The Ultimate Prey: Mankind

It’s always startling when the bizarre ideas of science fiction authors become reality. It’s been said that Arthur C. Clarke predicted modern cellular communications, first in his 1945 concept paper “Extra-Terrestrial Relays,” and again in his 1968 novel 2001: A Space Odyssey. In Runaround, published 1942, Isaac Asimov envisioned the basic tenets under which artificial intelligence would be designed, the “Three Basic Laws of Robotics,” and he’s even credited with coining the term “robotics.” It took years for Robert Heinlein to find a publisher for his first novel Rocket Ship Galileo (1947) because most critics believed that a manned expedition to the Moon was simply too outlandish, even for science fiction.

As a kid, when I first introduced to the works of these great masters, I was always flummoxed when I’d flip back to the first page and see when the book I was cradling in my hands was first published. “The Big Three”, however, were not the only sci-fi authors I read, Larry Niven, Ray Bradbury, Philip K. Dick, Douglas Adams, Kevin Anderson, Timothy Zahn, William Gibson and others also found their way into my hands. My memories are filled with the bizarre scenarios, technology and predictions for the future of mankind of all of these lunatics, each one crazier and seemingly less likely than the other. William Gibson, however, has a track record.

In 1984, Gibson published Neuromancer and made a splash in the science fiction world as being the first book to win the Hugo, Nebula and Philip K. Dick Awards in the same year. Neuromancer became a short-lived best-seller, and copies of his only other published work, a book of short stories titled Burning Chrome (1982) also saw an increase in sales. Burning Chrome featured the only work by Gibson that’s yet made it onto the big screen, it was a beautiful and frightening tale of danger and regret that was urinated upon by the executives of Tri-Star and pounded into a steaming pile of celluloid, Johnny Mnemonic, a film which, after I spit on the floor at it’s mention, I will not reference again.

In the story, Johnny is a “data smuggler” who’s dumped a large portion of his brain (ironically, his memories) to install a wet-ware hard drive, enabling him to safely transport sensitive data undetected. As the story opens, we discover that Johnny has been loaded with more data than he can handle, but the guy that’s got the decryption code is looking to make him dead. Johnny falls in with a dangerously cool bodyguard named Molly that thinks she knows someone that can help Johnny get the information out of his head before the synaptic leakage does permanent damage.

'Navy stuff,' she said, and her grin gleamed in the shadows. 'Navy stuff. I got a friend down here who was in the navy, name's Jones. I think you'd better meet him. He's a junkie, though. So we'll have to take him something.'

'A junkie?'

'A dolphin.'

He was more than a dolphin, but from another dolphin's point of view he might have seemed like something less. I watched him swirling sluggishly in his galvanized tank. Water slopped over the side, wetting my shoes. He was surplus from the last war. A cyborg.

He rose out of the water, showing us the crusted plates along his sides, a kind of visual pun, his grace nearly lost under articulated armor, clumsy and prehistoric. Twin deformities on either side of his skull had been engineered to house sensor units. Silver lesions gleamed on exposed sections of his gray-white hide.

Molly whistled. Jones thrashed his tail, and more water cascaded down the side of the tank.

'What is this place?' I peered at vague shapes in the dark, rusting chain link and things under tarps. Above the tank hung a clumsy wooden framework, crossed and recrossed by rows of dusty Christmas lights.

'Funland. Zoo and carnival rides. "talk with the War Whale." All that. Some whale Jones is...'

Jones reared again and fixed me with a sad and ancient eye.

The cool idea here is that this dolphin, Jones, had been equipped with a device that would allow him to pinpoint, intercept, and manipulate the data from the computers on enemy warships, right through the hull. The Navy trained the dolphins, and kept them under control by hooking them on smack.

Is it the strangest thing you’ve ever heard? Then check this out:


Experts who have studied the US navy's cetacean training exercises claim the 36 [dolphins] could be carrying 'toxic dart' guns. Divers and surfers risk attack, they claim, from a species considered to be among the planet's smartest. The US navy admits it has been training dolphins for military purposes, but has refused to confirm that any are missing.

Here I am, a wayward scuba diver, careening through the underwater world I love so much and enjoying the little fishes that rub on my legs like a lonely kitty when her owner gets home. It’s quiet, and serene and I’ve finally been able to put the images of my destroyed home in Gulfport to the back of my brain, and just enjoy my hobby. Oh look, it’s a bottlenose dolphin! These mighty kings of the sea are so majestic, how I relish their hospitality and playfulness! That is, UNTIL THE MOTHERFUCKER SHOOTS ME IN THE NECK WITH A POISON DART!!

There are armed, military trained, and possibly mentally unstable dolphins patrolling the Gulf Coast of the United States. We have a problem here.

But, like any great news reporter, we have to look past the story being told, no matter how huge, and find the story that’s not being told: What other species have our military armed with deadly weapons? Where have their twisted minds, obsessed with killing taken them and their bizarre experiments?



Can we expect to see chimpanzees swinging from tree to tree with Uzis tucked into Army issue belts? Have they recruited grizzly bears for the sole purpose of installing missile launchers on their hairy backs? Can you imagine the devastating power of a swarm of angry bees, each drone and worker carrying a tiny little rifle?

Hamsters with nun-chucks, pigeons with bazookas, cows packing nuclear arsenals in undisclosed stomachs… the possibilities are harrowing.

When next you see someone you don’t recognize walking a badger in your neighborhood, you should think twice. Was that a knife you saw, clutched in that squat creature’s paw? Perhaps you’ll never turn your back on your dog ever again, perhaps you’ll sleep with one eye on your fish tank, perhaps the next time your cat draws blood during a rousing game of “eat my hand,” you’ll wonder if it really was an accident.



You’ll wonder where little Chairman Meow was those few weeks he went missing last year, and why he came home smelling of whiskey and shoe polish. Why did he watch that Army football game so intently last week, when all this time you thought he was a Utah fan?



Where did this little bottle of chloroform come from?

God gave to man dominion over the beasts of the Earth, and it would seem they intend to take it back. Ironically, they have convinced our greatest military forces to give them the skills and weaponry that they will use to destroy us.

The squirrels have already begun the offensive, with guerrilla tactics and night raids on unsuspecting Americans.



The evidence is everywhere, will you take up arms against the neighbor's dog?