Hour Three - The Levinson Experiments
After stops at two different grocery stores, Lauren had everything she needed to execute her crazy scheme. She bought bleach and acetone, one from each separate store as not to raise suspicions that she was, in fact, making homemade chloroform. It would take nearly an hour to mix properly, so she wasted no time once she got home.
She set up her “operating room” in Sloane’s bedroom, as good a place as any to perform the simple operation, while she waited. She ignored the broken glass and wine stain on the wall… this time Sloane was going to clean it up her goddamn self. All there was left to do is wait. She shut off the lights and sat quietly in the dark.
Lauren’s mind spun in circles, a constant tug of war of wanting to carry out her plan and equally wanting to toss the slide in the trash. In just three hours time she’d gone from a simple college student to desperate criminal. This was extreme, even for what Sloane had done to her. This was crazy. Had she lost her mind? Had Sloane’s mental deterioration triggered some kind of psychosis within herself? Even just sitting there alone, under the cover of darkness, Lauren’s heart pounded like a sprinter’s.
It wasn’t much longer before the clumsy, drunken fumbling of keys against the hallway side of the door announced that it was time to set things in motion. Sloane must have come up short in the pick-up department. Lauren dabbed her homemade chloroform into a rag, praying to god it wouldn’t kill the girl. She silently slipped behind the door, just as Sloane about fell inside trying to open it. The inebriated blonde regained her balance and tried to find the light switch.
Lauren was so afraid she thought she might have a heart attack right there. She tried to control her breathing, to no avail. Sloane slammed the door behind her, still trying to find the elusive switch. Lauren, about ready to give up altogether, mustered up one last jolt of adrenaline and leapt at Sloane from behind, stuffing the rag into her mouth and holding it in place. She wrapped her free arm around Sloane as she tried to break free. In mere seconds Sloane lost consciousness and dropped face first onto the floor.
Lauren stood over her, absolutely stunned by what she had done… what she herself was capable of. “Oh god… what did I do?! What have I done?! Sloane!” She dropped to the floor at Sloane’s side, beside herself with the fear that she very well could have just killed her stepsister. She slapped Sloane’s face a couple of times before feeling for a pulse.
It was there… Sloane was still very much alive.
Lauren sat back relieved, wiping the tears from her bruised and battered face. She sat silently next to Sloane for a time before finally struggling to her feet on wobbly knees. “I guess there’s no going back now.”
She grabbed Sloane by an arm and dragged her into the bedroom…
Lauren hadn’t even applied to RenLabs for her internship, they vetted her. Her grades were remarkable and one of her professors had connections. Early on she mostly did remedial nurse work in experimental drug trials, but one of the doctors, Dr. Levinson, took a shine to Lauren. He had lost his daughter to cancer and something about Lauren reminded him of her. He took the young woman under his wing and introduced her to the fourth floor, where the real experimental shit went down. Stuff that was years out from trials and often towed the line of being ethical. It was highly uncommon for an intern to be invited to join such work, a testament to Lauren’s intelligence.
Dr. Levinson was the head of the company’s bioengineering division, and the project he was working on had the potential to literally change the world. He assured Lauren that whenever she finished school that she had a job waiting for her at RenLabs. So impressed was he with her work that he eventually let her in on the grand picture. Until then, things had remained compartmentalized and she really had no idea what she was working on. When he finally let her into the main testing area, she was completely taken back by the scope of what they were doing.
Inside the lab there were several work stations all centered around a large tank filled with some kind of thick yellow fluid. It was very bright and everything within was white in color. The oddest thing was the pen filled with chickens clucking away in the far corner. Lauren didn’t know what to make of it all.
“What… exactly… is this, Doctor?” She asked.
“Oh trust me, Lauren my dear, you’re about to find out,” he replied. He turned to one of his associates and informed him they were good to go with a slight nod.
The associate, an older balding man with thick glasses, made an announcement to the team that it was time to begin, “commence with phase one, test number 0213.”
A large metal claw lowered from the ceiling and snatched one of the chickens from the open top of the pen. It raised back up, slid along a track and then dumped the frightened bird into the central glass vat with a splash. Lauren chuckled a little at the sight, but felt quickly ashamed and tried to cover her mouth.
“What’s so funny?” Doctor Levinson asked.
“Oh… uh… sorry, it just looks like a giant claw machine is all. I didn’t mean to laugh,” she said looking to the ground in embarrassment.
The doctor thought about it for a moment and let a sharp laugh himself, “you’re right, I can’t believe I’ve never noticed it before! Ha!”
Lauren instantly felt relieved. Being asked to witness an experiment like this was an honor and she’d hate to think she screwed up such an opportunity.
The bird flopped and splashed around inside the tank for a few moments before it finally quieted down. The doctor put his hand on the shoulder of another colleague seated at the nearest computer, “commence phase two.”
The man at the computer typed in several lines of code and then dramatically hit execute. Lauren looked up from his computer screen to the bird, which was now astoundingly growing inside the tank.
“Oh my god,” she gasped.
The chicken continued to enlarge until it was about the size of a pony. The first associate signaled a stop to the process. “Commence phase three.”
The robot arm returned, unfolded longer claws and then lifted the dripping hen from the tank, depositing it in an empty pen on the other side. A door opened against the wall and the giant chicken walked inside where it could be further studied by another group of scientists.
“Fuck me…,” Lauren whispered to herself in a daze.
“Impressive, isn’t it?” Dr. Levinson beamed.
Lauren shook herself free of her trance and stared wide eyed at the doctor. “What was that? What exactly are you doing here, doctor?”
“Follow me, Ms. Pine.” The Doctor gestured her towards another door where they could observe the testing of the giant fowl. The pair sat down at an observation table where he laid out the project to Lauren.
“Essentially, Lauren, we’re here to solve hunger. With this process we’ll be able to feed millions. Imagine it! A single bird, or cow, eventually even vegetables… feeding hundreds. There’ll be no more need for poultry farms to carry thousands of birds, and as a welcome byproduct, there will be a reduction in the mass spread of deadly pandemics by not having so many animals crowded together in close proximity.” He held her hands in his, not as a romantic gesture, but because of his excitement. “Once perfected this will change the world Lauren, and you’ll be apart of it… what do you think?”
“I don’t know what to say, doctor… thank you for including me in this.” Lauren broke away from his eyes for a moment to observe the chicken. “How did you do this?”
“With this.” The doctor set a glass slide down on the table and slid it towards Lauren.
She picked it up and held the strange looking specimen up to the light. It was yellow and red, somewhat gelatinous… unremarkable looking really. “What is this?”
“It’s a bio-mechanical cell. The fusion of organic material and mechanics… the world’s first. We can produce thousands of them… and cheaply.”
Lauren slid the slide back towards the doctor. “How does it work?”
“We make an incision at the base of the neck and insert the cell into the subject. It sends out feelers, making its way into certain areas of the brain… mainly the pituitary gland. The cell then takes control, allowing us to manipulate the gland at a chemical level.”
“It’s incredible, doctor. I’m still truly stunned by it all. What exactly is the tank for? Some kind of catalyst?”
“Sort of, you can’t increase a subject’s size without increasing its mass. The bio-gel actually soaks into the subject as it grows. It’s mainly made up of water, with a few vitamins and minerals added in, just like most living things.”
Lauren paused for a second, realizing something that made her shiver. “If you can control a subject’s size, does that mean you can make them smaller as well?”
The glow suddenly faded from the doctor’s face. “Unfortunately, that’s the other side of this, my dear.”
“What do you mean?”
“A lot of our funding is coming from the federal government. They’re hoping to use the technology to house more inmates in our overcrowded prison system.”
Lauren cocked her head back, “Jesus Christ, doctor… that’s a little dystopian, don’t you think?”
“I’m not happy about it either, but without their money we couldn’t proceed… we wouldn’t have come near this far in fact.” The man’s demeanor shifted back to excitement like a flick of a switch, " but think of how it’ll reduce shipping costs! One could almost mail an entire cow, only to grow it to the size of a truck once it arrived!"
Lauren shook her head and let out a disgusted laugh, “instead of putting money towards solving the problems that lead to crime and poverty, they’re trying to figure out how to stuff more bad eggs into a basket.”
“It’s very American, isn’t it?” The Doctor replied. “But I truly believe in what we’re doing here, my dear. Maybe if people aren’t going hungry, there won’t be as much of a need for shrinking inmates. Maybe we can move forward as a society in ways we’ve never had the chance to before.”
“Right, but if this technology is mass producible, what’s to keep the wrong people from using it? Making people disappear for example? I don’t even want to think about what else.”
“If one person wants another gone, they’re gonna find some way to do it, Ms. Pine… whether it’s by shrinking them or with a bullet to the head,” the doctor replied. “Does that mean we should outlaw guns as well?”
“Some would argue yes,” Lauren answered. She continued, “is the technology adaptable?”
“What do you mean?”
“Say a party programmed it to fire every time someone, say, thought poorly of the government… or the military… or the police… or more likely, a corporation? It’s attached to the brain isn’t it? It could be used as some kind of, I don’t know… social engineering tool.”
“Now who’s being dystopian?” The doctor chuckled as he patted her on the back with a smile. “Lighten up, will ya!”
The doctor lightly shook Lauren by her shoulders, a gesture of familiarity her own father had done many times. She really did admire Dr. Levinson, even saw him as another father figure, but the implications of what he was doing were too big to be so passive about it.
“Look, with every new technology there will be those who use it to exploit others,” he began, “the question then becomes whether or not the benefits outweigh the negatives… and in our case, I’m convinced they do. This is why I want people like you on the project, Lauren. I need people to see things from all angles so we can find ways to produce the best possible product… to catch things I may overlook. We ‘mad scientists’ tend to get fixated on the end goal!” The doctor chuckled yet again. He put his arm around Lauren’s neck and smiled, “if this company didn’t require at least a masters degree, I’d hire you on the spot, Lauren. But trust me, your value here is still extremely high… even if it’s just for college credit.”
“Of course I want to be a part of this, it’s all too incredible not to… I just can’t help but worry about what kind of Pandora’s box we may be opening up here.”
Sloane lay face down on her bed. Lauren had fresh, clean towels laid out under her neck to catch any blood that may flow from the illegal surgery she was about to perform. She took a deep breath and lowered her scalpel towards a freshly shaven spot at the base of Sloane’s skull. She cut deep enough to find bone, trails of blood poured over both sides of Sloane’s neck which Lauren tried to contain with gauze from her med kit. She removed the glass slide from her purse and then extracted the bio-cell with a dropper. She hovered the tip over the opening in Sloane’s neck… and squeezed.
As she’d seen happen countless times in the lab, the A.I. within the cell was designed to seek out the brain like a manufactured parasite. It disappeared into the tiny pool of blood and proceeded towards its target at the base of the brain. Lauren quickly sutured the opening and then checked Sloane’s vitals. Her pulse was strong and her breathing, normal. Lauren sat back into Sloane’s bedside chair and wiped the sweat from her brow… instantly regretting what she had just done.
Lauren sat with Sloane to monitor her for several hours until she couldn’t stay awake any longer. She walked across the hall and fell exhausted into her own bed. Before she passed out, she hoped all this would be worth it… and prayed that it would work.
End Part Three
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