Human Instincts (Excerpt)

One

Dr. Deanna Nichols ignored the shrill whine of the intercom, her eyes darting intently across the data scrolling up the screen. Even if it were His Majesty the General himself, she wouldn’t—couldn’t—tear her eyes away. Here, in the Medical Research Unit, she was the boss. She didn’t take orders from anyone.

The experiment couldn’t be rushed, and she needed an answer. After a long series of failures, she didn’t have much faith in the result, but it would have been too much if she had missed the key moment—assuming the result was positive—because some nagging employee from the administrative department had remembered some urgent matter that presented no importance to her.

When the cycle ended, her sigh made fog appear on the protective mask that covered her face, so she removed it with an absent gesture. Officially, her shift had ended for the day. She was alone in the lab. The other doctors and assistants were either busy with other things or had retired to their rooms to get some sleep. The lack of success for so long would have ruined anyone’s good spirit. Another opportunity wasted, hundreds of hours of hard work, and in the morning she had to do it all over again— just like every other morning for that matter.

Deanna saved the data so it could be included in the statistics and she set the parameters for the upcoming test that would be completed over night. She programmed the machines, ignoring the recommendations to save energy. Such warnings arrived on regular basis, sent to everyone without discrimination, but only certain departments were confronted. The day the General himself came to tell her she had crossed the line, she would worry.

She ordered the incineration of the used tissue samples, removed her gloves and tossed them into the recycling compartment while her skin tingled from the antibiotic gel. Since they couldn’t afford to be wasteful, even if their living standards surpassed those in other parts of the world, the gloves were going to be sterilized, melted, and remolded so they could be reused the following day. They didn’t throw anything away, if possible.

As she had countless times before, she wished for the luxury from before the war, when the entire process was mechanical and human intervention wasn’t needed, the only interaction done through a computerized interface. She rubbed her eyes with one hand, but the chronic fatigue couldn’t be chased away so easily. In moments like these, she wondered why she didn’t give up. Three long and difficult years had passed and the team, brought together with haste, was exhausted. Sometimes she felt the same. Unlike the others, though, she was determined to continue. She had responsibilities.

When she walked by the cage where they kept the chimpanzee, she stopped and carefully inserted her fingers through the bars to pet his head.

“Sorry, Abe,” she murmured, “it looks like we’ll be torturing you a little more.”

The chimpanzee answered with a sad stare and pursed his lips. What did he know? Fed up with being pricked by needles and run through tests, even an artificial banana couldn’t cheer him up anymore.

Along the wall, two babies of four and nine months old slept in the incubators on wheels. Deanna called the nurse to take them back to their mothers. They didn’t run the tests on human subjects, only on tissue samples taken from adults, but in parallel, they followed up on the newborns’ evolution. For now, the prognosis was not at all encouraging.

The beep went off again, this time more persistently. It was accompanied by a visual message in flashy colors, the brightness of which irritated her eyes. Her hands shoved deeply into her lab coat’s pockets, Deanna walked up to the monitor. What did they want now? They bothered her only when she was busy. Actually, she worked all the time, but that was no excuse. If she had news, she would contact them. Why was that so hard to understand?

The short message, only a few words, made her frown. General Mackenzie himself had requested Dr. Nichols’ presence in his office as soon as possible. Up until now, he had never bothered her without a serious reason. Something must have come up that required her attention, something important since he asked her to report to him and they didn’t speak through the usual channels. She hoped it wasn’t another catastrophe.

Deanna flirted with the idea of delaying her visit a few more minutes, just to prove her independence. She wasn’t under his command; she didn’t have to jump and show up to report. However, he was also the commander-in-chief of the entire armed forces, as well as the commandant of the base where they both ran their activities. A large part of the funds granted to her research program depended on his good will.

That last thought convinced her to give in and go see what he wanted. She released her long hair from the ponytail, ran her fingers through it, and pulled it back up. It was only after she made sure she looked presentable that she left the lab. A few extra seconds wouldn’t matter much.