Amoeba (The Experiments) (74 page)

The eight investors had crowded into the lounge, sipping on old coffee and waiting patiently for Greg to return from Cedars Sinai Hospital. There had been no word at all in the last seven hours about the former director they had all come to know. Tension was high all over the center. The workers were all on edge. The observing monitors were arguing, and one of them even walked off their shift and out of the building, becoming the second of six to quit.

They all stood up when Greg turned the bend into the lounge
, all of them wanting to rush him and ask him questions. But they knew they would get their answers. All of them hope that the long length of time it took for Greg to return was time spent successfully saving Dr. Jefferson.

“I was told you’d be here
,” Greg stated. “I thought . . . I thought you’d be in the control room, but I’m glad you’re all still around.” Greg’s head dropped, and he kept his hands in the front pocket of his dress pants, his button down shirt out of his pants and hanging. “They brought him back and were able to get his heart beating. But . . .” Greg’s voice cracked. “They couldn’t keep it that way. They tried for hours, but unfortunately, Dr. Jefferson didn’t make it.” Greg closed his eyes. “I’m sorry. And I need to get to my office. I’ll speak to you all later.” Slowly he turned and moved to the door.

“Wait.” Aldo rushed to him. “Look, we all know this is a terrible thing that happened to Jefferson. We liked him. But there’s another issue at hand
, Haynes. The amoebas. Dr. Jefferson knew how to destroy them. Do you know where his notes are?”

“Yes I do
,” Greg answered, and heard the sighs of relief come from all of them. “He had them safely tucked away for no one to find. And no one ever will. Unfortunately for all of us, the secret of how to beat the amoebas . . . . left this world when Dr. Jefferson did.”

The storage closet was long and thin, adjacent to the large recreation room, complete with pinball machine, two tables , a juke box, a couch, and other recreationally relaxing things. It was handy, near the center of the building, and was a secondary storage place. Because of its easy access, things during the past five months were moved from the main storage area of the control building to there.

It was p
acked from floor to ceiling, and Stan couldn’t recall ever seeing it so jammed with stuff. He recalled other fond memories of that closet - that quaint little incident he had had in there with that red-head lab assistant, Sherrie, when they were setting up the control center, and the day they were all in the closet, tears in their eyes, watching Ollie’s cat give birth to the kittens, kittens whose lives were abruptly and violently cut short by Jake.

“Touch it
,” Stan told Richard. “I’m telling you it is.”

“No. It just looks like it.”

“Touch it.” Stan nodded. “We can test it.”

Richard reached out his finger tips and laid them on Stan’s forehead. He pulled them away
, rubbing. “Moisture. You’re right.”

“Yep. Perspiration. Can you believe that
? I broke a sweat.”

“We’ve been working hard.”

“And we aren’t done yet.” Stan wiped his hand over his head and cringed. “I thought sweating was a puberty thing for me. It’s been years.”

“It’s not sweat
,” Richard corrected. “You are perspiring. Fine men like ourselves don’t sweat.”

“True. And I hope it stops.”

“Possibly when we’re done.”

“Possibly.”

“Let’s go.” Richard walked from the closet with Stan. “We’ll get this done, and then we’re off to do the action hero stuff.”

Stan stopped walking. “Is it really action hero stuff
? Doesn’t it have to be for unselfish means?”

“It does.” Richard took a moment to think. “We can say it is.”

“I’ll go along with that.”

“Let’s finish up.”

“Let’s.” Stan followed Richard down the hall.

^^^^

Cal pounded twice on the door. “Jake. Please!” she called out long and whiney.

“Cal
,” he snapped back. “What do you want me do?”

“Hurry.”

“I just got in here.”

“Hurry.”

“Cal,” Jake snapped again. “I asked you before I went in here if you needed to get in here first. You said no.”

“Then the babies shifted
, Jake, and the pressure hit,” Cal complained. “You know what I’m like.”

“Yes I do
, and that’s why I asked you first. Now, can I help it you have to pee thirty million fuckin times a day?”

“Oh my God!” Cal gasped. “I’m pregnant.”

“Well, blame Billy for that one.”

“I will.”

“Thank you.”

“And hurry.”

Jake snarled loudly at her.

Lou saw Cal, arms folded
, walking around the bed. “Cal. Please. Don’t.?”

“Don’t what?” Cal asked him.

“Just . . . Shh. No bitching today.”

“Oh
, that’s easy for you to say.” Cal’s voice raised. “You were the one who whipped out his penis and pissed in a bottle when Rickie was in the bathroom for twenty minutes.”

“He did what!” Jake blasted from the bathroom.

“Whipped out his penis and took a leak, Jake. You were sleeping.”

“Lou.”

“I had to go,” Lou defended himself.

“And so do I!” Cal yelled. “Hurry
, Jake!”

“All right!”

“I can’t take it.” Cal ran her fingers through her hair. “Stuck in a room. Yes. In a room with four men who
don’t
know how to use a bathroom quickly!”

“Cal-babe.” Rickie was the calm one. “Just take one of the buckets in the closet and go.”

“Then what Rickie?” Cal snapped at him. “Trot out of the closet like I’m little red fuckin riding hood with my bucket of urine?”

“Well . . . yeah.” He snickered. “That was funny.”

Cal grunted, folded her arms, and continued walking towards Billy. His fingers moved fast on the lap top. “You aren’t saying anything,” she told him.

“General fear of you at this moment has made me silent.”

Cal was getting ready in her ‘really having to go’ miserable phase, but she stopped when she looked down at Billy and really saw him. Hair messed up. Focus forward, face pale. “Billy?”

“You aren’t gonna yell
, are you? I’m sorry it’s my fault you have to pee so bad.”

“No.” She shook her head and lowered to the floor. “Are you all right?” She asked him softly.

“Why?”

“You don’t look all right.”

Billy stopped typing. He looked to see Rickie and Lou then scooted closer to Cal. “No. I’m not.”

“What’s wrong?”

“Cal. I’m stuck in this room. We’ve been in this room for eleven days.”

“Billy, it’s a mental endurance experiment.”

“I’m scared right now of how much I’ll be able to endure.” Billy scratched the top of his head frantically. “I’m afraid not much more.”

“Me either.”

“Really?”

“Yeah.” She tilted her head back and screamed her loudest. “If someone doesn’t hurry up in that bathroom!”

“Oh for sure I’m not coming out!” Jake yelled back. “Hold it.”

Cal grumbled and looked at Billy who s
hook his head with a chuckle. “You’ll be fine.” She laid her hand on his knee. “Trust me. And I won’t let this experiment drive you nuts.”

“Promise me that.” Billy requested with passion. “Promise me.”

Cal leaned her face closer to his. “I promise you. Besides, why would I let the experiment take that pleasure away from me?” She smiled when Billy did and turned her head to the sound of the bathroom door opening. “And right now, you’ve just been saved a round of Cal torture. Boost me up.”

Shuffling his hand under her backside, Billy gave Cal a push helping her spring to her feet. Feeling a little better,
but not much, Billy returned to where he was before, in front of his lap top in what he had started to call his Hemingway Corner.

The noise level was ‘New York stock exchange’ loud on the meeting level of the control room. They had divided up the table, each using a section to do their own thing. Though a lot of the time the investors worked from the Caldwell quarters, all them at that moment were in the control room, not wanting to take a chance on missing the cabin fever antics of the five trapped in the bungalow.

All but two investors had a laptop. Ivan didn’t need one, he used the phone to reschedule his plastic surgery patients or refer them to another doctor. Caruso ran his business
, but he didn’t need a computer, he was the vocal master, only paged or called when needed. Daniela didn’t need a computer, either ,but he had one there, using idle time to master his skills in the newest version of
Doom
. Of course his video game obsession secured his title ‘the kid’ with the investors.

Greg cleared his throat three times before he got the attention of the investors. There was silence and a final gunshot from Daniela’s game. “Thank you.” Greg smiled when they all looked at him. “There’s someone I need for you to meet. You’ll be getting quite used to him hanging about. He’s going to be helping us. Through my connection at NASA
, we found him and got him to agree to this. He was the top graduate of his class at MIT in biology, and he’s our hope.” Greg reached behind him and opened the door. “Dr. Colin Whitney.”

He looked like a grown up version of the kid in school
that everyone had made fun of. The smart kid who was never rich and never well dressed because his family couldn’t afford it. Though he dressed better now, you could clearly see the past written all over Colin Whitney’s appearance. Not too thin and not too tall, average in build, he wore tan dress pants and a button down shirt with a blue tie. The pocket protector he wore had NASA written in the left hand corner, most likely a souvenir he was so proud of. He had tried to better his looks, and you could see the attempt by the way he tried to part his very short cropped dark hair. With a good face on him, Aldo would describe Colin as the type of man that if he just had a crash course in fashion, he could probably get any broad he wanted.

Colin carried a thick abundance of charts,
and papers stuck out the sides of the folders. He smiled a nervous smile as he approached the investors. “Quite . . . quite the introduction. Nice to meet you, gentlemen.” A twinge of an English accent graced his voice, but just a twinge.

After tapping his bottom lip and peering at the investors through the top
s of his eyes, Greg pointed to Colin. “Dr. Whitney has been working for Her Majesty’s Army for three years now. We were lucky to steal him away.”

Colin set down everything he held in his arms on the table. “This is what Dr. Haynes gave me when I arrived this morning. As you can see, it’s a lot
, and I’ve not had the time yet to go through every single sheet, but I will. Hopefully by this day’s end, I will know more about our amoeba situation. I’ve viewed some video documentation that Dr. Haynes has shown me, and I must tell you, if I were to rate the situation, I would have to put it a serious to grave level.” He heard the moans from the investors. “That’s not to say rectification cannot be achieved. Never give up hope. As far as the Honolulu incidents, right now I am awaiting word from the county coroner as to whether or not he has found protoplasm in the remains of those victims.” With his middle finger he pushed up his glasses. “My first move, though, is one that I feel should have been done earlier. But after being told the circumstances of your experiment, I understood why it was not. It’s not a scientific move, and as I’ve said, I’ve not yet read all of the material. The Amoebas have gathered in one area of the island, the ones that have surfaced, that is. And like glue they are sticking there. Where? The hut region. And that is because we have five people grouped in one small area.”

Aldo let out a loud , ‘a-ha!” holding his fist high. “And I’m no goddamn scientist. I told you that
, Haynes. They smell them.”

Greg just raised his eyebrows.

Colin continued. “This gentleman is semi correct. Not that the amoebas smell them, but they can sense them. We want to throw them off a bit. Right now as we speak, the two remaining controllers are fetching those participants and helping them move to the main building.” Colin felt as if he were in a room full of first graders, watching all of the investors quickly turn their chairs to check out the monitor screens, watching Cal, Jake, and the others packing things up. “Our controllers have brought them suits to protect them through the walk to the main building. It is our hope. It is our hope . . . gentlemen, could you please return to your seats.” He waited until they did. “Thank you. It is our hope to divert the scent, therefore causing the amoebas to not gather so strongly in one area, thereby hopefully making a future rescue attempt possible. Tomorrow we will begin a testing of height and distance, trying to determine how far up and out our amoebas can jump. Fingers are crossed that this is successful, because we’ll need this data for rescuing plans. And finally, the second reason we are moving the participants. Whether or not the Honolulu deaths prove to be our amoebas, we have to now consider their destruction. Letting them die out is not an option. They’ll multiply with everything they consume on that island, trees, vegetation, wildlife. They do not consume the bills of amphibians. Though unlikely, we must consider it a possibility that one may attach itself to a bird and fly off to a neighboring island or boat. Our first line of defense is our participants on that island. They are there, and we would not be doing ourselves any favors should we render them mentally incapacitated by locking them in a room and, well, driving them nuts.”

Ivan raised his hand. “You mentioned earlier something about the amoebas that have surfaced. Do you think they’re hiding?”

“Hiding?” Colin shook his head. “No. Nesting. Like the cockroach, they are somewhere we cannot see.”

Watson was the next person to raise his hand. “But don’t they need to eat to multiply?”

“They’re asexual, meaning they need no mates to multiply, nor do they need consume to multiply. My guess is that these mutations are the result of ingesting your Stasis, as Dr. Haynes told me. Just like the Stasis regenerates, the amoebas do also. Only like the earth worm, they can divide and become two. And what has made matters worse, if my theory is correct, the mutated amoebas mutated more when they consumed the Stasis animals.”

Aldo took his turn in questioning. “So in order to destroy them all, you have to not only kill the ones we see, but the ones we don’t’. Draw
them
out, correct?”

“Correct.”

“You’ll have to get the nest too, right?” Aldo asked.

“Correct.”

“How?” Another Aldo question came at Colin.

“We’re currently working on ideas.”

Aldo let out a long breath. “One more question.” He gave a cold stare to Douglass who huffed in wanting to ask
his
question. “Shut up,” Aldo snapped at him then pleasantly looked back to Colin. “So let me get this right. The game plan right now is not only to get our people off the island, but to use our people
first
to help you beat the amoebas.”

“Correct.” Colin nodded.

Aldo’s hand quickly covered Douglass mouth. “So what happens if we do this and succeed, but find out that the amoebas indeed have broken the perimeter and are loose somewhere else?”

Colin took a
dramatic pause before responding to Aldo, looking over his shoulder to the wall of monitors. “If that happens, and our amoebas show up in civilization, then take a good look at those screens, gentleman, because you could very well be looking at the next inhabitants of our planet earth.”