Frankenstein's Heroes: Tales of Mad Science Gone Aright by Andrew Leete Darling

Author:Andrew Leete Darling [Darling, Andrew Leete]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2016-01-01T23:00:00+00:00

The Jar

I wake up, and for just a moment, the upside down world startles me, but the tiny sensors in my brain detect the rise in stress signals, and my mind is flooded with pleasure and a sense of well-being. It is nearly impossible to be distressed about what I’ve become. The auto-injector is extremely precise at controlling my moods, and it’s far more likely to err on the side of orgasm than despair. In fact, I have to exert a little discipline to avoid sending myself off into a dopamine haze most of the time. For all my education, at my core I’m just a monkey with a pleasure-inducing button in the palm of my hand… well, if I still had a hand.

My home office looks alien inverted upside down as it is. I must have been moved here from Recovery while I slept, officially an outpatient now. I’m not so much at my desk as on it, positioned centrally to face the Manhattan skyline. Off to my left are the awards on the faux mantelpiece. Janet used to insist I keep them on display. She even framed that certain award from Sweden that I would have just as happily put in my desk drawer. Over to the right are the bookshelves sagging beneath piles of poorly organized wood pulp and knowledge. Print books are hopelessly outdated, of course, but I could always draw inspiration by leafing through early Friedman or Keynes. Next to the bookshelf is a podium with a book-scanner, which is new. They must be setting Patrick up to make the collection electronic, so that I can still access it. He’s been a good assistant; I wonder if his role will be more or less demanding in the future given my new circumstances.

My attention is drawn to small specks of red in the liquid medium around me. The many small incisions in my neck must still be bleeding a bit, perhaps from being transported from the hospital. Eventually they’ll heal seamlessly, locking the vascular catheters in place with a barrier impermeable to infection. Those tiny silver threads lace through the vessels of my brain, monitoring every mood, every chemical imbalance. They draw my blood out into the metal box at the top of my jar, where it is oxygenated and cleansed. Samples of my bone marrow and thymus in the box grow new blood cells, red and white, as well as a few stem cells that are then pumped back into my head. Once the incisions have sealed and I have healed enough for my neck to be weight-bearing again, the liquid medium will be removed, and the jar will be flipped upright, so I am no longer hanging upside down in here like a bat. I was familiar with all of this technology even before the knowledge became intimate. I had been researching this jar as one of the greatest dangers mankind has ever faced. I was querying the primary literature even as the heart attack claimed my body.

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