2024 June Post 01 - Synergy 00

I've decided to start a new series. This time, I'm going to try to write chapters to go along with the drawings, and doing them start to finish, so that the story unfolds as I post the pictures. Of course, if I find problems, misspellings, things I want to change, I will go back and edit the post in question.

Nothing sexy happening in this part just yet, merely setting the scene.

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The Monstrous Shall Inherit the Earth – Part three
Synergy

Characters, art, story ©2024 Meanybeany.

Chapter 0 – Prologue

The small board room was dark, save for the large screen showing wildly optimistic earnings projections. Four middle aged men sat quietly, listening to a much younger man with a receding hairline, who was reading his presentation from his phone awkwardly – clearly he hadn’t written it himself. The speaker was  Steven Bosoph, the son of one of the major shareholders.  Since taking an interest in bioengineering, Steven had rocketed up the corporate ladder despite lacking any formal qualifications. Recently, Steven had been put in charge of the ‘Applied Biosynthesis’ department of the Orgenexis company, by informal request of his family.

 “…and with your help finalizing the gene insertion, you can help me realize the potential of my discovery as well as increase your department’s profile.” Steven paused for a moment, scrolling down to make sure he had reached the end of his presentation, then he folded his hands and smiled, waiting for his employees to respond.

Two of the other men in the room, both wearing lab coats, had been looking at a technical readout of what Steven had called ‘his discovery’. A middle aged man with short hair breathed out smoke through his nose, keeping his filterless cigarette between his fingers while holding a small tablet with his other hand. With a gravely voice and skeptical tone he described it for others in the room.

“A protein that can initiate nuclear fusion by bringing specific atoms close enough together to allow quantum tunneling, bypassing the normal activation energy requirements. And It folds in multiple ways, allowing different fusion reactions even. All… aneutronic, any and all gamma radiation absorbed, everything converted into chemical energy…” The man dropped the tablet dismissively, letting it clatter on the hard smooth table. “And… you ‘discovered’ this? How?”

Steven continued smiling. “Yes. And that’s… classified.”

The scientist with the gravely voice exchanged glances with the man across the table from him, another scientist, before addressing Steven again. “These are synthetic proteins. Based on the markers, I would say this was made by our competitors at InterSyn… but this is far ahead of anything we have. If they’re really this far ahead, we’re boned.”

Steven nodded. “But, this being top secret, it would have been developed without filing a patent. If we can implement it first, we can claim patent and bring it to market. That’s why I need you to make this work before the next Platinum Fair. We won’t be auctioning it off to any of the bills or trills, but we need a viable demonstrator in order to claim the technology.”

The scientist groaned and shook his head. “Even if we ignore testing and safety regs, the paperwork for creating a new organism takes half a year at least…”

A different man spoke up, between drags of his cigarette. “I think we can bypass that particular problem.” He pressed a button on his phone and gestured for some unseen information to be transferred to a small holo emitter in the center of the table, like a card being thrown. A hologram of a bipedal creature appeared, with accompanying text. “We’ll use an old synthetic as test subject. We’ve already secured one. Pre-regs, no tracer, biosynthetic, made by a company that went out of business decades ago. If it fails, we deny involvement.” The man leaned back, clearly pleased with himself.

The scientist rubbed his forehead, leaning forward on the table. “The only way to reprogram the DNA of a pre-grown synthetic is by having nanites go through the entire body to reprogram every single cell. That many nanites would be… beyond our budget.”

The pleased man leaned back even further, glancing at his phone, becoming even more smug as he continued with a line he clearly prepared in advance. “We’ll use self-replicating nanites. Because budget constraints shouldn’t constrain scientific progress…”

The scientist groaned. “Regulations exist for a reason. This is such a bad idea…”