The elevator door opens, and he strides off, leaving me in his wake. I rush after him, cursing that my legs are shorter than his by a significant amount, so when he takes one step, I have to take one and a half to keep up.
He leads me into what I suppose must be his laboratory. I notice that there are eye scans and palm scans to get in, and that his name is on the door.
“Most of the experiment is being managed autonomously,” he says. “So I’m really not sure that you have much to do, if I am to be honest.”
“Does that seem like a good idea?”
He gives me another one of those irritated, jabby little glances. “Obviously,” he says. “Otherwise they wouldn’t be doing it.”
At this point, I’ve pulled out a small pad. I make a few notes about nothing in particular, mostly because it seems to annoy him, and he is definitely annoying me. Fair is fair.
This doesn’t feel like an interview at all. It feels like being dragged around by an unwilling person who doesn’t want me there. But he doesn’t tell me to leave, so I keep following.
“This is Project Chimera.” He finally says something useful. “Did Veronica fill you in?”
“A little. I have the outline.”
He looks displeased about that.
“She told me it is a top-secret, highly sensitive project and that you would have the say in deciding whether or not I was allowed to become part of it.”
That seems to mollify him a little bit. He’s still in control. I wonder why my presence seems to threaten that.
I can’t imagine him ever not being in control. He has the air of a man who has always been in charge. I shouldn’t pretend I don’t know who he is. Of course I know.
Simon Seek is the only child of Ramona and Derrick Seek, people who are known for being incredibly rich and good looking. Ramona and Derrick live in Spain now, havinginherited a castle from an aged relative. From what I can tell, Simon’s net worth is in the high millions. He doesn’t need to work at all.
He mostly stays under the radar, so information on him as a person is relatively limited. No social media. No interviews. He’s not a fame seeker. He could be, though. He’s more than handsome enough to be.
I try to turn the conversation back to the project at hand. I’ve been made aware that the shareholders need enough information to be able to throw more money at the place, and future researchers need to have access to detailed data sheets and such so that discoveries are not lost by being locked up in the minds of their inventors.
The corporate world of science is brutal. This man is a genius, and yet he possibly owns nothing of what he has made. That would be enough to put me in a perpetually bad mood too, I suppose.
“So, as I understand it, Project Chimera is an effort to edit genes in real time in living specimens.”
“We turned a mouse into a chicken. That was proof of concept,” he says, sounding thoroughly bored.
“Wow. Really? Do you have one here?”
“Of course I have one,” he says. “They’re quite the crowd pleaser. Makes the concept easily understandable by almost anyone. A child. Or a technical writer.”
I let the dig slide, because it’s silly, and because I want to see the chickmouse. Moushen. Chicouse. I will work on naming conventions later.
We step into the laboratory, and he gestures at a large glass cage with a mesh top for ventilation and wood shavings for bedding. The sort of cage a scientist might keep a lab rat in.
It is no rat that meets my gaze.
“Oh…” I say, surprised, though I probably shouldn’t be, because this is exactly what he said it would be.
The creature he has shown me is half-chicken, half-mouse. It is holding a piece of cheese in between surprisingly human-like hands emerging from short arms that in turn emerge from a feathered body. The little beast has a beak and pecks at the morsel quite happily.
“Well?” he says.
“It’s smaller than I would have thought,” I reply.
“Sorry my miracle isn’t large enough for your taste,” he snaps.
“I’m no size queen,” I comment, mostly under my breath. He snorts, apparently having heard it.