Outpost #4

For centuries this tropical canopy stared down at her perfect hiding place as if to bow in approval at her own handy work.
Eyes may watch but life never waits.
Giant Banyan vines hang as live wire, now dead, drag in the dirt stillness of jungle floor.

Her ancient hanging gardens, escape hatches for creatures with an opposable thumb who knew what to do when danger approaches.

The prefrontal lobe, Nature's precursor to intelligence, a worthy weapon. reliable in an ancient age when danger was still perceivable.
Genes answered questions and gave solutions. Uncountable ravelings and unravelings of the Double Helix, billion years in the making.
Time honored offerings by unseen forces, hidden gatekeepers. Passage into the future the reward. This jungle leaves no residue of death. At first light evidence is gone. As if death never happened. The perfect crime.



Outpost#2done


Inside the lab station, Dr. Cooper feels the pressures of the day mount. “Just an urge,” he thinks. The directive of ancient genes skillfully crafted by unknown forces.
Training had prepared him for gene mechanics, but something was different here. Genetic codes, DNA, gene expression, and proteins of primal genes usually follow predictable patterns in gel boxes. He looks again.
“Tamperings." This would be the last word to emerge from his consciousness for awhile.

Cooper looks over at Suzi, in sleep mode for the night. Why is she so remote, so distant, so inner directed as if preoccupied with her own Abysma program? For the past week--and mostly today--Suzi's photovoltaic tints are a sharper blue. Her scanners focused a little more. Auras drift, sporadically, from her lab bench. For a second he wants to check her monitors--not to doubt her day's activity, he could never do that--but to free himself from the laboratory, to be free to go outside again, into the jungle, even for a moment.

The back door of the research station opens into the night. Cooper steps out, feels the cool chill and follows an ancient trail through the glade of Banyans that lead beyond to the mountain. There are no tracks this low in the jungle. He wouldn't find them until he was further up the mountain.

Smooth mists lift off the tops of the jungle canopy into a clear moonlit night. The shadow of the lab building fades as Cooper makes his way into the the darkness. He hears no life in the trees. Only the song of distant waterfalls and the wispy sound of the wind. As a coolness settles onto the shadows, the jungle floor darkens again.





Outpost#3done

A push of simplicity

Desire is prelude to heated battle. She is a young creature. Less than a year old,

A rustle in the tall Banyan just ahead quickens the heart amidst this echo the giant trees.
Haunched in the shadows perceptions open percussive sounds on the jungle floor as if expecting an approach.
In an instant she was there, her scent exotic. pheromones prelude a heated battle.
She was a young creature less than a year old,
, the sound of the hunter is silence. For centuries, the tropical canopy remains the perfect hiding placee for eyes to watch and wait.


Remnants of Earth's Forests and her ancient hanging gardens, escape hatches . The prefrontal lobe, Nature's invention, the precursor to intelligence itself, a worthy weapon. Reliable in an age when danger was still perceivable. Genes answered questions and gave solutions. Uncountable ravelings and unravelings of the Double Helix, at least for billion years in the making. Time honored offerings by unseen forces, hidden gatekeepers. Passage into the future the reward. This jungle leaves no residue of death. At first light evidence is gone. As if death never happened. The perfect crime.


Dr. Cooper trusted science in his own hands, pre-engineered gene expression. A worthy opponent on a primeval battleground, he sensed everything. Anything she offered, he could answer.

Outpost#3 done

A rustle in the tall Banyan quickens the heart amidst the distant echo of giant trees. Haunched in the shadows, new perceptions open to faint percussive sounds along the jungle floor. Expect an approach.

In an instant she is there. She is a young creature less than a year old, her scent exotic pheromones, a prelude to heated battle, beyond sensual. Her nakedness didn't matter to the jungle. Blood in the shadows were primal to her survival against any intruder of territory. Claws razor sharp, and white teeth the only discernible signals, if a signal at all. Her athletic musculature contorts, eyes embroiling for attack. A noble beast imbedded with nature's most direct order. Tonight she carries the sound of the hunter-silence.

Deliberate in keeping her teeth shown and her claws erect, the final solution of survival, directed by gene expression, arrives.

No time exists now. Instinctive hormonal rage, this meeting at an inevitable crossroad of the evolutionary trail. She is art in motion. Fine tuned by eons of genetic connections, and intrinsic balance between available oxygen and gravitational detriment. She had nothing to learn. Her skills were all there. The same genes offered by the very trees that hid her and--the ones given her by someone, or something else.

Her eyes shift now, looking for a passionate kill. There would be no division of urge by this ancient directive in pure focus. Tonight it would be kill or be killed.





Outpost#4done


Nature at night smells different. It's a helpless thrill, deep down, nobody can help you. There are no awards when this battle is over--just the right to continue

Tigress appears from the shadows now. A renewed encounter, the worthy huntress. Forgotten magic responding as if to evoke religion. Beauty in pure natural motion, a ritual dance of sweet hate-- a reassuring killer instinct.

Cooper checks his weapon and thinks,"Crosshairs optical instruments used for astronomy and surveying." He locks on the tigress, intersecting lines in the shape of a cross.
"... who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge..."
He pulls the trigger.

Her ferocity was a deep contrast to the darkness of the jungle. She wouldn't have been complete without this. Her eyes held his. So young, yet ancient in her moves, holding her youth as a clever disguise.
Cooper pulls the weapon up again to aim. The inscriptions faint and subtle in raised lettering near the end of the stock number. He feels the glow of tritium, that radioactive form of hydrogen creating a light that helps.
...let light shine out of darkness,' ... give us the light of the knowledge of the glory...
He shoots again.

Cooper's mind wanders momentarily. Telescopic sights in the shape of a cross, a device associated with crosshairs. Cooper thinks of motion pictures and the media, crosshairs as a dramatic device. His memory floods back now--telescopes for polar alignment with a reticle that indicates the position of Polaris relative to the north celestial pole. Telescopes for precise measurements with filar micrometer as reticle; adjusted by the operator to measure angular distances between stars.
..."My goodness, and my fortress; my high tower, and my deliverer; my shield, and he in whom I trust; who subdueth my people under me."

Cooper's scanners click in automatically, "for aiming telescopes, reflex sights are used in conjunction with a telescope with a crosshair reticle. The reflex sight makes aiming the telescope on a Astronomical object or a region of the sky instant. Constellation Reticulum is designated to recognize the reticle and its contributions to astronomy."
..."blessed be the Lord my strength, which teacheth my hands to war, and my fingers to fight."

Tigress lives here. Cooper was part of it now, coaxed on by her dominance, as if finalist in a contest. A face-off with nature herself. This one moment in time, no oppressors or victors yet. Raw power the way it was intended to be. Her teeth, her only jewelry. Her smell pure, as if the jungle floor itself.

Cooper locks his weapon in again for discharge. "...blessed be the Lord my strength, which teacheth my hands to war, and my fingers to fight.

Evolutionary companions don't want to be any stronger or less strong than they are at this moment. He was here for the same reason she was. ..."be not that far from me, for trouble is near; haste Thee to help me.
..I trust in thee: let me not be ashamed, let not mine enemies triumph over me."

Her ferocity was a deep contrast to the darkness of the jungle. She wouldn't have been complete without this. Her eyes held his. So young, yet ancient in her moves, holding her youth as a clever disguise.
..."whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life."

Recognition emerges. Something in her eyes. She has the primitive wild gene, the one lost in a century of cloning. The xEVEo project.
Cooper locks his weapon in for one final shot. "Every living substance that I have made will I destroy,,,"





Outpost#5

A long time ago, Coop learned from his teachers.. He even remembers his professors who taught him the scientific method. As a student, his belief in God wanted exponentially as he progressed in his training. He always thought it curious that most of his professors went to church with their families on Sunday. His grasp of Latin and Greek roots as he studied always amused him. He knew the pitfalls of razzle dazzle and glitter and early on despised politics. He became an advocate of truth in science. The bright lights of the big cities never held a grip on him, either. The quirk of language interested him. “People would have to be entranced to go into an entrance,” he mused. He loved language, a new requisition of our prefrontal lobe. He always knew of his intrigue with anti-logic, urges without rationale. He liked walking the streets of Palo Alto after the lights were off. He always liked the opposite of fun, Purposely giving his talkative friends the creeps by his instinctive silence. As a small boy he liked animals but was more intrigued by the dark woods nearby where real critters lived, the squirrels and chipmunks. But this tonight was the dark wood he knew was our there. The one his little farm friends could never live in. Except Smoky, his farm cat.



Cooper started the long walk up the rock steps to the lab building. He had always wanted to be the lead investigator. Now, as the lead scientist, he projected an energizing maner. It had taken close to four billion years for the genetic code to ravel up in this place. Breaking the code had come in due time. He remembered someone famous had said, “Everything in its place and time.” The lab was immaculate. The building resembled an undersized fortress abandoned on the edge of a jungle. Remodeled on the inside, high tech, and of course paid for in full by the Science Consortium. Cooper was already personable for a bespectacled scientist. These new digs made him easy going.




Carter was already in the lab when Cooper unlocked the heavy metal door.

“Suzie from Beijing cam up here while you were gone,” Carter told Cooper.

“She's the one who interviewed for this job about five months ago,” Cooper said. “I remember her. Tall, thin, always carrying a red umbrella, rain or shine. Yeah, her complexion. She's worried about it. Pretty face. She said she's applied to a number of mainland universities. She wants to work here.”

“Because we're close to Beijing?”

“Did she leave her number?”

“No.”

“No phone number? That's strange coming from a woman of science.”

“And she's not on the Main Frame, either, but she's gor a campus boxy where you can reach her if you need to,” said Carter.

Cooper opened a fresh stick of gum and began chewing. He considered himself a lucky man, never getting hooked on the pleasure of smoke.

“She says she's a scientist,” Cooper said. “And really, there's no reason to disbelieve her. But a woman with those looks?” Cooper hesitated with a side glance. “I'm a fool to think women


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