Blame an ever-growing pile of schoolwork for the lateness of this chapter. For similar reasons its a little shorter than most of the others, but still, I liked it. Lots of names flying around in here, some of them not all that important, so tell me if you think it's ok or if it's a problem.
I haven't had time to read back over this so there may be some mistakes.
Chapter 8
Vykkers are hermaphrodites. It is a direct consequence of this that many vykkers have a sibling of a very similar age (and if you don’t understand that, I’m not explaining. You’ll work it out when you’re older). And, being vykkers, it tended to happen that by the time they reached higher education they had probably reached a point where they bluntly refused to communicate with their sibling.
William Krik was no exception to either of these phenomena. Indeed, before he reached the age of ten he had already had an almighty argument with his ‘brother’, Johnny, and insisted on being sent to a different school. By the time he reached university the only communication that passed between him and his brother were the annual new years and birthday cards (both of which usually arrived late).
Krik came from rich parents and so was able to attend a fairly reputable school. He proved himself to be a particularly talented and healthily morbid individual (in vykker terms). In school he showed a passing interest in psychology which was eventually overtaken by an interest in anatomy. However, his hands proved too brusque for surgery and after having a particularly large slurg explode in his face he decided that perhaps that field wasn’t for him after all. In the end he turned back to his first passion and took up an apprenticeship with a reputable vykker psychologist by the name of Professor Zimbago.
It was while he was working for Zimbago that Krik met his first in-the-flesh mudokon. Obviously he new of them, mostly of natives causing trouble for amiable businessgluks though he had heard a few people were beginning to use them as slaves.
Zimbago kept a few as servants because interns weren’t much help for anything other than surgery but he also carried out various experiments on them, simply because they were the only sentient creatures he could grab that he wouldn’t get arrested for dabbling with.
Krik’s first impression of mudokons was that they were somewhat the antithesis of vykkers: they were very strong physically, yet seemed appallingly stupid. The simple-minded curiosity of the creatures seemed to completely deny intelligence. It wasn’t until he actually saw some of his teacher’s experiments on them that he began to change his mind. The way they coped under torture and stress suggested that there was more to the species than met the eye. Under Zimbago’s tutorship he learnt more about the creatures and even suggested studies they could carry out in the future.
His study of the creatures led him easily to the conclusion that they would make excellent slaves for the industrial world, and the only thing he couldn’t understand was why most of the rest of the world didn’t also think so. His enquiries into the question resulted in a lengthy lecture from Zimbago about over-developed morals, fear of the unknown and peer-pressure.
It was Krik’s determined ambition for knowledge that led to his ‘downfall’ in psychology: when he suggested to Zimbago that they apply to do tests on the slig or glukkon queens, the older vykker decided his young apprentice was liable to get himself (and anyone working with him) killed, or at least injured. There were certain lines that were not to be crossed, and lines such as these were drawn in big, obvious circles around the queens of the industrial species.
Not one for beating about the bush, Zimbago told him that he was a lunatic who was going to get himself in a whole world of trouble now get out of my lab and never come back, and that (as the saying goes), was that.
Annoyed, but not to be outdone, Krik decided that he would get revenge by becoming ten times more famous than Zimbago ever was. He began a search for a psychologist who would be willing to take him under their wing, but Zimbago’s reputation led for the rapid spreading of rumours and it soon became clear that there wasn’t a respectable psychologist on Oddworld willing to accept him as an apprentice.
Eventually Krik met a vykker called Erwin Skinner. Here Krik learnt a little of the almighty nature-nurture debate of psychology: the great question of whether behaviour is caused by a person’s experiences or their biology. Skinner was an avid believer in biologic psychology, swearing that all behaviour was caused by the structure of the brain, hormones and most importantly, genetics.
Skinner taught Krik a little of the biologic side of things before realising he was the Krik that everyone was complaining about and quickly fobbed him off by offering to introduce him to a friend who was a fairly successful geneticist. Krik happily took the approval and Skinner saw him off, safe in the belief that he’d tactfully avoided a potential disaster for his career.
Frank Holes was the geneticist who now found himself face to face with the young and irredeemably enthusiastic Krik. He was quite an elderly vykker, over his 120-year life expectancy, and was not happy about finding this young go-getter running circles around him in his excitement.
Krik himself decided that in genetics he’d finally found his true path in life: it gave him the opportunity to pursue his interest in behaviour while allowing him to return to his older passion of physical experimentation. He was somewhat disappointed, however, in Holes’ obvious complete lack of interest in mudokons. Holes was the owner of a fairly large genetics laboratory which he had spent most of his life building up. Krik, now aged 19, quickly got himself a job in the lab so he could annoy Holes better, and then bothered the vykker about letting him start research into mudokon genes.
After Krik had worked at the lab for 8 years, Holes finally gave in. He allowed Krik a tiny laboratory, an intern and, after a few more months of unrelenting demands from Krik who in his eight years of experience had learnt that cunning was the better part of being an annoyance, allowed him a pair of sligs.
Krik quickly set his sligs to hunting down mudokons for his experiments, as buying them was still too expensive. They quickly got the idea of picking off individuals who wandered away from their homes provided a supply of mudokons that was slow but nevertheless enough to please their boss. Most of the vykkers working at Holes’ lab were, like Holes himself, rather old and comfortable in their current lives and so had absolutely no interest in mudokons. Krik found himself working alone, except of course for the intern, whose name Krik could never remember. Once again in typical vykker style, Krik eventually stopped trying to remember his name and settled with referring to it with a range of less-than-complimentary names such as ‘Mute’, ‘Intern’ and occasionally just ‘Hey, You!’.
Krik’s work was agonisingly slow and tedious, but as previously mentioned he was a particularly intelligent individual, and his eight years working at the lab had taught him much. Three years later he had compiled enough research to publish a book on the subject of mudokon labour, outlining what Krik considered to be the advantages and disadvantages of slavery and concluding that the use of mudokon slaves provided the best future for the industrial world.
The publication of his book provided Krik was a more solid income and Holes grudgingly agreed that maybe the vykker deserved a little more credit that he had previously been given and agreed to hire a few other supporters of mudokon labour to help Krik in his research. The six vykkers, led by Krik, spent the next two years working frantically, adding to Krik’s research and developing new ideas. With less pressure on Krik himself, he found time to dabble in other branches of genetics. This led to the creation of his first real creation: the artificial enzyme the now very old and slightly senile Holes decided to christen ‘DNAse’, much to its creator’s dismay.
Aged 32, Krik presented his discoveries at the annual G.A.S. (General Assembly of Scientists) to an encouragingly positive response. DNAse went down well among the rich crowd, but more significant was the number of vykkers and glukkons crowding round to provide funding into his mock-queen project. He selected seven offers, from five glukkons and two vykkers, and began work.
One of the vykkers was a scientist about twenty years older than Krik, named Doctor Emlech. Emlech was successful and fairly well-known surgeon who shared Krik’s passion in mudokon labour. He insisted on seeing Krik’s research before agreeing to fund him, and Krik showed him a selection of his research that he and his team had agreed on with Holes to show an impressive array of information without giving away anything important to avoid being copied. Krik talked with Emlech himself, and had a good impression that the older vykker was trying to find out much more than he was willing to tell.
Though Emlech would never admit it, he was impressed by the young geneticist, both in his vigour for research and his ability to keep his head under pressure. Emlech and Krik struck up a firm friendship and over the course of the following experimentation Krik referred to him several times for suggestions and assistance.
Work on the mock-queen project went on for seven years. Over that time, Krik borrowed over 14 million moolah from 12 different sources. During that time, Frank Holes died (and so vanishes from this story) and was replaced by a different vykker who was more interested in Krik’s work.
When Krik was 38, industrial patrols discovered the mudokon Queen somewhere out in the wild and a short while later captured her and brought her in. The price of mudokon labour plummeted like never before and Krik became worried that all his work would become useless if mudokons became easier to come by. However, with the decrease in price, slaves became more popular and very soon the Magog Cartel, who had taken control of the mudokon Queen from day one (Krik had never bothered to learn her name back then, and several years later when he did, he wasn’t sure if Sam was the original Queen taken from the wild or that queen’s daughter, born in captivity), were soon struggling to keep up with the demand for labour eggs. Krik’s project looked to be back on track.
A year later it all came crashing down around his ears when he received a message from the Cartel stating simply that they did not want any other source of mudokon eggs which would reduce the price of those birthed by their Queen. Krik was ordered to end his research and destroy everything that he had achieved so far. Nine years of work looked to be wasted, leaving Krik and his team without jobs, without products, and 14 million moolah in debt.
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