Mus Numena 1: Dynamice (Patreon)

As Ted walked up to the laboratory door, he heard it: scurrying. Squeaking. Both faintly metallic. And closer to the door than any of the mouse cages were, unless they’d reconfigured the room since his last visit.

He paused, hovering his access badge over the door’s sensor lock, listening. Had the Dynamice gotten out? Dammit, he’d been telling Dan he’d seen emergent behavior in them, but nobody at the company wanted to hear that. They were Nanolab Science’s cash cows. Cash rodents? In any case, they’d taken the business from struggling startup to global giant virtually overnight. Dynamice, half organic and half nanotech fever dream, were the perfect experimental subjects: able to regenerate, to directly interface with computers to report their own results, to synthesize chemicals in their bodies to aid in experiments, even to alter their form on command, albeit within sharp constraints.

What they weren’t supposed to do was be more intelligent than, well, normal mice. They weren’t supposed to work together, to communicate, but he was damn sure they’d been doing it. His entirely untested (and, probably, untestable) theory was that their built-in networking ability let them become a hive mind. Dan, his supervisor, had dismissed that by pointing out that a group mind of mice was, at the end of the day, still mice. He’d also noted that the VP of Product had referred to Ted in a meeting as “the Chicken Little guy,” and that maybe Ted should knock it the fuck off with the hive mind shit.

Anyway, this wasn’t even his department. He had access to the lab he was standing in front of, yes, because he was with IT. But he wasn’t a lab tech. IT was low on the corporate pecking order, and he was low on IT’s internal pecking order.

Swallowing nervously, he swiped his card. The light changed to green. He pushed the door open, half-expecting…well, he didn’t know what to half-expect. A giant mouse? Mice with knives or laser eyes? Mice using the computer to access classified information, caught in the act?

What he saw was: nothing. At least, nothing out of the ordinary. The lab room remained as it had been, the far wall lined with rows of cages containing a few dozen silvery, sparkly mice, the next generation of Dynamice still in beta. They still had fur, were still technically living critters, but it was difficult to look at one and not think of the liquid metal antagonist from Terminator 2. Employees were, under no circumstances, to ever make Terminator 2 jokes around executives.

Ted scratched his head, looking around. Hm. The computer was awake, but no applications were visibly open. Well, it was five to six; the lab tech had probably only left a few minutes ago.

He opened the lab dashboard. All the cages showed as locked.

“Okay, Ted,” he murmured aloud. “You might be going a little crazy around here.”

He walked over to the cages. Dozens of mice peered at him attentively. Sighing, he leaned toward one of the cages. “I hope you’re not super smart, because if you know what we were selling you for, you’d hate us.”

The mouse he addressed squeaked, standing up on its hind legs.

“That’s both cute and a disconcerting.” He headed over to the lab refrigerator, ignoring the biohazard labels festooning its door, and pulled out a Coke Zero while scanning the rest of the shelves. The most hazardous thing was someone’s forgotten, half-eaten sandwich. “It looks like they’re still out of the official rodent treats, but it’s okay. I have the good stuff for you.” He pulled a pack of roasted, unsalted peanuts out of a pocket, opened it, and put a couple in the mouse’s cage.

All the rest of the mice squeaked, running as close to him as they were able to in their cages. He made the rounds, quickly dispensing peanuts. “I’ve been yelled at for doing this once before,” he noted to them. “I guess I’m a rebel, in this one weird, pathetic way, huh?”

Once all the mice were nibbling on their treats, he waved to them, awkwardly, and headed out of the lab.

• • •

When he got to the office the next morning, the lobby swarmed with private security officers and employees, most arguing with each other.

He caught sight of Dan across the crowd, sipping from a styrofoam coffee cup and looking even more sour than usual. Making his way toward his boss, he waved and gestured. “So, what’s all this about?”

“No idea. Nellie said there’s been a break-in, or maybe a lab accident. They’re not letting anyone in except top-level lab heads and execs, so…” Dan trailed off, looking past Ted.

Huh? Ted turned as an executive—he guessed—who he didn’t recognize approached him, flanked by two of the rent-a-cops, both doing their best Badass Cop imitation. (It didn’t work; Ted was pretty sure he could take the guy on the left, and while he was in pretty solid shape for a thirty-something desk jockey, it wasn’t as if he was an icon of peak physique.) “Ted Bishop?” She was a thin, severe woman sporting a navy blazer and a buzzcut.

“Yes?”

“Come with me.” She turned without waiting for a response. The security guys glared with as much menace as they could muster.

Ted glanced at Dan, who gave him a wide-eyed shrug. Ted swallowed and hurried after the woman. “Uh, who are you?”

“Stonebraker. Director of Security.”

“Isn’t that George—”

“He reports to me.” She led him to an elevator. “What did you do in Laboratory 3C last night?” She pressed the button for the laboratory level.

“Do? I didn’t—”

“You entered it after hours.”

“I heard a noise as I was walking past, and went to check it out.” Technically true, even if he’d actually been there to give them peanuts.

“What did you see?”

“Nothing. The mice were all in their cages, and nobody—”

“Did you use the computer?” She led him down the hallway toward the lab in question. Other scientists and executives stood around, either arguing, or staring into the lab.

“No. I mean, I checked the dashboard for the cages to make sure they were all locked, but that was it.”

“What websites did you visit?”

“From the computer in the lab? None.” He didn’t try to keep the irritated confusion out of his tone. “Look, I don’t know what’s going on here, but I promise I didn’t break into anything, or steal anything, or—”

“Mr. Bishop, you’re the last person to see the Dynamice before this morning, which means you’re the last person to see them before this.”

“Before what? What happened to them?” He quickened his pace, starting to move ahead of Stonebraker.

She held out her hand to stop him, and pointed into the lab with her other. “That.”

Ted pushed aside a couple of gawping scientists, then joined them in gawping. Standing in the center of the lab, surrounded by security guards, her hands cuffed behind her back, was—

—uh—

“Is…that…”

Stonebraker crossed her arms. “You tell us what it is, Mr. Bishop.”

It—she—was a woman. A nude woman. An uncommonly attractive one.

An uncommonly attractive, nude, silver-furred one. Metallic silver, like the Dynamice. (Except for her shoulder-length hair, which looked more copper, but still metallic.) With mouse ears. And a mouse tail. And claws for nails and square front teeth and a face with a distinct muzzle. She looked lost, uncomprehending; he couldn’t tell if the mind behind those big coppery eyes was more mouse or woman, but he leaned toward mouse.

Okay. He used the internet. He’d seen the art. “She’s, uh, a furry.”

One of the scientists whirled and pointed a finger at him accusingly. “So you admit it!”

“Huh? Admit what?”

“Knowing what furries are!”

“Don’t you know what a furry is?”

“That’s beside the point!”

Ted waved a hand at the rodent woman, who was watching him intently, the same way the mice had last night. “You’re the scientist. You tell me how a Dynamouse can make herself into a centerfold model.”

“Ah-ha! You admit you find her attractive!”

“I—” Ted scratched the back of his neck. “You don’t?”

“Let’s acknowledge that she’s searingly hot,” Stonebraker said, in the same flat tone she’d said everything so far. “We’re getting off track. What exactly happened here last night, Mr. Bishop?”

“I told you exactly what happened. I said hi to the Dynamice, but they were still all mice, still in their cages. I didn’t feed them, I didn’t tamper with them, I didn’t give them Fur Affinity accounts.”

One of the other scientists sniggered. The accusatory one scowled even harder. “So you’re saying one of them got out of its cage and—and—did this all on its own.”

“I’m saying I’m in IT, sir, and I don’t know much more about the Dynamice than any other employee outside the nanotech and genetics groups. But isn’t this next generation supposed to be smarter, more like humans genetically, and even able to evolve on command?”

“You make them sound magical,” another scientist said. “They can’t flow through cages, let alone create mass.”

“Actually, Johnson,” the sniggering one began.

“Don’t start, Torgensen.”

“No, start,” Stonebraker said.

He shrugged. “On paper, there’s no reason they couldn’t flow through cages. They share a surprising number of the properties of fluids.”

Stonebraker raised a brow. “Like the robot from Terminator 2?” She ignored all the executives suddenly glaring. Ted couldn’t, though. He shuffled his feet awkwardly, turning away.

Hmm. Wasn’t there something different about that corner?

“Well…” Torgensen waved a hand in a circular motion, clearly thinking of all the ways they were not, in fact, like the robot from Terminator 2. “In a tenuous sense,” he eventually said. “But Johnson’s right about them not being able to create mass.”

“More to the point, they change on command,” the accusatory one snarled, thrusting a finger at the silver mouse woman and giving Ted another pointed glare. “They have to be programmed. Someone had to want to make that.”

Ted cleared his throat. “I have a question.”

“What?” the scientist snapped.

“Wasn’t there a file cabinet in that corner?” He pointed.

The group turned to face that corner. “I don’t know,” the accusatory one said.

“He’s right.” Johnson walked over to the now-empty corner. “You can see the marks here.”

The first scientist thrust out his arm at Ted, pointing finger extended. “You didn’t just steal the files, you stole the whole cabinet!”

Torgensen stared dolefully at his coworker. “What is wrong with you, man.”

“You’re the one babbling about fluid mice!” He put his hands on his hips. “If it could flow through the cage, why is it still handcuffed? Answer me that, smart aleck.”

Ted glanced at the mouse woman. Yes, still cuffed. Did she have any idea what was going on? She hadn’t spoken, hadn’t shown any sign of being more than a mouse…except for being five foot eight and humanoid. And, you know, somehow both organic and liquid metal at the same time.

Her eyes met his, and he sucked in his breath. As cute as she was, this wasn’t meeting the gaze of a timid, tiny lab mouse, even a normal—if that was the right word—Dynamouse. Any doubt about her intelligence vanished at that moment. It reminded him of the one time in his life he’d locked eyes with a wolf.

The mouse’s expression changed to a small, hopeful smile. Did she recognize him? Was that the mouse who’d been standing up on its—her—hind legs last night? He smiled back. Her ears swiveled, and she held out a hand, taking a step toward him.

Two of the scientists dropped their hands down on her shoulders, pushing her back with alarmed looks. Her expression wilted. Ted winced sympathetically.

“All right.” Stonebraker crossed her arms. “We may have more questions, possibly a lot more, Mr. Bishop, but you’re free to go. Don’t tell anyone about what you’ve seen here.”