An Extract from RED CLAW
DAY 1
From the diary of Dr Hugo Baal
June 22nd
It’s raining acid piss again. The rainbow effects are rather striking. I’m sitting on a rock typing this on my virtual screen. The rainbow is hopping about in mid-air, I’ve never seen that effect before – it’s – what’s the word? Is there a word for how that looks, and how it makes me feel?
Hmm. Apparently not. Well, there should be. Anyway, it’s extremely extraordinary and rather wonderful. I’m taking a photograph now for posterity, you can see it here, in my Miscellaneous Epiphanies folder.
On a more scientific theme: Yesterday, I identified two new species of land creature and have entered their images and key data on the database. Professor Helms tacitly agrees with my hypothesis that both creatures could well be animal-plant kingdomshifters(1), though as yet there is no way to confirm this since the specimens are a)(2) missing and b)(3) exploded. And for the time being we are going to continue with the current(4) narrowly defined Kingdom demarcations.
The first species is small and wiggly like a worm. The other species is an Exploding-Tree with claws and motile roots. Click here for photographs (5) and ultrasound scans (6) and key data if you failed to do so when instructed so to do in the previous paragraph.
The Wiggly-Worm has already escaped. It managed to dissolve its hardglass cage and burrow through the metal floor and into the earth below. This was quite unexpected, since by this point the creature had already been dissected, skinned and its organs and notochord and roots (??) (7) removed. The skin and other remnants of the Wiggly-Worm are now being kept in a secure cage, in case they transmute into some other life-form.
Tentative classification:
Wiggly-Worm
Kingdom: Animalia or Plantae
Phylum: Platyhelminthes (provisional, probably wrong)
Class: Clipeum(8)
Order: Uredo
Family: Serpentiforma
Genus: Wigglius
Species: Wigglius davidi
By general agreement, the creature was named after Professor Helms’s uncle David.
The tree was very large, like an oak tree, with a triangular trunk, so actually more like a Sequoia, with a shiny black bark, and bright purple leaves. But when we approached the tree it exploded, knocking us over, creating a forest fire, and wakening the undergrowth of sleeping Rat-Insects, (9) which immediately swarmed aggressively, blotting out the sky, before raining down as dead carapaces at lethal velocity. Fortunately, our body armour proved sufficient to protect all members of the exploration party from death or serious injury, on this occasion.
My surmise (10) is that the Exploding-Tree is a plant with animal characteristics, though it’s also possible it’s an animal with plant characteristics, or (as I surmised above) a kingdomshifter which mutates between the two kingdoms, or it could I suppose, now I come to think about it, be a mineral growth with motile potential or maybe it’s just a tree which exploded because it was inhabited by explosive parasites, or perhaps it’s something else entirely. Ha! You see what fun we have here? It will be such a shame when we have to terraform (11) this planet.
My provisional classification is:
Exploding-Tree
Kingdom: Plantae or Animalia, maybe
Phylum: Spermatophyta???(12)
Class: Don’t know
Order: Can’t tell
Family: Have no notion whatsoever
Genus: Fragorarbor
Species: Fragorarbor Type A.(13)
Morale among the scientific team is high. Today we are going to attempt to capture and dissect a Godzilla.
