James responded, “Sure, I’d love to be able to skip my biology and genetics courses. I’ve always been interested in Crispr. So that would be something I’d like to be able to know instantly”
“You got it!” Nicole responded.
“Ha, yeah… right. Should I meet you back here at the next pigs flying event for my treatment?” James joked back feeling Nicole’s confidence was overly elevated.
“You joke because you don’t understand. This is the real deal James, all I have to do is extract the memories and apply my solution to the delivery mechanism and then you’d know exactly what you want to know. You will see. This is happening now.” Nicole proclaimed her conviction and turned around to head back towards her apartment, not even waiting for James to reply.
James proceeded on to his lab and his evening proceeded typically. He returned from his lab to a note taped to his door. “I will need a DNA sample from you, I’ve got to find a compatible donor afterwards. Please return me a hair sample in the attached vial. Will come by to pick it up later. ~ Nicole”
“Uh huh, great now I’m a guinea pig in Nicole’s thesis work” James thought to himself. “There’s no way this would work on something as complex as sharing an understanding of genetics. It probably will just make me remember someone’s last meal like the lab mice” James reached up and plucked a strand of hair from his head and placed it in the vial and taped it back to his door. He didn’t want Nicole waking him up tomorrow just for this sample.
Nicole was working through the night to collect the data to encode for a mastery of genetics. Unlike the mice in her lab, she wasn’t going to depend on a donor’s experience she was going to encode the memories directly herself. Volume after volume of data and research was encoded into the DNA. So much information that James would be ready to pursue an advance career in the field. All Nicole needed was to find a suitable donor for delivering the mitochondrial DNA. She didn’t have James’s sample yet but there were a few subjects that would be reasonable suspects…
James woke the next morning and prepped for his classes. As he was leaving he noticed the vial with his hair had been claimed by Nicole as he expected. After another ordinary day of class, an unremarkable cheeseburger from the campus cafeteria and an hour jog around the campus, James was ready to settle in for the night. That is what James was hoping for, but it was not what Nicole wanted. So, James waved hello to Nicole and Mark who were standing by his door. Nicole wasted no time, “We’re ready. All you have to do is take this pill. I brought dinner too, so no excuses. We’re doing this tonight!”
James looked at the bag of takeout, looked at the pill, and then to Mark. Before unlocking his door, James grabbed the pill, tilted his head back and downed it in one quick gulp. “I better not grow gills, or a tail…” James quipped.
“No chance, the donor DNA would have to support that. You’re good! Don’t worry, I’m ten minutes you’re going to know why that was a silly thing to worry about my soon to be genius geneticist friend” Nicole confidently replied.
The group went into James’s dorm and the adults settled at the small table James had setup for eating meals. Mark was placed in a portable bassinet and the two adults sat down to enjoy some food. As expected, Nicole was not particularly interested in the meal and was waiting for James to say something or react in some way. Ten minutes lapsed and still no reaction or noted gain of knowledge from James and Nicole was getting impatient.
“Well? Have you noticed anything? Are you going to tell me you know kung fu or not?” Nicole asked.
“What? I don’t know what to say? I don’t really feel anything and I don’t seem to know anything about genetics that I didn’t before. Why don’t you ask me a question I shouldn’t know the answer to?”
Nicole asked the hardest question she could think of from her own studies and sure enough James had no clue. Nicole had resigned herself to her failure and switched her attention back to the meal and having an enjoyable evening with her friend.
“Well I didn’t make you a genius with a pill, I guess I’ll have to go back to the drawing board. At least I got the good stuff from our favorite Chinese place” Nicole said as she took another serving of a dish that smelled amazing, but looked suspect. All the pair knew was that it lived up to its name.
The pair continued chatting over their meal with Nicole or James stopping over to coo at Mark or give him some attention. An hour and a half had gone by and Nicole was prepping to leave for the evening. She had just bundled Mark back up to leave when James exclaimed, “Ungh!”
Then once more, James called out in what seemed like pain. Nicole put Mark back down and hurried over to James as he fell to his knees.
“James! James! Talk to me, what’s going on?!” Nicole frantically asked.
“I.. I… unnnmmmm” James started to speak and then collapsed on the floor in his room.
The next morning James woke up in his bed and saw that Nicole was sitting nearby staring at him.
“Hey… “ James said groggily.
“Hey yourself, you really scared me last night. I’m glad you are up, we have somethings to talk about.” Nicole says as James starts to sit up. James groans as he feels his body ache. Besides the pain, James notices his arms look different, his hair is hanging over his eyes now and he feels overall like there’s something very off.
“Look James, I had to use compatible transmission DNA to get you the memories on genetics. That usually means people like relatives, or people with a common ancestor. Turns out the best match for you was…”
Please note: The Next 4 Chapters allow the reader to select the nature of the transformation in this sequence
1. Who James is transforming into
2. The nature of the transformation James will undergo
3. The amount of memories that are available to James
4. The impact of the change on James's sexual preferences
 indicates the next chapter needs to be written. |
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