Silence the Living by Brian Bandell

Author:Brian Bandell [Bandell, Brian]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Silver Leaf Books LLC
Published: 2018-07-15T22:00:00+00:00

42

The giggling college girls couldn’t keep their eyes off Aaron. A Chinese chick with blue streaks in her hair and a Latina with a pixie cut exchanged whispers as they watched Aaron from across the lab of El Paso State University’s Pathobiology Research Institute. Months ago, hot items like these two would give him whiplash staring back. Now, they were like kittens compared to the lioness he’d watched the desert sunrise with. He dwelt on how the orange sunlight reflected off Moni’s longing eyes. Only if he succeeded here, would he see them again.

Aaron turned his attention back to his screen, which displayed a 3D model of the mutated version of thiobacillus bacteria that the alien nanotech produced. Moni’s body contained millions of them – millions of reasons why he couldn’t put his arms around her and draw her close.

He smelled a peach body splash and looked up. The short-haired Hispanic girl hovered over him with a playful grin while her friend stood behind her gawking.

“Just in case you’re curious, I’m a research assistant, not an instructor,” Aaron said. “So flattery won’t get you anywhere.”

“Yeah, I got that. What I want to know is…” She held up her phone. Aaron watched a boxer-clad lunatic corralling a cat in an amusement park. “Is this you?”

“Ah, well.” Aaron’s cheeks flushed red. “There’s a perfectly rational, scientific explanation for that.”

He hoped they wouldn’t require elaboration.

The girls scoffed like he was a drunken frat boy who didn’t belong in a lab with graduate students. He’d gotten that look before, when his professors in Florida assumed he was more about surfing than marine research.

“And that scientific experiment was what, to see how many cats fit down your pants?” the Chinese girl asked.

“Of course not,” he replied. “To figure that, all I had to do was take the volume of space inside my jeans and divide it by the size of the average cat. That wouldn’t have required getting almost naked in front of small children.”

“So you got naked in front of kids because?” Their faces went from amusement to revulsion as the long-haired girl finished him off. “Perv. Didn’t they give you a background check?”

Aaron broke off eye contact with them. They kept on yapping about him until Aaron threw his hands up. He grabbed his backpack and faced the exit. Aaron couldn’t take one step toward it. If he walked out that door, he couldn’t cure Moni.

“Mind your own business, ladies,” principal investigator Erma Nunez said as she marched into her lab and greeted them with a debilitating glare. “I approved Mr. Hughes’ hiring myself, so if you’ve got a problem with it, come straight to me.”

Avoiding further verbal evisceration, the girls sulked to their workstations heads down. Not a second after Aaron had thanked her, the veteran scientist narrowed her eyes at him.

“So what were you doing in that video anyway? Those aren’t the kind of headlines I want to make in this department.”

Aaron took a deep breath. How could he not tell

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.