"Drone, Drone, Drone"

(a short Click from now)

by CGAllan

(Before you get stuck into this story, take a moment to read the 'prequel' entitled "Click, Click, Click" which you can find further down the right sidebar panel of this page...)

"Any predispositions?"

"Yes, she should have a few. I'll just get my list."

The doctor looked blankly across the desk at his client who was searching for the all-important 'Tally' on the hard-drive of his computer.

"Here it is," said the stranger at last. He hit the 'Send' button saying "Voila!" triumphantly as it instantaneously came out of the fax machine behind the doctor. The doctor wasn't really impressed by the other's flash efforts, he just wanted to complete the transaction.

"Hmm," he said. "Athletic. Boorish. An acute aneurysm that will go off when she's 39 years old, and... premature baldness - an interesting combination."

"Yes" replied the buyer. "We think she will make a very interesting test case indeed."

"When do you want delivery Mr...?" He looked at the fax sheet once more.

"Jones?" Their voices both said simultaneously.

Jones half-laughed and the doctor put down the fax sheet.

"I think if we say three weeks after conception?"

"Very well" replied the doctor somewhat sternly.

Jones gazed at the doctor in awe. "I must tell you, Dr. Stein, what you created just three short years ago is helping science make huge leaps in its fight against diseases and inherited disorders."

"I have logged your order, Mr. Jones. It will be delivered three weeks after conceptional fertilisation is complete."

Jones was slightly puzzled at Dr. Stein's humility in the face of such admiration, but with the transaction completed, Jones graciously thanked the medical scientist and left the ageing Millennium Life building. He passed a smiling couple in the hallway who had also successfully completed a 'deal' in the room next to Dr. Stein's.

The In-vitro Fertilisation Engine's drone echoed around the Plant floor as Stein and his assistant keyed in the latest requirements from another nameless company.

"And premature baldness," concluded the doctor as the assistant set the parameters at the Engine's terminal.

"This one will be Clara-731." Said the assistant routinely. Stein made a note of the new serial number in the logbook and watched the assistant's hand - almost in slow motion - touch the 'Invent' keypad. He could almost imagine a flash of lightening circle the hand.

Certainly when he began this project, Stein had correctly envisioned the 'buzz' that had followed the unveiling of his machine to the then sagging medical-science World Community.
The cycle was now complete.

A 'Life-pod', as they had affectionately been dubbed, slid down the outlet tube and a steady heartbeat was detected by the machine's computer system.

'Voila!' Thought Stein as he bade goodnight to his assistant and checked out of the building for the evening.

Doctor Stein awoke the next morning from another night of broken and restless sleep. He took several 'wake-up' pills of his own invention and then checked the mail over breakfast.
"You have three new letters" droned his computer.

"OK, read them to me, Betsy," said Stein, gradually feeling the effects of his placebos kick in.
There were two copies of the same e-mail from his daughter, asking him not to forget to attend the 50th birthday party she was holding for him the following week. The duplicate copy was no doubt sent to underline her request, he mused as he chewed on a piece of toast.

He smiled quite contently for a moment, but as he listened to the last mail message the smile turned sour.

He was to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Life-Science Research. He stared at the eggs on his plate and became lost in their glossy yellow hue.

Betsy said that the 'Nobel'-e-mail was accompanied by an attachment from Dr. Francs of the Frankfurt In-vitro Academy, who congratulated him and said the award was long overdue.
But Stein wasn't at the table to hear the rest of the accolade from his European associate. He was already out of the door and driving towards the City-centre precinct (at speeds that weren't really recommended by the Transport Department of Government House) for he was eager to reach the end of the day.

The next five days went by at a distinctly monotonous pace and then Stein found himself out in the countryside home of his daughter, to celebrate his birthday.

"Dad, smile, will you?!" Said his daughter as she brought a cake out onto the back porch , which she had ridiculously, attempted to cram fifty candles into. "You've invented miracles all your life and yet you never found a cure for the mid-life crisis!"

"Yet again, Clara, I see that you inherited your sense of humour from your mother." He replied, looking out at the vast national park behind Clara's house. "How does Bill manage to Warden all of this?"

"Oh, it's not all that difficult" replied Clara. "I help him sometimes, but mainly he likes to do it himself."

"I suppose" began Stein, sneakily taking a few candles from the cake while Clara's attention was diverted. "If you love what you do for a living, it doesn't seem like a chore, no matter what the workload."

The door alarm spoke, informing them of people approaching the house, and Stein knew that the guests were here. Clara went to answer it and he composed himself for the impending stampede.
The evening was going pretty well - old faces came and went and a lot of alcohol was drunk (probably far more than the 'recommended' level set by the Consumption Division of Government House, but who was to know anyway?).

It was at exactly 12.25, for Stein would remember the moment for a long while to come, that Clara's best friend Cynthia approached him to offer her congratulations on his 'nomination' by the Nobel Assembly.

The rest of the room turned to look at Stein and he declared that it was indeed true. They applauded and he thanked them graciously.

Cynthia continued to talk to him, but at the same pitch as she had done to let the gathering know of his impending decoration. "Have you had much thought about your acceptance speech?" She asked, as he was still basking somewhat in the looks of admiration from the acquaintances around him. The question caught him off-guard and Clara cast one of those 'not now' glances at her best friend.

"Well..." he began, but was cut off by Cynthia's increasingly threatening tone.

"I was thinking you could begin with something like - "I'm glad my Monster has pleased all you other monsters out there." She looked directly at him. The room fell silent and the last of the candles on Stein's 50th birthday cake burnt down to their last.

Most people began to leave soon after Stein and Cynthia's argument reached its peak. Clara thanked each of the guests and gave them some cake as they left, while Bill tried to intercede in the uproar which had now spilled onto the back porch of the house.

"It's a mute point now, really Cynthia," said Bill. But neither of the two red faces responded to his attempt at achieving a standstill.

"I seem to recall at my 40th birthday, on this very porch, you complaining to me about the scientific community still using animals in our experiments," expounded Stein. "And I go away and seek out an alternative way of testing - a surer one at that - and now you tell me you're still not satisfied?!"

"But," said Cynthia, almost shrieking. "You haven't cured the problem! It's not a question of either humans or animals or men from outer space - it's the common denominator of them all: Life, and our arrogance in using it as if we had the rights of... of... God."

The back porch of Clara and Bill's house fell back to it's usual silence, surrounded by the vast blackness of the national park at night, as Stein stared at Cynthia somewhat dumbfounded and she put on her coat and got ready to leave.

He hadn't heard the word "God" or the concept of a 'religious' creator mentioned for at least twenty five years - not since the emergence of the ethics of Global Citizenship at any rate.
"You and your infernal 'Scare-'em' stories are outdated Cynthia" Stein finally called after her as Clara opened the front door to make her exit all the more hastily. But Stein had had the final word on the matter and that was something at least.

Clara didn’t speak to her father again until the next morning, leaving him the previous night in his rage to calm down with a good night's sleep. Stein got up fairly early and spoke to Betsy before seeing any one else. He came down to breakfast with a bedraggled look about him and went out onto the back porch where Clara sat sipping tea.

"Has Bill left for his rounds already?" He asked her.

"It's a big park dad. Have a seat, you can sometimes see his pod gliding across the horizon as he checks the quadrants."

He sat and for the first time in a long while Stein really looked at his daughter, while she watched the national park in front of them.

"You have your mother's eyes, you know." He said after a short silence.

"I never knew her eyes were blue as well. I always thought you chose them for me." Clara said coldly. "I suppose I have her blonde hair too?"

"Clara, please."

"I'm sorry that had to happen in front of everyone last night, Dad."

"But you're not apologising for Cynthia are you?" He asked knowingly.

"She does have a point dad." Clara said glancing away from the scenery for a moment at him and then back again.

The conversation between father and daughter ended there. Stein had no intention of arguing with Clara like he had with the 'bio-warrior' the previous night. They sat and watched for Bill's pod skimming the trees somewhere in the vast greenery in front of them. Clara was transfixed on the scene, but Stein was soon bored with the view and, choosing his moment, he rose, kissed his daughter on the forehead and announced that he had to leave.

Clara saw Bill's pod on the horizon a total of three times that morning and so she knew he was alright. She left the back porch and went to tidy the guestroom where her father had spent the night.

Stein had been gone for some hours now, but Clara found that he had forgotten his computer. Betsy was stuck on a display loop of incoming mail, having not been turned off, and she was continuously reading out the only message to have been received that morning. It was from one Cynthia Marmaduke and said:

"How long did Shelley's monster remain caged?"

(On December 1st, 2089, Dr. Josef Stein, MSc, PhD, OBE was invited to take the floor at the Nobel Prize Ceremony in Norway when it was announced that he had been awarded a prize for his now three year old Creation. His speech was however one of rejection - he would not, he said, be able to accept his 'award'. He also said that he must bring to an end what he had himself begun and was responsible for.

Mr. Elias Jones esquire, sat in the third row of the distinguished assembly on that mid-winter afternoon and he and the rest of that distinguished assembly listened to Dr. Stein drone on and on and on. He knew that in only a few short weeks, he would have his new test model: 'Clara-952', and he also knew that he would be ensured delivery once he had placed his order the following day.)

(word count, 1,936)

©CGAllan 2000 - Please note: The right of CGAllan to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

Like its sister piece, "Click, Click, Click", this story was inspired by genetics and reading news articles today about the strivings to completely map the human genome... I didn't think that I'd fully fleshed out the story, so to speak, with "Click..." or covered all aspects of a complex tale - I wondered about the faceless doctors and scientists involved, often demonised because of their controversial work - did they have a conscience about what they could unleash? Did they think they even needed one?

So this story is very much told from the point of view of Dr Stein - a terrible pun name, I know, but since the ending draws parallels to "Frankenstein" anyway, it was one of those "why not" decisions - and I often wonder if readers spot it straight away or only become aware of it on a second reading...

There are other links to "Click..." in this story too if you look hard enough - I wanted the reader to ponder whether the scene at the beginning of this story took place at the same time as the couple in "Click..." was ordering their custom-made baby in another room of the building - the "smiling" couple who pass Dr Stein in the hallway are a hint at that very fact...

I also wanted to play around with what future worlds might be like again in this story, as I always do when I'm in "sci-fi" mode... For example, the good doctor receives his morning "post" through his computer. Today we are accoustomed to receiving e-mail messages in this way, but I was pondering here that there would be no postal service at all in the future ( no Royal Mail if you live in the UK like myself!) - everyone had to own a computer (either at home or on the move) to receive their mail. Therefore here, I don't refer to the mail as "email" but simply letters, because paper mail just doesn't exist any more...

I love leaving hints and unanswered things in my stories too - and here there is a biggie in the form of the clones invented by Dr Stein all having the monicker of "Clara" with a serial number attached to them - but then later in the story we discover his own daughter is called Clara too. So, is his daughter a clone offspring or a biological one? Could she just be the "model" Stein used for his clones? All very Bladerunner and Star Wars esque, I know...

The last thing I'd like to comment on is the conservation pod of Clara's husband as he wardens the national park. I love that tiny scene and image of a hovering ship moving through natural features in a distant future landscape... Whenever I re-read that paragraph, I'm always convinced there's another story yet to be told about that man out there going about his daily routine...

Anyway, talking of other stories, as I said in the commentary for "Click..." above, there is a third story to complete this "genetics gone mad" trilogy (and it's not about the warden and his pod) - I tinker with it every so often, but it'll appear on this blog as soon as I get anywhere near an acceptable end product with it! Watch this space...

In early 2007 I decided to try different ways to add intrigue and anticipation to my writing for readers and made this post over at my writing journal blog:

http://cgallan.blogspot.com/2007/01/get-in-for-trailers-before-main-feature.html

Then I put a "teaser trailer" on each of my story blogs to prelude the stories that were "Coming soon". Here's what the teaser for "Drone, Drone, Drone" looked like:

A brand new sci-fi tale will emerge here soon...

"Drone, Drone, Drone"

(a short sequel)

by CGAllan

Get ready for more genetic intrigue of the future world

in the follow-up story to "Click, Click, Click"...

(Until the future gets here, you can journey into the past

to see earlier visions of things to come from CGAllan below...)

Congratulations! You've stumbled across the colourful word jumble of CGAllan's 2nd Zip Code Challenge! So your reward for this is "Hidden Treasure # 1" - somewhere on this very page is a hidden link for an exclusive look at the world of CGAllan's "Moon Crater" novel - just click a picture somewhere on this page that looks like it's erupting like the 2nd "Volcanic Venus" Zip Code Challenge...

"The Thirst For Knowledge" - a short chiller by CGAllan
(Winner of "Spookiest Story" Magazine Contest 2004
on the MA in Creative Writing, Northumbria University)

My life has always been filled with questions. Most of them begin with "Why" and end with "me", but about three hours ago I was faced with a new, more profound question which has forced me to try to forget my own problems for the present moment at least.

It was 7pm again and I had become thirsty as I always did at 7pm.

In setting this down now I hope to help myself remember, for the thirst makes me forget things quickly.

Typically, my pockets were empty. When my pockets became light like that I always visited those who had been my friends before.

Tonight it was the turn of John Franks, a former colleague. They never turned me away. Perhaps it was guilt or the remnants of something once alluded to as "social conscience", but I didn’t care to ask "why" when the thirst took over.

I knocked at the back door, as they always preferred me to do.

Three times, to let him know it was me and not some strange beggar.

John was in his lab as usual. That stuff still amused him, evidently. The security system announced my entrance and John's voice came over the intercom. "Come up."

It switched back to its monotonous crackling quickly, almost cutting John's words short.

If it was possible I was even more thirsty by the time I reached the eighth floor of his apartment. But I wouldn't trust any form of technology again, even an elevator.

I knew what to expect as soon as I entered the lab, even though I hadn't visited John for some weeks. His existence was spent slumped over a sparklingly clean steel table at the centre of the lab on top of which were numerous cages. The only thing that had changed
since my last visit was the number of inhabitants in those cages.

"No new specimens, then?" I enquired half-heartedly in an attempt to evade the reason for my visit. John took a while to answer.

I continually ask myself "why" this might be now. I don't know if my words just take longer to reach him through the layers of work which John piles upon himself.

Finally he consented to give me a little conversation. "Don't need any more. I'm close."

We didn't speak for an hour after that. I sat watching him, part of me reminiscing about the old days, but the greater part wondered "how" I was going to ask for what I had come for. To ask for what he already surely knew I had come to get.

It fascinated me, the strange nature of John's research. I forgot my thirst for that hour as I watched him work together with Alfred II. Theirs was a master-servant relationship, of course. But there was a definite bond between the two. A bond which really ought not to have been. But it was a bond I recognised.

Alfred was a lab rat. He was as old as a rat can get without dying of "unnatural" causes. He had survived where others had not because John would not allow him to die like the others. But he was running out of specimens as I had tried to point out.

Whenever John handled a specimen he was fairly brutal about it.

Despite at first tempting it with sweet things, he always ended up pulling it out of its cage by its tail. There were no comforting words or soothing tones. Only cold silence. Once out of the cage, the rat was slapped onto the freezing metal surface of the central table. Whilst in a dazed state, it was prodded and injected and left to react to whatever new concoction John and his colleagues had come up with this week.

But with Alfred II he was... different. The sweet things were still offered to him, but I imagined them to be sweeter somehow.

He was carefully lifted out and carefully placed upon a warmed cloth on the tabletop. He was injected and prodded, although they were gentler proddings than those of his siblings. And he was only injected with things that had already been tried and tested on other specimens before.

He was the "tested tester."

Alfred II always survived.

As to "Why" John had chosen to "befriend" this rat, I could not hazard a reason. Was he trying to salvage some shred of decency from our years of animal torture and mutilation? Perhaps it was just that he needed a companion in this lifeless apartment. I was sure that my infrequent visits were the most frequent John received each month.

I watched John jab and predictably kill the three remaining specimens in the other cages on the central table. Only Alfred II remained. He was sleeping in a corner of his cage.

I looked at the clock on the wall of the lab from where I sat in one corner of the room. It was an hour since I had arrived. The memory of "why" I had visited John came back to me and I coughed a dry cough to gain his attention.

"Are you calling it a night, then?" I gestured to the three corpses on the table.

"The problem is..." John's passion for his work came through in the enthusiasm of his tired voice. "I'm testing human diseases on these things."

I wasn't sure if he was addressing me or merely allowing his train of thought to be freed into the real world.

But then he did address me directly with THE question.

"Listen to me, Al. How can we convince them to give us live human specimens to work on?"
My mouth was dry. My head felt hollow and my stomach ached.

"What?" I crackled. "You've been up in this lab too long, Dr Franks. What about ethics? What about your oath? John, it's ludicrous!"

He stared at me for a long while. I hoped my words were slowly sinking down into his being and taking hold of his sense of decency.

Then he blinked as if to wake himself up out of a daydream. "Yes, of course it is. I... I get these wild thoughts sometimes. You must forgive me. How about a drink? I won't have one. Not while I'm working. But you want one, yes?"

Of course I did.

I took the glass from his hand and let the liquid swallow me as it trickled down my throat. It was very sweet. And after that all I remember is the cold, cold silence.

That was about an hour and a half ago. I remember feeling drowsy and being pulled abruptly by the arm... Or was it the leg? I awoke on the central table and felt bruising on my arms and chest.
I can see Alfred II in his cage eating merrily on a piece of cheese.

He always survives. And I feel the thirst coming upon me again.


(word count - 1,153)


©CGAllan 2002 - Please note: The right of CGAllan to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.


This story literally just came to me at the bus stop... It was written as part of a "weekly challenge" for an online writing club I was a member of a few years back, (incidentally, internet writing clubs and forums can be a great way to practise the art of writing, and to get constructive feedback from like-minded creatives!). Each week we were set a starting point to the story, like, "write a sci-fi story written in the old American West" or "write a story based on an object on your writing desk", but this particular one was to "write a sci-fi story based around the relationship of man and animal." Here's what the folks at The Poetry Club said about my story:

“Chris entertained us all with his sci-fi rendition of ‘The Thirst For Knowledge’. The writing was unique and superb… This is most unusual and well written. It reminds me of some horror stories I have read and I think the reader needs to read between the lines. There's a lot implied without you actually saying it and a lot left up to the reader's imagination.”

I think I twisted the brief a little by writing about animal experimentation, but I also wanted to bring in the theme of human experimentation as well, so it seemed a natural progression to draw parallels between Alfred I, the human, and Alfred II, the animal - both being "lab rats". I like writing stories with twists, but never fully feel like I've got complete control over how much I'm giving away and if it's too early to hint at what the end might be. I've had mixed reactions to the story, from people not quite understanding it, to others who tell me quite strongly that they don't want me to make them read it again! Anyway, whatever, I hope that readers can see the parallels I was trying to draw throughout the story between the two "experimentees". I've been asked a few times exactly what "the thirst" is - I suppose I've left it open to personal interpretation - the main idea is that Dr Franks (a very unsubtle name, I know) has given Alfred the thirst, but in a deeper sense, don't we all in some way or another have our own "thirst" in life - things we're "addicted" to, be it our own pursuits or distractions? (one of my own particular "thirsts" is collecting Indiana Jones memorabilia from eBay!)

I myself am still chilled to the bone when I read the last sentence of the story, years after writing, and I know what's coming every time! Maybe it's because of this that I redrafted that original story and entered it intp a student magazine competition on the MA in Creative Writing course I recently undertook - and I'm glad I did, because I won "Best Spooky Story" for my efforts. Winning accolades and prizes from industry critics might be something I've got to look forward to in the future but there's nothing like the feeling of getting a prize from fellow writers, the people who appreciate just how much goes into crafting stories, no matter what form they take or genre they're written in...