The Experiment of Tony Blair
Making New Friends

Tony kicked up the sand wildly as he darted for the little tunnel he had previously exited from. When he got to the arena wall he tried jumping for the opening but found it just out of reach. The base of the hole must have been at least fifteen feet off the ground. Behind him the alien crowd began to chant loudly as they watched the green snake approach the helpless human. They were saying:

“GIVA! GIVA! GIVA! GIVA! GIVA! GIVA!”

Tony didn’t understand the word they were saying. It sounded foreign to him. He suspected in the back of his mind that it meant kill the human, kill the human. He turned around and watched as the snake rushed forward to greet him. It opened its massive jaws revealing two rows of needle-like teeth. It lunged for him.

Tony screamed and jumped out of the way before the creature could grab him and devour him. The snake hit the arena wall with a loud boom. It let out an ear-shattering cry as it recoiled backwards in pain. It shook its green head violently as if trying to shake off the hurt that now encompassed its skull. Tony could tell that it was perturbed now. The thing was furious that he had jumped out of the way.

“Just great!” exclaimed Tony. “I have only managed to make it angrier. If only I had some sort of—”

Tony looked down at that moment and realized that his knife was gone. I must have dropped it when I fell into the arena. It’s probably buried in the sand somewhere. Tony started kicking up the dirt around his feet. His eyes shifted over the surface of the ground, rapidly looking for the lost weapon. He was about halfway into his search when the alien crowd started chanting again. Their voices sounded eerie and cold.

“GIVA! GIVA! GIVA! GIVA! GIVA! GIVA! GIVA! GIVA!”

Tony stopped and looked over at the snake. Its big black eyes were staring at him now with an intensity that would have made the sun jealous. It was analyzing him, it was trying to figure out the best point of attack; the thing was learning from its mistake. The snake began to raise its head high above the ground in a pouncing manner. Tony stepped back slowly as it did this. The chant of the alien crowd grew more boisterous and wild as the seconds passed.

Tony’s heart was pumping like a supercharged hotrod. Sweat began to collect on his forehead and run down his cheeks. He licked his chapped lips and readied himself for a full-on attack from the green serpent. He would have to jump out of the way at the right moment to stay alive. The snake slithered and followed him. Its massive forked tongue licked the air rapidly as it drew closer, and closer, and….

The chanting stopped suddenly. The snake darted forward with lighting speed. Tony saw it coming but couldn’t react fast enough. In seconds his whole body was in-between the creature’s jaws, struggling to get free. The needle-like teeth bore into his thighs as he let out a painful scream. In the distance he could hear the alien crowd cheer-ing his pitiful fate. Tony had reacted so slowly in contrast to the snake. He could feel the giant serpent shift about as it unhinged its massive jaw and lifted him up off the ground. He fought with all his might as the thing swallowed him quickly. Tony’s world became darker and darker as he slid down the creature’s moist throat. There was nothing he could do. He had lost the fight. He had been slow to react and now he would be digested for it. Life had been so short for him.

When the snake was done devouring the helpless human, it closed its jaws with a loud clap. Its tongue licked the air happily as it curled up and rested in the middle of the arena, indulging in the praise of the alien crowd.

* * *

Evila Gonthina stood outside the experimenting room and paced nervously back and forth. She gripped her clipboard tightly as she considered what she was about to do. No one in the history of the space academy had ever really stolen a testing subject before, and yet, here she was on the edge of taking a human without authorization. An actual liv-ing creature she could use to prove her theory once and for all. The risks of doing such a thing were very great. Should she get caught with a human in her possession, it would mean a week’s detention on -G- Deck.

She closed her eyes and whispered to herself softly; she often did this when she was about to take a test or a quiz. It calmed her nerves.

“It’s ‘do or die’ today, Evila. Either you go in there or you don’t. It’s either you have a human to experiment on and prove your theory of super species or you go back to your dorm room empty handed. Like the last seven times you have tried this!”

Finally, she stopped pacing and looked at the key panel to the right of the silver door. She straightened up and walked over to it. She started mashing the pin number into the computer system. When she was done she stepped back and waited for the door to open. A metallic beep was heard as the silver doors slid away from the threshold. Smells of potent chemicals flooded the hallway.

Here we go. There’s no turning back now! She tousled her long green hair back and breathed out a heavy sigh. She walked into the quiet room. The door closed behind her with a dull thud. She looked around the main cloning hull for any signs of life. She knew that her teacher had to be in here somewhere.

“Professor Denvil, are you in here?”

Evila walked over to one of the steel tables resting in the middle of the room. She rested her slender green hands on top of it and studied all the colorful testing beakers as they bubbled in their casings. Sharp cutting tools could be seen glowing softly in their synthetic packaging. After every class period, each tool needed to be sanitized and herm-etically sealed. It was a rule they followed very closely. If organic material was left out it could prove deadly and fatal.

Evila smiled slightly as she remembered all the experiments she had conducted in class. Each one was more insightful then the next. She was one of the best geneticists in the field. The cloning and testing lab certainly was a wonderful place to be. Cloning had always fascinated her as she was growing up. She would spend most of her free time as a young child studying the subject extensively. She knew all there was to know about chro-mosomes and structural DNA in plants and animals. She could construct living parame-cium and amebas with only some heat and a few organic materials. She could then evolve them into a number of different species and things, but what she loved the most was cloning and replicating. It was fun to make the same thing twice. It was fun to watch the whole development of a protein chain.

Cloning was a basic science they had developed long ago, and yet, there was so much to it that the academy didn’t even know. One could spend hours working out the genetic code of a Sitirian planet worm, and still not know everything about its species and what it was truly capable of. It seemed to be that way with everything.

“Who’s there?” asked a stern voice from the back of the room. Evila looked up and spotted the cloning professor. He was standing by the intercom system. He was fidgeting with the buttons on steel wall panel. No doubt waiting for the good news that the human he had captured was dead.

“It’s me, professor. Evila!”

The room got quiet as she stepped out from behind the test tubes. Professor Denvil studied her with suspicious eyes. He checked his digital watch and then looked back over to her. “What are you doing here, Evila? Class doesn’t begin for another ten hours. Didn’t you get my cyber memo?”

The tone in his voice sounded puzzled and confused. Evila could tell that he was freaking out about whether he had sent the message or not.

“I got it, Professor, don’t worry. I’m not here for class; I am here to talk to you about the project you wanted us to work on. You know the one about advanced cloning with subspecies. I think I might have solved our race’s big problem; I found something that I think you—”

The professor cut her off sharply.

“Evila, this had better not be about humans being one gene away from super species. I looked over your papers on advancing chromosomes and found many flaws with your phospholipid chains. It’s absolutely absurd that the human race could become faster and smarter by mixing our blood with theirs. It’s impossible. Humans are animals and need to be treated like such. Mixing ourselves with them would be an abomination! It’s absolutely wrong!”

At that moment Evila could feel anger rising in her chest. She tried to keep it in check. The professor hadn’t truly looked at her thesis paper. She knew that he had tucked it away into the crack pot pile on top of his desk, with all the rest of her breakthroughs she had com up with. She had worked on this particular one for nearly a century, taking out all the bugs.

It was foolproof!

“Professor Denvil, if you would just drop your bias for a minute about human expansion and give my formula a try you would see that it works. You would see that this would only better our cause in the future. Make our species better, and solve the problem we face with extinction.”

The professor was getting frustrated with her persistence; she could sense it in his stiff demeanor.

“Evila! I want you to understand something; humans will amount to nothing in the universe. People have tried what you have suggested, you know, messing with the genetic pattern that exists inside the hairless monkeys. They have created formulas left, right and center. And do you know what happened in the end? Nothing but death! That’s what always happens, and that’s what will continue to happen. Human subjects just can’t survive a dose of our thick blood. It’s like poison to them. You just have to accept that fact. Humans have no destiny with our people.”

Evila stepped forward. There was a lot of emotion in her voice. “No, Professor, that is not the way the facts line up. If we use the right catalyst before injecting our strand into them it will work! I’ll prove that it will! I’ll show you! I’ll show everyone that it will, that is, if you will let me!”

The professor started chuckling. His laughter filled the room like a foghorn over a quiet lake. Evila could tell that he was laughing at her.

It stung!

“You are a humanitarian to the days, Evila. I think we should buy you a little T-shirt that says ‘Save the Humans!’ Or maybe a shirt that says ‘Kiss me, I’m human!’ You know the ones that the activists wear in the mess hall.”

Evila was absolutely shocked that the professor would say such a rude thing to her. She could feel tears coming to her soft green eyes and looked down at the floor. She thought about the spiteful words. They were like a poison to her soul. She lifted a hand and quickly wiped her cheeks.

“I thought we could reason together on this, Professor. I thought maybe we could try my formula on one human and replace out. Just one little human, that’s all. If it doesn’t work, then I’ll shut up about it. You won’t have to hear from me ever again.”

Professor Denvil let out a heavy sigh. It was quite apparent that his tender young student didn’t see the ethical controversy of the subject at hand. It wasn’t a matter of experimenting on the human; it was a matter of mixing their species with humans. It was disgusting, and he would have no part in it.

“It’s not that easy, Evila. It’s just wrong!”

Evila bit her bottom lip with frustration and looked up at him. She was about to respond when there was a loud buzzing noise from the intercom. Professor Denvil turned and walked over to it. He looked back at Evila before he pressed the button and spoke into the receiver.

“Yes! This is Professor Denvil, chief cloning specialist.”

A young man’s voice came over the speaker.

“Hi, Professor ‘D’, How’s it going?”

Professor Denvil rolled his eyes. “Stop messing around Rivo. What do you need?”

“Well, a new human for starters, can you make one?”

Professor Denvil was shocked. “Has the human test subject died so quickly?! What did you do?”

“Oh, we decided to turn the snake on him first. It was over before it got started. I was hoping that the human would live for at least thirty minutes or so. But, boy was I wrong; I lost a whole lot of money on it, too.”

“Wow, amazing!” Professor Denvil raised his green eyebrows and looked over to Evila with surprise. She met his stare with one of her own; she wasn’t happy at all. He looked back over to the intercom. “Are you sure he’s dead?”

“Well, yes and no. You see, he was eaten alive by the snake so it might take him a while to actually die, but I think it might be safe enough to make another human. I mean, I don’t expect him to be coming back anytime soon.”

“Say no more, Rivo. I will personally make another ‘Tony Blair’ and send him right down to you. Let’s see how he does a second time.”

There was a long pause over the intercom. After a minute the voice spoke up. There was confusion in his tone. “You’ll make another what? What did you call the human? It has a name?”

The Professor recognized that he had given the name of the pitiful creature, and jumped in quickly. “Sorry about that, Rivo. I mean I’ll make another human.”

“Oh, okay, whatever!” he cleared his throat, “We’ll be waiting.”

The intercom cut off. Professor Denvil turned around and looked over to Evila. She was still standing by the testing table. Her expression was very firm. He could tell that she wanted to say something to him.

“Evila, you have to go. I’ll talk to you about this later.”

The professor walked over to a steel drawer and opened it. He pulled out the container of human blood and rested it on the table. He was in the process of extracting a single drop from it when Evila spoke up.

“No, you’re going to talk to me right now about this!” barked Evila. “I have waited too long for this moment. I am sick of being walked on. I am sick of having people criticize my formula, and I am sick of you!!”

The Professor looked up from the tube of blood. “Are you threatening me, Evila Gonthina? You had better watch that tongue of yours, young lady! I will not stand for disrespect. I could send you to the detention Deck if I wished it.”

Evila dropped her clipboard and reached for the stunner at her hip. She pulled it off and pointed it at him. The professor dropped the sample and stepped back from the table. He raised his hands in the air.

“I don’t care where you send me! I am going to prove that my formula works. There’s nothing you can say to change my mind.”

“Have you gone mad, child? Do you know what the education council could do to you if they caught you pointing that at me? They would—”

Evila interjected, “Shut it Professor. And put the sample of Tony Blair’s blood into the Pharnter machine. I don’t want anyone to get hurt.”

The Professor walked hesitantly over to the tray and picked it up. Evila held the stunner on him as he walked it over to the Pharnter machine. He opened the door and set the cold blood sample on top of the stand inside the giant machine. He was careful not to bump anything on the walls. When he was done positioning the growth lenses he stepped back and shut the door. The thing locked automatically.

“Evila, I don’t like the way you are behaving, you’re acting like…like…”

The professor paused as he considered his words carefully.

“Like a human, Professor? Is that what you were going to say?” barked Evila. He could see that she was getting worked up.

“No, I wasn’t going to say that, Evila. I was merely going to say that you’re just not your sweet little self anymore. If you give me the stunner now, we’ll forget this little incident ever happened.”

Evila backed away from the professor a bit. Her soft green hands were shaking a little now. She couldn’t believe she was actually doing this, “No, Professor, I’m going through with this, and you can’t stop me!” She pulled the trigger. Lightning shot from the muzzle and struck the professor in the chest. He let out a deep groan; then fell unconscious to the floor. Evila stood over him, breathing hard. She couldn’t believe she had just stunned him. But it had to be done. He was only restricting the cause.

She put the stunner back on her hip and walked over to the key panel. It was resting to the right of the machine. Its blue screen was blinking now. She pulled back her long green hair and began typing in the human cloning code. When she was done she hit the process button and stepped back from the machine. Bright light started flashing from the windows as carbon nineteen began to fill the container. The brown liquid swashed back and forth as it began to assemble the human form.

“Come on! Come on! Come on!” said Evila.

She looked at her watch impatiently. Soon her fellow students in the arena would be wondering where the test human was. She had to get him to her dorm room before they came up to inspect the cloning lab.

After a second there was a ding heard from inside of the Pharnter machine. It was done processing the human. Evila walked over to the round window and stared inside at the new creation. Tony Blair was resting on the stand now.

He was naked and unconscious.

“Now for the task of taking him to -A- Deck without anybody noticing.”

Evila looked down at the Professor, then over to the human. She was formulating a plan. A plan that would help her get the pasty white human to her dorm.