Ok, so my idea is a massive tank, like the ones you'd see at an aquarium, that when two complex organisms are introduced into, the tank fills with a purple fog and instead of the two organisms introduced into the tank, there's 10-50 genetically distinct individuals that are hybrids of the original organisms. However, the organisms are fertile, and can reproduce with each other. The object's effects won't occur if a recording device is placed into the tank with or before the organisms are introduced.
This is where it gets weird. I was thinking that organisms that aren't part of the same kingdom will be able to hybridize with each other. There's about a 75% success rate for a fertile population, but the success rate decreases the more diverged the species are in their evolution. Like a human and a bat will hybridize most of the time, but a human and a multicellular protist won't usually work.
Thoughts? Ideas for how it could be better?