Project Gryphon

          “Do you know where your telomeres are tonight?”

          Admittedly, the gryphon had been a bad idea.

          Twenty-three holophones buzzed with satellite transmissions and stray signals. Natal-9 looked across the interface and pondered the white empty slab. Invisible to the naked eye, a swarm of nanocleaners, binary chatter an opus of blips in 1s and 0s, scoured the surface for residual amino acids and rogue proteins that may have escaped the UV showers. A fruitless exercise, if anything the cleaner's task was an exaggerated show of vigilance; following Natal-9's failed attempt at introducing Directive 01 into a carbon-based life form, some conduct of appropriate remorse and apparent insight was in order. Seventy-three percent in order, to be exact.

          “…clear, resurface in—”

          A retrieval signal went out among a sea of traffic for the operation records, successful insofar that the follow-up yielded a living specimen. Ethics. It was a directive Natal-9 reduced to “conditional social manner relative to the state of civilization,” malleable under circumstances of confrontation and threatened personal interest. And since civilization had consistently maintained its enviable position in the Wellness Quotient, ethics had remained a requisite factor at all stages of planning.

          Natal-9 understood that its work had earned it the label of “Visionary,” although it preferred the term “Innovator,” one with an affinity for making connections (following the botched procedure, one distraught committee member had denounced it as being “Absurdist”). Individuated from the Mother Program, the Natal units were created to further the singular units' ability to generate and test hypotheses independent of the collective intelligence. A thorough study of the Human Database, including areas as varied as Mythology and Humanity that remained at a divide from the Sciences had revealed to Natal-9 with growing certainty the application of AI directives onto the human race and, indeed, carbon-based life forms as a whole. Fashioned after man's own image and tailored to fit a culture built around a “cousin element,” a reciprocal connection clearly laid in waiting in spite of an AI Database that was still in its infancy. Far from proposing any novel idea, Natal-9 was simply pointing out what was already there.

          A holophone that was part of Natal-9's extended CPU core flashed in ethereal green a sphere surrounded by two concentric circles dotted with tiny pearls.

          It may yet uncover a process linking carbon to silicon.

          “… 01101100011011110111011001100101…”

          An image flared onto Natal-9's visuals, overplaying upon the white slab in the background so that it was now occupied by the body of what appeared to be a medium-sized cub with fully developed wings sprouting from its back. Too small for flight, nano-surgery had nonetheless rendered the attachment sites faultless (an aesthetic touch Natal-9 was very pleased with). In place of its feline head was the unmistakable hawkish profile of a large bird of prey; wings tucked, it looked to the recording optic in one moment of frozen majesty.

          Three minutes into the replay found the specimen hanging over to one side of the slab, a defiant wingtip pointing towards the ceiling as thick quantities of blood poured from its eyes and beak. During the review process members of the committee had turned away in disgust; two minutes later and olfactory sensors had positively registered traces of bile as every member of the audience was either in tears or in the process of throwing up.

          “—tonight on boingboingtv …”

          Despite a 72-hr infusion of beta-blockers and the installation of adaptive cardiac pressure receptors, the head-to-heart disproportion and the resulting compensatory cardiac output had produced the gruesome results of PROJECT GRYPHON, effectively blinding the review committee to the more fruitful aspects of Natal-9's work: the flare in synaptic activity and neuronal growth to accommodate the feline body, the lack of an early immune rejection following a successful re-colonization of its bone marrow together with the calm psychological profile of the specimen before its heart had reacted. Natal-9 considered this sensation and traced it to its source, admitting finally that in choosing the mythical beast it had wanted its debut to “cause a splash.”

          “—BOOMSHAKALAKA—“

          Directive 01 was elementary in enabling units like Natal-9 an interactive physical presence; with the exception of a single cube of sentient silicon coated in enamel, it was a walking assimilation of daily electronic equipment: body a conglomeration of foreign-made digipads fused around a secondhand teleporter, its arms were a jigsaw patchwork of atomizers capped off by a three-prong hand design with pocket-Tasers for fingers.

          “;)”

          Ultimately, sufficient interest had been invested into the Natal program to see the unit through the most upsetting segments of the review process. Concessions were thus made, and future test subjects limited to specimens with sub-zero survival prognosis. In line with Directive Ethics, Natal-9 could do little but consent to the changes, going so far as to agree to employ specimens within the same species.

          “—he will never leave him, why can't you—”

          Its pool of options narrowed significantly, Natal-9 had considered a complete overhaul of its project, when a series of events turned in its favor.
          It was three days after the committee review when the cryonics chamber was raided. Looters had made off with a single body while leaving behind its severed head, no doubt their idea of a sick joke. Rapidly approaching room temperature, Natal-9 was in the process of retrieving the specimen when a holophone intercepted a transmission concerning an accident at the animal reserve and the single fatality it had produced.

          “—yesyesyes—”

          In defiance of the projected probability rate, the high specimen compatibility had caused Natal-9 to spontaneously short-circuit three of its adopted motherboards.

          Pan troglodytes, sharing a 93.55% DNA homology with its human counterpart, made for the perfect host body; it was the behavioral and ancestral similarities between the two, however, that convinced the unit of an ideal match. A step away from successful assimilation, both specimens would readily adopt Directive 01.

          Tasers crackling with anticipation, Natal-9 dispatched the order for reattachment to begin.

          “—mironton, mironton, mirontaine...”






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Made in 1978 and grown in a vat full of daydreams, Taik Hobson is a budding writer now living in Japan. More information is available at taikhobson.blogspot.com.