The video showed a split screen. On the left was a blindfolded woman walking through what appeared to be a maze. On the right sat Specimen #8, tracing a map with her index finger.
“In this video Specimen #8 is helping one of our blindfolded staff members through a maze we designed. She had previously done the same with mice and even a dog, but this was the first human trial we recorded. She was separated from the maze by five rooms.”
The video played on, showing how the blindfolded woman effortlessly traversed the maze, safely stopping for every wall and turning at exactly the right angles to proceed left or right.
Dr. Greer watched his audience watching the video. He could see that, behind the darkness of their stoic eyes, there grew an excitement that would soon become hard to contain. And they hadn’t even met her in person yet.
After the video ended Maggie closed the laptop. With a deep breath she allowed herself to lean back into her chair.
Dr. Greer took the remote control out of his back pocket and turned the light back on. He smiled as he looked at the group of men briefly talking amongst themselves. The presentation had gone very well so far, but he wasn’t done.
“Gentlemen. Gentlemen. A few more moments of your attention, please,” he said.
The men stopped talking and looked up at the doctor still standing in the middle of what was very much his stage.
“You have seen photographs and a video. But, of course, we can do better than that. Would you like to meet Specimen #8? You may ask her questions and even test her abilities if you so desire.”
The men hesitated for a moment, caught between their fascination and their fear of meeting a girl that might see into their heads. There were, after all, a great many things in there that didn’t belong to any other person.
In the end, however, they all agreed. They wanted to see Specimen #8 for themselves.
Maggie reached for the phone in her pocket and dialed the same number she had called before. She put the phone to her ear and said, “Please bring in Specimen #8.”
Several minutes passed before the door to the lecture hall opened. Soon a young girl came stepping inside, accompanied by the woman that had been in the video with her. Hand in hand they walked toward the front of the lecture hall.
“Please come on stage, guys, we’ve been waiting for you,” Dr. Greer said.
Hesitantly the young girl followed her escort up the small stairs and walked to the middle of the stage. There she stood as the tiniest person inside the large room.
Dr. Greer put his hand on her shoulder and, when she looked up, gazed briefly into her frightened eyes. He found himself incapable of caring about her feelings. She was a specimen, a tool that he had developed, a weapon that he someday hoped to employ. Her feelings, for so far that he even acknowledged them, were not relevant. A thing, not a person. That was how he separated himself from whatever plight those dark eyes might suggest.
“These men here are very interested in the things that we’ve been working on together. We were hoping that you could give us a demonstration.”
The young girl looked at the twelve men watching her eagerly. Their fears and worries frightened her further, and their excitement confused her.
Dr. Greer said, “What we would really like is for you to show us that you can read minds. Shall we try it?”
The girl said nothing. Her dark eyes remained fixed on the men that sat slightly below her, yet seemed so much higher than she would ever be.
“I will ask these men to ask a question inside their heads, and you will answer one for us,” Dr. Greer said. Then he instructed his visitors, “Please hold a question in your mind that you do not mind sharing the answer to. She will pick one out and answer it.”
A few moments passed as the men looked uncomfortably around the lecture hall. Whatever this was, whatever they had started, there was no getting out of it now.
Then the girl said, seemingly out of nowhere, “Green.”
Dr. Greer asked, “Who did the question belong to?”
The girl pointed at one of the generals sitting slightly to the left of the stage.
Dr. Greer smiled. “Would you please be so kind as to share your question with us?”
The general cleared his throat, his muscles just a little more tense than he would have liked them to be. “I, um… I asked what color my wife’s eyes are.”
Dr. Greer nodded, then asked, “And are they indeed green?”
Again the general cleared his throat. His lips had never been this dry, either. “Yes. Yes, her eyes are green.”
Dr. Greer allowed the men a short moment as they burst into gasps of awe and bombarded the general with their questions. Did he feel anything? Had she said anything to him in his head?
Then the doctor clapped his hands and resumed control over the situation.
“Gentlemen! Gentlemen! You can all have a go if you’d like.”
He looked down at the girl that stood silently and knew then and there that his funding for the next five years was more than secure.
“She can do this all day, gentlemen. So let’s have at it!”
(August 2, 2014)
Dr. Greer rode the elevator all the way to the bottom, burying himself beneath five floors of his laboratory. The sensation was always a little claustrophobic, but it had gotten better as he matured into his work at the laboratory. His laboratory.
He was the one that had made the research so successful. He who secured grant, after grant, after grant. Pulling all the right political strings was almost as difficult as the science needed to justify it. Assistants came and went; they usually never lasted long around Specimen #8, but he had always held the line.
Dr. Greer was proud. Proud of what he had accomplished and proud of what was going to happen very soon. What he had forced to happen, because he knew it was the only way forward even if others disagreed.
The others were afraid. They feared Specimen #8. Not Dr. Greer. This was his laboratory. This was his world, and Specimen #8 was allowed to live in it only as long as she adhered to his rules. It didn’t matter how powerful she had gotten, Dr. Greer believed. He would control her.
The elevator stopped and its metallic doors slid open for the doctor. A long hallway stretched out in front of him, tainted by the blue haze of artificial lighting. The scent that lingered was as clinical as the hallway’s white tiles and walls, as if anything that was allowed to live there did so only under a pervasive scrutiny.
Dr. Greer stepped out of the elevator and made his way through the hallway. His destination was the very last door to the right. The door to her room. The one room where Dr. Greer sometimes did not feel in control. Where maybe, some of the time, he lived in her world instead of the other way around.
He stopped at the door and, without knocking, walked inside.
The room was well lit and the walls were painted a soft yellow. From it came a warmth that, though nuanced, struggled almost violently with the clinical feel of the hallway. A small bed stood in the corner; on it a pile of books lay scattered around. All the walls were decorated with big bookcases, allowing the inhabitant of this small room at least a window to imagine what the rest of the world looked like.
She sat in the middle of the room, at a small black table, on a hard plastic chair. Her head was raised up slightly from the book she was reading, and her dark eyes made contact with the doctor that had just entered her room.
Dr. Greer studied her the same way he would look at a mouse or a chimpanzee. Every detail of her body, her face, and her posture had meaning to him. That small body and young face. The girl was eighteen now but her body had stopped growing when she was fifteen. She had not developed the curves other women her age did and her face had retained a childlike quality. Dr. Greer wasn’t entirely sure, but she was probably unable to have children. These were among the many side effects of the hormone cocktails they had given her.