Alder's Grove

Content warning: Barbie nudity discussed, technology/human hybrid



“The trick has always been balance.” Idella Passmore had that dangerous combination of skilled enthusiasm and charisma; the tour group was listening intently, despite having no idea what she was talking about. “You want sufficient technology to retard or stop decay, of course, but people want to be people. This particular model involves a cybernetic torso with a RealSkin(tm) cover. Most of the organs have been replaced, but the brain remains and the heart continues to pump blood. In some cases, we choose to keep the uterus; in some we replace the heart with a technological marvel like our HeartPump2000.”

read on…

“Rashi, what did you do?”

The interns at the laboratory known only as The Lab did their level best to be close enough to hear the argument while far enough away to avoid any fallout.  Just three weeks ago, a new intern had taken umbrage at being shouted at and, while the Boss was fine - the boss was always fine - three nearby interns had lost parts or all of their limbs to a parasitic vine.  With the memory still clear - with Yando still sitting in his mechanized chair, working the controls with what were only sort of fingers (and sort of vines) everyone was very cautious this time.

read on…

Written to clare_dragonfly's prompt.

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Caroline’s adviser liked to leave her notes.

She almost never saw Dr. Comey. There was the big lecture on Mondays and the team meeting on Wednesdays, of course, and then sometimes there was the all-department meetings, which Dr. Comey sometimes deigned to attend, but the Dr. - who was so old the legend said that when they’d rebuilt the faculty wing of Ivy Hall, they’d just picked up Dr. Comey’s office and built the new building around it - preferred to work in late nights and early mornings, and Caroline’s schedule was such that she worked in the lab generally late mornings and late afternoons.

But Dr. Comey would leave her notes: combine experiment A with experiment B. Note results. Ask Sally to enter request for life test subjects again.

All Dr. Comey’s administrative help were “Sally.” The current one - Crystal - confided that they took it like a title, “Current Sally for Dr. Comey,” and took no offense from it.
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Cross posted here: http://www.lynthornealder.com/2017/08/22/drink-me/ on Wordpress

“The trouble with chickens,” Professor Feltenner had written in her journal, “is that they don’t scale very well. And when they scale up, their instincts do not. They have been domesticated for far too long. What I need is a wild chicken, a chicken who has never been bred for tameness and domesticity. That, then, should be clever enough for what I need.”

Professor Feltenner’s travels into the jungles were the stuff of academic legend. It had become the very morbid joke around the university that if you did not like a student, it was a clever idea to get them to take Feltenner’s classes, because there was a very good chance she would then take them with her on one of her summertime or winter-break expeditions - and then there a very, very good chance that they would not return.

Professor Feltenner, on the other hand, always returned - even that last time, that fateful trip when she came back with one bedraggled grad student, two smallish cages, and a man named Gorvald she claimed to have found in the middle of the jungle. Since Gorvald’s accent spoke of the Rus and the far-Eastern mountain ranges, everyone at the university raised eyes at that - but Gorvald was good with the things in the cages, and someone needed to be. Gods above knew the poor grad student whimpered every time she saw so much as a feather.

“The trouble with chickens ought to be solved by working with a more pure specimen,” Professor Feltenner wrote in her journal. “Today, Gorvald and I begin the experiment on the junglefowl we have acquired. With luck, working from an enlarged junglefowl pair, we can begin breeding better and jucier meat with a much more sensible bird.”

The junglefowls’ thoughts on that were never properly recorded; once they had dealt with Professor Feltenner, they (with brains that scaled up, it seemed, much better than their domestic counterparts’) opened the doors to the lab and fled, taking several carriage-sized domestic fowl with them. You could hear their cries late at night in the forests near the University, and the professors had a new way to rid themselves of difficult students.

Next: https://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1315524.html

This is a continuation to Some People Just Want To... commissioned by thnidu

The news channels tried to cover it up, but the people were clamouring for news, and what the media would not cover, gossip would take care of. Yolanda was surrounded by it: the mad scientist. The murderer, hoist by his own petard.

The mystery formula that could make war impossible, if only...

The potential scientific benefits of Dr. Fidelli’s formula, if only...

The ways it could be modified to make a better execution drug, if only the formula hadn’t vanished.

He had to have written it down. He had to have kept it somewhere.

Yolanda tried not to flinch, tried not to smile, tried not to shout. She spent a lot of time hiding in her favorite bar, thinking about anything but biological systems and acidic toxins.

“Yolanda Giana.” A well-dressed man — far too well-dressed for this bar — sat down next to her, his body shielding her from the rest of the barflies. “I have a proposition for you.”



all funds now going to repair or replace the tablet I use to write on the bus: just broke the glass today

Written to book_worm5's prompt here to my Summer Giraffe Call.

The Landing Page for my Science! setting is here

“Well.” Cara frowned out the window. “This is interesting.” The city closest to their fortress-slash-research lab was over a third rubble. The shock waves from the bombs could be felt all the way to the tower, which had been built on a remote island to minimize interruptions from the curious or outraged. “I’d say it’s unexpected, but according to our charter…”

“Mmm.” Alex frowned. “I always thought our charter was a bunch of carefully-worded bullshit.” He was holding a hip flask; he took a long drink from it before offering it to Cara.
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"...so do you think you can get one of the interns set on that?"

Cara pursed her lips. You didn't say no to the boss, but... "It's way out of our normal range of projects, sir. Can't the client just use Dragon or something?"

"In this case, no. It has to be this - they refuse to use 'modern technology'. And, Cara?" Liam raised bushy eyebrows. "This is a grant-payer."

"Aah." Cara nodded. The grant-payers were the legal, legit source of income for the lab - although certainly not the only source. "I've got three promising new interns. I'll see what they can do."

Three weeks later, she walked in to the intern corral to an argument-in-process.

"...you can't quit! Do you have any idea what they do to you if you quit The Lab?"

"Generally," Cara interrupted, "we give you a glowing letter of recommendation for being smart enough to get out of here before it kills you. Not going well, is it?"

"It's impossible! It's paper, it's not the sort of medium that listens very well, and you want it to take its own dictation?"

"Not me." Cara shrugged. "I use voice rec software a guy down the hall built. But the client wants it, and the clients pay your... room and board."

"But it's paper... A book that takes dictation?"

"I think I've got it." The third intern, small and mousy, had been easy to overlook, off in the corner the way she was. She pushed her glasses up her nose and repeated herself. "I think I've got it."

Cara stifled a crow of triumph. Sometimes the impossible projects got them the best scientists, in the long run.

...although there had been that case with the sentient roses...

Why haven't mad scientists taken over the world? Either they already have, and we just don't notice, or they're too dysfunctional to take over much of anything.

This setting posits a little bit of both.

---

Best place to start
Engineered (LJ)
The stories run in more or less chronological order.

Engineered (LJ)
Re-Engineered (LJ)
Golden Egg? (LJ)
Making Friends (LJ)
Shows Promise
(LJ)
Alibi
P for the Possum Postulate
In Theory
100 Per Cent
Through Biology (LJ)
Blame Game (LJ)
In a Fashion (LJ)
Next on the Tour(LJ)

Lair (LJ) [Beta Filter] started it all

Two stories of Science! appear in Alder by Post, Issues Five and Twelve.
Order back-issues here.

Science! Character List
()

I asked for prompts regarding Variants here for The MicroPrompt Giraffe Call. This is written to LilFluff's Prompt here.

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"What's going on with Island Seven?" Alex passed over coffee the way Cara liked it. "I can't get a solid read on the genetic scanners there."

"Oh, that's where we let Bontempo and Gilman-Friis work on that project of theirs."

"That... oh, you didn't. Seriously? Bontempo?"

"He asked very nicely, and he seemed relatively sane. I mean, relatively and all, but he does seem like he knows what he's doing, as long as Gilman-Friis keeps him in check and moderates his work."

"Doesn't seem fair to her."

"No, but I promised her Island Eight if they get anything at all out of this at all."

"And... so what do they have?"

~

"I'm getting bored with this." Coren ran her hands over the super-slim form with the pale skin and the black hair. "I'm thinking about doing something more fleshy for tomorrow."

"I know what you're saying." Toran pinched a nipple on his current body. "This isn't bad, but I think the punk look is... last week."

The two of them were wearing, in addition to their body-shapes, peacock-bright clothing that covered enough of them to be "decent" by another world's standards. Coren's, as usual, was mostly shades of blue; zie wore a bracelet on her wrist that had zir name picked out in rhinestones. Toran's was black and pink and zir name was embroidered on zir collar.

"Hey, bitches, what do you think?" A third stepped up to the town center, spinning in a body-shape they had not seen before - four arms on a very muscular torso, body otherwise androgynous, clothing skin-tight and black, wet-look like oiled leather. Picked out under the pecs was a name - Anor, of course. "It's an all-new look. Custom."

~
"Have?" Cara shrugged at the footage. "They've developed the next level of fashion."

To rix_scaedu's prompt to my daily bonus from dailyprompt.

There weren't any witnesses, which helped matters, just three fuzzy surveillance vids and circumstantial evidence: Dr. Potter had motive; he'd been seen walking into the building, and he'd called the cops when it was all over and been first on the scene, hands covered in blood as he tried to hold Dr. Ahluwalia's life into her body.

Dr. Ahluwalia's last words had been not particularly helpful, either. "You bastard. I know..."

Of course, Dr. Potter and Dr. Ahluwalia were both employed by Those Madmen in the Tower, so there was no knowing what the late Doctor had known. And, while the police swore that they'd seen Dr. Potter for a moment as they arrived - long enough to hear those words - 1700 of the world's best and brightest scientists were willing to testify in court that he'd been in another city at the New Ideas and Orthodoxies (NIO) Conference, giving a speech on ends vs. means. Dr. Ahluwalia had intended on attending, but backed out at the last minute, which the police felt sounded suspicious.

Even more suspicious, however, was the topic of Dr. Potter's speech: On the ethics of cloning and the uses thereof; What to Do With Yourself.

For kelkyag's prompt

"In theory, it should work."

If they had a dollar every time they'd heard that, Alex mused... they would be far poorer than they were. Because for every 100 times a phrase like that ended in failure, there was once where it succeeded wildly. And Cara and Alex had shares in the company.

"Which theory?" Alex bit, because this new one was interesting. Also cute, but that was probably beside the point.

"Clarke's Third Law."

"Clarke's..." Alex glanced at Cara. Cara would know.

"Arthur C. Clarke. Sci-fi author? Jeanne down in PR is doing some research on his theories."

"Oh, that Clarke. What are you trying to make, Juris?"

Their newest scientist lifted the blade from the vat of bubbling blue liquid. It shone brightly, even against the fluorescent light of the lab. "In theory, it should talk to the wielder, make small corrections for better aim, and glow in a nice pretty way, especially in the presence of ill-intent."

Cara and Alex shared a look. "You're making a magic sword."

"Well." Juris beamed. "It seems the best way to test the theory."

For imaginaryfiend's prompt.

Science! has a landing page here

"U..."

"If he says 'Eureka,' I'm going to kill him and save the boss the trouble." Cara's low mutter only carried as far as her partner's ears, and he was prone to agree with her. Some people just gave mad science a bad name.

"...guys have got to see this." Archibald Antipone had promise, at least from Cara and Alex's point of view. He did good work, reasonably, and didn't tend to cackle to himself or throw things. He had yet to invent a sentient anything and he could, unlike most of their new hires, actually socialize to save his life.

It might save his life, around her. Usually the guards shot indiscriminately because they were pretty certain none of the scientists were actually human.
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"We think we've come up with a problem for the oil shortage."

"You've what?"

"Look at these duck eggs. It took us a bit of finagling to do it, and more than a few changes at the genetic level, but now instead of needing calcium and laying calcium-rich eggs... they take in a variety of supplements and lay plastic eggs. The shells can then be recycled for their plastic, and the egg inside is still perfectly viable. There's just one flaw..."

"There's always a flaw."

"In order to get out of the eggs, the hatchlings needed...

"You made duck Unicorns."

For lilfluff's prompt, combined with wyld_dandelyon's prompt.

"I think I've figured it out!" Jason looked up from his table excitedly, a "eureka" sort of expression taking over his whole body. "Cara, Alex, check this out!"

Cara, who was knee-deep in bioengineering a slow, undetectable poison that would take ten or fifteen years to kill the target, and Alex, who was trying to come up with the truly irresistible scent, looked up at Jason impatiently. It was Liam, the team's handler, who came over to Jason's workstation.

"What is it, Jay?"
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