The Ascension

Bears and beasts

Artemis led Aster down the hall and to a room that had been locked earlier. It seemed to be another medical type room, plain white, with a bay of computers at one wall. A large window, looking into a plain room, took up the adjacent wall.

"We'll need a bear, to start." Artemis said, and he pulled a small device out of his pockets, tapped for a minute, and then put it away. "Just asked for a bear."

Aster narrowed her eyes. "From whom?"

"Well, bears are like humans. Staples of a lazy planet. Not very hard to get one mailed to you. I just ordered some off the omninet- that's like the internet, but in space. Wait, did your planet ever develop an internet? Never mind then. I just called someone and bought a few bears, and they're going to teleport it over immediately."

"If you want me to adapt to higher levels of technology, you probably shouldn't skip over explaining things."

"An intranet is what connects a network in, say, a few buildings. An internet can connect the world. The omninet connects planets. What level of computer does your planet have?"

"Well- I've heard the kingdom of Aeis' royal institute is years ahead of my schooling, but I've never been to the south. We had a computer that would do math, and there was an ongoing effort to copy a dictionary onto it."

"Okay. Look. The omninet allows for trillions of people to connect, and there's trillions of web addresses on it for every kind of anything you can imagine. This constant flow of information has- oh, look, the bears are here."

The bears were here. In the other room, four attendants were walking four bears by the muzzle. The attendants left, and the bears stood around peacefully.

"They're a domestic subspecies." Artemis said, seemingly proud.

"What species are the other aliens on the ship?"

"They're just dogs." Artemis said. "I keep them around mostly to piss Ioro off. He can't stand them. Now, anyway, I will show you what I mean when I say anyone can be a god within a day."

Artemis turned to the computers on the wall, and brought up a screen of letters and numbers. "This is the genetic code of a bear. We didn't need actual bears to bring it up, of course, as it's been in the databases for years. It only takes a couple of mods, in truth, to turn a bear into a fern- well, metaphorically. If we tried that now, the bear would simply die. But the codes are similar enough."

"So what do I do?"

"I'm going to walk you through this first one, but honestly, a child could do this." Artemis clicked around a few times on the screen, typed a few things in a foreign language, and code shortened itself. "Here's a few example of genes a bear might carry." He selected something else, and a machine in the other room hummed to life. "And here are the exact genes the bear on the far left possesses. Adjusting one will do nothing immediately, unless it's one of the genes concerned with carrying a disease, in which case the bear may become ill. Are you following this?" Artemis turned over to look at Aster with a somewhat bored expression on his face.

Aster was following it, but she did not know what a gene was. Or what DNA was. She was just making assumptions in her head, guesses based on context that let her feel less lost than she was. She nodded.

"We'll be using gene shock therapy to adjust the DNA in two creatures, then artificially age the young to examine if desired results were met. If we actually were seeking to create a new species, further generations would have to be born in order to create genetic variability, and add in codes for disorders and variations to help equalize population levels. For now, we will focus on creating a small bear."