The day Zane discovered the Autoeditor his career as a splicer took off. The Autoeditor was the jiffiest part of the Jiffy Splicetm. It made sure all of Zane's harebrained genetic monstrosities were formed with the minimum requirements of life. Like a heart and lungs and brain and digestive system. It was slicker than homunculi shit. Pick a couple of things you want from the monster and leave the hard work up to the computer. And hard work it was for the Macintosh Ultrapower ZDX 2001. Thirty-six hours later the little green light on the Infernal Oven began flashing and the protein synthesizer began it's quiet hum. The Mark One Roach Eliminatortm was in the oven.
It was a limited success. It ate roaches. When it could catch them. Which was usually when they were lying on their back in the bathtub. Which is where Sasha found the Mark One after it caught it's first roach and couldn't get out of the tub.
"I don't care what it eats! It looks like a cross between a crane fly and a tarantula!"
"Actually that's a pretty good guess, I used the tarantula genes to make it big enough to eat the big roaches."
"It's grosser than the roaches get it out of here!"
Zane fed the little monster back into the synthesizer careful not to get too close to its little fangs. It was too slow anyway, Mark One had only caught one roach in its miserable short life. Zane's subsequent attempts at roach control were met with similar responses. Jason flushed the Mark Two down the toilet after it fell in and couldn't get out.
His only comment was, "It looked like a wet hairball.."
The Mark Three Giant Mantistm was treated like a pet and when our cat Killer trotted into the music room with its crushed body there was much mourning. Killer was sick for a week so the Giant Mantistm design was shelved indefinitely. The Super Geckotm just disappeared. None of the cats got sick so maybe it just escaped. The roaches were threatening to unionize in the small hovel and the hunter paradigm of roach eradication was going nowhere. Zane broke out the last stick of his Newthink Smokestm and lit up considering the problem of roaches from a new perspective. If the blurb on the side of the smokes could be trusted.
That gave Zane an idea, co-opt the little buggers the corporate way. Make them more lovable. The ugly brown color and stupid fearlessness of roaches annoyed even Zane. Green and red roaches with fuzzy bright yellow antennas looked great to Zane. Sasha thought otherwise. She screamed when she turned on the bathroom light. Not as loud as when she saw the Mark Onetm. And not quite as loud as when she opened the cabinet and the roach wearing chucky t's and a diaper landed on her arm. She'd hated roaches since she found half of one bitten off in her Moon Pie in the third grade. Her fascination with small old fashioned rolling toys gave Zane the idea that eventually made Zane's fortune as a Professional Gene Splicer.
First he set the map to roach and designed a super roach that would kill the other roach males, breed with all the females and produce a litter of special new roaches. Designing the carapace and wheels to replace the legs was time consuming but rewarding. The suckers would be fast, twice as fast as it's nemesis the common roaches. Built in population controls were part of the Autoeditor and had to be modified in the custom preferences dialog box. Zane thought 50 of them would be plenty to keep the regular roaches out of sight. The firefly genes were a crowning ingenuity straight out of a Instant Genius Inhalertm.
The debut was a stunning success. Four weeks after releasing the prototype, Sasha walked into the kitchen and turned on the light. She didn't scream; she laughed out loud.
"It's so cute! Come help me get it out of the sink."
Racing around the sink, it's headlights glowing green was a bright red replica of a 1967 21-window VW microbus Hot Wheelstm car. Zane let it roll up on his hand and float to the floor where it zoomed away wheels spinning on the Hyperplasttm floor. Sasha watched the car disappear under the baseboard with a mischievous grin and took another hit off of her NewThink Smoketm.
"Are they all like the VW?" she asked, puffing smoke out slowly.
"Except they breed into every Hot Wheelstm and Sizzlertm car type from your Fyudor's Miniature Antiques catalog and come in every color of the rainbow." Zane replied excitedly.
"Are they still roaches?"
" I don't think so."
But Zane wondered as he watched a small green Mustang Convertibletm zoom down the refigerator hot on the tail of the Batmobiletm. Headed for the overflowing garbage can. At least they were cute roaches.
©Gregory Lee Jones aug95
