“Not precisely professional behavior, Doctor Seek,” she says.
“Uh. What happened?”
“What happened is an animal was loose in here. An animal that turned into an unconscious man. I’m going to have to pay the security guard off handsomely and send him to Siberia.” Her lips quirk slightly, but I do not think she is actually joking.
“Get up, and be careful about it,” she says.
I do my best to get to my feet without cutting myself to shreds, and almost manage it. A quick trip to the facility doctor later, and a change of clothes thoughtfully brought from my home by an assistant, and I am sitting in Veronica’s office.
“I should fire you,” she says.
“Right at the moment I make a breakthrough that has never before happened in the history of mankind? Strange time to let someone go,” I say calmly.
The truth is I don’t care what she has to say. I know that what I just did was incredible, and if I can review the footage and tweak the formula, I bet I can make the whole thing much more manageable.
“I need assurances from you that you will not take substances on the property,” she says. “These formulas put us at significant legal risk.”
I know she’s just going over boilerplate things. She has to say all of this. Even her tone suggests her heart is very much not in it.
“For example,” she says when I tune back in. “There’s the matter of what might happen if someone under the influence of such substances were to impregnate someone. Would the changes propagate?”
“I don’t know,” I say. “Is it possible to introduce malleable mutations into genes without the need to take the formula? The semen would have to be produced while under the effect.”
“Yes, well, it would be terrible if we were to find that out, thereby effectively creating an entirely new breed of human,” she says.
I pay full attention to her, because now I am certain she is way off script.
“I’m not dating anyone, and even if I were, I wouldn’t be impregnating them.”
“Perhaps you’ll meet someone who is interested in participating. Or someone with whom you have a special bond,” she says. “Certainly, I cannot ask you to procreate for science. The ethicson that are clear. So. In other matters, I think it is high time you were assigned a technical writer to ensure that the specifics of your work are being recorded for posterity.”
“I don’t want a technical writer.”
“Someone young, perhaps female, to work closely with you,” she says, her eyes locked on mine as she talks in double speak so clear I almost don’t hear the words she is actually saying nearly as loudly as I hear the subtext:I am going to hire you someone to breed.
CHAPTER 2
Lydia
He said he was okay. At least, I think that’s what he said. It was really hard to tell. I was freaking out, and he didn’t actually have a mouth anymore. Communication issues this early in a relationship are often bad signs.
Is there any way he was actually okay? He looked like his face was a mask rolling down itself with another mask underneath it. It was one of the creepiest things I’ve ever seen, but I also have a sort of sense of secondhand embarrassment, like I was witness to something I wasn’t supposed to see. Something intimate and personal.
Everything I’ve seen today is weirder than anything I’ve seen before. Technology is wildly out of control and I don’t know how any of us are going to survive once this stuff gets out of the lab. But that’s a problem for next month, or maybe a year from now. Or maybe in the morning, Simon will be a puddle on the floor that gets inadvertently wiped up by the janitor and all his research will be lost forever.
I should have maybe gotten help for him, but I just went home and showered, and now I am tucked up in bed, my red lamp throwing a calming yet frankly Amsterdam-style feel across the room. It’s supposed to stop me from fucking my sleep cycle up, but it turns out my dubious decisions do that well enough.
I can’t believe myself.
This morning, I would have sworn that I was a sane, responsible woman who doesn’t make rash decisions, especially not sexual ones. I strictly adhere to a ten-date rule before I even kiss a guy. Men don’t like that, but generally speaking I find that by the time ten dates roll around, I don’t like them either.
Today, though, I just slept with a man I don’t know. I am going to have to go to the doctor about that, make sure I didn’t catch anything from a dude who apparently will fuck anybody who walks into his laboratory. I don’t come off any better in that equation though, do I? I am just as bad for it all. I let him. I practically begged him, without words. I didn’t say no. I just let him…
Clunk.
I startle at the noise. It’s usually pretty quiet here. I am on the first floor, but my apartment has gardens and a gate, well… more like a flower bed and a rusty old thing that squeals in the wind. Screeches are normal. Clunks are not.
There’s something outside the window. I can hear it rustling in the bushes.
