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Your intrepid eyewitness recently bumped into an old colleague whose path had not crossed his for some years. He was a scientist: a rather eccentric chap, being well-stricken in years, whose area of expertise was fiddling with DNA and looking for that breakthrough that might save the human race, for he was at heart an altruistic old bloke.
After exchanging pleasantries of the “Long time no see” type, the subject of work came up, as it tends to under these circumstances.
He told me that he had been conducting some interesting experiments for some years. “In fact,” he said, “I had some DNA from government ministers come into my possession a few years ago, and I’ve been doing some experimentation with it. Don’t ask me how I came by it, as I will have to kill anyone who finds out.”
I assured him that I was more than happy for the origin of the samples to remain a closely guarded secret, as one never knew whether he was joking or not. On my pressing him, he agreed to give me a few results of his experiments.
“My first experiment was with some DNA from that Angry Spittle fellow,” he said. “I just happened to have some Japanese giant killer hornets to hand, as one does, and I decided to introduce some of his DNA to these creatures. Well, it wasn’t a very satisfactory result. The hornets containing the ministerial DNA became nocturnal, working only in the dead of night, rushing through changes to their nests, and then becoming very angry when the changes were, of course, faulty. They became so irate that each hornet stung itself to death, thus destroying the nest’s entire population. All for the best I think.”
“Quite so,” I agreed. “I think the world is a better place without that level of irascibility.”
“The next case also had an unsatisfactory result,” he continued, the bit between his teeth now, as when a scientist gets talking, he is impossible to stop. “I tried some DNA from that David fellow… David Porker is it? Something like that. I crossed his DNA with one of those ferretty things, you know, the ones that go pop. What are they called again?”
“Weasels?” I suggested.
“Ah yes, that’s it,” he said. “Very disappointing: there was no discernible improvement in the offspring of the weasel. In fact, they were considerably more weaselly than normal, with a touch of ferret. Shame really. I’d hoped that there might have been a bit of humaneness in the resulting weasels, but there was none.”
I tut-tutted, but mentioned that considering the DNA in question, the result should not have been unexpected.
“Yes, yes, perhaps you’re right,” he conceded. “The next case however, was a bit more interesting. I decided that a friendly puppy would be a good thing. So I used some DNA of that lady with the PhD in Mouldy Makeup Application, Megan Should, is it? Well it was certainly an interesting puppy that resulted. A really huge ball of fluff.”
“It was a female puppy, I assume?” I enquired.
“Oh yes, it was a bitch alright,” said the prof. “All went well until she grew a bit, then she starting eating her rope and escaping regularly. Soon the complaints began to come in from bakeries. She was coming into the bakeries, jumping up on the counter, and breaking into the pie warmers. Ate every pie, every time. It became very expensive for me. I had to draw the line when she started getting into butcheries and eating whole sides of beef. Shame, but there we are. Another fail.”
He paused and thought for a moment. “Oh yes, the next one was that Winshton Putters chap. I happened to have a friend with a few chimps as I’m sure most people do, so we used his DNA in those. The resulting baby chimp was pretty ugly, but you’d expect that. The problem was that it wouldn’t touch its mother’s milk. Spat it out if it ever got a taste of it. Then it started breaking into my drinks cabinet and working its way through my spirits collection. It had a real taste for whisky. Well, as you know, a sober chimp is bad enough, but a drunk one…” He shook his head sadly. “It had to go, I’m afraid.”
“So no real successes at all,” I said. “But considering the material you’re working with, I can’t say I’m surprised.”
“No, very disappointing,” agreed the prof. “Incidentally, I do have some of Justinda Ardeau’s DNA available in the collection, but quite honestly I’m afraid to use it.”
“Why is that?” I asked. “Wouldn’t there be a lot of kind DNA there? Wellbeing, in abundance? Intellectual superiority? That sort of thing?”
The prof choked on the apple he had just started gnawing, and looked at me pityingly. “I’ve learned that anything bad is possible using this collection of DNA,” he said. “But nothing good. There have been another few results I don’t have time to tell you about now, but they also, alas, were not favourable outcomes. I can quickly say though, that I used Phil Slyford’s DNA in an experiment with a donkey, and the poor beast couldn’t even figure out how to eat. Instead of saying hee-haw hee-haw, it said light-rail light-rail. No, using the DNA from this collection of incompetents is not going to have a beneficial effect on the human race I’m afraid. The best we could hope for from Ardeau’s DNA is a version of Mrs Edna, wife of Mr Ed the talking horse. At least he was funny, but I fear Mrs Edna wouldn’t give us many laughs. No, the gene pool is not enhanced by having this lot aboard. Well, must go now, see you later.”
With this, we continued on our ways, both feeling rather down in the dumps and wondering even more strongly, what weird warp in history’s timeline had given us this bunch of muppets to blight our lives.
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