So she'd have to write this whole thing down - after she stopped it crying. "Hey~," she cooed as gently as she could, taking her hands away from the creature. "It's okay, uh, l-little one. Don't cry. Please?" She was terrible at baby speak.

Mary was starting to think less about recording this thing's behaviour and more about terminating it now, before anyone else found out. She had already long given up on her project being a success, and now this thing was monstrous and didn't even have anything to do with curing cancer. Her life's work was staring her in the face and it was all wrong. She'd have to do it quickly, before she had any regrets but more importantly, before the creature could harm her with that freakish tail of its. Quickly, she grabbed a can of gas and air with a mask, and put the mask over the baby's face. No, the creature's face. She may be about to kill an infant but she wasn't cruel. As it wiggled, Mary had to hold it still with her free hand clasping the creature's head. Oh, the top of its head was soft with downy baby hairs... "Shit," Mary cursed, taking the mask away and staring down at a now slightly drowsy baby. How could she think of killing something so small and soft?

Wow, this thing was incredibly mobile for a baby. The fact that just before it couldn't even sit up, and now it was crawling away despite being a bit doped out was fascinating. Mary would note all of this down, but not until she'd calmed it down and won its trust. She walked around to the other side of the table and knelt down until she was on eye level with it - with her, she realised, having seen it move around. "Hey there," she said as softly as she could with her raspy smoker's voice. "I'm sorry about that. Won't happen again. Okay?" She put her hands on the edge of the table and waggled her fingers. Babies liked waggling fingers, right?

Mary kept waggling her fingers, and even smiled. The baby was being... Adorable. Its whole being was adorable, despite the tails and scales, and those freaky red irises. When she had clasped Mary's finger in her hand, Mary felt a strange thrill of delight flutter in her heart. Such tiny, squishy hands, with perfectly shaped nails, and a not-so-surprisingly strong grip. "We got off to a bad start," she murmured, staring into the little girl's eyes. "I'm sorry. My name's Mary."

Mary made sure to move slowly, and kept checking the girl's incredibly expressive face for signs of fear, as she put her free hand around behind her and gently scooped her up. She fit so perfectly into the crook of her arm... Despite having just been thinking that she should write her discoveries down rather than film them, Mary was thinking her scribbles wouldn't quite have the same impact as filming it. She remembered she and Victor had bought a camera that they were specifically going to use for when their experiments were successful, but it had gone unused. She went to the cupboard where it was and fished it out from behind the coffee mugs and instant noodle pots. It was still in the box, an older model, and was covered in dust that plumed all over both of them as she got it out. Mary coughed, making the baby bounce a bit.

"Sorry," mumbled Mary, fumbling with the camera box and getting it set up. It was a hassle to do it with one arm, and then there were no batteries so she had to go and fish those out of somewhere. She clambered under a desk and bumped her head on the way back out, but now she had a working, if dusty, camera. She sat down at her desk, clearing away the clutter of empty food packets, and set up the camera. As it started recording, she cleared her throat and held the baby a bit more vertically. "Uhh... Th-the date is the 13th of May, 2025. Heh, it's a Friday. Um... A-after years of trial and error, of failures, project genesis has stumbled upon something... Unknown." She tilted the baby slightly to make her more clear to the camera. She began to explain what she and Vince had done to produce the creature, and how she had been reacting so far. "Whether or not this can be seen as a success for project genesis is unsure as of now," she concluded, looking down at the baby with doughy eyes. "But what I do know is that we are now entering a realm unknown to science and mankind. A true genesis... Jenny." She snort-laughed and reached over to turn the camera off, but not before it recorded her mumbling, "what am I getting myself into?"

"Ack!" Mary spluttered, getting up quickly and gently bouncing Jenny in her arms. "H-hey there, Jenny. Jenny!" she said, quite unsure what to do. Was she tired? Hungry? Thirsty? What?!