Unthought Experiment
by Michael Jess Alexander
Part 1 appears in this issue.
conclusion
The electronic lock clicked, and I opened the heavy steel door. We entered the lab. I didn’t bother turning on the lights since the various electronic consoles and devices that filled the lab provided sufficient lighting.
“Man! This is so cool!” Roland exclaimed.
We were only in the lab for a moment before we found a large glass container filled with a pink jelly-like substance. It sat atop a lighted countertop, which illuminated the substance.
“This must be what my father is working on,” I said. “It wasn’t here the last time I was.”
“What is it?” Roland asked.
“I have no idea,” I replied.
“Some sort of new chemical? Or maybe it’s a type of food?”
I shrugged. “Like I said, I don’t know.” Satisfied at having found my father’s current project, I turned to Roland and said, “Alright. You saw the lab. Let’s go.”
He looked at me incredulously. “We just got here!” he whined.
“Come on, man,” I moaned. “You promised we’d only be a minute.”
Roland rolled his eyes. “Just a few more minutes and then we can go,” he said.
I sighed loudly. “You’ve got two minutes.”
Roland stood in front of the glass container and leaned in to get a closer look.
“If it is food, it doesn’t look very tasty,” he said. “It looks like snot. I wonder if that’s what your dad is working on. Trying to make it look less gross.”
I didn’t reply. I just stood there silently counting the seconds on my watch.
Grinning, Roland lifted his hand to the container’s open top, which was just above his head.
“Roland, don’t,” I protested.
I think the substance sensed the heat of Roland’s hand because as soon as his hand hovered above the opening, the substance sloshed around on its own. Roland instinctively brought his hand back, but the substance was too quick. A tentacle shot out and wrapped around him. Roland screamed. He shook his hand violently, desperately trying to fling the substance off. He separated the mass on his hand from the bulk that remained in the container, but what was on him stayed put.
“It burns!” he screamed. “Help me, Anders!” More tentacles shot from the mass on his hand and attached to his face and chest.
I didn’t know what to do. I just stood there.
I heard the front door open. “Hey, guys, I’m home early!” my father called out.
“Dad! Help!” I cried.
My father came rushing into the lab. He saw Roland, who had collapsed to the floor. “Get back, Anders!” he yelled. He then grabbed a fire extinguisher from the wall and started spraying my friend.
Roland writhed and screamed in pain.
“Hold still, Roland! I need you to hold still!” my father demanded.
My father turned to me as he continued spraying my friend with the extinguisher. “Get out of here!” he barked. “And close the door!”
I did as he instructed. Feeling light-headed, I trudged to the stairs and sat down. I held my face in my hands and thought, Roland is dead, and life as I know it is over.
* * *
My father was in the lab for hours. When he came out, we sat down in our living room. We sat in silence for a moment. He seemed to be searching for the right words.
“Anders,” he said, “we’re far beyond my being disappointed or upset.”
I didn’t reply. I didn’t know what to say. I just gazed at the floor.
“I’m so sorry, Dad,” I finally whimpered.
“I’m sure you are,” he said, “but here’s the situation we find ourselves in.” He paused. “Look at me, Anders.”
I did as he instructed.
“Your friend is alive, but he’s in a miserable condition. I had to place him in cryogenic stasis until I am able to truly help him, and I can’t say how long that is going to be.”
“He’s frozen?” I asked.
“Yes,” my father replied. “You see, the organism you found is a biological weapon. It was discovered by a colleague of mine, and what I’ve been working on is essentially an antidote — something less crude than freezing it, which is the only neutralization we’re currently aware of. This work is extremely important. It simply must continue.” He closed his eyes and brought his hand to his face. He sighed and continued, “It must.”
“Can’t you surgically remove it from Roland?” I asked meekly.
“No,” he answered, “it’s gone too deep. The only solution is complete neutralization.”
We sat in silence again. After a moment, my father spoke. “Anders, listen.” His voice carried a tinge of anger. “If anyone finds out what happened — my overseer, your friend’s parents, your brother — it won’t only mean an end to my work, it will mean the end of everything. Our lives. It’ll mean prison for me and foster homes for you and your brother. But we’re not going to let that happen? Right, son?”
“Right,” I said. “So, what do we do?”
“Your friend was never over here. You haven’t seen him. You don’t know where he is, got it?”
I nodded. “Alright, Dad,” I said.
* * *
It’s been months since the incident. When I ask about Roland, my father only tells me that he’s close to the solution, but I suspect he’s only telling me what I want to hear.
Like my brother and me, Roland lived with his father. His parents divorced when he was little, and his mom isn’t in the picture. His father was working the day Roland came over, and Roland was definitely not the type to leave a note saying where he was. Besides, I know he had planned on being back home before his father got back from work that day.
People say Roland ran away, and his lackluster performance at school makes that story seem plausible. His father won’t hear it, though, and maintains that his son wouldn’t have run away, that something must have happened to him. I try to stay clear of Roland’s father. I worry that someday I’ll feel compelled to tell him the truth.
In the end, I find myself clinging to hope. I hope that my father discovers how to neutralize the organism, and I hope that my friend, silently residing in our basement, is unaware. I hope he’s asleep but not dreaming.
* * *
Project Stingray
2017-05-17
My son and his friend snuck into my lab. The friend, a fifteen-year old male by the name of Roland Sanderson, was attacked by the synthetic organism I have been studying, that is, XR-syn1.0.
As expected, the organism caused extensive damage to Roland. According to its design, it sensed the exothermic nature of Roland’s arm, latched onto his arm with pseudopodia, and rapidly dissolved his flesh through the secretion of proteolytic enzymes. The organism had latched pseudopodia around Roland’s right hand and forearm as well as on his right buccal, maxillary and pectoralis major.
I was able to arrest further damage by freezing the organism with compressed tetrafluoroethane and injecting Roland with 2ml of benzodiazepine 1mg/1ml solution. I then injected Roland with two units of dimethylsulfoxide in saline and placed him in a cryogenic chamber, inducing stasis by lowering the chamber temperature to a stable −248 degrees Fahrenheit.
Roland was chosen to test XRsyn1.0’s attack efficacy due to his relationship with my son Anders, his evident curiosity about my work, and his convenient background (i.e., raised by a single parent, low sociality, etc.).
I have been utilizing verbal, auditory, and visual suggestions for the past month to motivate Roland and my son to sneak into my lab and for Roland to expose his arm to XRsyn1.0. This, of course, involved incorporating trigger words in my conversations with my son and Roland but also subtle manipulations of the media used by the boys.
For instance, I digitally altered the emphasis of certain pronunciations in songs, films, and video games routinely used by them. (Such trigger words included directives, such as “access,” “enter,” and “study,” and suggestives, where an embedded term is emphasized in the pronunciation, such as “unavailable,” “collaborate,” “center,” “sneakers,” etc.)
Under the pretense that I would be away for three days, I parked my van two blocks away from the house and observed my son via a surveillance system of which neither of my sons is aware. As planned and expected, my youngest — and considerably more sociable — son, Steven, left the house to stay with a friend, leaving Anders alone and inclined to invite his usual companion, Roland. It did not take long for my strongly planted suggestions to motivate the boys to enter my lab.
On a laptop, I watched as they collected my password book and entered the lab. (I had earlier revealed the location of my password book to my son, who was spying on me through the keyhole of the door to my study.) Once they approached the container holding XRsyn1.0, I returned to the house. Once Roland placed his arm above XRsyn1.0, I exited my car and approached the house to announce my return.
After freezing XRsyn1.0 and placing Roland in the cryogenic chamber, I spoke to my son and related to him the importance of never divulging the events regarding his friend’s disappearance. An earlier psychological profile of Anders suggested a high likelihood of compliance with such instruction. While his narrative, attached to this report, might seem to conflict with such a conclusion, it is actually in accordance with his profile.
My son’s personality inclines him to perfunctory solutions to stressors. That is, I fully expect his post to have effectively satisfied his desire to reveal the truth and to be his only serious attempt at exposing what happened. He will eventually accept that his friend is unlikely to recover and will move on.
In anticipation of just such a divulgement, I spoofed the online forum my son frequents, and unbeknownst to him, he has, for some time, been interacting with bots. I do expect that posting his narrative was sufficient in alleviating the stress he has felt over what happened to his friend. However, I cannot rule out the possibility that my son intends to make further efforts to reveal what happened, and any indication that he holds this intention will call for a more definite remedy.
Copyright © 2022 by Michael Jess Alexander
