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The now following report consists of recollections of specimen CAD-183, one of the patients used in project SAWYER, who refers to himself as "Lear". Official reports by the leading scientists will follow shortly .This is a classified document. Do not read unless given permission by a board member or SAWYER-supervisor. Do not displace, take notes, or make copies of this file.

The village

_"_And how are we doing this wonderful morning? We're doing fine, aren't we?"

There are people all around who ask others questions, then immediately answer themselves and then return to whatever they were doing. If you asked Lear, that was the ultimate way of showing your complete and utter lack of interest in anyone else. You can't really go through life without asking your neighbors how they are doing on at least a semi-daily basis, of course. But be honest: You hope and expect they'll answer "good" or "fine", which they'll probably do. But every once in a while, you'll come across some weirdo who doesn't understand your actual intentions. The unwritten rule that dictates the only possible answer to the question, which is: "Fine, and you?" . These people will take a weary sigh, and start their endless speeches, their orations of self-pity with the words: "Well, honestly...". It might just happen that you come across someone who doesn't understand that you DON'T WANT an honest answer. And if you asked Lear, there was only one way of coping with that.

DEAL WITH IT

Take a few minutes out of your busy schedule to LISTEN to someone else's problems, to ACTUALLY CARE how they are doing. Either do that, or just be honest from the start. Lear had always wanted to say to someone: "How's it going? Please do not tell me how it's going though, because I couldn't care less about you. I'm just trying to be polite."

He'd never had the nerve, of course.

So every morning, he gave friendly nods and smiles to other people and if they greeted him, he greeted back, and sometimes he would pass someone who would say something like "Isn't it a beautiful morning? ", Sometimes rhetorically (which he hated), sometimes waiting for an answer, which he would give them. There was only one person who could ask a question however, then to immediately answer it himself witch a rhetorical plea for confirmation of his own assumption of Lear's agreement. Thus combining every conversational action Lear so despised in one sentence. Old man Cujo, as he was known, had a way of making small-talk much more complicated than necessary. Cujo was a farmer, one of few in the village. For a man his age he was surprisingly fit, and he always managed to do his share of the work that provided daily fresh vegetables and fruit for the over three hundred inhabitants. The over three hundred people.

The village had been founded less than a year before Lear's birth. His parents came from two different polecat clans, and had Connected at a very young age. Not in a Romeo-and Julia sort of way, the two clans had been on good terms and members of different clans falling in love and mating was very common. But Connecting in the way they had done was not. Polecats weren't usually monogamous, but the two young lovers had decided what they had was something special and precious. They recognized in each other the feeling of being different, no, of being better. They had left their clans, alone and scared of the thoughtless bloodthirst of all other animals. They had met a number of other creatures on their travels, all being more intelligent than their respective conspecifics, and soon it became obvious that they would have to work together to protect themselves from all the inferior minds. They had built the village, using all their clever ideas and findings to organize it, and strived to progress. From his birth, Lear had been taught to live up to his biological superiority, to distinguish himself from the common beast that wallowed in his own filth and stupidity, and most importantly, to do it with style. That was why politeness was so important. Animals did not do illogical or inefficient things, and therefore, inefficiency was a sign of civilization. That day was the beginning of the end of the village's short existence. But, like all days, it started with a perfectly normal morning, that only turned strange at around half past twelve.

Lear had finished his work, and on his way home, he noticed a great commotion by the wall. The guards on top of it appeared to be talking to someone on the ground outside. The wall consisted of a wooden scaffold, nearly five yards high, and covered in wooden planks on the outside, making it impossible to breach by oneself and very hard to climb over. On top of the scaffolds, there were constants patrols of young men armed with wooden sticks, in case an angry beast would attempt to enter the village. This had never happened, and the guards, never having been in a situation like this before, were obviously a little panicked. Lear made his way to the front of the crowd. Everyone was trying to get a peek of the stranger through one of the many peeping-holes in the wall. It looked like a weasel, but of some sub-species Lear had never seen before. He could easily be mistaken for an otter, and he would probably be able to pass for many kinds of marsupials. He probably was in his early thirties. His fur was scruffy and dirty, and naturally, he wore no clothes. He was trying to get the guards to open the gate, while the guards were either frantically instructing him to go away, asking skeptical questions, or negotiating amongst themselves.

"But do you have a name?"

"Not yet. I just want to..."

"But who taught you to talk?"

"No one. I did. My parents taught me to speak weasel, but eventually I noticed that all the animal languages are the same, if you can just understand the different dialects. Please just..."

His voice was drowned out by the surprised murmur of the crowds. When the village had been founded, the first order of business had been to write a new language for all the different species to communicate in. What this stranger was saying sounded far too strange to be true, and the other inhabitants did not seem to believe his story, judging by their nervous laughs and smirks. Strangely enough, Lear was one of the first people in the village to understand what was going on. It took him a while to actually formulate the theory, but somehow he already understood then how his ancestors had come to understand one another all those years ago. They had tried to communicate as soon as they met, at first by the obvious means of speech and gesture, and failed. And no one was surprised when creating a new common language was so much easier than expected. That was because all they really had to do was learn to understand normal words in a completely different pronunciation. The realization popped up like a cork underwater in Lear's mind. It boggled his mind, but seemed so logical, too. Why had no one ever thought of this before? The guards were still yelling the same questions at the creature beneath the wall.

"But why do need to come inside?"

"I told you already, I want to live here with you? "

"This place is for conscious creatures only."

"Yes, I know that. I'm just like you people! You can't ask me to keep living with the beasts, I'm intelligent, like you!"

"How do you know that? How are you so sure you belong here?"

"I've always been able to do stuff that none of the others could do! I speak to other species, I build stuff, I can reason just like you. Come on, do I look like a regular animal to you people? Let me in, dammit!"

Lear got the feeling that they did not trust him at all, and that they were hoping he would say something that would give them a good reason not to let him in. Maybe none of them wanted to be the one to make the risky decision to open the gate, and take the blame if something would go wrong. There was no official government in the village, but the guards who patrolled the wall, but they had quite a lot of authority over the inhabitants. The crowd had grown so strongly in the last few minutes that the people in the back hardly had any idea of what was going on. Naturally, everyone was looking up at the group of guards atop the wall to make a decision. Eventually, they had no other choice. They did not have any more valid reasons to deny this guy access, But none of them dared to take action, and therefore, responsibility for whatever would happen as soon as the gate opened. It took a few more minutes of haggling and dawdling, but eventually, they gave in.

The gate was no more than a huge wooden plank with holes near the edges that had been tied to the others at both sides. The guards undid the knots on one side and opened the door. As soon as the strange weasel stepped through, they quickly closed the gate again and tied it back down meticulously. The crowd seemed to be conflicted as to whether they should come closer and take a good look at this guy, or stay as far away from him as possible. Pretty much everyone in the village had arrived at the scene now. The weasel was escorted inside by the crowd. He seemed to sense the unspoken hostility of the people, but stubbornly ignored it, thanking the people for letting him in and asking interested questions. It pained Lear to see the distrust in everyone's eyes, the seemed to say: We don't want you here. We can't send you away, because we haven't got a good excuse, but you don't belong here. Go away. And what pained Lear most was the fact that he felt the same way. It made him feel childish and guilty, but somehow, seeing this nameless stranger inside the wall sickened him. He wanted to go up to him and scream: "You're all making a mistake! Get rid of him! He'll doom us all! Why aren't we paranoid enough?" The only thing Lear could be proud of now was the power of will to keep his mouth shut, stand here, and smile. "Am I really that xenophobic?" he asked himself. "Am I really that irrational, and stupid, and suspicious? Although I have no good reason whatsoever to suspect this man of anything?"

At least Lear was not alone in his paranoia. There was no-one in the village who sincerely liked this man, But everyone kept their mouth shut and smiled, though not very convincingly. It would be appalling to judge a man because of a strange gut feeling, and being the only one to express concerns would certainly lead people to believe one had gone mad. In an enclosed town of a few hundred people, few things were more valuable than a reputation. And rumors spread fast in the village.

The housing issue came up quickly. All families had a small home, made primarily out of wood and stone. Building a new house would take quite a while, farmland would have to be sacrificed in order to create sufficient space, and it somehow seemed a little wasteful to build a house for just one person. Everyone here lived with family, but a complete stranger had, of course, no family to move in with. He himself came with the idea to add a room to the house of "someone who would be so kind to share their home with me while I build a life". Everyone agreed, though nobody volunteered to open their home to him. But still, someone would have to take him in until one of the houses could be expanded. An uncomfortable silence followed.

"For the love of god Lear, Why on earth didn't you talk this through with us before making such a commitment?" Lear shrugged and looked blankly into his mother's furious face. He was not sure why he had invited the new polecat in his house either. Maybe just to prove something to himself, to put a good face on the community for the new guy, to set an example, or simply to help out a brother in need. But he was certain of one thing: nobody could blame him for doing something so morally just. Right? He said: "It's just temporary. We have the space for him, and he really needed..."

"Someone else could have taken him in. Why did it have to be us?"

"Because nobody else offered to help him out. It's my house too, you know. You once told me that I should take every opportunity to help someone of our own. Well, he's one of us now, he's obviously intelligent like us, so you should be thanking me for giving you this chance to do a good thing."

His mother shook her head in frustration. She was looking for a valid argument in vain. Finally she just said:

"This is not what I meant when I said that, Lear. This is just... this is different, all right?"

They stood there a while, in silence. Then, Lear's father came up the ladder that went down to the small and empty basement where their guest would be sleeping. Behind him was the now acquainted stranger, showing all the typical humble modesty of a guest, as if he was trying to make as small an impression on the house as possible. They seemed to be having a pretty good conversation going. Lear was relieved to see his father making an honest effort to get along with him. The next few weeks were less interesting than one would expect, apart from maybe the first two days after the arrival of the new inhabitant. First of all, his name was decided upon to be Fred, for no particular reason other than the fact that he required a name for convenience. Fred was a normal, unremarkable name, and seemed very fitting for such a remarkable person. He tried very hard to learn everything there was to know about the way of life in the village, which apparently wasn't too hard for him. Fred seemed to already understand the basic concept of agriculture, medicine, and engineering. Lear wondered if he was the only one to notice Fred's uncanny powers of observation. None of the others ever talked about how fast Fred was making all these skills his own. Then again, they never really "discussed" Fred. Not with Lear, at least. They were warming up to the poor man very slowly, but at least they were not as embarrassingly silently distrustful as before. And for a few weeks, all was fine. Lear and Fred worked together in the fields, Fred seemed happy, and everything went back to normal. All was fine.

Then, all turned shit.

In the village, you got up at sunrise, and went to bed at sunset. It was highly unlikely for anyone to be outside after sunset, because why would you? You can't work or play at night, without sunlight there was really nothing you could do at all. But Lear suffered from mild insomnia. He would wake up to a dark and silent world, fully refreshed and filled with energy. Usually he managed to fall asleep after a while, but sometimes he would just lie there, twisting and turning, and trying not to think about how tired he was going to be tomorrow morning. And one night, lying there fully awake, he heard something.

Well, he heard lots of things, of course. During one's sleep, one is constantly bombarded with sounds; the tiny creaks and murmurs of the house, the wind against the windows, the pulse of your heart and the sliding of the sheets form a pattern unique to every bed in every bedroom. Lear's subconscious knew that pattern better than anything else and his brain had learned to ignore it. But this time, something had disturbed the pattern with a noise that fell out of the ordinary. A rhythmical pop-pop-pop, like hitting a stone wall with a wooden stick. The sound wasn't completely unknown, though; within a few seconds, Lear had figured it out. It was the sound of the steps of the ladder to the basement, bending under the pressure of a foot and snapping back into shape. Lear got out of bed as quietly as possible, as if the effort to be silent of whoever was coming up the ladder was reflected on him. Or something. Fred was coming up, and any logical destination for him would be outside. Why he was leaving the house, Lear could not know. And all that was going through his mind was that strange realization.

"If I stay here, I will never know what he is going to do and where he's going. Never."

And that is why, without any good reason, he exited his room a few seconds after hearing a gentle creak of the door, down the hall, and after his mysterious guest into the night.

Lear had never stalked anyone before, but it came very naturally to him. Maybe something he had inherited from his predatorial ancestors awakened in him that night, maybe he simply had a knack for it. But Fred did not give him much of a challenge. He seemed so occupied with not being seen that he himself did not notice his pursuer. Fred had once been taught that "a cat watching his prey can easily be caught in a net", which was especially true here because anyone spotting him would arouse such devastating suspicion. Because there was nobody else in the street, Lear did not have to fear losing Fred, And kept a great distance from him. Eventually. Fred reached one of the crop fields and walked straight into it. Lear could no longer follow; If he left the houses and entered the open field, Fred would most certainly see him. He cursed softly; by now, there was no doubt in his mind that Fred was doing something shady that was not meant for anyone's eyes but his. Lear was strangely enough not shocked or surprised, only curious. "Face it," He thought, "you never trusted him and you never will, and you were right. He's obviously doing something wrong now, and he'll pay for it." Fred's silhouette crouched down in the middle of the field. He was doing something on the ground, but Lear could not see what because it was so far away and so dark. For a few minutes, Fred just sat there, motionlessly, and Lear was beginning to consider just walking up to him and demanding an explanation, when all of a sudden, Fred got up and ran back to the houses. Lear watched him approach rapidly for a second, the burst out in panic and tried to get back too, so Fred wouldn't see him. He found this harder than he had expected. His muscles had cramped up from standing still so long. He walked a few steps, picked up the pace, ran, and...

He stopped. "Why am I running?" He asked himself. Wasn't it better to just stay here and confront Fred now, before he had a chance to deny it? "No more sneaking around" He mumbled to himself, "No more secrecy".

" Hey man, what are you doing out so late?" Lear felt a fuzzy paw on his shoulder, two large and genuinely surprised eyes stared into his. "I was just..."

"Cut the crap, Fred. I saw you. What the hell were you doing?"

Fred looked puzzled. " What do you mean you saw me?"

"I saw you just now in the field."

"And... what exactly did you see?"

"I just told you, I saw you in the field. That's literally all I saw. What were you doing?

"Calm down, you'll wake everyone! Seriously man, I..."

Lear grabbed the boards of Fred's shirt and pushed him against the wall. He had never used physical force with anyone ever before, but Fred was a very skinny guy and Lear could lift him without too much effort. He had never been so angry with anyone in his life. He yelled in Fred's face:

"Stop denying it, you treacherous fuck! Why the hell are you here?! Tell me! What have you been keeping from us for so long?! TELL..."

Fred had turned pale and speechless with terror. Lights were flickering on behind linen windows; hostile voices echoed from the houses. But Lear ignored them. He had heard a sharp pang of metal falling on stone; when he had lifted Fred by his shirt, something had slipped out of a carefully concealed pocket, slid down a smooth-haired belly and fallen on the ground. It was a black box, about the size of one's fist, covered in buttons, levers, metal extensions and holes, lights, and wires. Lear had never seen something like it. When Fred saw it falling on the ground, he stared at it in utter dread, while the last smidges of color faded from his face, before he started kicking and screaming like a madman to escape Lear's grip.

"That's mine! Let me go! Lear, don't touch it! Don't..."

Lear dropped him on the brick pavement and kneeled down by the object. He immediately knew that this was what he wanted. But it was so alien to him... Where would he start? He picked up the device. It was smooth to the touch and quite heavy. He instinctively tapped one of the buttons, and to his surprise, it unfolded in his hands! It popped open, revealing another surface with more thingies on it than he could even describe.

"Authentication required."

When a cool female voice sounded from the object, Lear dropped it as if it had bitten him. It once again bounced off the pavement.

"Wha-?"

"Get down!"

Before Lear knew it, two hands had pulled him backwards; he was dragged across the bricks and someone was laying on top of him, as if to shield him with their own body.

The bang was ear-shattering, in the most literal sense of the word. A wave of scorching heat washed over Lear, His skull felt like it had been hit with a sledgehammer, And everything sounded like someone blowing into his ear. Someone was tugging at his arm, trying to lift him up, but Lear was too heavy.

"Are you okay? Get up!"

Lear's vision came back to him. Fred was yanking at his arm and screaming in his face. And he wasn't the only one screaming, by the way. There were people everywhere, running around in nightgowns, looking confused and terrified. Lear slowly managed to get up, his whole body shaking. "Come on! We have to get out of here!" Fred dragged him along. A little voice in the back of Lear's head remembered him that Fred was responsible for all this and that Lear shouldn't come with him, but all his thoughts were too slow and foggy to act upon them.

Lear was running through dark alleyways and over winding avenues, with a hunch that he was going home. Fred was running in front of him, taking a turn once in a while, and Lear followed him blindly, trusting him to take him somewhere safe. When Fred had pulled him on his feet a few minutes ago, Lear wanted to hold him down and discuss with the other villagers, who had arrived at the scene in masses, what to do with him. But something about them felt too threatening. Some of them had severely damaged houses, and there was a real risk of them collapsing. Some were screaming at the top of their lungs to settle down, everyone was talking, running, and panicking. Nobody had given the two young men a second glance, but eventually they would understand that they had something to do with the explosion. And when the first person had noticed Fred, Lear knew that they were both in danger. The crowd was not in the mood for conversation or careful examination of what had been going on. They had been stressed out ever since Fred got here and they would immediately blame him for the damage and chaos. And moments ago, they had seen Lear with him, arguing and fighting before that thing that fell out of Fred's pocket had exploded. They were not in danger of getting in trouble. They could very well be lynched. Something had changed definitively. He wanted to tell Fred that there was probably no way that he could live here anymore, except maybe if he came clean and somehow explained everything that had happened, but somehow nothing he could say sounded worthwhile. After a while, they reached Lear's home. His mom and dad were already waiting for them inside. The four of them stood there for a while, the two young men gasping for breath, the terrified parents already drawing conclusions. After a while, Fred started closing and locking all doors and windows. Lear looked at his parents and tried to speak, but no words escaped his mouth. He began to fear that he had somehow lost the ability to speak, when finally, his father broke the silence.

"Fred, we do not want to be involved in all this. Take what you need and leave. Please, we... I'm afraid we do not want you here anymore."

Fred looked back at him. He looked terrified, but strangely calm at the same time.

"I understand. I agree with you that I need to get out of here as soon as possible, and I never wanted you to be involved either. But I'm afraid that nobody here has a choice anymore. If I leave, I will die, and all of you will soon die too because of it. I'm the only one who can save us, and only in one way."

He looked outside through the only window. While he had talked, a storm of voices had gathered outside. They seemed to come from everywhere, hissing and screaming. Lear realized that there was a furious mob of citizens outside. Fred averted his eyes from the crowd outside the house and said:

"It's far too late to turn back now. "

He ran out of the room, into the hallway. Lear's mother had started crying. Dad leaned against the door, resting his head to the rough wood. He heard his friends, his neighbors, and his colleagues calling:

"Are you there? Can you hear us? Open the door! Is anyone there?"

Dad swallowed, made a tiny sound as if to confirm he still had a voice, and spoke:

"Yes, we are here. What do you want from us?"

The voices were so loud now, with everyone trying to be heard over the others, you could barely understand anything. And yet, they all essentially said the same thing; It was a savage cry for blood, for death, a wordless expression of primal urges, for revenge on that stranger who had caused so much trouble. In the crowd, there were no more people; their minds became hazed and melted into one big mental force that drove their bodies at the door.

"Let us in! Give us the alien! Give us the animal! He can't be trusted! HE CAN'T BE HERE!"

In shock, Lear stepped away from the door. It looked so thin, so fragile, like a piece of paper that had to shield them from a tidal wave. He found himself running through the hallway, to the small basement that had been Fred's room eight hours ago. God, it felt like an eternity. He found him sitting on the floor, surrounded by black and grey boxes in all shapes and sizes, looking just like the one that had exploded in the street. They were connected by wires, and in the corner lay a small pouch that, as Lear immediately understood, had been kept by Fred like a treasure all along. He had hidden it under his bed or under his clothes every day and it had somehow encased all of these dangerous objects that he had secretly brought from whatever alien world he came from. Fred was frantically doing something with the boxes and the wires, and all of a sudden, he stopped. He looked at the boxes like an acrobat, soaring high through the ring, looks around for the hands of his partner. He knows they're there and that they are supposed to save him from a horrible death, but he doesn't know where, somewhere in the blur of sky and ground, until he either feels them grabbing his own wrists or until they appear just too far away to reach, and he knows he's missed that decisive moment. And just like the acrobat can do nothing but soar and wait, Fred just sat there and waited for the boxes to respond. It was strange sitting here together in silence, after all the chaos and confusion, waiting. This small basement was quiet and isolated. They did not look into each other's eyes.

"If you can really save us, I forgive you."

Fred looked up at Lear. There was more pain and guilt carved into his face than Lear had ever seen before.

"Don't say that. Not yet."

Without saying a word back, Lear got up and returned to his parents. He found them sitting on the couch. They looked like small children waiting to be scorned by their teacher, a strange image that made Lear unexpectedly smile. The roar of the crowd outside had faded to a mumble. Then, the silence was broken by a strange sound, that seemed to be coming from the sky.

"Buf-buf- buf- buf- buf- buf- buf..."

The sound became louder, until everyone had to cover their ears and the house was trembling. The people outside responded by freaking out once more, this time in utter panic instead of bloodlust.

"BUF-A- BUF-A- BUF-A- BUF-A- BUF-A-..."

Lear's father put his hand on the doorknob and looked at his son as if to ask him for permission. Lear nodded and his dad opened the door. It had become morning and the light, however faint, was blinding. The villagers were looking up at the single most terrifying thing Lear had ever seen. It was hovering in the sky without anything holding it up, although it was enormous and made out of metal. It was floating graciously about five meters above the ground. Little hatches spit out ropes and black-clothed figures sliding down that pointed metal objects at the people, who flinched intuitively. All except for one of them, a slouching polecat who greeted the creatures with nods and shoulder pats. The intruders made a circle wide enough for the object to land. A dark grey wolfish guy in a dark green shirt and trousers stepped out and shortly talked to Fred before shouting:

"We're done here, fellas. The trucks will be here in a few minutes. Fall back and..."

Fred grabbed his arm and said:

"Please, just let me explain. They deserve to know what's going on.

He looked at the villagers, who had remained quiet all this time. He looked at a literal loss for words.

"People, you are all going to be all right. There will be trucks, ehm, big moving containers to bring you away in ..."

"What?! Away from the village?! Where to? Are you just abandoning us in the wild?

"No, please let me speak. There are other villages, infinitely bigger than this one, where we'll be bringing you. We have technology like this helicopter and my computer, the one that exploded yesterday. Of course I can't expect you to trust me, but we'll take care of you, find a place for you all, I swear to..."

Fred wiped the tears of his face and sighed.

"I'm so sorry for everything. I'm from another world, but on the same planet. The woods around your camp do not cover the whole world, they are just a ring around your village. There are no wild animals either, we could probably walk from here to civilization in two days. You have built a society believing that you were the only intelligent beings on earth, but in fact..."

The wolf in the green suit pushed Fred aside and looked upon the crowds with disdain.

"I highly doubt that any of you understand what my colleague is talking about. Maybe I can clear things up with a little history. A good twenty years or so, the world was at its absolute peak in terms of wealth and average living standards. It had taken millions of years of evolution, but all species of animals had gained a certain degree of consciousness and were living and reproducing in harmony. But there were some of us whose mental capabilities were significantly less than the rest of us. They essentially had a small piece of animal still inside them. There were tons of possible biological causes that we attempted to wipe out, but we realized that people like this would always be around, and though it was obviously not their fault, they were a negative influence. These people were referred to as U.E.I, standing for... damn, if I have to recount this entire story I will need a smoke or something, who has one?"

He turned to the uniformed men, who all shook their heads. The wolf moaned and continued:

"So be it then, I'll wrap this up quickly. U.E.I stood for Undesired Evolutionary Inferiorities. Medical staff was trained to care for these people in camps away from the cities, where they could learn to adapt and to live with their problems as best as they could. As expected, some responded to the peace and security of these places better than others, but most were relatively happy and their caregivers did not force the complications of modern technology upon them. But then, a very interesting sociological occurrence took place. Patients who had lived in these camps all their lives were convinced that there were no other people but their caregivers and fellow patients, or that there was no other civilization but their own tiny world. Other, older patients who had experienced the real world went along with the younger ones' ideas to not upset them, and eventually they more or less purposely forgot that it was a lie. Soon, entire camps had turned into tiny play-societies. Patients learned to provide for themselves, and new arrivals were welcomed to warm homes. The caregivers rarely needed to interfere, and everyone was happy. This occurred in multiple camps separately."

The sound of his voice was the only sound there was to hear, apart from a smothered sob once in a while.

"All patients were sterilized, except in the biggest one, a place where the patients had made up many false collective memories and had grown unusually paranoid of the outside world, ironically believing themselves to be the only sapient beings in a world full of wild animals. The greatest scientists of our world decided to conduct an experiment. The patients were referred to as "specimens" from that point on, and allowed to reproduce and wallow in their smugness and self-worship as they wished. They rapidly grew in number, completely cut off from us. During the following twenty years, all other camps were shut down, the undesirable genes became naturally extinct, and the specimens' fear of "the wild" increased with the size of their town. We needed an eye inside the wall. An highly trained operative managed to win their trust and transmitted highly valuable information to us using a custom made high-tech system, but he had to call for rescue after someone accidentally activated the emergency self-destruct function on a piece of equipment, turning the villagers hostile."

The man snickered and looked down with a smile.

" I guess" he said, "I might as well stop referring to y'all in third person.

The trucks came not long after. Nobody resisted when the men in black pushed them out the gate, into the enormous metal boxes. When the doors closed and Lear saw the last glimpse of light disappear from his mother's face, Lear thought not about anything that had happened this night and morning. He did not fully understand everything that they had been told, but he knew that his life would never be the same. And yet, all that crossed his mind was his friend. The last time he had seen, and would ever see Fred again was when he was escorted into the waiting helicopter by the green-suited wolf. Lear thought back to that day for the rest of his life. He would forget Fred's little boxes, his clothes and the name "Fred", that had never truly been his. He forgot his voice, his face, and he even forgot his lies. The only thing Lear remembered when he thought of this strange little man, was a memory from that day.

The tears that Fred had swept from his snout.