Pete ~ 2584 words
satisfaction and turned to his colleague, Baldur Kleinmann. "An excellent
preliminary result." he said. "And what of Harding's research?"
"It progresses as expected." replied Kleinmann. "Her lastest results are
being processed right now, and of course we will obtain a copy of the
analysis as soon as it becomes available."
"She still suspects nothing?" asked Gruber.
"It is extremely unlikely that she would be continuing with her work, if
she knew the real purpose to which it is being applied." said Kleinmann.
"I am satisfied that she has no knowledge of our aims, or of our link to
her computer system."
"Excellent." replied Gruber. "Then we can expect to move on to phase three
of the project very shortly..."
A week earlier...
Micky Mahoney woke up with a throbbing headache. This was unusual for
Micky because even though he drank himself into unconsciousness most days
when he was able to get his hands on a supply, his body had become
accustomed to his abuses and he rarely suffered from hangovers. He ran a
hand through his long, greasy blonde hair, groaned quietly to himself, and
crawled out of his cardboard box to empty his bladder. It was only when
he got to his feet that he noticed the stranger standing near his box.
The man was young, well groomed, and wore an expensive-looking suit.
Forgetting his pressing physical needs for a moment, Micky's spirits
lifted as he smelled the scent of a mark. Sally-army outreach, perhaps,
or simply a well-off do-gooder, hoping to atone for a lifetime of wealthy
excess by speading largesse among the less fortunate. Micky put on his
best hang-dog expression, and shambled over to his potential benefactor.
"Spare a dollar for a cup of coffee, mister?" he quavered. "I ain't eat
in two days. You'd save me life if you could let me have the price of a
sandwich..."
"Actually," said the young man, "I rather think that I might be able to
help you to a far greater extent. How would you like to earn a
considerable amount of hard cash for a week of your time and very little
effort?"
Micky was immediately suspicious. Bumming the odd dollar or two was one
thing, but these sorts of offers just didn't happen to people like Micky,
unless the potential mark was some kind of pervert, or maybe wanted to
make a snuff movie. "What sort of effort," he asked, "and how much cash
are you talking about here? Who are you, anyway?"
"My name is Michael Jennings," He said, producing a card from his
waistcoat breast pocket with a flourish, "and I work for a division of a
company known as Fenner Pharmeceutical Research. Our aim is entirely
altruistic, I assure you. We are attempting to develop cures for many of
the world's greatest illnesses. When we achieve any significant advance
in our efforts, Government policy dictates that a novel treatment must go
through several stages of testing; cell-culture, animal testing, and
tests on healthy human volunteers. Then we can go on to test the
treatment on those it was designed to help. The third stage is where you
might be able to be of some assistance to us, if you're interested."
"You want to give me some kind of medicine to cure a bug I ain't got?"
asked Micky.
"That's the way it works," said Jennings, "although the dosage you'll
receive is really minute. Basically, we're just looking for any allergic
reactions, that kind of thing. In return, you'll be put up in 5-star
accommodation for the week or so the tests will run for, you'll have a
daily choice from an a-la-carte menu, and at the end of your stay we'll
give you a thousand dollars for your contribution, in green folding
cash-money. What do you say, does that sound like a fair deal?"
"Gimme a minute," said Mickey, "I gotta take a whiz and think about this."
He staggered off behind a support pillar of the overpass that his box was
sheltering underneath, and relieved his bladder. As he stood there
thinking, his mind was torn. Life hadn't been kind to Mickey; the
collapse of his hardware business, his divorce, his failure to regain
employment... Of course, the drinking had started long before that, but in
Mickey's mind that wasn't a really serious contributory factor in his
downfall. Things this good just didn't happen to people like him, and
yet... He was of an age to realise that the major regrets of his life
weren't the wrong choices he'd made, they were the missed opportunities.
Wrong choices merely turned out to be part of a learning process, but the
things he *could* have done, but didn't, the chances he *should* have
taken, but for one reason or another he had shied away from... these
memories were the bitterest of all. "Dammit," he thought, "what've I got
to lose? And sure as fate, if *I* don't grab this chance some other bum
will... Ah, Hell, I'll do it!"
He made his way back to the refrigerator carton that had been his home for
the past week, and where the young man in the nice suit was still waiting
patiently. "What kind of bugs are you testing for, anyway?" he said, still
somewhat suspicious of his good fortune, "I might already have it!"
Jennings explained patiently, "We're mainly interested in diseases of the
auto-immune system at the moment; arthritis, lupus, AIDS, that kind of
thing. From the looks of you, you don't seem to be exhibiting any
symptoms of this kind of disease, and as you're obviously not tied to any
kind of work schedule and don't appear to be the kind of man who has any
other sort of pressing social commitments, I took you to be an ideal
candidate. If you'd rather I search for some other test subject..."
"Hold yer horses there, son," said Mickey, "I haven't said I wouldn't do
it yet, have I? Fact is, I could use a break from life on the road, and
the money will come in useful too. So if the offer's still open..."
Jennings smiled and said, "There's a car waiting to take you to the
research compound less than half a block away. If you'd follow me...."
Micky followed Jennings to what would turn out to be the beginning of the
last week of his life.
------------------------------------
Passing the guardhouse at the entrance to the Fenner estate, the car
pulled into a section of the vast parking area.
"This is the bit of Fenner Pharmeceutical known as "Area 17," said
Jennings. "There are lots of other projects on the go at any time here,
but this is the area where our particular research project is based."
As they stepped out of the car, Jennings pointed out the major structures.
"Over to your left we have the office building, ahead of you you see the
manufacturing facility, but to your right are the research labs where
you'll be spending the next week."
He led Mickey across the car park to the research building, and was met by
a receptionist in the foyer. The receptionist filled in a form with
Mickey's details, and Jennings then led him down a corridor towards his
accomodation.
"I'm afraid that for health and safety reasons, as well as for security
purposes, you will have to be locked into your room," said Jennings, "but
you'll have access to a variety of entertainment media, and you shouldn't
be too bored."
Mickey looked around the room he had been assigned. A spacious bedsit, it
comprised of sleeping and sitting areas, with a huge television screen
mounted on one wall. A door to one side led into a spacious en-suite.
"The remote's on the coffee table," said Jennings, "and someone will be
around in an hour or so to take your order for your evening meal. In the
meantime, I'll leave you alone to settle in."
After Jennings had left, Mickey investigated his surroundings in detail.
To one side of the large, comfortable bed was a small bookcase filled with
a variety of contemporary novels; King and Koontz predominant amongst
them, and to the other...
"Oh, wow," thought Mickey, "...a mini-bar!"
Within half an hour Mickey was snoozing peacefully on the floor, propped
up against the side of the bed, surrounded by a scattered pile of empty
whisky, brandy, gin, rum and vodka miniatures. He woke briefly some hours
later to find that someone had kindly put him to bed, and had left a
plateful of sandwiches on the bedside bookcase, and more importantly, had
restocked the mini-bar. "I think I'm going to like it here," he sighed
contentedly to himself.
-----------------------------------------------------
Over the next few days Mickey's life settled into a pleasant routine. In
the mornings, breakfast would be delivered to his room, at his
request always a full English, consisting of bacon, eggs, black pudding,
fruit pudding, lorne sausage, link sausages, fried tomatoes, mushrooms,
beans, toast and coffee. Later, some medical types would appear to take
his blood pressure and monitor other vital signs; heart rate, lung
capacity and the suchlike.
In the afternoons he would get completely blotto on the contents of the
mini-bar and drift off to sleep while watching sport on the big screen in
the living area. Evenings, he would be provided with a choice of meals
from an exquisite menu, often settling on roast duck with trimmings, and
again would drink himself into a stupor that would see him through to the
next morning. Quite often he would awake in the morning to discover that
someone had put him to bed while he had been unconscious.
Whilst he remained an occupant of the facility, he discovered early on
that his clothes had been taken away from him; he awoke on the first
morning to discover himself clothed in nothing more than his boxer shorts
and a large fluffy white dressing gown. When he protested at this he was
informed that his original clothing had been sent for cleaning and would
be returned to him at the end of his stay. Having no pressing reason to
argue the point, Mickey simply accepted it as yet another perk of his
remarkably fortunate position as guest and test subject.
On the morning of the sixth day of his stay, Mickey was introduced to two
other test subjects, Mikele N'Gombe and Hashimoto Dumo. N'Gombe was a big
black African, Dumo a diminuitive Japanese. As they were all informed
together, they were to be exposed to a potential autoimmune treatment that
might have a genotypical response; it was to determine which racial type
would respond best to the treatment that they were all going to be tested
together. The three were led into a warren of laboratory corridors and
eventually into a test room isolated from the rest of the facility by a
double-airlock system.
Settling down in the chairs that they had been guided into, the three
subjects allowed themselves to be strapped at wrist and ankle to the
armrests and legs of the seats. "Purely a pracautionary measure," as the
lab assistant explained to them, "Sometimes there can be a neurological
reaction to the chemicals we are testing that results in a sort of
epileptic fit. We don't want you to be thrashing about and possibly
injuring yourself, do we?"
After the technician had left, the three subjects heard the words of the
research staff from the other side of an observation window set into the
side of the lab. "Atmospheric purge commencing... Replacement N2O2 feed
nominal... Cycle through variant 2.37..."
The first sensations that Mickey was aware of were a stinging sensation in
his eyes, and the smell of frying onions. "Bloody Hell," he thought, "I
hope the grand in the hip pocket is worth all this... I don't like this at
all." He wished that he could wipe his streaming eyes, but of course his
hands were firmly lashed to the chair armrests. Instead, all he could do
was lower his head and close his eyelids. Just before he completely
closed his eyes, he noticed the bright red stain developing on the lap of
his dressing gown, and felt a trickle running down his upper lip.
"Uh, hey guys," he shouted to the staff on the other side of the glass,
"Got a bit of a nosebleed here... Maybe we should call off the test.
Could someone come in here and help me outa this seat? Guys? Hey, you
guys out there... I'm bleeding here! Can someone come in here and help
me?"
The observing scientific staff, obviously aware of Mickey's distress, said
and did nothing but continue to monitor the effects that their treatment
was having upon the test subjects. Neither N'Gombe nor Dumo were showing
the slightest sign of a reaction to the treatment, but Mickey was
beginning to thrash wildly about in his restraints. "Goddammit," he
shouted, "it stings! Get me out of here!" He was now beginning to bleed
freely from his nose, ears, and the corners of his eyes, and his skin was
taking on an unhealthily pink, waxen appearance.
All of a sudden, Mickey leaned forward and vomited over his knees, stomach
contents initially flecked with pink froth turning bright red as the
spasms continued. Mickey was frightened now, desperately struggling
against the straps that held him firmly in his seat. He began to scream,
and the other test subjects screamed with him, not because of any
discomfort on their part, but in sheer horror of the sight of their fellow
subject's suffering. Mickey's skin continued to redden, and seemed almost
to flow from his face. He began to bleed from every surface, and tugged
against his restraints with renewed vigour.
To his amazement, his right arm came free from the wrist strap by virtue
of the fact that it had parted company with his hand. His right hand fell
free from the armrest strap and plopped on the lab floor as Mickey stared
in astonishment at the blood spurting from the stump of his wrist. At
this point, blood loss mercifully rendered Mickey unconscious, and he was
unaware of the dissolution of the rest of his body; of the point where
his skin sloughed off to form a viscous puddle beneath his seat, of the
point at which his stomach burst open spilling his internal organs into
his lap, where they continued to dissolve, of the point where even the
connective tissues joining the bones of his skeleton began to liquify,
leaving nothing but a scattering of bones protruding from the large puddle
of ichor beneath a seat that contained little more that a hip-bone, a few
vertebrae, a nastily-stained pair of boxers and a formerly-white dressing
gown.
By this time the screams of N'Gombe and Dumo had been reduced to whimpers,
and the air in the room had been purged for a second time. Support
technicians had come into the lab and wheeled the other two subjects out
to a decontamination area. "After decon," instructed Uberseher
Kleinmann, "take these two to the holding cells. We will have use for
them in the next series of tests. And get someone in there to remove the
remains and hose down the lab." He stood in triumphant pride at the
physical vindication of his theories, displayed in the observation window,
and awaited the arrival of his colleague, Klaus Gruber.