About four miles outside of Toronto’s northern border stood the enormous, sprawling, Mackenzie Complex. Owned and financed by the Government, it housed numerous laboratories, offices, apartments, and a very elaborate computer room. The main lab was a huge room, the most modern on the continent. It was the pride of the staff, and was filled with the latest equipment. Of the several hundred employees there, only twelve were scientists. The project was top secret and headed by Dr. Joseph Langstrom from Sweden.
It was mid-July and the weather was hot and humid. At six o’clock in the evening work was finished for the day. All was quiet in the business sections of the complex. Security guards maintained their posts outside the brick and glass walls. The night watchman came on duty, exchanging a few words with some of the guards on his way in.
Inside the main lab it was also very quiet. Still, something was happening, something which the entire world would soon know about. A week ago he was only a small, insignificant, green creature, with bulging, beady eyes and no intelligence to speak of. He had survived because the law of survival was all he knew.
People didn’t really like him but he bore no love for them either and shied away from them. He didn’t like the feeling of their hands all over him when they studied him. Why should they be so interested in his anatomy? The interest was by no means mutual. He simply ignored them most of the time and wished they’d show him the same courtesy. He wanted only to be left alone, to live out his life peacefully, the way his ancestors had for centuries.
For seven whole days now, those obnoxious, persistent humans had pestered him to no end. They showed him no mercy. They didn’t seem to care if he had feelings or not. They jabbed him with long, sharp needles, injecting foreign substances into his blood stream. They stuck him with other, larger needles, which drew blood from him until he was totally exhausted. They fed him strange, horrible tasting things to eat which nearly made him sick. Still, he must eat to survive and survival was most important. All he could get was what they placed in his little cage. Of course, it would be much simpler to just give up and die, but he didn’t function that way. And he had changed in recent weeks… in ways he did not yet fully understand… and which the humans did not not even suspect.
This once placid, ugly little creature now had a strong willpower to live and be free. It was natural. He should not be confined to this little cage. He also had a strong dislike for his tormentors and a desire to avenge himself. True, he wasn’t thought to have any intelligence. Somehow, in the course of the last week, his slight body had hardened. He had built up immunity to all their poisons. His taste buds had dulled. His blood absorbed the injections and replenished much faster. His sight and hearing had increased enormously. His system digested the strange foods quite easily. He no longer had trouble sleeping because of the pain caused by the disturbing needles. These days, he seemed to need less and less sleep. When the need did arise, he could will himself to sleep automatically.
