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The situation: in order to graduate from school, Linques must create a potion. She's testing her work in this section by feeding it to a lab animal. She walked past the first room and into a second. This one was much smaller, holding only one cage. It was almost completely dark except for a projection of a cat that glimmered brightly on the wall. As the only thing to look at in the room, her eyes were immediately drawn to it, and held by it. She had planned the set-up with that kind of fixation in mind. The cage held a chimpanzee-- a bonobo. She had to have a chimp; biologically, it was the closest to a human being, and intelligent. It had not been in this darkened room long. She hadn't wanted to derange it, only to plant the image of a cat in its mind, so that it would be the only thing it thought about. She had given strict orders that no one was to disturb the animal, and therefore, she was the first being to enter the room since it had been placed here. She hoped its emotional disturbance wouldn't effect the outcome of the test. "Nice chimp," she murmured. In her hand, the fluid in the beaker glowed of its own accord, shedding red light on her palm as she poured a small measure of it into the chimp's drinking bowl. She hoped it was thirsty. She heard it begin to drink. Then it choked and gibbered. She heard it jumping madly around its cage, although all she could see were occasional flashes of light from its eyes and big, gleaming teeth. Transform, she hurged it silently. Transform, damn you! Thud. No more noises came from the cage.
"Dammit." She carried the corpse of the chimp to the dissection room. While it wasn't required to dissect dead laboratory animals, she wanted to see exactly what had caused its death. She laid the animal out on a table and quickly donned elbow-length latex gloves and the long, rubber robe that would keep her student robes free from gore. After that, she turned on a tape recorder so that she could have a record of what she discovered. She wouldn't be able to take notes while dissecting. Carefully, she made the Y-incision and pulled back the flaps of the animal's abdominal wall. Diagrams on the wall showed all the internal organs of the common lab animals: rabbit, chimp, rat, cat, guinea pig, dog. She referred to this often, so she would know what in this creature was abnormal. The cat diagram was of particular interest to her. If the chimp had even begun to transform, the first sign of it would be in its internal organs. She spoke aloud as she worked, noting each step as she took it. Even through her medical mask, she could smell the blood and intestinal gasses of the dead animal. "A ha..." Speaking louder for the recorder, Linques stated, "The liver is shrunken. While this may have been a preexisting condition, there is a surprising similarity between that and the liver of a feline." She continued, noting aloud that other organs were also shrunken and slightly deformed. She finished the inspection of the body cavity and looked at the chimpanzee's head. Its dead eyes seemed to reproach her for this invasion of its body. She didn't let that deter her. "Bone saw, bone saw..." she murmured, laying her scalpel and tongs beside the tray. She found the tiny instrument and started it up with a whirr. An aerosol spray of bone and blood jetted from the chimp's forehead as the saw bit into the bone. She had to be careful not to hit the brain. Once she ha dcut through the skull, she peeled away the layers of muscle and tissue that protected the organ. It was here that she discovered a massive brain hemmorhage. Blood pooled between the two hemispheres. The brain itself looked smaller than normal, and the same distortion she'd noticed in the other internal organs appeared to have occurred here as well. Linques noted all this for the recorder, then began to strip off her gloves. "In conclusion, my potion appears to have worked-- slightly. Transformation began inside the chimpanzee, but it did not survive for it to reach the extrnals. This may have been due to the chimpanzee's inability to concentrate on the transformatoin, which is the major necessity for the functioning of my potion. The brain itself began to transform, but due to the compaction of mass, there was a massive hemmorhage which lead to the animal's death." Linques paused, considering what she was about to say next. "Due to the similiarites between the partially-transformed organs to those a cat's, I would ahve to conclude that the potion is, if not a complete success, at least close to completion. It's my hypothesis that all the it lacks is a human mind to direct the transformation. In order to test further, however, I would have to find a willing human test subject. Seeing as how that is nearly impossible, I will submit these findings to my Master for further instruction and analysis. Caitlyn Linques, 2-19-2340." She cleaned up the area according to protocol, leaving the carcass on the table for the custodians to deal with. Returning to the chimp's old room, she picked up the beaker, which still had a little bit of glowing elixir in it, and returned to her lab table to reset the apparatus and brew a new sample according to the same recipe. She sealed the remaining potion in a stoppered bottle and left it, along with the tape of the dissection, in her Master's drop box. |
