UNEDITED EDITION

The Cockatrice Hatched

Kevin P. Tremblay, Reporting News One, WXXE Boston

Cambridge, Massachusetts : Harvard University – Tozzer courtyard has been completely scorched, three people are dead, martial law invoked. Many other university associates and employees hospitalized. Three dragons created in a laboratory in the basement of Harvard’s Botanical Museum have escaped. Stay tuned in, and do not go outside or look out your windows. The background of what happened follows.

Professor Jon Robeson, a research fellow at Harvard University, recently attempted what was considered impossible: the mixing of different ‘genotypes’ to create a new creature. This mixing of unlike life forms is not as farfetched now.

Only tales from the annals of witchcraft and arcane sources ever mentioned the mixing of species, and a few Biblical references, one of the inspirations of this unfortunate experiment. Some examples are the union of an incubus and human, and the Nephilim, another human-demon hybrid. Of course there are thousands of fables and lore of monstrous creatures from ancient times. Mostly these are children’s stories used to keep young people in line and teach morality.

With more recent scientific discoveries and completion of the human genome project, the door to genetic manipulation between unlike species has become wide open. There was that improbable mix of a spider gene inserted into embryonic sheep, where the sheep’s milk contained spider’s silk. Also, the use of domestic animals for producing drugs like insulin has been going on for decades government sources acknowledge.

Robeson’s intent (it is surmised) was to get the attention of the worldwide scientific community. A new creature had to be of the most fantastic kind possible in order to be noticed. His death upon its realization places him in infamy. We are all in grave danger following his success. Citizens in the greater Boston area are being warned to stay indoors with their window blinds down. The National Guard and Cambridge Police are on alert.

Dr. Robeson’s death has come as a shock to his friends and colleagues. News One researchers are still trying to piece the story together with information from inside sources at the National Institutes of Health, staff at the Recombinant DNA Advisory Committee and other unnamed sources.

Some background is appropriate to better understand what happened, how Robeson died and why. Although what follows will be difficult to comprehend or even believe, it is important to explain what the scientist was attempting to do and what the results were. The outline of the facts will become more significant as the story unfolds.

Robeson’s undergraduate degree from Yale University was in Biblical Studies, with a minor in genetics. His belief in matters spiritual waned as his scientific studies and knowledge increased. “How can the Bible hold anything worthwhile in a modern and technologically advancing world?” he used to say. “We landed on the moon and have technologies to read people’s intentions, to read their minds. Is there anything left that belief in a living God could solve?” He apparently thought not. While at Yale he had been tapped, (Bonesman, class of 1968), and was baptized by desire as a born-again atheist and member elite.

He had been doing cloning research with minor success. “That was yesterday’s news,” he was reported to have said. After Dolly the sheep had been cloned, there was little else to do but clone humans, and that would have to be done in total secrecy so as not to enrage religious fundamentalists and ethical purists. Dr. Richard Seed, another Harvard alumnus branched into human cloning. Little more is known about him or his research after a controversy rose.

That was about the time Robeson remembered an old Biblical reference he came across while studying Old Testament linguistics. It concerned a beast with seriously dangerous implication: the “Cockatrice.” Some biblical translations call this ‘mythical’ dragon-like beast a basilisk. Others contend the basilisk is born the second generation of a Cockatrice through a transsexual union, an unnatural mating between an indefinite gender and species. The basilisk has “death-darting eyes” and leaves a sulfuric odor from its breath wherever it has been.

He thought that if he could take a cockamamie idea from an antiquarian book like the Old Testament and actually create some odd creature, the world would take notice. He had been an ambitious man, always driven. His colleagues noted his all-consuming passion to create this mythical beast, the Cockatrice. Many thought he was chasing phantoms, the make-believe. The Cockatrice’s image appears in heraldry and on the Robeson’s family shield. He felt called to create it dismissing the Cockatrice symbolic representation as evil.

He did not think that a Cockatrice would be as dangerous as the fables about it alleged. He was just looking for notoriety. Unfortunately history will remember him as the man who unleashed an evil the likes of which only existed in science fiction. Another opinion he held that illustrates his skepticism in Bible accuracy is, that King James was a member of the Illuminati. The Illuminati believe in a Reptilian god. King James skewed biblical truth to gain increased control over humanity.

There are four specific references to the “Cockatrice” in the King James Version of the Bible. Three are in the Book of Isaiah and one in Jeremiah. Isaiah 14:29 is of most significance now that three Cockatrices have been hatched, and we have seen the results.

“Rejoice not thou, whole Palestina, because the rod of him that smote thee is broken: for out of the serpent’s root shall come forth a cockatrice and his fruit shall be a fiery flying serpent.”

Dr. Robeson obtained crocodile eggs from South America shortly after they were laid. The specific croc species was Crocodylus acutus . These eggs were immediately flown to Logan International Airport and taxied to the Harvard Museum in Cambridge where Robeson did research. He had already obtained genetic material from the highly poisonous and dangerous yellow viper, Daboia xanthina , that he had genetically tweaked. He spliced a gene fragment from a cock, the common barnyard rooster, into the viper’s gene.

It was in these hallowed halls of Harvard that the means discovered to unravel the double helix of a DNA strand, insert different amino acids, and rewind the gene; something that could not have previously be done without killing the gene. It was a Joseph Kucera a laboratory technician who had discovered how to accomplish this.

Others claimed the scientific notoriety, commonly done in this cut-throat environment of academia, where you either publish or perish. However, the specific notebooks outlining the rudimentary methods were recently rediscovered in a stack of unarchived documents showing that Kucera had actually made this find.

Robeson used Kucera’s method to relax a DNA strand, fiddle with the viper gene adding the chicken DNA splice. Without Kucera’s notes Robeson would not have been able to rewind the DNA after inserting this final element into the mix to create the Cockatrice. Bishop Spinoffa, a spokesperson from the Vatican was quoted as saying: “This is something that never should have been done.”

Each croc egg was pierced via micro syringe and manipulated with this genetic mix that was inserted into the crocs’ nuclei. The eggs incubated for ninety days. Robeson kept meticulous notes which are in the hands of a team of forensic scientists. They are looking to discover the Cockatrices’ weaknesses in his notes, if there are any.

When the eggs hatched, we can only guess what happened. Robeson’s skin appeared to have been badly scorched, his eyes burst out of their sockets and his brain was literally boiled. A number of other research fellows and staff in the museum buildings at the time saw what looked like three small dragons fly out of basement’s laboratory windows, into Tozzer Courtyard and off into the sky. All the plantings in the courtyard have been scorched to death and there is a heavy odor of sulfur in the area.

The witnesses who had reported seeing them fly off immediately felt hot and their skin began to itch, as if they had been bombarded by electromagnetic energy. All of them are in the hospital and their prognosis is poor. They have all lost their sight. Two have died. The legends surrounding the Cockatrice state that to gaze upon the creature’s countenance would mean imminent death.

There is little more to report at this time. The public is being warned and Governor Norton has invoked martial law. The laboratory has been sealed off; the use of a thermonuclear device is under consideration to ensure that more hatchlings do not escape. The United Nations has been advised. Stay tuned to your local emergency radio station, and again, do not go or look outside. Under no circumstance is the public to be outside. A twenty-four hour curfew has been ordered. STAY TUNED. This is Kevin reporting.