Aggy and the Dinos

Chapter 1

Julian Evergreen, unaware of his wife's discovery, was a troubled man. Though he had thrown himself back into his work with an enthusiasm meant to inspire, he has lost the guiding light in his professional life. His dreams were snatched from him by the law, when he was just inches away from realising them – for Julian was no ordinary man, but the foremost cloning expert in the world. It had been expected that he would lead the way in cloning a human being. His pioneering work, and rumoured successes, had attracted more attention than he needed. The Anti-Cloning League lobbied to have cloning banned, and they won. The Scientific Practices Act 2013 was passed, and it criminalised everything, from human and animal cloning right through to stem cell research.

Evergreen and his colleagues put up a fierce fight, but all their rational arguments and international support could not sway the House of Lords. The League, via sensationalist campaigns, had the nation convinced that armies of clones would rape and pillage, there would be war, it was unethical – although Evergreen failed to see what was unethical about finding cures for diseases and increasing the supply of transplant organs – and the an entire field of scientific investigation came to an end.

He was sitting in his living room, on this particular evening, in the house that was still the house of a successful man. Perversely, his book sales had doubled since the ban, which just goes to prove that there is no such thing as bad publicity. He was accompanied by a glass of the cheap red wine that was still his favourite, and had been since he was at university. His budget had grown, but his basic nature remained the same. Debussy's Sarabande graced the air, heavy and sonorous. His writing was slow and meaningful, for such is the effect of the sarabande on the troubled mind; gradual heavy clarity and acceptance, acknowledgement of pain, followed by a climatic rise to renewed strength and understanding. It didn't matter really, he concluded, that the law had put an end to the plans for his master work. It could not be turned back, the decision was made and the world must now continue without that great marvel. He closed the journal and ran his hands over the leather binding. Leaning back in his chair, he could feel the weight of the past months still pressing in on him. He heard the whisper of a future that was now beyond his grasp. He felt like a detective who had his man, but lost the case on evidence. The lab had a future; there were four graduates about to begin their internships, four dazzling minds waiting for his influence, ready to make the next great discovery. But he mourned for challenges unmet, and felt sorry for the achievements he could no longer pursue. He had been the one who was expected to crack it first, to produce a perfect human clone. He had come close, many times, but never got the cigar. When cloning had been banned, his glory was stolen from him; it was not enough to already be the best. He had missed out on his opportunity to be God.

He lifted his head and smiled at the sound of Linda arriving home. He was at the door as she got out of the car in order to help her with her bags; the house looked even more wonderful as he brought them inside, a lucky man who still had a future, with a beautiful wife in this beautiful house. She was warm in his arms. Brushing her lips against his cheek, she whispered;

"I have something to tell you."

"You did that?" He asked, brows furrowed, hands planted on the work surface. She nodded like a teenage girl, eyes shining.

"Why?"

"For you." For the first time she looked troubled.

"Why?" He shouted again. "Linda for heaven's sake, you could lose your job for taking unlogged material from the dig."

"Don't shout at me Julian. I just thought you could use it, you lost the cloning thing and I thought perhaps you might like to work on something as exciting as the first cretaceous tissue sample ever found." She said, slamming her hand down.

"Don't pretend you did this for me."

"I did! I wish I hadn't now but I did."

"You're fucking nuts, you know that don't you."

"No, I'm a scientist. And I thought you might be equally anxious, but I was wrong, I'm sorry, forget it."

"We'll have to. You stole the sample. It can never be used."

"I'll log it next time."

"Oh so you're going back? I thought that was it for Hell's Creek?"

And so they continued, long into the night. She thought he should at least experiment on the sample; he was emphatic that only bad could come of it, he was too closely scrutinised. They left it at that, she was sorry, but she'd done it for him; he knew, but though she was mad, they loved each other, and that was it. He lay awake in the couple of hours he had before he had to get up; in innocence he played out how the experiment would begin, falter, and fail. The first misty fingers of madness swirled around his cranium, unnoticed. It was a ridiculous thing to attempt – all it would serve to do was highlight a loop hole in the law. A good scientist respects the law,

Without interceding sunlight, mist settles into fog. Evergreen's turmoil was stretched with the weight of inevitability. He had an affair with the idea behind his own back, telling himself that he wouldn't commit the crime that beckoned to him from his lizard brain. He flirted with it, and before he really knew what he'd done, the secret tissue sample was stored safely within his laboratory, briefly improving his marriage but gradually breaking down his rational mind. Soon he knew that he was powerless to the allure of the unknown, the glory of being the only man to touch the past in such a way, even though that glory must be hidden until after his death. If he was caught he would go to prison, and his work would become virtually worthless.

Because of this, he honoured the last shred of his morality by sabotaging it before he'd even begun. He planned an experiment so ludicrous, so biologically impossible that it wouldn't work. He took a grey paper file, the kind that just hold loose leaves of paper, and considered what he would write. The idea was so gross, so dark and malformed, that he struggled to find a name for it. After a long moment he picked up his pencil, and in the top left corner wrote the words Dinosapien Folly.

I.Q. unltd was a huge facility. It was the symbol of Evergreen's life work – like an iceberg, most of the lab was below the surface, the neat entrance and reception belying its vast size. It spread two square miles under the ground, lab after lab of sterile white walls underneath London. Initially the purpose of the lab was to assist Evergreen in his research, and be the flagship of human cloning. When the law abruptly changed, it adeptly rebranded itself as a facility for developing synthetic stem cells for medical research and fighting disease. Evergreen underwent great scrutiny, as the powers that be suspected that he would not let go of his goal, to which he was rumoured to have been frighteningly close. Evergreen observed the law, and continued to be one of the great scientists of his day, even though the resentment tore at him every time he entered his own lab. Despite this, he was still a great believer in the inclusion of new minds, and every year the institute took in four graduates on an internship. After a year in Evergreen's world, the lucky four could be guaranteed positions in any facility or university that they chose. These four interns, disappointed to have narrowly missed out on that great race, though excited none the less to be under the tutelage of the finest scientist in their field, were starting their first day.

They stood before Evergreen, idealism undimmed by a career laced with red tape and moral debate. They irritated him, slightly, with their fresh faces framed by stylish glasses, pressed shirts, biros at the ready; the intelligence of the future, so sharp, so enthusiastic, so...pointless. Put them in a lab and they'll beaver around flipping petri dishes until they drop, without discovering a single thing. It didn't work, that was the great secret. They supplied millions of people with hope, but hope was not the cure. It seemed there was no cure for the decline and weaknesses of the human body. Dean Fisher, Brian Dee-Yun, Jordie Jacobsen and Sean Coe were the country's top graduates. They knew things that most human minds could not fathom. Realistically they were about as useful as a cheese-wire seatbelt.