He stared in the mirror again, seeing the thick hair on his face. Elliot was sure his beard was brown the last time he looked, now it was a deep grey. "I look pretty good with a grey beard. The under grads call us silver foxes, right?"
He was self conscious about talking out loud to an empty room before. Now the sound of his own voice gave him joy. The vibrations in his throat, hearing the faint echoes in the far reaches of the lab, it all reminded him that he was alive. At least, he was pretty sure he was.
He looked healthy, if a little thin. He quickly realized that he only doing research, eating and sleeping for the rest of his life would make him crazy. So he started a simple exercise regime that eventually evolved into a very intense series of 30 minute routines. He exercised 3 times a day, rotating the muscle groups, and lowering the intensity every 5 days for 2 days. It was basically all he had for a calendar, he didn't have days of the week anymore, just shoulder and chest day, cardio day 1, etc...
He stepped back into the lab area. It didn't look modern and untouched anymore. Every surface was covered with current experiments, past experiments, and ones under construction. Food was being produced on two full lab benches, and the variety was impressive. There was even grain growing out of compost in some plastic trays. He headed over to the mouse experiments, which took up most of the available space now.
"Hi Baby, hi Dino," he said with a wave to the two full grown chimpanzees. They weren't just his friends, he kind of treated them like lab assistants. "Such smart boys." Today was day number he-had-no-idea. Much like the days of the week, he didn't measure months or years any longer. The only measure of time he cared about was generations. He cared about his generations of mice, and he was several hundred generations in. He smiled, because today he was going to review the results of several experiments.
He made sure his hand and tools were clean, but he had run out of latex gloves a while ago. Holding the mice in his bare hands made him feel a little closer to them, making it more bitter when he sacrificed them. Such was science though, he needed to measure the progress of his discoveries.
Today he was going to sacrifice one of the oldest mice, from the second generation. If his initial discoveries were true, this mouse would confirm it. "If this gene editing worked, then the world is going to be in for a shock. The models I have designed based off this can create new types of humans, we'll have to reclassify them as different species." He paused, took a deep breath. "Don't get ahead of yourself Elliot. All those crazy models don't mean anything if this didn't work."
With a practiced hand he pulled out the mouse, Old man 2, from the enclosure and brought him to the sterile work station. With clinical precision, he snapped the Old man 2's neck with a finger tip, and then set about the work of taking sample, preparing slides, separating tissues and starting to measure everything. Now he just needed to see what he had achieved.
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"I'm a freaking god. A golden calf in the swirling cosmos of the geniuses before me. Genius is a funny word, don't you think Baby?" Elliot was lounging in his hammock, he'd fashioned it out of lab coats and it was surprisingly durable. He swayed gently, a large flask with a questionable liquid inside, it bubbled gently.
"Complete success. I've solved aging. Humanity has dreamed of this since the dawn of time.". He took another big swig from his flask. "Or I'm imagining all of this. Maybe I died, and being trapped in a lab is my version of heaven." This seemed almost more likely than single handedly solving aging. The crazy part was, this was just the key that unlocked a cascade of discoveries and modifications that seemed even more impossible. Just thinking about it staggered the mind.
"I need test subjects." He considered testing on Baby and Dino, or maybe their frozen siblings. He even thought of growing some clones of himself and just seeing what the hell would happen. It was safe enough on the mice. That didn't mean it wouldn't do something crazy to a higher order animal like a chimp or a human though.
"Testing, testing, one, two, three," he said in a sing song. Then he celebrated by finishing off his flask of moonshine.
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"I don't even want to know how strong that alcohol was. Geneticist, yes. Brewmaster, definitely not." Elliot stumbled out of the lab area, naked and sore all over. Really sore. "I can't drink like I used to, that's for sure. I certainly smell like an alcoholic though." He made his way toward the bathroom, needing a sink bath and tooth brushing. The tooth brush he'd found in his hidden supply stores was a godsend. Now though, its bristles were falling out. 'How long does that take, for the bristles to fall out', he wondered. Time was very subjective here, and he gave up trying to track it. No sun cycle will do that to you.
He splashed water on his face and lathered up some home made, well lab made technically, soap to start washing. He glanced in the mirror at his disheveled appearance, and thought he looked pretty good for someone who was in his mid 40s when he was first trapped. Hard to know if he was still in his 40s now. 'Am I 52 maybe? or older?' he wondered.
He finished cleaning, and decided to give himself a quick exam in the mirror. "Damn, my exercises really work. Maybe high intensity interval training is the real anti-aging secret." He was half joking, while seeing the results of his efforts. Defined shoulders and chest, prominent biceps, thick thighs and carved calves. He even had visible abs, and that had never happened in his life before now. "Did I look this good yesterday? I need to either drink more often, or way less often." That's when he noticed his beard. It was a flowing, dark walnut brown.
"Oh no. Oh no, no, no, no," Elliot said, pulling at his beard, looking closely at the facial features that had been covered by hair for so long. "I did it. I experimented on myself."
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Steve Cerses the 5th believed he was a god. His fortress was located in a fixed airspace with a beautiful view of the Tokyo cityscape. All the women he brought here were captivated by it. They were impressed with him too of course. His ancestor unlocked the genetic Pandora's box, ushering humanity into a new era. And, generations later, the divergence had only increased.
Steve ran his hand over his chest, loving the feel of the purple and silver tiger striped fur there. He had written the sequence himself, and thought the effect was majestic. 'The girls are in for a treat tonight. Me.' he thought to himself. If he recalled his order, one of them was lupine cross, and the other was stock human with generous physical enhancements. He couldn't wait.
In five generations, the Cerses had built on the first Steve's research to become one of the richest families in the world. Mostly through the licensing of the technology, but also for continuing the research by creating new hybrids and chimeras that filled specialized roles. His teams were working on a project to create amphibious soldiers for certain theatres of war. It was tricky to make people who were effective on land and sea.
"We created this world. The Cerses, with our drive and brilliance. We even abolished racism, sort of. People are more identified by their mod profile than where their ancestors were from." He glanced around, 'maybe I should monologue a little less, in case the girls arrive and hear me'. He saw his reflection and purred. To match his luxurious fur, he'd given himself larger pointed ears, tipped in black, and a cascade of silver hair. The hair looked almost metallic, but flowed as he moved. He enlarged his eyes slightly, and coloured the iris silver and the pupil blue. He didn't have fur on his face, but his stubble was the same shade of purple as the fur.
"I'm a masterpiece," he said. Forgetting about the monologuing again.
In the background, a holo viewscreen was playing on mute, but it was cycling through images of several war zones. In one, there were men the size of gorillas fighting normal looking humans, and the normies weren't doing very well. Another showed a man gliding on angel wings, in full tactical gear, firing a modulated laser weapon at a crowd in a high altitude village. The camera pulled back to show a squad of these angels evading the anti aircraft weaponry of the village. War had become very customized.