Chapter I
There was the constant robotic noise with no organic sounds. Barring the constant hum of the fans in the fume hoods, rumble of the rotary pumps of the mass spectrometers and the cyclic squeek of the liquid chormatographs making injections every 4 minutes, the lab produced no sounds at all at this midnight hour. Bright and almost flooding lights from the select segments in the ceiling reflected from every object in the lab- the shiny corners of the hoods, the black slabs on the benches, the steel housing of the instrumentation and the glass windows which reflected portions of these objects on them. I was engulfed in bright loneliness. The environment has a disorienting feel which at times felt like it was the real early morning hour when the rest of the crew has yet to arrive. A moment later it felt like the late evening when the rest of the staff have gone for the day and are perhaps in the process of dining and preparing to go to bed. Or it could just have been that everyone has gone for lunch and will be back in a moment. That’s when I have to look at the wall clock to reorient my self. The clock had just stuck fifteen past twelve at midnight.
It was time to look at the data that just came off the instrument. The previous day ten monkeys were “sacrificed” that were injected with various amounts of the test pharmaceutical molecule-TX450. The samples from their serum were prepared and loaded into the instrument for data acquisition. At midnight the last of the samples would have been acquired.
I had visited the cage room in the morning where the monkeys were kept. As I ran my eyes over each cage, the animals inside them seemed inconspicuous of what was going to happen to them jumping and making noises, except, it seemed, the one in the 9th cage. In cage 9 was a large ape that constantly stared at me from inside. It was the largest of the animals and looked different from the others with its darker mane and deeper eyes. Its eyes were focused on me all along while I was there. Closing my eyes I could still feel its stare on me. It was as if the animal was studying me and as if it knew our plans and was not afflicted. I was its study animal.
Ah, the midnight disorientation. I shook off my thoughts and sat in front of the computer to look at the data. First as usual I checked the control samples to ensure that my experiment was valid. The control samples are prepared form a pool of the serum obtained from the many animals in the study group. The data from these samples showed the expected large peaks from the house keeping lipids typical of the species of the monkeys in the test group and the internal standards spiked into the serum immediately after drawing the blood. The most dominant peaks were from a set of phospholipids typical of the serum from these monkeys. I then began looking at the individual test samples for these peaks to ensure that the samples were acquired correctly. As I carefully huddled through the data I learnt that they were, except for the sample from cage #9! The data had no peak from these phospholipids typical of the monkey species. It had the correct magnitude of the internal standard peaks. This would typically mean that the sample preparation and analysis was done correctly but the sample did not have the phospholipids I was looking for. But then there is also the other possibility. Gary, the technician who collected the sample could have mistakenly interchanged the tubes with the sample from any of the other animal species in the room, rats, squirrels, dog plasma etc that did not contain this lipid in their serum. I will have to wail till morning to check with him on that. There is, however, one thing I could do while waiting. I could find the bag of blood initially collected from the dying animals from which an aliquote of the serum was transferred to the tubes by Gary and then rerun the experiment. If I do it sooner, I could use the same plate controls and save time. If I wait for Gary, the specified amount of time for the use of controls will pass and I will have to prepare new set of controls. So to save a few hours and efforts and material, I rushed to the animal storage room where the bag of blood is refrigerated. Having been in the room earlier when the animals were still alive, I felt heavy at heart to go back where ten monkeys were bleed to death for science profiteering. I do have 2 pet cats and I do feel for animals. Well, I had accepted long ago that life is a road of contradictions and I would never know absolute wisdom from what I perceive are my duties. I did feel terrible going back to that room after the fact. I tuned the lights on and went straight for the wall where refrigerators are placed. I identified the red rubber bag with the blood of the animal in cage #9 and carried it with me to the lab. I thawed the blood in the bag and began preparing the samples for re analysis. When the samples were ready I injected the extract into the analysis vial and waited for the data to be acquired. As the data appeared on the instrument computer screen I clicked the mouse to look for the peaks.
No phospholipids peaks but the expected internal standard peaks were present!..just as I found it the first time!!
The result confirmed that Gary did not make a mistake of switching the tubes between species-if the blood from the animal in cage 9 was collected in this bag. There were no other bags collected that day. Perhaps the blood was contaminated by something in the bag such that the phospholipids were destroyed for this particular sample. Very unlikely but plausible if I find that a bottle of chloroform or isopropanol may have leached into this bag. Perhaps I could find an empty bottle of non polar solvent at the collection site that could explain this observation.
I rushed back to the animal room to take a closer look. I once again opened the door and turned the lights on. This time I turned to walk towards the empty cages from where the blood collection procedure began. After bleeding the animals to death they were taken to a morgue in the next building for disposal the next day. As I walked toward the empty cages, a glimpse at the cage #9 stopped me still and breathless.
Those eyes were still starring at me!!!
The cage #9 had the animal in it and it was looking at me exactly the same way it did in the morning when I had visited the animal room. The animal was supposed to have been dead. The only difference was that now the cage door was open and I was standing defenseless in front of the beast with my back to the wall.
.....to be continued
Chapter II
The wall behind me must have supported my body from collapsing. I stood there with my eye balls feverishly focussed on the beast. I didnot think I had the courage to blink. I was gasping for air and sweating and looking for any signs of aggression from the beast. It appeared as though the ferocity in the eyes of the beast slowly melted and gave way to a sympathetic yarn. I felt a tiny release of ease from somewhere in my spines. The beast stepped out of the cage with its two limbs first and then the body propelled by the hind legs. Now the beast was fully in the open and still focussed on me.
The clock behind stuck 5 and at the same time the beast turned towars the row of glass windows. At the moment the lab doors flung open. More flouroscent lights were tuned on. Gary stood at the open door studying the beast which was near a glass window. The beast tuned back with those firce eyes pinned on Gary. Gary had pointed a shot gun at the beast that was licenced to be used in the event of dangers in the lab. He must have rememberd some thing from the previous day to have been in the lab so early.
"Hi there.."
Gary let his presence be known to me while looking at the beast who was advancing towards him. I heard a click and a loud thud from Gary's gun. A window pane behind the beast shattered. While I recovered from the blasting noise of the gun shot and the shattering of the window pane, I noticed that the beast had Gary's head in his forlimbs. I almost fainted as the next events unweiled. The beast had Gary's lock of hair in its palm and Gary's body was throbbing on the ground. What was once his head was now a fountain of blood overflowing around his body on the ground. It seemed that his skull was crushed under the palms of the beast. What kept me from crashing down to the floor was my involuntary awareness that the the stare of the beast was on me the whole time. While Gary was struggling in its palms, the beast had its eyes on me. Its body language did not convey that it was watchful of my plans but it felt as if it was revealing something to me. This time I could not notice an iota of sympathy in its stare.
It took a few steps towrds me and then tuned back, with two hops reached the shattered window pane. With its arm it slashed the pane further to make a bigger opening and as if a toy it pushed the netting out of the buidling. In matter of seconds the beast had disappered from the room. The window opened itself up to a patio which faced a conservation land..900 acres of Shanendoah forest and campgrounds. I glimpsed at the possible path of the beast through the window. The moon shone over the valley casting a silhoutte of the large mangroves and the silver river. The early birds had began chirping.
To be continued....
