Bad Scientists: Part 1

Balancing work and grad school has been tough, so I definitely slacked off on posting last week. Luckily for me, I had an almost fully fleshed out idea pop into my head, so I'm running with it here and trying to catch up on my post quota. This series will develop as I go, with the intro today and the meat of the first part going up tomorrow. Parts 3 and 4 are already in the works as well! Hope you like what you read, and feel free to pop into my inbox to send in ideas or just chat. 

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Stepping into my lab, I take a second as I do every day to really let it set in how crazy this all is. Row after row of lab stations are set up for me and my fellow technicians, and each one is stocked from the top shelf to the bottom cabinet with the newest technology available. Each glassware cabinet is stocked, and I have one employee who washes it all and wipes down every counter before I even see that I’ve spilled something in one of my experiments. Through the double doors at the end of the lab, there is a massive space where engineers from all disciplines work on coming up with whatever our mysterious benefactor requests.

In college, we’d all dreamed of something like this- a job that got us rich and still let us be creative. We’d shunned the oil companies that set up shop at career fairs like they were kings of the castles, and we’d politely grabbed pamphlets from start-up companies that we knew would go under within the year. Visions of boring jobs awaited us, but one by one, everyone here had gotten a mysterious email from a benefactor who remained nameless.

We’d had a black towncar show up in front of our apartments that shuttled us to an interview. We’d then have to summarize our latest projects and aspirations. At the end, the board of men and women in front of us asked us what we’d do if we had unlimited money at our disposal. I told them that the easy answer would be to cure cancer or mass produce medicine for free, and they then told me to answer again without feeling the need to be diplomatic. Before I knew what I was saying, I told them that I wanted to make pleasure more readily available, something in our lives that wouldn’t be taboo. I had had a professor in college who’d researched pheromones and their effects on humans, and I knew that I wanted the money to do something in that vein one day.

One week later, I got the call that my dreams were coming true.

As we all lounged around the grounds for lunch each afternoon, or when we grabbed coffee in the palatial break room near the lobby, we sometimes said the quiet part out loud. We began to wonder how we’d gotten so lucky, and we wondered what would happen if the other shoe fell, and this all came crumbling down. That conversation began to fade though as weeks of employment turned to months and then years. More people were hired regularly, but very few people really left. As I sat down in my chair this morning, I realized that I don’t think anyone in my lab had actually left except for Tim who moved across the country for his husband’s family.

We’d thought this was all too good to be true, but no one had lied to us yet.

Smiling to myself, I started pipetting this morning’s set of solutions, and the clock ticked by behind me as my coworkers filtered in around me.

Right before lunch, I got a message on the screen beside me to head to examination room B. I was about to type back how urgent it was but Marco sent another message before I could that just said ASAP. Getting up from my lab, Greg offered to finish up for me, and I passed it over to him. Taking off my lab coat and hanging it beside the door, I washed my hands again and headed down the hallway before taking the stairs up to the third floor. This was the floor for human experimentation, and it was the last step before our designs were finalized. I’d had my fair share of contributions here, and that feeling of accomplishment never really faded away.

I saw Marco standing my a door halfway down the hallway, and I walked over to him, matching the smile on his face. His lab was next door to mine, and he’d just spearheaded a design that landed him on this floor for the first time. Inside, there was a small room with a few chairs and one computer set up in the corner. The wall in front of us was floor to ceiling glass, and we were looking out onto the room in front of us behind a two-way mirror.

“Bill, we’ve passed every single test so far. This is going to make it.”

His voice was practically shaking as he ushered me to two armchairs right by the glass. The room in front of us was comfortable but clearly sterile for each experiment. The floor was covered in thin threads of fabric in every color, and I couldn’t imagine how they’d made Marco this happy until the door into the room opened once more.

A beautiful man walked in wearing nothing but a pair of briefs. His hairless, muscular body was on almost full display, and he walked into the center of the room.

“Trevor, please run through the calisthenics exercises that we practiced.”

The voice over the speaker was Tonya’s, another scientist in Marco’s lab. As the intercom clicked off, the man in front of us began stretching. He raised his arms in the air, leaning left and then right as every muscle flexed under his supple skin. Turning around, he knelt over to touch his toes, presenting his ass to us. The briefs rode up a little, and the untanned skin at the base of his cheek tantalized me, before I remembered that I was here for science.

He ended with a set of lunges, alternating which knee was pressed into the carpet. I watched as his bulge pressed against his thick left thigh, and I wished I’d brought my phone with me to stealthily record what was happening.

“Thank you, Trevor- please stand still as we conduct the last section of this demonstration.”

Nodding his head, Trevor stood there, and I wondered if he knew what was going to come next, or if he was just as oblivious as I was.

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The rest of this demonstration is going up tomorrow!