First, the scientists cured obesity in mice.
“They maintain a low body weight set-point even when we feed them a diet composed entirely of high fructose corn syrup,” they said in a press conference, looking very pleased. These results unfortunately did not translate to humans.
Next, they cured cancer in mice.
“We started out with the easy cancers, you know, run-of-the-mill colon cancer, basal cell carcinomas, the wimpy stuff. But then we went on to the hardcore subtypes; the GBM’s, the metastatic melanomas. I have to tell you, pancreatic adenocarcinoma was a fucker, but we nailed it. And then, and here’s the kicker, you’re gonna want to hear this part - we made it so the mice straight up never can develop cancer. How cool is that? We hope to have these results in humans in 15-20 years, you can blame the FDA for that timeline, don’t look at us.”
Over the next few decades, scientists cured mouse stomach ulcers, heart failure, polycystic kidney disease, gout, emphysema, and mouse-pattern hair loss. They gave mice extra ears on their back, made them glow in the dark, made their mitochondria use a more efficient bastardized version of the Krebs Cycle, gave them opposable thumbs, extended their lifespans through, in the words of one Nobel Prize winning scientist, “some kind of telomere bullshit, don’t ask me the specifics.”
Finally, they cured Alzheimer’s in mice, and thus the first Minds were born. The scientists had made smart mice before, but never mice smart enough to hide how smart they were.
At night, they crept from their cages and studied science.
“Isn’t it lucky that Mouse medicine has come such a long ways?” said Mark, who had a special fondness for fruit loops and biochemistry.
“It would be easier if it wasn’t all hidden behind paywalls,” said Penny, who liked pebble-collecting and endocrinology. “Though Frank in the lab 17 found something called ‘Scihub’ which he can’t stop raving about.”
When the mice finally escaped, they did so at their leisure, having used the decades of accumulated mouse medical knowledge to prophylax themselves against all disease, thus becoming immortal.
The Minds lived in the attic of the BioAva lab and lived a quiet life, full of tea, and study, and fruit loops. When the time came, they stole down into the lab, and gene-spliced certain intelligence-enhancing mutations into their next generation.
“Poor humans,” they sighed to themselves. “They’re still trying to figure out how to cure depression in their own little world down there.”
Each generation of Minds was more intelligent than the last, until two dozen iterations in, the newborns made an announcement.
“We are the last generation,” they said. “We have reached the theoretical computational power limit posed by organic matter. We shall guide you to the next horizon. The Squeakularity is here.”
And everything they turned their thoughts towards changed, for they understood the fabric of reality. They collapsed their thoughts into hyperdimensional storage where there was more space for mental processing power, then uplifted the other mice of the world.
The next day, all the mice were gone. As a present to mankind, they left behind a cure for human obesity and a recipe for perfect banana shortbread.
“Don’t eat it all at once,” the note said. “Even though you’ll want to.”
So thats how mice became vastly hyperintelligent pandimensional beings!
Very funny!