The Science Prophet (Complete)

Chapter 2: Disbelief

Darwin’s train of thought about that fateful day three years ago was interrupted as the computer she was furiously typing on beeped in protest.

Rob deleted the files!

Well, given Rob’s low level of competence with computers, she should be able to reconstruct the files he had deleted. Files that contained scans of his brain. Files that could undermine all of the self-aggrandizing evil he had committed in the last three years.

She wished she had deleted that original scan of the anomaly, and forgotten about the whole affair.

She nearly had. It was three months before Darwin dared to speak to anyone other than Lucy and Lester about what the BrainCleaver had recorded that day.  The images were so unbelievable, she risked professional ridicule if she spoke about them. As a graduate student, Lucy felt even more vulnerable to censure. And Lester was afraid of losing funding if one of his top researchers was discredited.

So the three researchers kept silent for week after week as they sought to find a mainstream explanation for the scan results. The most obvious explanation was that the video had been corrupted by the same malfunctions that had released unusual doses of radiation.

Rob, they were sure, lacked the discipline to keep the matter confidential. However, because he had left the lab without seeing Lucy’s video, it was easy to keep him in the dark.

Darwin was content to let him take a few months of “light duties” to recover from his “serious burns” as she and Lucy worked long hours to investigate the matter, frequently meeting with Lester to review their progress. 

As soon as the console computer was replaced, they tested the BrainCleaver with standard parameters – first with inanimate objects, then on animals, and finally on human subjects once they were sure it had not been damaged in any dangerous way during the computer fire. These scans with standard parameters all produced standard results.

Of course, the anomalous video had not come from standard parameters, but from the highly unusual parameters that were caused when the console malfunctioned.  Darwin was sorely tempted just to set the BrainCleaver to those parameters and see what happened. She even lay awake at night fantasizing about it.

But she couldn’t. Her professional discipline prevented her from taking such expedient action. Every step between the standard parameters and the parameters in place when the anomaly occurred needed to be methodically understood. Gradually, one step at a time, Darwin and Lucy nudged the console towards the fateful settings.

As they experimented with new parameters, they followed the same pattern of test subjects. They started with a fern Darwin kept in her office, to provide a baseline for a non-animal scan. Next up was a lab rat named Rudolph but which they nicknamed Rob Jr. The last test for each setting was for Darwin or Lucy to be scanned while the other recorded the results.

As weeks passed and they slowly approached the exact parameters that had caused the anomaly with no sign that the anomaly would be repeated, Darwin felt relief and regret growing in her mind together.

Regret because she knew that most likely the video had just been corrupted and they’d wasted weeks of time chasing something that never existed in the first place.

Relief because she didn’t want it to exist.

Sure, replicating the anomaly would be a career making discovery. It would change neuroscience forever. Darwin would become a part of scientific history, be on the front page of newspapers and magazines, and have laboratories named after her. But the implications of the anomaly were so unsettling to Darwin that she would rather it not exist.