Devil Moa

A different kind of formula

Dr. Orn dragged his hands through his thinning hair and looked at the cigarette burning in the ash tray. A thick line of smoke slithered up to the ceiling of his office. He’d promised Ally he would quit. Several times. But shareholders were riding him for a viable embryo and he just wasn’t ready yet. Failure cost time and even in science, time and money were forever entwined in an ouroboros that kept shitting cheap and ineffective solutions into its own mouth.

The moa eggs kept dying. That was the crux of it. But they kept dying because the scientists were rushed and hadn’t recovered all the necessary genes. Yet investors demanded implanted eggs on a schedule. He snatched the cigarette from the ash tray and took a long drag. His hands shook as he exhaled. Another long drag, then another, and he picked up a dart from the red plastic cup on the corner of his desk, hurling it at the photo on the wall.

“Right between the eyes, Nicolaou!” He ashed the cigarette and muttered, “Give me a deadline when I’m trying to quit smoking?” De-extinction wasn’t exactly a kiddie puzzle. The moa had gone extinct over five hundred years ago, that meant any genetic material they had to work with was degraded and had to be rebuilt. But in order to do that, they had to know what all of the moa genes on the genome did, the ones that hadn’t degraded anyway. Once they knew that, they had to find the ones they wanted and plug those into an emu egg’s genetic material to make a complete, though hybrid, moa egg. So yeah, not exactly kiddie stuff. He couldn’t just poof an extinct, giant flightless bird into existence. Right now, they were plugging incomplete genetic profiles into eggs because they were on a deadline. It was a Hail Mary after Hail Mary, but much more expensive and with zero chance of success.

He was on board with the aim of the project, to reintroduce the moa to its native New Zealand and revitalize its former ecosystem, but did the end justify all the stress he was putting on his staff?

He threw another dart at the investor’s picture. If he didn’t make the deadline, the bastard was going to pull funding. Then the project would be on hold until they could find another investor. If, they could find another investor. De-extinction was controversial, to put it mildly. He lit up another cigarette. There was a knock on the door.

“Yeah?” He blew smoke at the ceiling. He’d disabled the smoke alarms months ago. The door opened to a middle aged man in a Demon Slayer t-shirt holding a cup of coffee.

“You’re not supposed to be smoking, Ally said to keep an eye on you.” He pulled out his phone, “She’s having lunch with Eric today.”

“Christ. She’s got a spy network.” Dr. Orn stubbed out the cigarette. “Can’t I get a break because we’re under a deadline for a thing that’s fucking impossible to do under a deadline?”

“Speaking of, Popov brought some weird witchcraft spell to the lab and swears it’ll resurrect a moa.”