|
It started out like a normal day. Little did I know it would change my life. Just a fine day in the shimmering white lab where we waited in our cages for our food. We had been captured in our grassy home and missed the outdoors badly. It was two rabbits to a cage, one boy and one girl. Occasionally there would be two girls if there weren't enough males. I was one of the lucky ones. Me and my sister Jeannie lived in the same 2 by 2 cage. It was slightly cramped, but we didn't mind much.
Anyway, today we were hanging around waiting for breakfast to show up when Dr. John pushing a cart with droppers filled with a clear substance. He opened our cage first and took a hold of me. I didn't resist, because if you did, you got no food for a day. He pried open my mouth and dropped some stuff into it. I swallowed, then he dropped me back into the cage. He did the same thing with Jeannie.
I had absolutely no idea what was going to happen to me that day. But after a while, I realized I'd began to see the world differently. I started to learn how to read and understand what the scientists were talking about. I was also getting stronger, and I could lift things that humans could. I was becoming more human! Also, scientists were trying to give us quizzes. We were put in mazes and had to remember which way to go so to not get shocked. Me and Jeannie did very well. .The other rabbits couldn't remember as well as we could. After one particular excursion, I was listening to the scientists talk.
"John, you've realized that that concoction you've given the rabbits in A are working, don't you? Jeannie and Beatrice remember things that group B and C can't!" says Dr. Linda.
Ahh, I thought. A was the letter on our cage. The concoction must mean the stuff that Dr. John gave us. The stuff that made us remember things. Was that why I felt more like a human now? Or maybe I wasn't supposed to be like that.
I turned around to tell my revelation to Jeannie. She was snoring on the bedding in her favorite corner. Sheesh, Jeannie, you're always sleeping on the good parts. I turned my attention back to the scientists.
"....feed it to all of them. This could be a great breakthrough! Thousands of Alzheimer patients could be saved!" Dr. Linda said excitedly.
I grinned. A breakthrough in science. Boy, that'd be great! Then I stopped myself. Beatrice, since when have you been concerned about humans? It was like I was basically becoming a human!
The next morning when I woke up I saw the bars of the cage and panicked. The bars were closing in on me! Get me out of here! Ahhhh! I raced around the cage, trying to get out.
"Beatrice, what is wrong with you? You're acting like there's a tiger in the cage with us or something!"
Huh? I turned around and there was Jeannie staring at me like I'd gone crazy. Suddenly the bars of the cage stopped moving.
"Seriously, Bea, you're acting like a human!
Human? Oh no! Was I turning into a human? Was the stuff that made me remember things also turning me into a human? Why wasn't Jeannie turning into a human then? Was I going to be like a wererabbit-human and rabbit? These questions remained unanswered.
Later that day, Jeannie started acting like a human too. Uh oh, I thought, we were becoming human like! In the evening, when Dr. Linda tried to feed us some pellets, we ran out of the cage and through the crack in the doorway. Sliding into the corridor, I asked, "
What's next?"
"I don't know," said Jeannie, troubled.
Here we were, two rabbits that acted like humans, not knowing what to do. Then Jeannie said hysterically, "Beatrice, you are getting taller and starting to look like a human! Your fur is shrinking!"
"So is yours!"
By the time we got to the bathroom and checked ourselves out in the mirror, we were able to pass as little humans. And we could talk like them too. A lady came up and said,
"Hello."
We said it right back. Oh my goodness, I was becoming a everyday little human-how scary! We decided to go back into the lab when another lady came up to us and said,
You're the rabbits from the experiment, right?"
We nodded mutely.
"Don't worry, I'll take care of you. Come with me".
Having nothing better to do, we followed her into a black area with lots of lines. There were a lot of machines there too, big ones that you could ride. She motioned for us to get in a blue one and we did. Then, wonder of all wonders, she stuck a metal thing into a hole and suddenly we were moving really fast! There was an invisible hand pushing us into our seats. Wow, I thought, the human world is amazing.
Soon enough we were at a strange looking thing that looked like a bunch of giant boxes and triangles connected. I'd seen a picture of it in the lab, I think. There was a big rectangle with a lot of squares on it, then the lady pressed a button on another square she had in her hand, and the rectangle slowly disappeared. Wow! Then we drove the machine into the space that it uncovered. Wild! This was human magic. Perhaps it wouldn't be so bad after all to be a human. Then we walked in through a door (They had those at the lab too.)and came into this huge space. I was going to start running around and sniffing when I remembered that I was a human. Darn!
We headed into a place with a lot more shelves and cupboards-and here was a curiosity! Four black swirly pieces of metal sat on a square counter. Wonder what it did?
The lady said,
"This is a kitchen. Those black circle things are called burners. I cook on them with a pot." She held up a shiny bucket with a lid and put some vegetables into it.
"Wait! What are you going to do to those veggies? Why are you trying to cook them?" I asked worriedly.
"Don't worry. This is how human beings eat vegetables sometimes with soup. It makes them softer."
"The humans?" Jeannie asked.
"No, silly, the vegetables."
I wondered why humans would do such a stupid thing. Didn't they want to enjoy the crispiness of the carrots and lettuce? Silly humans.
Then the lady put the pot on the burners, flipped a knob, and suddenly the burner turned red!
"Is this human magic?" I asked.
"No, this is how we cook."
Wow. This world was plain amazing. Only sometimes the humans do stupid things, like cooking vegetables. I wonder what else is in this world.
"Oh, and this" (points to a white, big box) "is a refrigerator. It keeps things cold."
" One question ma'am. What's you're name and why are you taking care of us?"
She grinned and said, "That's two questions, actually. My name is Isabella."
I noticed Isabella didn't answer the second question, but I didn't press her. What a huge mistake, I found out later, but right now I was concerned with learning about humans. I would have to know how to act like one if I wanted to survive for long.
"What's that?" Jeannie asked as she pointed to a black box.
"That's a microwave" said Isabella.
"What does it do ?" I asked?
"Makes things hotter." She said.
I could read, write and talk the English language. However, there were still a lot of things to be learned about humans.
In the days that followed, I learned all I could about humans. What was acceptable to eat, drink, and how to take a shower. I felt like a baby being taught. Humans were not content with ordinary water. They were basically sugar freaks, drinking fizzy, sweet fire and sweet candy instead of normal pellets and treats. And, they ate meat. Isabella said that some people didn't eat meat, vegetarians. I guess I am one.
I was learning so much from Isabella. She told me things about humans all the time. Only I felt weird. Like I have a premonition about her, that she isn't what she looks to be. Maybe it is just my superstitious nature but I am not feeling very secure for some reason. Is there something bad about Isabella? It does seem to be to good to be true., her helping us. I'm scared to ask because she might do something to me. I've tried talking to Jeannie but she says that she doesn't feel that way. I wondered if I was just being paranormal. I was really worried. What if she was a lab scientist in disguise? Close enough, it turned out.
The next day,(being rather cautious), I noticed that Isabella was constantly asking me about what I thought about cloning. Ah ha! Got you there! She was trying to clone me and Jeannie! She had stopped teaching me , I knew plenty about humans. I immediately told Jeannie.
"Jeannie! Isabella-she's a fake! She's trying to clone us! I'm running away!"
Jeannie stared at me.
" Are you sure?" she asked slowly.
I nodded.
"We could be giving up something good," she said.
I shook my head.
"I'm positive. She's not being as nice to me anymore after I've learned all the stuff, and she asks me about cloning...Put 2 and 2 together, she's trying to clone us. Maybe to make a race of super rabbits.. I don't know!"
She sighed.
" All right, let's go. We'll leave tonight. Take some of her food and a couple water bottles, OK?"
That Jeannie. She was both a follower and completely thoughtful. It was a good thing I had her along, though. Otherwise, I would have gotten into a bunch of messes.
"Hey you guys! Want me to show you another human invention?"
Jeannie and I looked at each other. There was no other way to go. She would have gotten suspicious and ran after us. I only hoped that she wouldn't try to clone us so soon. If she did, we would have to run for it.
She lead us to the family room and showed us a big silver contraption.
"This is a twin machine. If you get into fights with each other, you have a twin to play with that always agrees with you. How'd you like that?"
"We never get into fights," said Jeannie.
That was true, though. Jeannie was the passive one. She always listened to what I said. But she was a thoughtful person-I mean rabbit that always thought about what to do next.
"But don't you want a fun buddy besides your sister?"
"My sister is my fun buddy. I don't need anyone else."
She sighed. "Come on, it's fun having a good buddy."
I poked Jeannie. She nodded.
We ran. We dashed past Isabella, slid through the kitchen, thumped through the living room, opened the door, and FREEDOM! I stopped to breathe in relief when- Isabella came darting right after us! I kept on running-pat-a-pat-a-pat-a-pat until the footsteps behind me and Jeannie stopped.
"Whew, that was a close one!" I panted.
Jeannie nodded in agreement, looking fearfully over her shoulder. "Where are we going to go next?"
"Why don't we go to school?"
"OK"
So off we headed, to a place we had never seen before, only heard descriptions of.
As we entered the school, we went to the office. I asked the lady behind the counter "Could we please stay here to check out the school?"
The lady said, "Certainly."
We walked into a classroom with "visitor" buttons on our chests, and sat down to watch. We didn't learn much from the teacher, but it was a perfect way to observe how kids act. They seemed to pass notes around a lot and push, shove, and giggle. During lunch time, I realized that I had no food, but it didn't matter because I wasn't very hungry. I watched the kids go play on computers and sit around inside and talk. I wondered why they didn't go outside and breathe the fresh air and play in the grass. Being a human was starting to lose it's appeal for me. I mean, they can't even have fun. They seem to never get out and have any "real" fun.
"Jeannie, do you think that we should stay how we are?" I asked.
"I don't know," she said quietly.
In the end, we stayed there for a couple of days, watching and learning more about the human life. It seemed kind of sad, being a human. You couldn't roll in the grass or enjoy grass and vegetables. And they thought that bananas tasted horrible, and apples... Those things were luxury to rabbits.. And the humans complained about having not enough sweet... It didn't seem like a too good life to me. I missed the sweet outdoors, and the fresh vegetables. The bright indoor and computer lights hurt my eyes, and I so desperately wanted to be a rabbit. Then again, this world was full of technology. I thought, and thought, and thought. Then I made my decision.
"Jeannie, I'm going back to the lab to ask them for the antidode. I can't stand being a human. I miss the fresh air and the vegetables and the real fun. I'm going, are you coming?"
Naturally she said yes. We immediately went to the library and asked them where the lab was. This was something I learned from Isabella.
When we went to the library and asked the librarian she said. "Lab? What lab? There's no lab around here."
Ooops. Maybe the lab was destroyed or something because according to this lady, there was no such thing. I sighed. What if I could never again become a frocklicksome, careless bunny rabbit? I would have to stay as a human for the rest of my life!
"Jeannie, let's stay around here a while. I'm tired." I said tiredly.
I walked around until I found a chair and sat down. Jeannie was watching all the people walking by attentively.
" Who are you looking for?" I asked.
"One of the scientists."
I sighed. "It's about a one in a million chance that we could catch them here. What if, when driving us to her house, Isabella was speeding and traveled a bunch of miles?"
"Doubtful. It seemed like only five minutes."
"But back then we didn't have the concept of time."
"Good point. But the libarian would have at least heard of it, wouldn't she?"
"Maybe they have a web site we could check out. Want to try it?"
"Let's wait five more minutes," said Jeannie plaintively.
"All right."
We sat around five more minutes, watching and hoping but not really expecting. Then we slowly got up and went to sign up on the computer. We clicked on the "Internet" button and searched for it for ten minutes. I sighed(again), and got up to stretch when I who did I see but Dr. Linda! Wow!!!! It must have been my lucky day! Yahoo!!!! I immediately ran to Jeannie and pulled her up.
"I saw Dr. Linda! Come on, let's go!"
We dashed after the streak of red hair going around a bookshelf, and caught up with Dr. Linda.
"Dr. Linda! Dr. Linda! It's us! The rabbits in cage A! The ones that escaped! It's us!"
Dr. Linda turned around and looked at us, then rubbed her eyes.
"You two survived! What a miracle! All the other rabbits who have taken the medicine have died of horrible death in various stages of transformation. I was afraid that would have happened to both of you somewhere out there. This is an experiment which has gone really wrong and something must have gotten into the chemical batch that we have prepared. We were expecting some changes in your muscle and bone structure but never the transformation to humans! I don't know what to say. I was so shocked to see you two!"
"Wow, we could be wiped out just like our other siblings. I wonder why we are spared!" I looked at Jeannie and don't know what to do next.
"You two must come back to the lab with me." said Dr. Linda. "There are so much we can study about the two of you which will save millions of people, and rabbits!"
"I am not to sure if we want to be lab humans. We just want to be rabbits!" said Jeannie.
"You two must not worry, we will not experiment on you as humans. There are laws against that, you know. We just hope that we can find something special in the two of you, which will benefit the rest of the world. Come, let's go home!" said Dr. Linda with a smile.
So there we go, living our lives as humans and finding out things we have never expected before. We discovered that being a human wasn't so bad. It turned out the school that we went to was not like an ordinary school, kids did really run around on the grass and have fun. Dr. Linda has adopted us and taken us home to raise us. We got used to human foods and ways of living. Last Christmas, we even get our own pets: two rabbits, of course. They ran free in our house and somehow were able to look at our eyes and communicated with us. We don't know how tomorrow will be or how long we can live. We are taking it one day at a time.
"Pass me that chocolate bar please, Jeannie, and here is the rest of your soda."