Centuar Troubles

An alien vessel floated over the planet, invisible to the naked eye, and all forms of human detection. Two creatures stood in the bridge of the ship, looking over a blue projection of the world under them. A green creature sat at the edge of the screen when another blue alien entered the room.

"Have you located a suitable test subject yet?" asked the alien, in an almost musical female voice.

The other creature, sighed and waved its hand, "I think so." it said, in a slightly high pitched male voice.

A few seconds passed in complete silence as the blue one searched the projector, "That one?" it asked.

The male rolled his eyes and answered, “yes, though I don’t see why we have to abide by such specific parameters. There are billions of them, any one of these creatures will do the job.” The male put his fingers against the projectors and moved it so that they were looking at a wider area.

"Because I’m the head of the science division for this project and I say we follow the protocols for dealing with under developed planets.” Said the blue alien annoyed at having her orders questioned.

The male rubbed his hand against his face, "yes Cerna.”

“Good, now tell me about her.”, she said, making the wide view go into a smaller view of the area again.

The male sighed, “From what we have observed over the past thirty day and night cycles of the small populated area of the planet we are focusing on, the subject is female, she is a young adult, lives alone, no animals or pets in the property, and only leaves her house to work with the exception of acquiring nourishment every fourteen days and goes to bed at around the same local time everyday which means she is sleeping now. She is pretty set in her pattern ma’am.” he said, turning to face her.

Cerna smiled and turned away, "Alright then Byx. Have the transport technician beam her into the test chamber and have the staff inject her with a sedative upon arrival to extract a sample of her DNA so that I may begin making calculations to the DNA altering chip, I’ll be in my office."

Byx nodded, "Right away Ma’am. All these protocols and you’d think they’d have a problem with just plucking a sentient being out of its life for scientific purposes. We don’t even know if its safe." he said half sarcastically before turning back to his screen.

Cerna was getting annoyed with her underling yet again, she hated to have to explain herself. “The protocols are in place to avoid intergalactic conflict from the more sensitive members of our alliance, Byx, not to treat less developed worlds or animals as citizens of the federation. Besides, this inter dimensional experiment will change the face of science as we know it. I doubt she would have amounted to anything close to being our test subject on her own, she should be proud.” She said as she walked away.

“doctor Cerna, as agreed a few delegates of the federation are here to witness this scientific breakthrough. Would you mind walking us through what you are doing? And please, keep it simple.” asked the captain of the ship from a protected observation box.

“Of course,” Cerna said into the microphone on the side of her head. “the subject we picked lives in near isolation circumstances so there will be little impact on the others and disturbing their natural habitat. As you can see the subject is under a sedative. I have already programed the latest adaptive DNA altering chip prototype to her DNA and are about to inject it.”

she smiled, “I have also already set the parameters to the inter dimensional transportation machine, all we need to do is activate it and send the subject through. The chip inside will also act as a transmitting device allowing us audio and video along with the biometric signals of the test subject. Wherever she ends up going to, we’ll be able to study her. If the experiment is successful we’ll be able to begin actual federation exploration of other dimensions and advance our own understanding of science to become the most powerful alliance in not just this universe, but many more to come.” She finished smugly.

“ma’am, were ready to send her through now” said a technician.

“of course, proceed.” she said, giving the go ahead.

A group of technicians then carried the human into the portal created by their machine. It took a few seconds for the transmission to begin sending signals back through the portal and into the ship.

“ma’am, we’ve got a signal. I’m reading biometrics, she’s fine. Video and sound are coming in through now.”.

They all turned to the large monitor in the room. They watched it for a few minutes until the captain, spurred by one of the delegates asked “Doctor, when can we expect to see changes in her anatomy?”

“The ship has our most advanced sensors captain, but it is downsized quite a bit, it’s also too small to carry all the computational space our computers require, once it identified another being it will send its information to our computers, which in turn will make the decision if its sapient and then rewrite the subjects DNA to match theirs.” said the doctor.

“And how far does the nearest sapient have to be in order for the sensor to pick them up?” he asked again for the delegates convenience, knowing full well that his ship had the best sensors in the fleet.

The doctor noticed his grand standing and turned to the observation box with a wry smile, “several hundred miles captain, I’m sure the holdup is the computers trying to figure out which specimen it should take its DNA from”. And almost on queue the human female began to shake and convulse on the grass upon where she lay. The observers watched in horror as the human began a painfully looking transformation. She is lifted off the ground as a massive and powerful magical field envelopes her. Rings of light begin to pass over her, starting at her feet, changing her body more with each pass.

The effect moves up the legs, seeming to fight for every inch until it reaches the hips. There it stops moving but continues to grow and reshape the body, producing the ribcage, shoulders and forelegs of a pony. At this point the rings give out and the magical field subsides, laying her back on the ground.

“That’s enough, turn it off, obviously the DNA altering chip needs more work.” said Cerna, slightly annoyed at her failure, she was sure she had it this time, but instead she had made the subject half stupid animal instead. “it’s not a failure if we learn something from this captain, I’ll go over the data of her transformation and I’ll submit my report within the week.”

“Very well doctor” said the captain. He then left the observation box with the delegates in tow.

The day after the experiment a scientist working for Cerna approached her with a data drive. “ma’am, I’ve finished downloading and analyzing the last of the test subject’s biometric data our computers captured before the portal was closed”. Said the scientist.

“Thank you, your dismissed.” She said not even looking up from her work.

The scientists hesitated, “Ma’am I also noticed that the subject’s life signs were beginning to stabilize near the end”.

“What!? And you’re telling me this now? Gather up the technicians, I want that portal reopened ASAP! Observation of first contact is crucial!” she screamed in annoyance.

“Uh, yes ma’am!” said the scientist startled

Cerna sighed and rolled her eyes, “I’m surrounded by incompetence, I can’t possibly be held responsible for these fools” she growled under her breath as she made her way to the test chamber.

A few minutes had passed since she had arrived at the test chamber and the technicians were just turning the machine on.

She cleared her throat as she watched, “ok now lets see what we have here.”