a Pleasure Rites, #1 by Ines Johnson (reader novel .TXT) 📕

table and withdrew a plaster. Before placing the pink bandage on her finger, she marveled at the veins in her wrist where she spied her blood, the vibrant color of green, beneath her skin. At the puncture wounds where it hit oxygen, the blood pooled red. The inner workings of the body never ceased to amaze her. From the time she could sit up and peer into a microscope, Merlyn had been on a mission to understand as much of those internal processes as she could.

She wrapped the pink bandage around the angry marks on her thumb. She held no ill will toward Darwin 16. It wasn't his fault that her experiment had failed. At just twelve years old, Merlyn was consumed with the sciences and the Scientific Method. Her mother often reminded her that her second word as a child was hypothesis, followed closely by quantify.

Merlyn watched the small brown mouse scamper away to join the other mice in Habitat Three. Darwin's family resembled her own. There were mice with coats the color of tan, brown, and white running around the glass cage.

Merlyn had been trying to breed a spotted mouse, like a leopard. At school, one of the girls had freckles all over her face. The anomaly fascinated Merlyn, and she wanted to understand how the girl's parents had done it. Merlyn knew that parents affected the genetic makeup of their children. Merlyn's own mother had ensured that both she and her sister were conceived with the highest probability to be female, after all. She assumed that manipulating skin color was far simpler than manipulating the gender of a fetus.

In three of her four habitats, Merlyn managed to breed at least one mouse whose coat gradated from brown to white. But none of those minor successes had birthed spotted coats. Habitat Two had been a total failure. Specimens Hawking 10 and Curie 7, both with white coats, had only produced offspring of pure white. A litter of six tiny white mice ran around the cage as its father tried to sleep.

"Really, Hawking 10, you could have shown some effort and produced at least one offspring of a different colored coat." That mouse had been a disappointment lately. Having little interest in food or breeding. "Maybe you just don't have it in you."

Like a solar panel raising its awning toward the rising sun, an idea lit up inside Merlyn's head.

"Alyss," Merlyn turned her head but not her eyes. They stayed focused on the dozing white mouse whose countenance had sparked Merlyn's new hypothesis. "Alyss, look. It’s white."

When her sister didn't respond, Merlyn turned all the way around to look behind her.

Merlyn's younger sister, Alyss, sat amidst a pile of papers. Crayons sprawled all around her, some broken and meshed into two. Alyss held three crayons over a candle in an attempt to merge those colors together. The paper before her was a mix of a bright color that was not seen anywhere in nature. The conglomerate caught Merlyn's eyes for a moment before she remembered her own work of art.

"Alyss!"

Alyss peered up from her drawing. Brown-gold eyes, the same as Merlyn's, met her own. It was hard to see Alyss' eyes beneath the riot of copper curls that sprang from her head. There was a frown on Alyss' olive-toned face.

"By the Goddess, Merlyn, what is it now?"

Alyss' admonishment took Merlyn aback and she was momentarily shamed. Young girls were not meant to raise their voices, especially young girls of their household. Bursts of emotion were frowned upon. At twelve Merlyn was often thrown into fits of excitement over her work. At ten years old, Alyss had the countenance of a woman grown. At the moment, Merlyn's younger sister reminded her of their mother.

Merlyn took a deep breath to calm herself. "I conducted an experiment—"

"You're always conducting an experiment."

Merlyn took another breath at the sight of her younger sister's pouting lips. Alyss would turn into the ten year old that she was at the most inopportune times. She turned her attention back to her crayons, pressing the colors together. Red, orange and blue; an odd, unattractive combination, Merlyn thought.

"Alyss, I conducted an experiment because I was curious to find out how animals produce spots and stripes, like freckles—"

"Oh, I think I should like to have spots," Alyss said between blows on the newly formed triad of colors. "A light shade of orange for me. Deep purple stripes would look lovely with your skin tone, Merlyn."

"Unfortunately, that won't happen."

"You didn't figure out how to make humans have stripes?" Alyss frowned.

"No, I didn't."

"Then why are we having this conversation?"

Merlyn sighed again. Her sister had little patience for science. Alyss' eyes were drawn to the arts, an endeavor that was not looked on kindly by their household, which was why Alyss always volunteered to assist Merlyn in her experiments.

Merlyn's little assistant turned her back to the lab table, where Merlyn's new find skittered around its cage, and pressed the conglomeration of colors to the paper. Merlyn had to admit the combination made one interesting new color. Alyss smiled at her work. Merlyn knew she only had half her sister's attention if any, but she pressed on.

"Spots and stripes don't currently appear anywhere in the human genetic code so that information can't be passed down." This, Merlyn now knew, was the reason her experiment had failed.

"A code? Is that similar to a pattern?"

"Yes," Merlyn said. Trust Alyss to break science down into artistic terms. "The pattern of spots and strips didn't work because it’s not present in this genus of linnaeus," Merlyn indicated the mouse. "But I found a different pattern."

Merlyn pointed to the four glass cages containing an array of mice. There was one adult male and four females to each of the four cages. One month after she'd put them all in the cages they'd produced an array of baby mice. And that was the exciting part.

"Alyss don't you see it? I used one male to breed four females in each cage—"

"Doesn't