Chapter one

Some days you just wake up knowing something great is going to happen.  Or, at least Dr. Austin Woodlow likes to claim he did.  Right now the young Denver scientist was sitting at his kitchen table, eating breakfast.  He had a half empty bowl of cereal in front of him and beside it was the blaringly displaced Frosted Flakes box.  Around the table notes were strewn, with various diagrams of cells.

If it weren't obvious, Dr. Woodlow had just finished college, and was a stead fast Bachelor with nothing to do but hear about the "Oxygen Crisis" as the government liked to say.  Personally, he thought it was a senseless argument, plants consistently let off Oxygen during photosynthesis, and there was no way Oxygen levels could suddenly just "deplete" as they liked to say.

Woodlow rolled his eyes and tossed the morning paper aside, where it flapped onto the tile floor of his condo's kitchen.  Woodlow looked across the cluttered table and stared nonchalantly out the window while he chewed on the soggy breakfast cereal, trying to pass the time before…

He jumped out of his seat as his SmartWatch started vibrating and beeping furiously.  Woodlow looked around startled; at first confused by the noise until he realized that it was only the watch which lay on the table.  He lout out a chuckle at his momentary stupidity, then bent forward to pick it up and let it read his thumbprint, which would turn the alarm off.  He glanced at the time that was displayed on the screen and gasped.  08:32… he was already late for his first day at the Botany lab!

Stumbling over his own feet, Woodlow Stashed the SmartWatch in his pocket and picked up his newspaper.  He leaned across the table and grabbed the bag with all his "important" papers and as he moved away from the table, he knocked a few instant meals into the bag also.  By the time he reached the front door he had everything thrown over his shoulder for easy maneuverability.

After he was outside he started running down the automated walkway, and although it was triggered to start as soon as he stepped on it, he kept running at a break-neck pace to the lab.  The lab itself was like any of the other buildings he passed.  It was in a dome shape, for better stability against the weather and reached as far underground as it did above ground to save ventilation and space.  In the back of the lab was a designated place where the lead reaserchers lived, and they had to earn that privilage.

All living places were in the back of some buisness or another.  Austin Woodlow lucked out and lived behind the Robot consultation store - a much better deal than when he was behind the instant food processing factory, at least it didn't smell here.  Though, he did miss the free food.  Woodlow noticed, at the thought of food, that he had no idea what meal he stashed in his bag.  He hoped it wasn't Instant Lasgna.

He hated Lasgna.

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Author guidance for This story

I created this as a simple story I dreamed up one winter's night after studying for a biology test on photosynthesis. I have no real plan for the story that isn't outlined in the description, I mainly wanted to see what kind of hardships that the people of Protagonize and I could created for Dr. Woodlow, and see if this experiment would indeed save the human race, or breed a new kind of monster. So, feel free to join in and please do so, a plot twist is exactly what we need!

updated Dec 15 '10 by RapidRun