New Zoo

By Larry A. Chace

Jim arrived at his job every day to prepare the meals for all the animals at a small private zoo. One day when the bosses were off at a conference, he tended a sick wolf and learned the horrible truth. Most of the animals were formerly human.

The new shifter pack looks for a place to live without being harassed. Even if they are furry with sharp teeth or scaly and burp fire.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Larry A. Chace
• Release date: Feb 16, 2009
• ISBN: 9781452308920

Larry A. Chace

Larry Chace is a fruit and vegatable farmer that also runs a special product sawmill making boxes for the agricultural industry. In his spare time, usually when the weather is to *** cold to work outside, he writes novels having to do with shapeshifters of various flavors.

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New Zoo

Book one of the Naniods

Larry Chace

This book is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in these pages are a product of the authors imagination and are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locals, and/or persons, living and/or dead is coincidental.

New Zoo

Copyright © 2009 by Larry Chace

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any way or manor without the written permission of the author.

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Prologue

I got out of the taxi telling the perplexed driver, Thank you for opening the door for me. Please take the money out of my pack, right front compartment. Without hands it is difficult dealing with cash or even the door to the car. I talked too much, but that generally helped to calm those humans nervous with what I am. He was very careful to count out the exact amount in front of the face of the very big wolf, me, a wolf that was talking to him. I told him the amount of a tip to take, I made it generous, but I think for him the best tip would be for me to get out of his car so he could leave. I did get out of the taxi at the Western Hotel at the foot of Younge Street in Toronto. I had a presentation to give on the state of human to animal conversions and relations between the converted and humans. The doorman expected me and opened the door for me as he would anyone else, well anyone on two legs. It was a nice courtesy as I was used to very few places recognizing me as more than a mere animal therefore unsafe to have in a public building.

I hope most of that discrimination was in our past. I still shed some tears when I thought about what I left behind just a short ferryboat ride across Lake Ontario to the United States, a place where I was born and will probably never be welcomed again. A simple act of saving someone from sure death and in the process giving them a very long life of wearing a fur coat has given me a murder conviction in absentia. The person is alive and currently out hunting rabbits, with her teeth. Politics of health care was condemning millions to death. I try to fix that and a whole country is against me. I blinked the tears out of my eyes so I could move on with the business of the day. A wolf shedding emotional tears was not normal but I am far from a normal wolf. I am a human, that was changed to a wolf, by billions of microscopic robotic computers, nanites. They made me and the other humans that were changed into animals and monsters, or the current popular term was nanoids. To some of the public any of us that are changed fall into the monster category. Fine let them call me a monster but to me a monster is defined by what you do not what shape you are.

I was at the conference to give my story. I thought it was going to be a small meeting but more chairs had to be set up and another section of the divided conference room was opened for our use. A small contingent of the crowd was with me, I had a team of three writers, one of them Dana, my sister, a couple of documentary news crews, and some local newspapers. I personally invited these few, friends to the cause just in case things got out of hand. But the main crowd consisted of people from the Ministry of National Defense, the Ministry of Environment, the Ministry of Agriculture and just about any other department you could think of. This was just the VIP part of the audience the public stuffed every other available space. They included a good sized contingent that were totally against us. We affected all of them in some way. I saw a few friends and media from the U.S. I placed this conference here to make it easier on them. The hotel was at the dock for the ferry to Rochester, NY. I hoped in placing it here the small percentage of US supporters we had could make there way here and maybe bring the last few hiding nanoids to safety in Canada. Overall a lot more people wanted to hear my story than I expected. Looking at the crowd and the credentials of those represented, maybe I should have moved the meeting to Ottawa as someone close to me suggested earlier. I usually go with my own hunches but in this case, I have a feeling I should have listened.

I padded up to the stage. My assistant, who arrived earlier in the morning to set things up, helped me to adjust my throat mike. The lack of hands was my biggest continual gripe. I could gain hands of a sort but then I was a green fire burping dragon. It is quite rude to be talking to a big group and have the first few rows walk away missing hair and nursing second degree burns.

I also assisted my helper in setting up translation program to English and French from my computer based nanoid language. The room sound was in English but if someone preferred French, a headset gave instant conversion. I spoke in a new language suited for animal vocalizations. My version was called Nanoid Canine very few humans could understand it. It sounded like modem noise to them or sometimes when I talked human slow I sounded like I was a wolf singing. I had a portable translator unit on my collar that helped in instances like the taxi earlier. I could talk slow and be understood by most but in a noisy environment that didn't always do the trick. Most of the Taxi drivers had so much of an accent that I almost needed a translator to understand them. I could understand English fine, and I was even learning a little French the longer I lived in Toronto. I just couldn't speak any normal human language. Most of the animals couldn't. Our physical voice equipment just did not have the capability of human speech.

I padded around the raised platform stage taking a good eye-to-eye look at those attending. I did not have a podium but I did have a laptop computer for notes in front of me. It recognized my speech so it just sang to it. I could put pictures and charts on the screen in the front of the room when necessary.

After testing the computer and watching the right pictures pop up on the big projection screen, I pulled up the courage to speak and started. As you all probably know I am James Davidson and I am here to give you the condensed version of my story on what happened to me and brought me to you today in the form you see. The book form long version will be available for sale in the lobby afterwards.

Chapter 1

The morning weather was miserable. A drizzling freezing rain fell at the lonely early hour of four AM. This was the kind of weather that told you, go back to bed, it is not going to be a good day. I should have listened to my feelings and called in sick, permanently, it ended up being a very not so good day.

The animals need to eat and we strive at the New Horizons Animal Collection Zoo to feed them the best and freshest available. That is why as the zoo's food preparation manager it fell upon me to be here at this time of the morning. The animals get to eat restaurant grade meats and vegetables. Our deliveries arrived at this early hour because most of the restaurants were not yet open. The zoo also received a substantial discount because our suppliers could take care of us before gridlock hour. Daytime traffic was horrid around this town as it was in most of the bigger cities.

It took me hours to do the prep anyway, so early morning was my major work time. Some days I brought my live-in almost wife Bean in to work with me, not today. I always chuckled at the thought of the name, Bean was not her real name, it was Bea but she hated it. That changed at a gathering of several of our friends, we gave her a name party. We came up with many wine and beer lubricated ideas, but Bean was the one that stuck, probably because she objected the loudest to it.

The beef arrived as full hanging sides and primal cuts, I cut them into proper sizes for the different carnivores. The zoo employees that normally fed the animals were on a training trip today to a conference, at a big zoo down south, I think it was just an excuse to spend time at Disney World in Florida on the zoo expense account.

Normally I would just put the prepped meat into the walk in cooler and go on to prepping the vegetables and fruits for the rest of the animals. Since it was a two-job day for me, I decided to finish up with the meat first. I pushed the cart past all the displays to the far end. The smells and sound of food coming early got the interest of most of the animals. By the time I got to the far end to start the feeding circuit, it sounded like, well…a zoo. I fed the big cats first. Most of them were in separate displays. They did not get along the best with each other. Working my way back towards the kitchen I ended up at the wolves. I have spent quite a bit of time with the wolves because they were right next to the food prep area. They like to chew the bones and did it with relative safety to themselves so I regularly supplemented their standard rations with the bones and scraps from the rest of the zoo. They knew me and I was one of their favorite visitors. I was a grocery store on legs to them. They came running to me when I brought in breakfast, they were expecting a snack from me, but I had a full meal ready for them. This caused me to move up in status, I was now most favored human to the pack. I had a whole road killed deer for the pack and some meat chunks mixed with dog food for Adam the notes from the head vet were that he was to get the geriatric mix. I looked for Adam the beta male, he was missing from the group. He wandered in late, he looked terrible, his hair was falling out in clumps and his head looked a little swollen. I wondered if he had been injured in some kind of fight. He looked at me with a look that said, Help me.

I sat down on the floor beside him and he leaned into me more like a dog than a wolf. I looked over his coat for parasites and took a couple of scrapings for the vet. I was betting mange or some kind of mite but I might be wrong. I am a nutritionalist not a vet. I stayed with Adam until my assistant George came in to work. I had him take over the vegetarian detail. I need to find the vet and have her check Adam, he looks terrible.

You will have a long look she is with the boss and the rest of anyone important at the conference.

Great, thanks for taking over for me, I guess I will look for Adams records then call one of the standby local vets later in the morning after they open, wolves are close enough to dogs to get some useful help.

I had the key to the office. I used the phone to call the conference numbers while I searched for some records. No one seemed to be at their hotel rooms. I called cell numbers and only got voice mail on all of them. I hope they are having a good time. Some of us are trying to do our jobs. I tried the computer looking for records and found a cross reference chart for most of the animals. Adam was one of them he was just referenced to as WC 1. I looked at the labels on the file cabinets and found one drawer that looked quite promising. Unfortunately, I couldn't get it opened, it was locked. I had that covered I had tools and skills. While I was in college, I worked with my brother in his locksmith shop, so I had some useful skills and those cabinets had very simple locks.

I went to my car and took the tool kit out of the trunk. The picks were right were I expected them to be and they worked flawlessly. Not bad for several years of not using my skills. I was a little nervous I found myself thinking that after breaking into the records I may need these skills. If I lost this job, maybe my brother would need some help.

The drawer I selected was just promotional information from suppliers. The codes on the filing system made me think they were trying to hide something. I kept looking and found what I was looking for in the last drawer. I pulled folder WC1, it had a person's picture taped inside the front. I leafed through it and fell back into the chair with what I found. My mind could not lock on the truth of what I was seeing. It was science fiction and horror rolled into one. WC1 stands for wolf conversion 1. He was human at one time. I found a progressive picture series of his conversion in the back of the thick folder. It was many pictures covering a couple of months. This was impossible. I read the material and it had a recent post-it note on the last page of the medical records. Termination scheduled to start 10/15. That was last week. It also had one word under it Thallium. I put the folder back in the cabinet after copying everything in it. I was going to lock up but I took a few minutes and copied all the rest of the two letter designated folders. If I was right most of the zoo was former humans.

I was about to leave when I had a horrible thought. The copy machine was a digital one. It had no phone line connection. I was probably safe that it was not sending information on what was copied to a remote location. I spent a few minutes thinking then called my college beer buddy Uri. He now owned an office machine business. Uri, I have a slight problem. I am in the office at work. I have been using the copy machine to copy some resumes. How do I tell if the copier has a feature to save what I am copying?

Now Jim, why are you doing that? Stop by here and copy whatever you want. Do you hate your job that much? Ok, give me the make, model and serial number off the back.

I did as he entered it into the computer. Yes, it has a hard drive in it that saves everything. Open the panel on the right, then the metal panel under it. See the four buttons, if you push the two end ones it will cause the drive to reset and erase everything that is stored. You better be sure they aren't saving anything important on it.

I guess I will just tell them there was a power surge and the thing went nuts. A reset could conceivably be caused by a computer glitch, right?

Yes, who's maintenance sticker is on it.

Yours.

Gee thanks pal. You owe me a case of beer for that.

If this is as bad as it looks you will get a truckload.

Well at least I made someone's day. I reset the drive, maybe I was being a little over cautious, but this whole thing was…out there. I had heard there was work being done on regrowing damaged body parts. The last several military conflicts were doing a good job of creating damaged veterans. Someone must have taken that technology to the ultimate end, whole body conversion. I then locked everything back up. This had to be a dream, nothing like this could possibly be real. Maybe one of the animals passed me a weird illness and I am hallucinating.

George was at the far end of the zoo so I took one of the animal carriers and put Adam in it. He went in with no problem. I told him, I know what you used to be, I am getting you out of here, they are poisoning you. You have been scheduled for termination.

He reached out of the cage before I closed the door and scratched I human in the dirt.

I said softly, I knew he had good hearing so I was trying to gentle on his senses. Yes, I know. I need to get you out of here.

I had tears in my eyes as I closed the door and put him in the back room. I cleaned up and waited a couple of minutes until met George half way through his feeding rounds. I didn't want him to suspect anything was different. I could not get anyone on the phone. I am going to visit a couple of vet clinics with the hair samples and scrapings I have, then maybe see if I can convince them do a house call later today or tomorrow if I don't see any improvement. Last time I saw Adam, he was slinking back to the den hole, if he goes in there none of the other wolves will bother him. It is only big enough for one. I think he will be safe from them fighting him. I wish we had an isolation cage available for the poor thing. Call my cell when you are done. I will be back as soon as possible. I had left the flap down on the cave like hole in the back of the wolf exhibit. Unless George lifted it, he would not know Adam was gone.

I rolled Adam's box into the back of my van. I think I was safe, I knew of no cameras in the loading dock area. George was busy and no one else was at work yet. I did not trust George, he was the boss's cousin. Adam just whimpered at the movement.

I drove right past all of the local vets. I was getting paranoid that some of them might be in on the cover-up. I stopped at my sister Dana's house and had her go with me. I gave her the folder on Adam while I dove well out into the country to a vet that specialized in farm animals. When we got there, his wife told us that he was already out on a farm call this morning. She then told me he would be back in less than fifteen minutes. A reasonable wait for not having made an appointment. While waiting my sister and me browsed the other files. A lion, two tigers, five other wolves with notes hinting at more in other locations, two turtles, a gator, all the lamas, deer, and similar animals, two fox, three kangaroos, snakes and more were all human conversions.

I talked with the vet as he left his car, I have a problem that comes out of a sci-fi or maybe a horror novel. I could not trust any of the veterinarians in town because of their connections with the zoo.

I plopped the folder down in front of him, Just look at this while I get Adam out of the van. I gave him a few minutes to set down behind his desk and look the file over. When he had glanced at a few pages I said, I did not believe it until he scratched, 'I human,' into the dirt of his enclosure this morning. If the folder is right, he has been a wolf for almost ten years. How he could retain sanity and intelligence after that amount of time is beyond me. The vet was thinking sanity too, but mine not Adam's.

Dana and me managed to carry Adam to the exam room. He was not a small wolf. The vet came in and said, Either I am so far out of date as to be operating with stone knives or you are certifiable.

Adam slowly and shakily walked out of the carrier. He looked at the vet with the same help me look. The vet said, If you were given the dose of Thallium it stated on that paper that would account for how you feel. It would not be fatal but two more doses would. If what they are doing is true they were trying to make you look sick before you died. Simple no questions asked, old wolves die. You may be old for a wolf but your body looks like a teenager. I am starting to believe those pictures the more I look at you. Can you answer me yes or no answers. Adam nodded his head up and down and side to side.

I asked the doctor, If you don't believe why are you talking to Adam?

I talk to all my patients.

His wife said, The farmers call him Dr Doolittle.

After working with Adam a little more he looked at me with a perplexed look, Either you have an extremely well trained wolf or I need to go sharpen my stone tools.

Does this hurt? he was moving Adams rear leg in bigger and bigger circles.

Adam shook his head no.

Whine when it starts to hurt. This is a range of motion test.

He moved Adams rear leg until I though he would break it off. Adam whined.

The vet Barry said, I am sorry about that but you have the joints of a one year old canine. All larger canines, either dogs or wolves have deterioration in the hip joints over the years. It varies but all have it, your joints are perfect, as if they have been rebuilt to youth form.

Your records show you have been a wolf around ten years, is that true.

A head nod up and down.

Follow me to one of the horse stalls there is sand on the floor, you can write letters in it.

In the horse stall Barry asked, Can you give us any part of your old name?

Adam scratched a series of letters, Brain hurt at chang, mak smal to fit wolf, looz thikin oly remem agnt dan fbi.

He looked at me, An FBI agent, I will take a picture of this to save it. I can work with him a little but I need to get him some medicine to start the poison removal. You can use the phone and computer in the office. I think we can trust the FBI.

I did call the local FBI office and told them, I have found some information from ten years ago that only says something about FBI agent Dan. Did you have someone by that name staff at that time?

There was a pause. A new person came on the line, I am agent Wildman, I was Dan's partner he disappeared on a drug investigation around that time. I would like to find out what happened. What do you have?

I have something with that name written on it in a mater like someone was asking for help. Let me get it maybe you can help me get more out of it.

I went in to ask Adam, I have agent Wildman on the phone, do you know him.

Adam started a happy bounce he was doggy kissing me. Ok I will see if I can get him here.

Back at the phone I said, What I have will be very hard to believe. I have it in front of me and I don't believe it. I have a wolf that scratched some words in sand, they said, I human, and that he only remembers agent Dan FBI when we asked his name. I have a copy of his medical folder from the zoo where he has been for the last ten years that has a series of pictures showing his conversion from human to wolf. I have a pile of other folders. I think if it is true, there may be a whole bunch of missing persons cases solved. If not you can direct me to the nearest mental health clinic but I know what I am seeing, the vet here sees it too. I think the people behind this, my former bosses might not like me having this information. We may need protection.

You are fifteen minutes away. I will be right there. This is highly irregular you better not be lying, scamming the FBI is a federal offence.

I told Doc Barry, The FBI is on their way, I think Adams former partner is the one coming.

Good, we might need someone he knows to calm him down. He is not in good shape. Too much excitement is not the best. He looked down at Adam, Hear that, keep calm and you will be ok, get to excited and your system will have more trouble recovering.

His tail was going thump, thump, thump at a very regular interval. I would swear he was a dog and not a wolf. Wolves are always so serious. He was more laid back. The vet went over the pictures with me, he said, "Look at the third picture I think that is the key. They are injecting him with a silver liquid that looks like mercury, if it was that he would be dead. I am guessing he is infused with nanotechnology. Little mini cell sized robots that were originally designed for repair work. I saw some of the initial work when I was in college. They were used for burn repair and tattoo removal. Something about the control of the nanites at the time was bad. Sometimes the burn victims ended up with so much skin over growth they looked like the wrinkly-skinned bulldogs. Look at the last entries in Adams record. It says, tech unstable, head size increased one percent overnight, intelligence increases found, security risk undetermined. Then later they added. High risk, terminate. It looks like they were afraid he would start to remember he used to be human and wanted to eliminate the threat."

Agent Wildman showed up in a very plain looking mid-sized car. I thought FBI would have super cop cars but I was not in law enforcement so what could I say. First, I showed him the folder, he sagged when he saw it. I pointed to the post it note and the entry on termination. I said, He is sick but he only got an initial dose so he is going to be ok. Do you want to see him?

We went into the horse stall, Adam stood up and greeted the agent with a very happy tail and when he got near jumped up and kissed him vigorously. Questions started, Are you really Dan?

A head nod yes.

Can you remember being human?

Adam scratched, Litl

Do you know if the people who did this to you were the ones you were investigating?

Adam scratched a very big, YES. It went all the way across the stall.

He hugged Adam for several minutes. When he finished he turned to us with tears in his eyes. After he went missing, I got his wife and kids a dog that looked a lot like this. If I only knew.

He looked over the other folders and after a few got a panicked look in his eyes, panic in an FBI agent is not a good thing. He called his office, Sherry has anyone come in yet and accessed the call logs. Good, it looks like our regional director is deep into this case. I need a code 99 sealing of all information on this case. Call the state police and tell them I will be contacting them to run the investigation.

He was actually sweating, that was not a good thing to reassure me. I asked, Is their anything I can do?

He turned to us, Someone high in the FBI is mentioned all over these papers. I even see him in some of the pictures. Procedure is to have the state police handle the case when it is unwise for us to involve ourselves in self investigation. I trust them over the federal letter agencies. Be glad I was his partner. Others may have passed the buck up to someone that is part of the problem.

Chapter 2

Agent Wildman said, One thing for you should do is to call any wife or kids you may have and get them away from home. You don't want them as fuzzy hostages.

Is it that bad? How about I call the zoo and tell them I took Adam because I was suspicious of his illness, it looks a little like major allergies so separating him from his normal environment would be the first thing to do. Maybe that will throw them off for a day or two.

Use this cell phone to call the zoo, it can't be traced.

I called the zoo, George was pretending to sound worried but he was furious. He was slipping by using words far above his normal vocabulary. He was giving all sorts of other possible causes using detailed medical terms to explain what was happening. His image of empty-headed muscle was slipping. I then called Bean as I walked back to the others. I got her at the gym where she led a dance class. Jazzercise or something like that I never did pay that much attention. Maybe that is why I hadn't advanced from permanent boy friend.

I told her, Get out of there and go to your sisters out west for a couple of weeks. It is bad at the zoo, really bad. I can not tell you more without you getting you into the danger deeper than you are. While I was talking to her, she got another call on the landline phone. I could hear her talking. I was not supposed to hear but I did get at least one end of the other conversation. I almost dropped the phone when I discovered who she was talking to.

I got agent Wildman to listen in on the conversation. She said on the other phone. George, it can't be that bad, he has no access to the information. You mean he has gone and hauled off one of the primary subjects. Damn, I will activate his nanites, I kind of liked him, and I hoped it would never come to this. She came back on to my line. Jimmy, where are you, I will come to be with you.

No, go, go far away and don't look back. You may end up being something you don't want to be.

"I am so sorry for this Jimmy, I thought it would go on forever but this is for the best, at least