The final chapter

It had been nearly 2 years since replacing the 200 executives. The plan was going quite well. Contacting several of his men, he told them to meet him in the conference room in one hour.

“It is time for phase 3 to begin. Our operatives have done excellently. Their companies are doing better then they have ever before. The innovation they have created will be very useful in increasing our support. It is time for us to let ourselves become known.” Much chatter filled the room, and the questions poured in;

“Are we really ready for that? What if they reject our proposal?”

“Can we really let them know what we’ve been doing?”

“I know you are all concerned, but the time has come. With the work our operatives have done over the past 2 years in their respective companies, we have shown that we are for the ‘greater good’. The people they replaced are still able to be located so that we can show them that they are thriving in their new lives. But it’s time to expand the plan to cover more then just random people and executives.” The room was silent.

***

Governor Mead had been in office for 3 years. His term has been successful and he had a lot of support and was well liked.

“Governor, you have a call on line 12”, his secretary announced. Thank you Janice, he said as he picked up the phone and switched to the ‘line’ in question.

“Good evening Mr. Mead.” The voice on the other line said.

“Who is this?” the governor responded. The conversation continued,

“You don’t know me, my name is Travis Carter. I am the leader of an organization that has a proposal for you.”

“What kind of organization?”

“We are striving to make the world a better place. I’m sure you have noticed all of the innovations that companies in your state have been making over the past 2 years. We have been directly responsible for those. But I’d prefer not to discuss anything further on the telephone. I believe it is in both of our best interests to arrange a meeting”. Definitely curious, but at the same time cautious by what he had been told, his response was a simple;

“Where and when is good for you?”

Premier Rachel Page arrived at her office early that morning. Normally she didn’t receive calls until later in the day, so she was surprised when her secretary told her that she had an incoming call.

“Thank you Philip, patch it through”.

“Good morning Mrs. Page, my name is Travis Carter and I have a proposal for you”. Their conversation went much the same as his conversation with the governor had gone. She agreed to a meeting place, which was the same place that the governor had agreed to.

The day for the meeting arrived. Travis, along with two of his men Jack and John waited for their guests at the designated location. 2 cars pulled up close to them, from each of them 3 guards exited the vehicles first. Confirming that everyone was who they said they were, both the governor and premiere exited their cars.

“Greetings, Governor Meed and Premier Page. I am Travis Carter. These are my associates, Jack Denton and John Williams. Thank you for coming. Please follow me. If it makes you feel more comfortable, you are free to bring your guards. Once I’ve shown you what I invited you here to see, I hope that we will be able to trust each other enough to be able to forego the need for security.” Following him down a stairwell, they proceeded down to a steel door. Pressing several buttons beside the door, Travis put his eye up to it, and the door opened. Walking in, they came to a hallway and walked down it, eventually ending at a door. Going through the door, they entered a room that had a podium at the frount, with a large screen behind it and several lounge chairs in front of it.

“Please feel free to have a seat. If you require food or beverages, we can provide them for you”. Everyone was seated, said that they were fine. Travis began to speak.

“I would like thank you all for coming here today. You’re probably wondering why you were called here, and why you two in particular were called. The answer is a bit complicated, so I’ll start with the beginning.”

“5 years ago we began plans to deal with the many problems that have been plaguing humanity for decades, and in some cases centuries. Our plan was to test our new serum he had discovered that could literally transform a human or any other species into any other species. The serum was tasteless, odorless and colorless. It would be delivered in any form, injection, ingestion or inhalation”

Both the governor and premier raised their hands. He allowed them to ask the questions they wanted to ask.

“Wait a minute, transformation? That’s fantasy, something from out of the movies!” the governor said.

“I have agree with Mr. Mead, what your saying is impossible”.

Travis continued;

“I realize that what I am telling you seems impossible, but I assure you it is not. This was one of our first subjects, his transformation took about 2 hours, we have time elapsed it to allow you to see the entire thing”. Pressing several buttons, the screen behind him displayed a picture of a man in a room with just a bed. He had something injected into his right arm. Red fur began to sprout all over his torso almost immediately, followed by red fur sprouting all over his legs. His face began to change shape, his nose growing out into a muzzle; he also started to shrink as a tail began growing from his tailbone. His nails grew into claws, and the fur growth spread to his face, with each passing seconds he was looking more and more like an animal. Finally, as he had continued to shrink he shrunk into his boxer shorts. Several seconds later, a red squirrel crawled out of them. Both the governor and Premier were in shock at what they had seen, and responded with a demure

“My God”. Over the course of the next year, we were able to successfully transform 458 people in the species of their choosing. A large percentage of them chose to not be changed back. To keep track of them, mostly to make sure they were okay, we implanted a nanoscopic chip in each of them.

“Nanoscopic?” the premier responded.

“You heard me right, a device 1 thousandth the size of a microscopic device.” He pressed buttons; this time the screen showed another squirrel, a Grey squirrel doing that appeared to be an intelligence test. He continued;

“We preformed several tests on each transformed individual, to ensure that their intelligence and memories remained intact after their transformation. When we were out of the testing phase, we took it to the next level, we had found a way to scan someone memories and give them to someone else without harming the original persons memories. The purpose was to allow the transformed person to retain their human minds and memories, while a clone of their human self would replace them. Because the clone had their memories they could easily pose as them without arousing suspicion.”

“And exactly how many people did you replace?” The governor asked, now sounding very concerned. He continued.

“Over the course of 2 years we replaced someone new each day, accounting for 728 people. Again before releasing them into the ‘wild’ we implanted nanoscopic chips so they could be located if necessary”. Pressing buttons he shows several images, each a picture of a person which the outline of an animal below it, representing the species they had been turned into.

“Why do this though? What were you trying to accomplish?” They governor and premier asked. Travis continued

“We needed to research which companies and which products were the most influential, what better way to do this then to do actual ‘in house’ research”, our ‘replicants’ provided us with a lot of very useful information about which companies had the most influence. 2 years ago, we had enough re-search to know which companies we needed to target. We invited the CEO’s of these companies on a cruise. All were turned into sea lions at a party on an island. Afterwards, their replicants replaced them and returned on the end of the cruise. The former human sea lions were taken to the Galapagos Islands. We have kept close tabs on them, and so far they have been doing quite well, it would seem they have enjoyed what happened to them.”

“So the inventions such as pollution reduction, super crops that can grow anywhere and are naturally resistant to pests and disease, advances in car safety that has saved countless lives, advances in space propulsion that will make a trip to Mars that would have taken months only take days and so on. Are all technologies you have introduced though your clones? But why?” The Governor asked.

“You’ll notice that many of the most important innovations that have been made, were made by companies in your state, and in your Province Mrs. Page. We have been attributing these invocations to contributions by your governments. This has gained you a lot of support, which is necessary for the next part of our plan”.

“Which is?” Both the governor and premier asked.

“Over population is a serious problem that isn’t going away. One of the biggest reasons for many of the problems humanity faces every day is caused by overpopulation. Many people suggest birth control or abstinence, but lets face it, in many parts of the world birth control still isn’t available. There are several species of animal that are under populated or even in danger of becoming extinct. Just look at the literature, comic books and Television and Movies. The idea of being transformed into an animal is a popular fantasy. Imagine how many species could be saved and how humanity could benefit if enough people volunteered to undergo it. All I am saying is to take this idea back to your governments. If such a plan could be implemented wide scale, just imaging the benefits.”

The governor and premier were skeptical, this whole idea still sounded like fantasy, but they couldn’t ignore the evidence they had seen. They both agreed to go back to their colleagues to tell them that they had been told.

***

“Sir, it’s been 2 weeks since the meeting and we haven’t heard anything yet. I don’t think their going to support your idea” Jack said to Travis. Folding his hands together, Travis replied

“The political process has often proven to be slow, we must be patient”.

Suddenly, over the itercom an urgent came in;

“Sir! You have to see this, it’s on all the major networks!” . Pressing a few buttons Travis changed his viewscreen display to pick up one of the broadcasts. Information about what they were doing had been leaked, people’s reaction was everything from outrage to curiosity to wanting to volenteer to be transformed. The families of the executives they had transformed wree especially angry, demanding to see their family members, some even wanted to be turned into sea lions so they could

“join them” .

Again, the intercom sounded

“Sir! We’ve been monitoring military channels and have heard some distrubing things!”, switching to the channels, and switching the satelite uplink to view various bases Travis was realising the severity of the situation. He could several warships, war planes and submarines headed towards their base, as well their satelite uplink was beginning to be blocked.

“How could they have found us so easily? The place I took them to 2 weeks ago was nowhere near here.”

“It doesent matter how they did it, what matters is that they found us. We must evacuate, while we still have time”

3 hours later they were still in the process of evactuation when they received a surprising call from the ships heading towards them. Answering it, Travis was surprised to hear what they had to say.

“By now you’ve probably seen the news reports. A lot has happened in the weeks since you’ve made your plan known. We were not sent here to attack you, we were sent here to protect you from those who want to attack you. Your plan has been approved, but we need to get you all to a safe location, along with your materials. This is going to take time, but soon your plan will come to fruition. There are of course some issues, but we can discuss them with the apprppriate authorities.”

***

Over the next several weeks, they met with many presidents, Prime minisiters and other major Political Figures . One of the first things they had worked out was to allow the families of people they had transformed to see their loved ones, even if they had to flown out to wherever they were. All were given the opporunnity to return to being human, some wanted to, but most did not. In many cases their family members decided to join them as members of the species they had been transfomred into. There were cases where the oringal ones to be transformed wanted to be human again, while their releatives actually wanted to be the sepcies they had been. While cases such as these were rare, they did happen on occasion.

Within a year, the serum had been distributed enough arround the world, so that anyone who wanted to be transformed could if they so pleased. As time went on, problems with over population became rarer and rarer as more and more people chose to become animals. Several species that used to be on the endangered list were removed as their populations grew in leaps and bounds.

As for what became of the ‘organization’ , well;

Jack Denton, one of Travis Carters cloest advisor handled distribution thoughout much or North America for nearly 5 years. Spending so much time working with people that chose to be transformed made him yearn to explore his animal side. After some though, he deciced to become a flying squirrel, as he had always been facinated with the species.

John Williams, who was the

“2nd in command” spend most of his time doing speeches arround the world about the benefits of helping out an endangered species by becoming a member of that species. After spending nearly 10 years doing this, he had convinced so many people do so that there were no longer any species listed on the endangered species list. Feeling that his job was complete, he fuullfilled a lifelong fansty and became a raccoon.

Dr. Anika Reyes, spent much of her time in what eventually became known as the early years spent her time talking to people they had initially transformed, and telling what had happened to them and why. Shortly after the news of what they were doing became public and the serium became distributed she decided to became a dolphin.

More then 90% of the rest of the staff chose to be transformed.

As for Travis Carter aka ‘the leader’, contunied to lead the organization, and to this day still leads it. He has won countless awards, although he is thinking of retiring soon. As for where he’s going to go and what he’s going to do when he retires? Well, lets just say it involves a ringed tail, and garbage raiding.