Introduction
The Discovery
It was just another long day at work, at least I thought it was. Connor, however, thought it had gone really well in fact he even said that we would probably finish tomorrow, or finish our current assignment at least. Oh how I wish he had been wrong. You see it had been nearly 15 years since we finished high school, and nearly 10 since we left Uni and found work for a business ran by one of my best school friends - Thomas, we were working towards finding a way to either prove or disprove the possibility of their being other life forms outside of our Solar System. It could be rather long and arduous but it was also rather rewarding in that we were 'accidentally' discovering new particles and elements, in fact at the time we were trying to determine whether or not it was possible to send and receive messages at speeds far exceeding that of lightspeed(we had managed to send it and were waiting on a reply). That weekend, however, it was my birthday and I had hoped we had a major breakthrough prior to that and so, naturally, I wanted my friend and assistant, Dr Fielding, to be right. At the time.
After finishing our runthrough on the machines spread across our stupidly oversized research facility we went up to our boss to talk about the evenings plans. It had always been a tradition of ours to get together after work and meet up with our other two friends one of whom was working at the same company in the engineering department, he was a rather short lad who went by the name of Joel. Anyways we would all get together at a café ran by another friend who was, again, a short lad, this time by the name of Lee. We would always meet there after work just as he took his final break before closing to discuss anything interesting that had happened and, as usual, nothing much had happened.All of this was soon to change. We finished our drinks and took our leave. I made my way over to my car, a rather nice old car that I was given by my uncle, it was a red MGb GT. I had always loved it. As I made my way home I turned on the radio and plugged in my MP3 player immediately being blasted away by my old rap-metal collection. I was soon at home and back into the boring routine - turn on the computer, check my facebook and twitter get mobbed with messages about the upcoming reunion, I was seriously regretting that now, anyway after I did that I noticed something out of the ordinary... I had a letter. "Now what on Earth could that be?" I thought to myself - it couldn't be bills they were sorted by my butler, Jeffrey, but what could it be? I opened it with my letter opener immediately recognising the handwriting of an old acquaintance of mine - a fellow professor. But instead of it being in Astrophysics as mine was, hers was in Animal Biology. It read :
"I am writing to you my old friend as I am in a bit of a pickle, you see I was recently dissecting a rare animal found only twice but with it having recently passed away it was entrusted to me. So as I was dissecting the unnamed animal I noted an unusual property. The animal in question was believed to have been just a normal horse however the skeleton had a small lump on top of the skull giving the appearance of it once having a horn. Normally I wouldn't bother over this but it also appeared to have once had some kind of wing like protrusion from the upper side of the spinal cord. I need you and Connor to come down tomorrow and have a look around to see if you can see any similarities to other life forms, after all you are the most patient and observant person I know of in a similar profession.
Yours,
C.McDowd
Professor of Animal Biology"
Naturally I rang my boss and assistant immediately to discuss these most unusual circumstances. We all agreed to make our way there the following morning.
I awoke to the sound of the local radio station's early morning radio broadcast" Good morning everyone here's to a good tuesday morning - the sun is shining and there isn't a cloud in sight. It's the perfect day." I immediately remembered the letter from yesterday and bolted to get ready. I was already halfway down the street when I remembered that I was supposed to e-mail the local brewery to get some cider for the school reunion, I decided to do it as soon as I was able to.
I arrived at my lab, as had been agreed, so that we could collect necessary equipment to do with checking over the anatomy of this, as of yet, unnamed animal. As I arrived there I noted that Connor and Tom’s cars were already here, upon entering the building I walked to the stairs(having been afraid of lifts for the past 20 years) and descended to floor U10 where our laboratory was. I arrived there out of breath in a matter of 2 minutes and noted that all the equipment was in a crate in the corner and Tom was stood glaring at me tapping the area of his wrist that would normally hold a watch. “Incredibly sorry about the time” I said suddenly as I headed toward the crate to give it a once over to check all of the stuff was in it. It was. I then joined the other two on the table in the centre as we were discussing what was to happen throughout the day and who would be doing what. We soon decided that I would be comparing the creature to images of other animals whilst Clare compared the anatomy and Connor researched the gas and nutrient levels within the animal too see if we could find out how and why it died or where it was from. Tom would be fetching energy drinks, pizza, and donuts as and when we required them.
We then proceeded to leave our laboratory and headed towards my car and drove over to the other lab. 20 minutes later and we had arrived. Sprawled over the study table in the centre of the room was a ... Horse? The animal appeared to be a pony or horse of some kind and yet at the same time - it just didn't. The lower legs appeared to have had something done to them and had some strange holes in them. It appeared to have a smooth, black, chitinous shell instead of fur or skin and what seemed to be insectoid wings on its back. "It reminds me of a changeling" exclaimed Connor. "What the fuck is a changeling " I asked. "Its off MLP." explained Tom. "Great the two bronies are going to keep on about this" I thought as I noticed something most unusual "Where's Clare?" I asked suddenly, "Right here" she said as she entered the room. "The animal is on the table and I've cleared you some space for any equipment of yours.” - “Yes there are photographs on the P.C." she stated as I began to interrupt to ask that very thing.
The animal, a changeling as Connor had called it, was quickly compared to all other animals we had heard of including every known species of horse, dog, wolf, we even compared it to mythological animals. Eventually we came to the conclusion that it must have been either not of our world, a recent adaptation, or from Madagascar. We spent the rest of the day recording all facts we could determine about the animal Connor found that it needed a similar mix of gases to humans but we could not find what the animal was supposed to eat, nor could we find a reason for it to have died.
“What the fuck is going on here?” I thought“I get a letter the week after Connor and I send the first FTL message through our Universe informing me of this bizarre creature that had recently been discovered winding up dead in a laboratory in the middle of Birmingham with Connor’s theory of it being a changeling being the one making the most sense.”
“How the fuck do we explain this to other people?” Thomas exclaimed, suddenly breaking the profound silence as he entered with another pizza and four cans of Monster.
“Where was this … animal … discovered” asked Connor blatantly ignoring Tom as he began to eat the meat pizza laid out on the desk at the back of the lab where the computer bank stood
“In an oil rig in the middle of Alaska” replied Clare
“How the fuck did it get here then!?” I blurted out before i could even think
“It was flown in by the military” Clare said giving us a resigned look.
“Do you think it…” started Connor
“No we can’t go out there, the oil company don’t like us at the moment” interrupted Clare
“Screw them” I said “I can probably find someone who can get us in there”
“How?” the others all asked in unison.
I just tapped the side of my nose “That would be telling.” I said, grinning.
