The Universe's Mixer

ZOO ESCAPEE! KEEPERS NOT ENTIRELY WORRIED.

A Great Russian Africanized Dire Tundra Wolf has escaped The City Zoo today. But given the creature's incredible size, the zookeepers aren't very concerned about how long it will stay loose. This particular wolf was granted the world record in height and weight, standing six foot tall at the shoulder and weighing just a little over thousand pounds. Those that we spoke with are very confident that the wolf will be noticed quite soon, and sheer panic will increase the number of police calls to capture it.

Why such a stance taken? Why not seek the beast out to stop whatever rampage that it might go on before it even gets a chance? 'Well,' say the keepers 'it's not as if it can sneak up on anybody, is it? We figure that somebody's going to run into it, and run. If they're smart, they'll hide in something smaller than it. That should be a pretty obvious route.'

A pretty obvious route to take, indeed. Remember in your scramble to escape, find a small space to fit yourself into, and if you can't remember to do that? As far as we know, the wolf cannot climb. Up seems like a reasonable route to take to save yourselves from being snackfood.

'Besides,' says one zoo management official 'he hasn't hurt anybody before. He's been in that zoo a really long time, and we've never had a problem with him before. It wasn't his fault he got out. Somebody left the cage door open.'

And where did this creature get such a long name? According to scientists, it has features resembling many breeds of wolf, yet none of them in entirety. It stopped at six classifications because the paperwork was getting a bit tedious.

Hank was very deeply engrossed in his project at the moment. His lab was finally up and running (or rather, to his usual standard of being in progress, filled quick machines and computer screens and scientific experiments that were temporarily out of the way to get the time to develop on their own that they needed.

Having revamped and restarted his gene work, Hank's usual impatience demanded that while the machines did their work he do more of his own, so at last he settled on really exploring what his physical body was capable of. He'd never done that before, always tried to hide his feet, strength, and other abilities from the rest of the world and himself, but this City made everything so.... different. And women like Baba and Amy seemed determined to reveal him to the world. So why shouldn't he know?

He'd already done dexterity exercises, which had surprised him. A bit of practice and he was already at an average human's typing ability. Writing with pens would take more work but it was also looking good.

Now he was testing the strength of his limbs, both upper body and lower in motion, grunting slightly as he walked up and down the bars he'd installed into his ceiling holding a good forty pounds of equipment. He was quite surprised that he could carry so much upside down without too much effort; after all he never went out for exercise or weight lifting. It just wasn't normal... but it wasn't that bad, either.

Facing away from the door Hank shifted his load into one arm and pulled himself up, getting the clipboard that was wedged up there and starting to write on it.