A New Ingredient
Gaed sighed. These kits were all the same, but his relatives insisted on buying him one every cycle. Sure, they had been fun when he was younger but they’d lost their luster as time ground on.
“Grow your own primates!” The bright blue box proudly proclaimed, “Now with 30% more water!”
Every company had its own secret formula, its own “mix” for creating the perfect tiny primate reproduction chamber. Arth was one of the better ones, but that didn’t mean they did anything substantially different from the others.
Scatter your materials; zap it with the rod, wait a week and something would happen. On the box it always said “90% Guaranteed” but Gaed had seen it fail far more often than that, and had a closet of dead toy spheres to prove it. Some of them had been intentional; it was fun to create a super cyclone or raging storm or crash the toys into one another and see the shattered results.
He glanced at the kit again, sitting on his desk with the other kids toys he’d been given. They’d all meant well, but most of his family didn’t really have any idea of how old he was getting now and how tired he was getting of baby stuff.
Still, he really didn’t have anything else to do.
Tearing open the package he found all the usual suspects – heavy metals, plant matter and the bio-products that would create the living things he needed. Despite his overall irritation he felt his curiously pique; he loved seeing the beginnings, seeing just what his primates were going to look like.
On the heels of interest came disappointment – it wouldn’t really matter what they turned out like, since whatever they created would be the same. Sure, they could live and breathe and scuttle around on their little toy sphere but they were bound by the rules on the box. They wouldn’t fight, wouldn’t harm one another; wouldn’t do anything interesting!
Pushing the rest of the junk on his desk aside Gaed got to work but his heart wasn’t in it. He was halfway through the setup when he realized the catalyst rod was missing and he spat out a curse. His family didn’t approve of cursing, but he found it was a good way to get out his frustrations without actually damaging anything.
The rod must have been in the box but ended up with the all the other stuff he’d swept off his work surface. Digging around the pile of presents for a moment hr found exactly what he was looking for; a small, Creatium-tipped rod. It also yielded something he hadn’t expected – a bag of Sinapple candies. They’d been his favorite for years and he still got a bag every time his relatives came to visit.
Grabbing rod and bag he sat back down at his desk, excitement rising as he re-read the box instructions. They were very clear; this kind of technology had only been viable in the last fifteen cycles or so, and certain things could produce unexpected results if introduced to the system.
His breath caught as he found it – a whole class of food products that could cause “unstable elements” to appear on the sphere and that could drastically affect the behavior of the primates, and Sinapples would be top on the list owing to their content. They were bad for a body, about as bad as it got, which is why he only got one bag a year.
Smiling, he finished spreading the materials across the surface and jammed the rod into the pre-cut hole on the top of the sphere. He hesitated for a moment; there was no guarantee what this was going to do, and he’d be in a heap of trouble if he was found breaking the rules again.
He set his jaw. He was tired of how right everything was around here, how boring. Nobody fought, nobody yelled, nobody did anything exciting. They used to, so the Old Ones said, but they’d only talk about it if he acted like he wanted to learn a lesson, like he needed to be “taught”. It was time to do something different, something fun. Time to grow up. Time to see what happened when he didn’t do what he was told.
A quick tear, a hand in the bag and he flung a smattering of Sinapples at the globe, the soft red surfaces easily sticking and molding themselves across its equator. Grabbing the rod controller he made sure it was securely connected and pressed the big red “life” button.
There was a flash and a bang loud and quick enough to knock him backward and out of his chair. Struggling to his feet he saw that the toy was…seething…as the Sinapples were absorbed into the surface. After a moment, everything went still and Gaed felt a stab of disappointment. That was it? His chest hurt and his chair had a broken leg and that was all he got? A flash, a bang and nothing else?
Angry at himself for being so stupid he scooped up the toy in one hand and stalked to his closet. Filled with the ten other toys he’d received, all lifeless husks he’d mounted on the ceiling around the bright light, he grabbed one at random and crushed it under his foot then stuck the new one in its place.
He’d come back from time to time, he figured, maybe check on this one and see if anything interesting happened. Maybe in a week or so he’d see something different, maybe he’d actually get to have some fun.
A sound downstairs told him that someone had heard the noise he’d made and he dashed out of the closet to shove his chair as far under the desk as he could.
Under the steady heat of the light Gaed had left on his haste, the Arth-made toy began to tremble, then writhe as life was created, a life in defiance of directions.
- D
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