There's a generation coming up now, many of whom have been saying that the Experimenter -- also called 15226 -- is a figurative thing, not to be understood as a real being, and was more likely just an institution from the old-world governments using smoke and mirrors to pawn itself off to me as some kind of cosmic entity. They say that would make me less likely to go asking questions and really look into the why and how of my DNA being completely rewritten.
They've got this whole thing explained down to a tee; I'm actually impressed at the level of detail that Sana and them have put into it. We had a saying in the old world, though... truth is always stranger than fiction. I will insist to the day I die that the Cosmic Experimenter was real, and it was she who not only made me into the first of us, but literally wrote our species' DNA herself after centuries of painstaking and outlandish research.
Whether anyone believes me now, isn't really of that much - if any - consequence. You're all, of course, free to make up your own minds. She left a long time ago, and isn't coming back. Creating me, and getting the Vault ready, were the last things she did before she took off to save the next species from itself.
Mind that when I say 'she', that's because she picked a female form for that body... but given what she said, I think she also thought of herself as female -- but a female of whatever species she was before she got turned into a thinking spaceship... thing. I probably didn't impress her very much when we first met; I emerged from the bathroom holding a measuring tape to my oversized hard-on, grinning like an idiot, waddling out with my pants around my knees.
Already I was thinking back to my experience with Bethany. My erection was practically ready to explode again. I looked up, and over to my computer -- I guess I was thinking of looking up some porn, hell if I remember -- and there she was.
She wore a skin-tight black jumpsuit, it looked like it was made of plastic or some special polymer. It was essentially painted on, in any case... it hugged those perfect curves tightly. There was a silvery patterning on it, though I never found out if it had any significance. The outfit seemed to be more for protection or functionality than for decency or decoration... it didn't conceal her nipples at all, and even her cameltoe was plainly visible.
It didn't even have shoes as such, more of a thicker layer of the fabric just under her feet; the outfit even fit perfectly around her toes, as if she was barefoot. It stopped at her neck, where her gorgeous face with shiny black hair and thin red lips were on display. Her features were delicate, and despite actually being a goddamn spaceship, she actually came off as quite human. I remember that about her most, I think.
"Merry Christmas." She said it without any preamble, or much emotion at all -- she said it as if it was the answer to an unasked question.
I should have pulled my pants up, indecent exposure and all that, but instead they fell right down to the floor as I also dropped the tape. I was like a deer in the headlights for a moment -- ah shit, none of you will know that metaphor. I was just completely stunned. A few seconds later, I was stammering apologies and picking my jeans up.
"I'm sorry! I'm sorry! John didn't tell me you would be here! Um, sorry we met like that -- I'm Ben, John's roommate, and you must be Tammy..." John had mentioned a new girlfriend. I'd assumed this was she. Not a bad assumption under the circumstances, really, though the crazy outfit didn't really fit in with the hypothesis.
"I am not Tammy. Sit down, Benedict."
Only my mother called me Benedict, and I think she did it to piss me off. I had barely visited the mental ward she lived in. I hoped around then that she got help from someone, but it wouldn't be me. I tried too many times.
"Um -- you're not Tammy? Who are you?"
"I'm the reason for your need of a measuring tape." She tilted her head at me, with a crooked smile. It was like I was a kid who'd been caught looking at a dirty magazine. I belatedly thought to pull my pants up.
"I'm sorry?" I choked it out after a few moments of fumbling to make myself decent again.
"Your penile endowment being increased -- congratulations, I guess, not sure what you would say around here -- ah, is one of an enormous number of changes I made to your DNA over the last 24 hours with a retrovirus tailored specifically to you."
I raised an eyebrow. "Did, uh, someone from the hospital tell you something?"
"Hospital?" She looked away for a moment, and seemed to be thinking. "You were checked in last night, 09:08pm local. Good... okay, their tests didn't find anything immediately dangerous." She looked directly into my eyes. "Avoid medical facilities from now on, unless it's a life-threatening emergency. Use an independent doctor you trust. Understand?"
I shook my head. "Uh, I understand I don't know who the hell you are and what you're doing here if you're not John's new girl." I was feeling a little macho that day and didn't want to be ordered around.
"Suit yourself. I engineered the retrovirus that is turning you into a whole new kind of human being as we speak. I've been preparing my experimentation facility to function as a repository for the collected knowledge of the human race, as well as you and all the other new humans that you will be helping create. I did all this to make sure the human race lives on, in a form that won't need babysitting to ensure it doesn't obliterate itself."
I looked up at her. Okay, the suit fabric I had to give her; I'd never seen anything like it. But they came up with new stuff all the time. It was just a skin-tight bodysuit, with a good-looking but apparently insane girl inside it. Even with the suit, and her knowing about my, uh, condition, it was too much to believe. I was hoping to shed some light on this, not to get a National Enquirer update. "Listen, if you need to get somewhere, I can't give you a ride. I'm on these painkillers and they told me not to drive. If you know something useful, say it and get out of here."
