Tommy is angry at me. He doesn’t want to be here, and I don’t fault him. And he misses you, and I don’t blame him for that either. But I think we made the right decision, regardless of everything else. He’s safer here than back home.
He said that I’m just trying to fix him. And really, that’s the root of all of it, isn’t it? It’s the problem I can’t research away. And I know I ended up failing us because of it.
Jon stopped and erased the last paragraph.
I’m going to do my best to help, to get us back with solutions to all the problems. Everyone down here is working as hard as they can to make sure we fix things.
There’s no way for you to reply to this, but know that we’re safe. Take care of yourself. Be careful. I know it’s not in you to give up, which is why you stayed behind. Tommy will learn that.
I’ll send another letter soon.
Jon folded it up and put it in an envelope, addressing it. He didn’t know what to do with it, though. It’s not like they had a post office. He picked up the phone and called Operations. A stern voiced man answered and told him there would be someone there to grab it in ten minutes.
They came within a minute, and Jon handed it off, hoping it would get where it needed to.
Talk to Tommy.
He took a deep breath and followed the instructions his heart gave him. Jon went to Tommy’s door and knocked. There was no answer.
“Tommy?” he asked at the door.
“What?” asked Tommy.
“I’m—I’m—are you okay?” asked Jon.
“I’m fine,” said Tommy.
“Are you sure?”
“I’m sure,” said Tommy.
Jon’s hand closed around the knob, going to turn it, to go in there and apologize to his son, apologize for everything, for trying so hard for so long and making it all worse in the process, but he couldn’t do it. It was too deep inside him, too intertwined in him. It was him now, and he couldn’t cut the string. He would unravel.
So Jon retreated.
He went to his room, where he dove into the Shawnet database, into the different research projects. He looked at Tabby’s first, out of sheer curiosity. And as far as he could tell, she was true to her word, even though he didn’t understand most of the jargon in the summary for her project. He couldn’t figure out most of the vocabulary in most of the capsules, but they still fascinated him. Half of them seemed impossible, like science fiction. Did Shaw expect them all to succeed? Fusion at room temperature. Weather control. All of these things felt silly.
But then he thought to his own work, and the disbelief he often confronted when he told people his goals.
There was some solace in that. Jon belonged here, in the simple fact that he was trying to do the impossible.
7
The days passed in a blur. Jon settled into a silent truce with Tommy, and he continued to see Tabby at lunches. He liked her, and he wanted to ask her out, but he didn’t know what that entailed down here, so he just tried to enjoy her company during the short time when he wasn’t working.
Because what he mostly did was work. Mel had coded his formula and built a model to test it on the rat genome on file. It toiled away, testing efficacy after efficacy of thousand permutations of serums, some giant server somewhere spinning up rack after rack of computer power.
“How are we doing?” asked Jon.
“We’ve gotten a few viable options,” said Mel. “We’ll get more as we go, and any actual testing we’ll do I can add to the model, to dial in the accuracy.”
The rats sat in a corner in a couple of cages, eating, sleeping, doing their normal rat business. Mel went over and stared at them.
“Splinter isn’t eating today,” said Mel.
“You shouldn’t name them,” said Jon. “It’s going to make it harder when we have to test on them.”
“I know,” said Mel. “But I can’t help it. I’ve never liked it.”
“What, testing on animals?” asked Jon.
“Yeah,” said Mel. “I don’t even eat meat, and now we’re going to chop up these little guys. And I know there’s even more of them throughout this lab in particular. Poor little ratties.”
“I mean, it’s not nice, I know,” said Jon. “But it’s necessary. It bothered me at first, but then—”
“You got used to it,” said Mel. “I know, that’s what everyone says. But I never got used to it.”
“You kill enough rats,” said Jon, “and you get used to it.”
“I don’t want to become used to it,” said Mel. “Killing defenseless animals.”
“They don’t suffer,” said Jon. “And it’s not like we’re testing cosmetics. We’re experimenting so we can help people. Save lives, in some cases. And like it or not, that wouldn’t happen without these little guys. Frankly, your models are saving a lot of them.”
“I know,” said Mel. “But it’s still hard.”
“Well, I’m going to prep a serum,” said Jon. “So get one ready.”
“We’re moving ahead?” asked Mel.
“No time like the present,” said Jon. “We’ve got to get going, if we want to find results.”
Mel thought for a moment and then grabbed a rat, carrying it over to their experimentation area. Jon went to his workstation and pulled the most promising serum from Mel’s model, letting the computer give the Cas9 enzymes the proper instructions using CRISPR, and then attaching them to a virus that would insert it at the right spot.
CRISPR made this all possible, and gene editing was where Jon had gotten his start. After the accident, he pivoted when he realized what the system could do with the appropriate research. So much advancement had been made over the years, eliminating toxicity and other complications. But it was still hard. Harder still when you were trying to do new things with it. Mammals regenerating limbs was still new, and he was the only one attempting it. This was all him.
Even so, the computer modeling made it much, much faster, weeding out any toxic combinations quickly. But it didn’t mean this was foolproof. The DNA cuts could still destroy the animal, or the replacement DNA or RNA could be wrong in a million different ways. The cells could proliferate, cause cancers, or obliterate any number of perfectly functional systems within the animal. It was messy. Jon hated it, but if they would ever get anywhere, they’d have to start here.
The computer also mixed the resultant serum, so Jon didn’t have to do it by hand, which was how he trained. He hadn’t realized how much time that would save him. It would take him a day to put together a mixture manually, examine it, and then test it. The computer did it in five minutes. Jon had heard about these systems, but he thought they were only prototypes at this point. Shaw had dozens of them on this level alone.
Mel had grabbed a rat, and Jon didn’t ask its name. He washed up and put on gloves and a mask. Mel sedated the rat, sliding a small IV into it. It would keep it under, both to prevent it from unnecessary pain, and from keeping it from moving. The IV would carry sedatives and nutrients, feeding the rat as many extra calories as its tiny body could handle.
“You ready?” asked Jon.
“Ready and recording,” said Mel. They would record every experiment for archival and research purposes.
“Okay,” said Jon, breathing deeply. His heart beat hard in his chest. He had thought a lot about this moment, but excitement had never entered his mind, but he was excited now. This was was as far as he had ever gotten..