- Working at KSC
- NASA Old Headquarters building on KSC destroyed.
- Flintknapping points
- On going writing projects
- Vampires of Kennedy Space Center and the O&C
- Demons of Kennedy Space Center
- Demons of Kennedy Space Center, corpus callosotomy
- Ghosts of Kennedy Space Center, End of Spiders
- Dreams of Kennedy Space Center, lovers and pyramids.
- Witches of Kennedy Space Center
- Cave Bears of Kennedy Space Center
- Aliens of Kennedy Space Center, uninvited guests
- Remembering Kennedy Space Center
State Security of Kennedy Space Center
Director of Security, Eugenics & Quality Assurance
This is another tale of the Kennedy Space Center's multiverses, both in the distant past and the far future.
Follow ghosts, demons, gods, AIs, tourists, DNA experiments, vamps, and witches as they travel the multiverse only to discover their interconnections as allies and enemies across an endless history or future.
Every story is the true story.
This story is Part Two of Gene Splicers of Kennedy Space Center
Director Jake
Jake smoked alone in his small office, an office too small to represent his promotion to Kennedy Space Center’s Director of State Security and Eugenics.
He leaned back in his worn-out chair, contemplating the recordings of the dream stories of the Ophelia creature downloaded during her programmed seizures.
That the bird-bat-human chimera wanted to murder her husband, the toady gene-splicer, was not a mystery; the murder was not the thing that bothered his intuition.
Jake exhaled the synthetic smoke and spoke to his cell phone assistant to record his thoughts.
“All the NASA chimera double helix hybrids have varying forms of bizarre dream stories, nightmarish beyond normal comprehension. The gate jumpers risking insanity as they dare to explore the timelines have confirmed that some of the dream stories are somehow real in that ‘other’ space. The green-skinned man, a common dream theme, could be a NASA experiment or an escaped feral.”
Jake inhaled deeply, trying to hold the smoke in as long as possible while his mind raced over the possibilities and the what-ifs.
The creature’s seizure dream-time stories and vids of the gene-splicers murder had not answered the thing.
The old reports in neat stacks of floppy discs lay across his formally clean desk; old needles and an overflowing abalone shell marred his desk as he had searched for the thing.
The floppy disc titled “Camouflage,” he spun about his fingers, meditating on the light playing off the metal and plastic to calm his mind.
The thing?
He slipped the floppy into the player and commanded his phone to run the disc while his personal AI reviewed a copy of the same information.
“Our study confirms the findings of other studies and autopsies that many neural circuits are dedicated to camouflage and visual communication. Given the Vampires’ unique ability as predators to hunt and communicate with dynamic color changes - the ability to camouflage themselves either solitary or pack hunting.
Their membrane filters allow chosen light spectrums to pass through the membrane faster than the other rudiments.
As a result, light refracts, passing out the other side of the membrane and allowing the subject to blend with background elements. The seeming talent for invisibility has been demonstrated via shock and chemical experiments.
With energetic corpus callosotomy experimental surgery, we have convinced the vamps to believe they were invisible when they were fully visible. Note: you may have listened to the medical behavior journals, that some technicians had been disciplined for harassing the brain-cut vampires.”
Jake snorted; “Who wrote that shit? The techs had only been mocking the vampires. No one can take a joke anymore.”
The AI interpreted Jake’s question as not a question.
His phone gave him a preview of the following file to review, and Jake’s neck veins bulged out and his face crimson.
He would have smashed and broken things, but he knew the AI monitored rage, always watching. As it was, he broke the rules and scribbled the word ‘Mother’ on the floppy disc.
“Phone, play the Mother file,” he said, with bile and synthetic smoke competing for the same air pathway.
“The Mother file
Proximity permissions & Pair Bonding
Our best practices for creating human/hybrid have run smoothly with the expected failures.
Social bonding between randomly assigned (selected for intelligence) astronaut cadets (volunteers) and Vampires forced to live together for only the mean of 8.5 days (depending on the lunar cycle) sustained pair-bonding relationships when released into the test village. Feeding and sleep-hibernation relationships initiated during the forced proximity phase demonstrated successful DNA blending via natural methods.
The management team will meet on Tuesdays and Sundays to discuss disposition and adjustments in the procedures or modifications in test objectives as necessary for multiple colony settlements on Mars. —Directer McGreen.”
“Mother?” said Jake.
The AI interpreted that Jake’s statement was not a question but recorded a dangerous spike in blood pressure and released counteractive drugs.
Before he gave himself an aneurysm, Jake switched to vids from the semi-intelligent motion-activated cameras of the recent murder-suicide.
Jake smoked and watched, playing the suicide of the gene-splicer on an endless loop, looking for the thing.
That the splicer had brought death on himself by the mistreatment of his creations was not “the thing.” The thing, the thing, the thing. What was it?
The vamp-hybrid assistant appeared distraught just before she was dismissed by the gene-splicer.
Nearly two dozen cameras recorded the murder over a spectrum ranging from 200 nm to 1100 nm and, upon demand, played ultraviolet, visible, infrared, and thermal, shifting colors of the spectrum in unarticulated knowledge of the thing.
“There,” he hissed.
The infrared videos recorded a spike, more like a spermatozoa-shaped orb, that may have come from the woman hybrid assistant.
Jake slowed the vid down to where it took an hour to watch the orb spike.
The recording showed a spike never before recorded in the digital age, where AI’s recorded everything. A new type of energy or communication?
“It could be gamma rays,” said Jake.
Gamma’s were not unknown; indeed, we have yet to record all of the mysteries in the universe.
Jake enlarged one of the gene splicers’ eyes to where one eye filled the entire monitor, watching, waiting for the before and after of the orb-spike.
The eye reflected the vamp-hybrid’s face. There was rage on her face?
And the timing, the orb-spike just before the gene-splicer stepped into the loving arms of his wife and crimson splashed at least one of the cameras.
Jake glanced at the real-time video of the DNA mutation in her cage. She stared back, with red curls, beautiful wings, and just the hint of sheathed fangs. Almost pretty features in an exotic-bat-like skull shaped for echolocation. The woman’s eyes flashed carmine as if she knew he was watching her. Maybe I should visit her before the euthanasia.
An improbable idea pirouetted insidiously into his brain, and he hot-boxed another smoke, his mind racing through flickering possibilities, eliminating scenarios, until at last concluding, “The most likely yet logical thought that fits poetic imagination,” he said to the vid screen of the murderer.
The thing.
Yes, the thing, I have it!
The vamp-hybrids have powers they have kept hidden. Instead of sharing for the benefit of all, they retain unknown abilities.
Jake thought about his mother, who had been whored to the Vampires. NASA called it a test.
Those NASA directors were cold bastards. Ma was one of the few who had escaped that NASA experiment.
Yet Ma had never been correct after the vamp abuse. Nightmares, survivor guilt, drug addiction, a quest for love from all the unsavory characters of society.
Emily, my sister Emily, with vamp-tramp-tainted blood in her body and suicide in her teens, was tossed away by NASA as damaged experimental goods. My father is unknown, but most likely her drug dealer, Verde Shamrock. We have the same green eyes. Fuck.
Thinking about his mother only increased his blood pressure, so he turned from the vid and spoke to his phone: “Memorandum of Understanding. A new threat to humanity’s existence and expansion into the universe. To begin immediately, I am invoking Project 6EQUJ5.”
Project 6EQUJ5, in place for generations, was not overt genocide of the vamp-hybrids but relatively slow extermination based on the inherent hazards of spaceflight.
Hypergol spills, failure of wrist grounding straps, and inadvertent pyrotechnic initiation. Launchpad Water Deluge Systems accidentally engaged. Asphyxiation and oxygen displacement.
The MPPF facility equipped with the Toxic Vapor Detection System (TVDS) part of the Hypergolic GSE Subsystem that alerts for hazardous hyper (N2O4, MMH, and N2H4) in the high bay will go out of calibration, and the flashing emergency beacon disabled. That single event would exterminate thirty percent of the vamp-hybrid spaceship technicians. The last thing they would smell before entry into hell will be Monomethylhydrazine (MMH) - Fuel – Fish odor. Nitrogen tetroxide (N2O4) - Oxidizer – Chlorine odor and Hydrazine (N2H4) - Fuel – Ammonia Odor.
Jake ran through the details; of course, clones and human normals would be lost, but their sacrifice would only ensure the survival of the human race by assisting in the elimination of something that nature abhorred. And clones could be replaced in tubes and crèches.
“They kidnapped my mother, the NASA bastards, the bad press from the loss of vamps and clones? NASA deserved it. All of it.”
And the vamps on the Martian colonies in the canyon?
Activate the virus in their implants for Glioblastoma, beginning with mild headaches blamed on the change in gravity, COVID-type headaches, nausea, and seizures to record more stories in their implants. And then, finally, no bio signs from Mars. Just the weird stories in dusty implants playing over and over.
Unexpected joy swept across Jake’s features, and a stirring in his groin, saving humanity, was pleasurable.
Ophelia’s father uncamouflaged himself from the block wall, “Jake, brother of Emily, you who could have been my son.”
Jake’s fingers and vocal cords were no longer under his own control, and his brain screamed in terror.
“Nor is your implant or AI recording my presence,” said Ophelia’s father. “One has to keep up with the technological changes.”
“Don’t bite me,” Jake wanted to say.
“Jake, brother of Emily, you who could have been my son. However, I see now that you are damaged. I would not have allowed you to see a dozen summers. There is empathy damage. Your blood cells indicate fetal drug addiction. Ahh, your mother. She was like a carved bowl of rose Quartz, exquisite and desirable, yet with flaws so deep they were nearly invisible.”
“She escaped you!” screamed Jake in silence.
“She rejected my love!” said the vampire with such power and anger it left the paralyzed Jake shaking to the core; he would have wept and urinated if not frozen.
“Enough!” screamed the vampire. “Speak into the monitor that you rescind Project 6EQUJ5. Say that the gene-splicer committed suicide by one of his mistreated creations. Investigation closed.”
There was a thing that bothered the vampire, what was left undone? A look at the camera monitors showed a chimera with red curls looking back at him. The gene-splicers wife.
"And Jake, remove the gene-splicers wife from euthanasia status and schedule her for the next colony ship to Mars."
The hybrid looks too much like my daughter. She could me my daughter. Cannot promise she will enjoy dusty Mars, but life is life, take what you can get.
When Jake, brother of Emily, completed his tasks, the vampire inputted a permanent video loop into Jake’s implant where a green-eyed drug dealer chased Jake holding double syringes of the meth-phen solution that had killed Emily.
“When they find you, and they will, the docs will hook you to a drip. Meanwhile, old Green-eyes chases you until you die or until the drug dealer catches you with his needles.
Welcome to hell, brother of Emily.”
The vid cams recorded an unknown orb spike if one were to study infrared levels.
In a cage in F-Tower of the VAB, an Ophelia hybrid would purred and flashed her eyes..
Ophelia’s father picked up the backup thumb drive of the winged lady’s seizure stories and faded back in his wall camouflage.
“Some days are busier than others,” said the wall.
Other tails of the Space Center:
Vampires of Kennedy Space Center
Demons of Kennedy Space Center
Demons of Kennedy Space Center, corpus callosotomy
Ghosts of Kennedy Space Center
Dreams of Kennedy Space Center
Aliens of Kennedy Space Center
Director of Kennedy Space Center
Hitchhikers of Kennedy Space Center
Witches of Kennedy Space Center
Cave Bears of Kennedy Space Center
Chimeras of Kennedy Space Center
Gods of Kennedy Space Center and the Nile
Dinosaurs of Kennedy Space Center
Kayakers of Kennedy Space Center
Remembering Kennedy Space Center
Shadows of Kennedy Space Center
Starman of Kennedy Space Center
Gate Jumpers of Kennedy Space Center
Allies of Kennedy Space Center (Pt 2 of Gate Jumpers
Savants of Kennedy Space Center
Gene Splicers of Kennedy Space Center
State Security of Kennedy Space Center
Rescuers of Kennedy Space Center
Ferals of Kennedy Space Center
Return HOME from State Security of Kennedy Space Center page
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Author Bruce Ryba at Kennedy Space Center Launch Pad 39B & Artemis 1. "We are going to the Moon!"
Author's discussion (that's me) on You Tube of a book review on Amazon
For the video versions of information, please check out my YouTube Channel (Turkeys, Flintknapping, dive stories etc.)
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Struggle for the northern frontier and other lost tales of old Florida.
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