the subject of genius

   When I was younger and in the long duration of my school days I frequently would find myself in some classroom situation where following my contribution of a small faculty of observation I would hear in hushed tones or open gasps of astonishment the application towards myself the title of 'genius'. Some other students would shout or proclaim it loudly, as if suddenly awoken from stuporous slumber or otherwise scripting themselves in some unfunny pantomime where their part constituted witness heralding eurekas.

    I first assumed I was the butt of a joke, as gathered midgets might amuse themselves calling the shortest amongst them 'a giant'. Only after poking nimble prods of mock sincere modesty I was loath to discover in the flat candor of their expression they were serious. Worse was to come when those in some frame of academic need on topics outside the context of my (or their) talents would come to me in earnest hope that I might lend benefit of some 'ability' to remedy numerous failing attempts o'er hurdles loftier beyond either's scope. Most seemed to understand explanations that although I may appear to be good at mumbletypeg I was all thumbs when it came to darning the wool they sought to unravel from the sheep. Egomaniacal idiots avowed I was holding out, refusing to help them by way of feigning ignorance in an effort to supress their ambition.

   Among the ambitious lurk some various personages of wishful Damocles failing to notice the sword swinging threadborne just above the summit of the goals they desire to accomplish. It is a waste of time to do something imagining postscripts labeling your efforts as that of a trailblazer, for then you will modify your stance unwittingly attempting to fit yourself to the mold of desirable foresight rather than seeking solution to what lays in the immediate path of your vocational duty.

 At the moment my view is that of an immortal person safe behind the clear barrier of our specimen suppression safety cache as just a few yards away five thousand degrees of scorch plasma envelopes the hideous writhing mass of raging monstrosity I had been toiling over for the last nineteen hours. My hopes had been to extract an undiscovered enzyme that theory instructed me lay in one of the beast's two hundred and thirty two hard-to-find pineal glands. In wonder I count to myself the full scorch plasma duration of fourteen seconds and then find myself gaping in astonishment that the creature is still viable. The clear barrier protecting me vibrates with the shock wave of it's bellowing, for now it is even angrier at being burned than it was at being slowly dissected.
   Just as I am measuring how soon it may formulate an idea that it could at least try to get at me behind this transparent safety barrier, our new electrical gridwork suppression protocol kicks in, and the beast is stunned to quick silent apoplexy as nearly 100,000 watts surge through it's mass. It is quickly reduced to a smoldering black lump the size of a pot roast there on the floor next to the exam table. In a few seconds the lab's environmental control will neutralize any residual atmospheric problems and the safety cache door will swing open and I will get a good whiff of what gasses smolder from the pot roast sized lump. 

  That Igor is a genius to have thought up the mechanism of the electrical gridwork shock-em-to-death thing. I would much rather congratulate him for his keen foresight and acute intuition following the first successful application of it's intended use than to see myself grateful to him for having killed the creature with his axe when he came back to the lab to find that beast hammering away at the transparent door attempting to get me. 

 Or maybe, since I see that Igor is again nowhere to be found, I could just drop this scorched blob in the trash and mention nothing. Doesn't take a genius to see that would be the smartest thing to do lest risk of Igor getting a swelled head.

More of the Helsing-Dracula situation

    Igor shows me evidence from a succession of hidden camera video feed files demonstrating that Detective Helsing is no longer in residence at Deichtenstein's Inn. Then he shows me some infrared and satellite images indicating that something about the size of a skinny bear or man may be camped on a high ridge across the valley. Bears don't stay in one place like this. The strategic location of it's position keeps us from directly spotting what or who it might be with the telescope or far ranging infrared imager, it is behind a large ridge fold about twelve kilometers away. I forget just enough geology to be able to describe this rock formation accurately by it's given term. I instruct Igor to keep an eye out by a hack into (name of sovereign country)'s surveillance satellites as they pass over to see if whatever or whoever this is ever moves itself into a line of sight position with our castle.

   If this is Helsing himself and he is camping up there with some new manner of surveillance device of his own then he is isolated from the view of other mortals. From where he is if I can't see him then no one in the village can see him. This valley is remarkably picturesque for it's unique rock formations. Even if he moved to where I could see him then still no one in the village could see him, the lower ridges occlude a line of sight from it's location to that high spot. I wonder if he has noticed that he can't see the village from where he is. Further maintained surveillance on our part will reveal if he is in contact with anyone; if anyone is bringing up supplies, etc. If he has a cell phone he would need a solar charger, and would only have about six hours of direct sunlight to charge the batteries, the ridges here are that steep. If he is operating some kind of electronic surveillance device it too would need batteries...but if it was set up on a line of sight to our castle then it would receive about three hours of additional sunlight, and he could be monitoring the device from behind the ridge outcrop wall formation thing, whatever it is called. 

  I summon Igor back to get him to look carefully to see if he can also spot some kind of small device on a line of sight to us situated on the ridge facing us, in front of this hiding spot. I suppose I could laser away part of the occluding rock formation, but there is a sheep farm in the hills below where the many tons of rock debris would fall. That translates into another episode with the torches and sharp farm implements outside our main gate, and rude behavior towards any interns unaccompanied in the village by Igor. Also of late the American intelligence community seems to have a real talent for detecting the use of high energy particle projection devices anywhere on the surface of the earth. Except they call them "weapons" or "your laser cannon" in the explicitly terse communiques I have received from them after some recent test shots aimed at the moon. I'm fairly sure I didn't hit anything with their flag on it, they didn't send me a bill.   

  All current index A4 specimens are all away to various corners of the globe, doing what I designed them to do best. The index A4 specimen server cluster monitors and archives all incoming signals. We are currently out of inventory any kind of organism that I could program to go over there just to watch Helsing from up close without the risk that the same organism would try to eat him.  Had not Dracula asked that I seek some course of action that will inspire Helsing's return to that neck of the woods (heh) in Romania where Dracula lurks and into the waiting fangs of his number two bride I would probably set about the use of that hungry organism forthwith.
 Let's see what the satellites tell us.

Helpful lab hints #4 specimen anesthesia protocols

 Foremost in the maintaining of operative functions for the type of work we do here is to first specify in the long view the most essential of tools to keep ready at hand. Aside from  those such as found on the standard surgical tray in any operating theater scoped in the practice of western invasive procedures are the instruments comprising the anesthesia protocol. A refined art in itself, the application of anesthesia aids greatly whilst in the midst of the practice of many types of procedures. Should the unusual situation arise where more time is needed to complete the task at hand, especially when it is noticed that relied upon assistance is suddenly nowhere to be found, it is considered prudent to have additional implements of anesthesia at the ready.

 A situation arose where the eventual outcome forced me to remind Igor that though I had trouble during the rising drama of the situation seeking the anesthesia tool when it was most needed I found myself recalling quite well where the bullwhip was hanging in it's spot on the wall. 

 I felt ridiculous saying it to him. Over these past two hundred years it has grown fruitless in attempting to instruct Igor by means of corporal discipline. He has obviously grown immune to such a degree that the last time I whipped him I discovered that he was merely engaging in some silly pantomime of agony at each stroke of the lash. Either through excessive scarring or sheer endurance of will he had become immune to the sting of the whip. He was in fact mocking the ritual. He wasn't mocking me, he belittled the ritual of corporal punishment by placing it in the scope of absurdity where it belongs. It made me look foolish instead of feeling guilty.
 We had both become anesthetized within the necessary suspension of dignity required when one person tries to inflict his will upon another by means of disciplinary brutality.

Eyeful for the interns

   When Igor is giving the indoctrination speech to new batches of interns he likes to regale them with stories of previous lab assistants who went on to greater heights and wider avenues of recognition. Nikola Tesla seems to make a big impression, and in the past 30 years his name has received a much larger scope of recognition, as well it should. Heisenberg also seems to raise eyebrows, of all the more recent big names.
  That so many more young people are able to even go to college in the  past thirty years than in the previous centuries prior to WW2 adds significant levels of dilution to the prospects that any of these recent bunches will go on to distinguish themselves, at least to the level of celebrity (or in some cases, infamy) that previous workers have gone on to achieve. That they will go on to be part of a vast workforce divided into small groups all working together precludes the possibility or even the real need for there to be a personality associated with any new technology breakthrough. New breakthroughs or advances are now associated with the labs or organizations where teams of scientists work together. Cern is an excellent example. I have a serious desire to get down into that tunnel and poke around with the innards of that super collider; but they probably have swarms of workers mulling over it 24/7 like frantic bees. My guess is even if I could pull it off I might be disappointed at what I find. Probably if I put my mind to it I could get comparable results much faster merely using bacterial chimeras with model constructs in microscopic media. Except then I wouldn't need to build a circular multi-kilometer tunnel under two countries, so Cern and it's backers do edge me out there in the fun factor.
 Maybe a tour for Igor and the interns could be arranged.. I could implant image collation bacteria in the eyeballs of the interns while they sleep. This bacteria triggers a layered image set banked as phosphor stacks on the back of the eyeball. As different spectra of light comes through the cornea the bacteria is triggered to a cycled emulsion that adds layers. All a person has to do is turn their head or blink to delineate differing spectra of light. If only I could develop a method of retrieving the phosphor stacks without having to replace the eyeball itself. I mean, what if I replaced an intern's eye with a different color eye because I was out of the needed matching color of iris?  Plus some of them might get curious when they all stand around noticing that they all have itchy eyes yet no other symptoms nor subsequent development of conjunctivitis later. And it would be a stretch to drug them all and hurry to complete the procedure on all of them in one night, and that's if everything went smoothly.
 I would try an index A4 specimen, but if they go that far underground I doubt we could maintain contact considering the intensity of the electromagnetic fields they would be immersed in down there.

Castle Newton-Steyn in sunny Bavaria

 Actually, no. This is not a picture of our castle where everything that you read about in this blog takes place. This is Castle Neuschwanstein built by mad King Ludwig in 1869, not Castle Newton-Steyn built by mad Doctor Frank______'s family starting sometime in the 12th century.
 Though shockingly similar in appearance, Castle Newton-Steyn is built of black stone, and that's not really the name. The villagers call it simply 'the castle' and everyone knows where they mean. You won't find it on the map, though on some older maps (those in archives where Igor hasn't gotten in yet with his big bottle of white-out) you will find the humble village of Heidelweiche Constabulary, and then an undefined dark mass just up the mountainside from it's valley. Somewhere near Bavaria and Austria.
 Obviously though, an architect in the employ of mad King Ludwig seemed possessed of a remarkably photographic memory at a time when taking a real photograph was a feat of near magic.

 Satellite imagery? There are some sophisticated light photon disbursement instruments up on top of the keep, aimed upward covering a .24 degree arc. Nobody bothers us about any of it, how on earth would an intelligence agency be able to explain this one without peripheral risk of retreading some extremely sensitive topics? The satellite passes over and takes a picture, and the new guy in the image downlink room looks and sees sheep and maybe a strange barn or two in an alpine meadow. The guy who has been there twenty years supervising this particular download says "next slide, kid; mark this one just as you see it and don't look at it again." The kid who is trusted to work in this room knows what else the weight in his tone of voice implies. 
  It's a good thing the satellite can't look too closely at the sheep.

Piltdown Man vs Newton-Steyn's creatures.

   Did anyone like that movie where the two software engineers built the time machine out of cardboard boxes and duct tape then hid it in a storage facility so their wives wouldn't find out and make them take it apart? Some of the interns and Igor watched this movie the other night after work on the new widescreen. I found out what it was about later after I asked Igor what he was laughing at.

  I used to be fascinated by quantum physics, now it arrives just short of making my eyes glaze over. Grim sinkholes fulla red herrings abound if you deftly posit an unspoken notion of the possibility existing that anything can happen at anytime for any reason. University tenures of every shape and size built on any theoretical construct as long as it contains plethoral plenitude of ten dollar words arranged in ironic or juxtaposed wordplay fascinating enough for the university dons to imagine classrooms full of wide eyed kids mesmerized by not much more than a whole lotta shilly shally and the timely tossing around of reverenced big names. Most of all the dons imagine the kid's parents or some grant shelling out the dough to keep an eye on those kids for four…six…eight+ years…

 Whatever theory results in reliable working hardware renders all theoretical arguments against the theory with the reliable working hardware moot.
  The guy who invented the wheel did it like this: he had no slide rule. He saw some rocks rolling down a hill, a landslide or something. Then he noticed the shape of the full moon and the sun (at sunset when it’s easy to look at). Genius cave man that he is figures: if there was a rock shaped like the sun or the moon…then..but loses the rest of it. Some years later, his grandson, hearing these stories from pop about grandad's sun shaped rock being special for some reason, gets the notion to take a rock and bash it with another harder rock until it IS shaped like the sun or the moon... while HIS son sees him doing it. The great grandson gets the notion to lift it off dad's work slab, turn the thing on it’s side and watch it roll. The invention of the wheel. Too bad great-granddad got et by the panther and missed the historic moment.  
    Or let’s follow our complicated invention-by-way-of-wrangling-the-theory argument. Just reference the achievements of all the proponents of the Piltdown Man during it’s lengthy stretch of academic reverence. Consider the respected scholars of the late 19th century awash in solemn hubris avowing on their pillars of academia that man will never fly. Or those that said the AC motor was a perpetual motion scam. My favorite was the late 19th century academic who said that man should just give up on science because when reflecting on the sheer huge scale of wonders already revealed one can only come to the conclusion there is nothing left to discover. A perfect example of the kind of deductive reasoning plumb from the type of mind that cannot see the forest for all the trees.

  I will say, hidden here in my guise, that within twenty years we will see a working test hardware device that will ultimately result to the creation of a "faster"-than-light-with-no-time-dilation craft in the same way a paper airplane ultimately resulted to the American's SR-71. (using the SR-71 as a metaphor for a flying machine that is quite far up the evolutionary ladder from the paper airplane.)
  And the Big Bang is this generation’s Piltdown Man.

Picture of Igor, back from lunch with interns

I caught this picture of Igor as he was coming back from lunch in the village with the interns. I think the camera adds ten pounds to his hunchback. For this particular photo I had to photoshop out the background as there were objects of a sensitive nature that Igor's hunch did not occlude.

Helpful lab hints #3: electric gridwork safeguard

  If the flames don't get them...I can count on the electrical gridwork. The use of this protocol is the measure of resort following evidence that the flames prove 60% ineffective; mostly indicated if the specimen is still moving. If the subject has not been rendered inert following saturation in what amounts to immersion in about 5000 degrees of chemically induced scorch-plasma, the next step (and in certain conditions this becomes an automated response) the grid will initiate and isolate the ‘out of control’ organism in an arc channeling some 70,000 to 110,000 watts through it's mass.
I have to credit Igor with the implementation of this safeguard. Following a particularly close call with subject E-87a that was only resolved with Igor's deft wielding of a fire axe (a very lucky stroke into E-87a's ganglion brainstem) we discussed the idea of a second 'hands-off' suppression option. Igor's plucky axemanship was partially a success owing to the fact that E-87a was designed to function with no visual reception senses; meaning it had no eyes and couldn't detect Igor lurching quickly towards it with the axe.
What I never expected was that even with all that flame it's scales hardly looked burnt. It had only paused it's thrashing momentarily as the flames engulfed it, but we can't operate the throwers in a spurt longer than 14 seconds without risking structural heat damage to the entire castle. Usually that amount of heat is as destructively effective as the flame booth, depending on the survivability protocol designed into the organism (as unexpectedly observed in the case of E-87a).
Obviously, some subjects are intended to have certain invulnerabilities. As of yet I have nothing in the specimen design library that can withstand an electric arc exceeding 50,000 watts for longer than 17 seconds.
Igor double checked this fact after seeing a movie called "The Thing". He then asked me to watch the 1951 film's final scene where the story's protagonists resolve their problem (which involved an inability to negotiate with an extraterrestrial) by running what looked like a few short thousand watts through the body of this unlucky visitor from another world. Igor, inspired by the cleverly brutal resolve of the movie's heroes, explained to me his idea of implementing the secondary 'electrical gridwork' (his term) lab protocol disposal safeguard. Had this not been a week after the event of E-87a with Igor and his plucky fire axe, I would have poo-poo'd the whole idea. But it made sense, and truth be told I was beginning to get ideas following E-87a's autopsy. This exam focused particular attention on the subject's seemingly flame resistant scales. My muse instructed me in the probability of creating an organism that could survive for a short time while submerged in molten rock. But in case of yet another 'developmental mishap' and this time with a subject largely impervious to intense flame we would need that second protocol. Igor's electrical gridwork idea (inspired by something he saw in a movie, of all things) seemed an acceptable solution.
We did, however, manage to destroy more lab equipment than I anticipated during the tests to determine what gauge of chicken wire could withstand all that power.

Remarkable scientific milestones, #1

This nutritional paste is pretty good. We whipped it up for the growth nubs, makes it easy for feeding within hours of their spawn. Just plop a handful into each maw every two hours for 17 days, then a handful every 6 hours for the next 43 days. I’m pretty sure it’s not much more than baby food, except Igor tripled the growth hormone count to cover the nub’s 60 day spurt to mass index A, when the course DNA can be applied.
We’ve come a heckuva long way from digging up corpses and sewing together the most viable parts to make a whole creature. Got the idea for the nubs reading Darwin’s notes on the sea cucumber. I think it was Darwin with the sea cucumber; that was a long time ago. Of course now, (thanks to the efforts of universities and corporate research servers around the world) extensive data on almost any topic is retrievable within scant seconds thanks to the internet. If we’ve come a long way since raiding graveyards, we’ve come an even longer way from the time when I would spend hours in the library flipping through heavy volumes or bound journals to now where all I need is to tote this laptop with me everywhere. Everything we need comes in via the coaxial cable from either the dish array on top of the tower keep or over the cable TV service provider’s monthly subscription. I prefer using the satellite for more sensitive issues.
Last year a clever intern feeding the nubs suddenly made the sea cucumber connection as she plopped a half cup of nutritional paste into one of the nub's maws. She came running up to me breathless, rambling enthusiastically about my brilliant synthesis of a sea dwelling organism and mammalian metabolic functions into one funny smelling chimera macrophyte. I reminded her that around here we call them 'growth nubs' or just 'nubs' and instructed her to mind the nutritional paste she was about to spill from her bucket. She ran gleefully back to her feeding chore, babbling happily to the floor and ceiling about how everything she was taught in bio 101 would have to be rewritten. A budding biotech engineer for the 21st century. I figure, well what are any of these students gonna tell people: "oh sure, we interned for this mad scientist who managed to impart a mammalian physiogyte onto a plant cellular substrate and got them to grow within 60 days to a humanoid zygote that is able to produce varying percentages (based on alternating metabolization ratios) of the oxygen it requires." They know all the other interns would just laugh at them: “what did he do next, get them to walk and talk? ha ha ha ha!”
Walking and talking takes another four months, from index A to index A2; and sometimes that flamebooth comes in handy when the talking gives indications it’s only gonna resolve to endless shrieks after a week of reaching index A2.
At index A2.2 species interaction starts to become important, and Igor transforms from occasionally helpful/bungling hideous hunchback assistant to (of all things) caring nurturer. At least from the maturing A2-A3 nub’s perspective. Even more shocking is when a fully matured properly functioning A4 organism will still look at Igor the way a child recognizes a beloved parent.
Now that’s the basis for a scary horror movie.

Immortality #2

  I know that all the interns have overheard or snooped around enough in my files to surmise that Igor and I are immortal, but I wonder if they think it's just some personal gallows humor joke between Igor and myself. Wouldn’t be a stretch after what they see in this lab.
  I sometimes toy with the idea of secretly imbuing the interns with the chimera protein, but the procedure isn’t quite as quick as an inoculation or the simple swallowing of a pill. Plus, how would they be able to understand their condition with their own personal health maintenance professionals or even their families when in forty years they still appeared as they did in their early twenties?  

What blunders never cease

Heh, and what hard apples have fallen from my tree. Right now I can hear Igor directing the interns in their wrangling of one of those hard apples. Too often the results of my labors can be said to be more nutty than fruitful as the kids struggle to get G-117 into the flame booth. This time they are all wearing plenty of proper protection. G-117 doesn't know it's going into the flame booth any more than it could be wracked with hunger sitting in front of a bathtub full of nutritional paste and would starve to death before the proper motor neurons sequenced the necessary nerve receptors to immerse it's own hideous maw in the paste. Even more remarkable would be if G-117 extended one of it's nine tentacles into the nutritional paste, swirled up a small mass of it then retracted the paste-coated tentacle into it's maw. At that point I would win the Nobel Prize even if G-117 managed to consume part of the tentacle along with the paste. Then swallowing would be the next miracle, and I think I even heard one of the interns make this very same remark (though I'm not sure if he was referring to lab work).
Do I have high hopes for G-118? I have charts and slides and this laptop. One of the interns is tasked with getting the content of the charts and slides into the server where I can access it, but I don't blame her if that stuff gets backed up. At the moment it's much more of a priority that G-117 goes into the flame booth, for even the newest intern learned what that iodine-sulfurish smell meant. There are always priorities like these popping up in this lab. The interns follow each other's lead, after only about one week they don't need any prodding from me or Igor to recognize it could mean their very lives are in considerable jeopardy if they don't move fast at the proper moment.
At this proper moment Igor flicks the switch and G-117 shows no reaction whatsoever as the flames consume to fine grit every kilogram of it’s smelly hideous writhing mass.
The interns trudge down the passage in their armor to the decontamination shed. By twos they clank through the acid spray, the armor has to lose an external layer of it’s titanium-silvered shelling no less than 6/10ths of a millimeter to be reusable.

Oversized personalities and how they get that way, #1

   A little push, a little nudge - and from here and there some very subtle grudge. Pluralized, then personalized. Doesn't take much, and before you know it you are digging up evidence in a search for a method to become immortal. Sometimes literal evidence, things you can touch with your hand. Things that can end up touching you back a bit too literally after you push all the right buttons. You end up being amazed in retrospect at all the guesses that ended up later looking like the shrewdest of strategies but at the time felt like the most desperate of blunders.
  Hard science paves a lot of roads all leading to new university campuses where become endowed soft plush new chairs interpreting the long steps and scrawls of the most direct  practitioner. The same practitioning toiler who years before on more than one night propped himself in front of the lab table on the steady prod of one hard stool to finish all of another  review of slide and dish samples looking for that one aberrant protein. Two hard stools on some nights.
   Now we just get some interns to do all that crap.

An intern issue

  Though Igor claims otherwise, I suspect one of the interns may be showing signs of encroaching lycanthropy. A little lightbulb in my head went off a few days ago following the 'deer hunting' episode. (2010, Dec; "Igor - deer hunting")
Had I been paying closer attention I would have noticed the number of interns in the 'hunting party' fell short by one of the total number of actual interns I know to be working here in the castle. That, and the sudden appearance the other day of what looked to me like long canine hairs around the drain in the locker room showers.
So now I can conclude that none of the holding pen tenants managed an escape but that one intern may have been a little careless at feeding time with one particular pen's occupant. Forge steel wire gloves and titanium plate arm sheaths are heavy and quite uncomfortably cumbersome, but they do guarantee one's immortal soul will remain immutable when accursed fangs are unable to penetrate the flesh of those hands that feed them.
The followup paperwork could be a potential chore were I taking on interns from schools that were not among the extensive list of my alma maters. Reports back that an intern placed in my charge had suddenly succumbed to becoming a werewolf might not be taken by some schools with the same old grain of salt swallowed past accustomed familiarity.

Helpful lab hints #2: flame suppression or otherwise

     Most mad scientist's labs measure evidence of their prudence in the extent of their automated quick reacting fire suppression system maintained and ready for sudden deployment.
    While also anticipating many of the same situations decrying an equal level of wary prudence, I can also avow to the usefulness of a second system that can be used in some instances immediately prior to the deployment of the fire suppression system. This would be a reference to the network of overhead, wall, and floor mounted flame throwers we learned the sharp value of many many years ago.

Mary Shelley (3 of many); Lake Geneva hijinx

 Some specific events occurring during the summer of 1816 round the shores of Lake Geneva ended up inflicting a large throughput of cultural legacy down many successive avenues of mass media. Either those of Mary's purposefully intended forthwith; or following in turn on successive generation's influenced instincts exploitment extant.
  My initial thoughts at the time were swimming in some concern that Percy Shelley might consider his wife Mary's frequent visits to my house across the lake to be borne of a nature other than literary inspiration.  Until I visited their house and quickly surmised his interests of ilk were not bound in the matrimonial safekeeping of Mary but were instead some avid prospect within a mutually gained pact of 'heavy lifting' entered into between himself and the other oversized personality domiciled on that shore opposite my own.
  Regardless of my own personal taste and irregardless of what measured distance I became good friends with all three. Albeit with caveats, though broached in good stead via the common acquiesced manner of the genteel. Which means I didn't mind where they practiced their swordsmanship as long as they kept it well within the furthest round circumference of rapier's swipe and far askew the perchance of my periphery.

Igor - deer hunting

  I look up from my work and see Igor shuffling past with a hunting rifle, followed by all the interns, similarly armed. Having been years since I even knew where the old weapons locker had been moved to, I thought nothing of it since I was preoccupied with emplacing an inner bone transceiver on a specimen who was giving the gurney straps a very thorough test of binding tolerance.

  Later up in my office I am making notes when I see down across the floor the bunch of them returning. Two of the interns are limping, one has a huge bandage over his head and one eye, and four of them are dragging one of those extra extra large neoprene cadaver bags. Whatever is inside is not a cadaver and might be more easily transportable in the next largest bag size.

 Igor comes by on the catwalk in front of the office door overlooking the scene at just the opportune moment that would have afforded me the clearest view of the drama enfolding below. He pretends to be surprised to notice me here as though he was walking by on his way to somewhere else. The rifle is slung over his shoulder, it's stock and strap stained with some kind of fluid.

 "Oh, there you are. This came in the mail", and places a package on my desk that I know actually came four days ago. I wonder that he isn't shrewd enough to have handed me the package with the other hand that perhaps doesn't have fresh bite marks... or perhaps the other hand has worse wounds. I play along as I notice he continues to stand in the spot that perfectly blocks my line of sight down to where I can hear the interns struggling with the bag and it's content. A short exclamation of shock is quickly shushed by three other voices. From somewhere else below I hear a sharp sudden wail that can only come from the dispensary as I picture the two limping interns removing the field dress head bandage from the third.
  As if concerned and noticing it for the first time I indicate the bite marks on Igor's hand. I can now hear something dripping on the floor behind him.

  "Oh, we were out..." he pauses and I realize he didn't prepare a cover story. "uh...um...deer hunting. One of the kids saw a deer."

  Later I must personally go down to the holding pens and try to discern which specimen had escaped and how it managed to do so.

Deichtenstein's Inn getaways

    Every six weeks we take the interns and book all the rooms for a weekend in Deichtenstein's Inn down in the village as a reward for the cumulative weeks of hard work. Over the years I have observed how progressively fewer of these kids seem  less traumatized (than their counterparts from past years) when confronted with some of the more 'hard science' aspects of working in our lab. Those bloodcurdling shrieks of a newly spawned growth nub still catch me off guard sometimes. I remind myself that perhaps I should look in on what kind of media entertainment these kids are subjected to during their upbringing. 
  Deichtenstein's Inn is one of those beautiful old alpine buildings that appears to be of a certain size from the front but inside just seems to go on and on. I've been in and out of there for some 200 years and I still haven't personally been into every nook and cranny.  But every manner of my creations have, and it's only by following the live feed from embedded cameras that we can test how well our remote control systems work.
 As they collect their room keys the interns soon find out that like most things they learn from me it's better to pierce both hemispheres with one thrust of the probe. Even on a short break, as I take each intern aside and place in their hands the first of many small power modules and a map of where the hidden camera it powers is located. It's a big old picturesque building, and for the two night visit the interns find themselves not as they imagined hoisting stein after stein of Heidelwiche Doppelganger ale but instead wriggling long and stifling trails through labyrinthine wall and ceiling crawlspaces to replenish numerous hidden camera power packs.

Mary Shelley (2 of many)

 An aspect of her storytelling that I particularly enjoyed, and is renewed everytime I see yet another retelling, is how she spared the reader the spectacle of the engineering of my work. When I saw the first movie back in 1931 I was amazed how much of her book they disregarded in favor of demonstrating a 'technical' angle. In Mary's book there is virtually nothing expounding on the nuts-n-bolts side of the creation of the creature(s). In the film, there seems to be little else other than the doctor and his assistant in the lab-castle, and the scary-monster side of the creature as depicted. A whole section on the creation, and then some drama extracted out of that act, leading to significant elements that have no original corollary in the book. The whole idea ended up working much better in the first film sequel with the comedic angle reflecting the absurd act of appropriating just the book's title and ditching all of the substance.

  In my mind I picture the people who made the film(s) traveling to Great Britain merely for the purpose of dancing on Mary Shelley's grave.

That phone call with Dracula

  The odd thing is that Dracula called me.
  In the midst of a heavy strap-tightening struggle to more gainfully secure a frantic new specimen, and just as it was dawning on me that I was doing yet another of Igor’s assigned tasks, who should appear at my shoulder but Igor himself to tell me that Dracula was on line two. After assuring that Igor had a firm two handed grasp on the torso brace and also assisting an intern with unclogging an intestine bevel then directing the intern to help Igor, I took the call in the lunchroom.
 Speaking with Dracula on the phone causes me to wonder: if Bram Stoker were alive today, and eavesdropping on our conversation, how many additional chapters might he suddenly feel compelled to write to reflect some drastic change in tone from those preceding parts of the Count's 'biography' concerning our present day contretemps with Detective Helsing, our common current nemesis. If not an implausible bloodline descendant of the Stoker book’s genteel Van Helsing than an accursed usurper of identity in some vile practice of self aggrandizement (for what strange purposed means to what non-incredulous law enforcement agency) is best left to the weighted scrutiny of perhaps not a biographer but an introspective composer of Victorian era science fiction? I then listen with suddenly sparked incredulity as the Count waxes in my ear his bemoanments of how long it might take me to scare Helsing back to Transylvania. He wants Helsing back?
   The question hangs my sudden pause as I consider what reply other than a catalog of my efforts to that very end I have tried and succumbed failure to towards the result it seems now the both of us would prefer? He wants him back? I would offer to link the recorded video feed file of Helsing kept at bay atop the radiator in his room at the inn while a dozen of my rat size attack dachshunds with blazing eyes and lethal looking claws rend long swift menacing strokes in the inn's hardwood floor, but Dracula never took to computers and only recently deigned that  the gatehouse of his castle could be electrified and a landline phone installed. Which is where I imagine he is placing this call to me from. I describe the scene with the dachsunds as far as I can without succumbing to the paroxysm of laughter I fell victim to upon my view of the original live feed, and I can hear the Count giggle at the description of the innkeeper’s wife, Frau Gruella Deichenstein, sweeping in (literally) and in two short deft broom swoops dispatching all eight of the miniaturized attack dachshunds. I clarify to the Count that the Frau is as vision-impaired as Igor and likely she surmised Helsing was cornered atop the radiator by mere rats. She acted so remarkably swiftly that the dachshunds could not have responded to her presence fast enough for her to realize that she may have risked considerable peril attempting to confront creatures that were of my handiwork. The villagers, with some long familiarity of the latter, generally regard my creatures as belonging to a ‘kill first, sup on remains progressively” pedigree so that a terror inspired protocol of precautionary fleeing is the deeply ingrained common response among the village populace when confronted with many (but not all) of my creations. 
  However - Dracula has phoned me, it seems, to inquire what my course of action might be to urge Helsing back to Transylvania. He wants Helsing back; this is contrary to what I would have expected to hear from him when it had been my very intent to drive Helsing there, guessing that Dracula had been glad to be rid if him and probably hadn’t given a second thought to where he might’ve gone, nor would likely be happy to see him return. Somehow he found out Helsing was here, in our village, which means that Dracula searched for where Helsing had gone?
   Standing in the lunchroom I muse that Dracula, like me, is also an immortal being, and has been so for about 300 years longer than I have. As I pause waiting for him to say something I wonder - has the weight of this burden finally affected the Count into some profound realization of affection for Helsing, a perennial nemesis whose pursuit, like those of his ancestors, maybe now the Count sees as the only human constant in his life, a living counterpoint to the loneliness of his long immortality? Living forever, you watch any non-immortals you come into contact with eventually age and die, their bloom of life before you fades, then the long slow decay and eventual collapse to corporal dust. Dracula has seen or caused this to happen to Helsing’s ancestors, has it affected him finally that he chooses to instead embrace Helsing in some manner of profound irony, as if to punctuate by rough counterpoint the pitfalls of immortality? Or is he hinting to me in his roundabout fashion that I should imbue Helsing with my chimera protein so as to inflict upon Helsing the cruel first hand perspective of what unshiftable weight actually accompanies the attainment of mankind's ultimate mantle? He could just turn Helsing into a vampire himself, but likely against Helsing’s will. Or…does Helsing have no offspring to further the honorable centuries-long family heritage battle with the fearsome Count Dracula?  
   As if reading my mind, Dracula offhandedly remarks that one of his brides had been for some fifteen years waiting in a strange state of purposefully postponed undead-sexual frustration to ‘allay her needs’ upon the person of Helsing. But then Helsing left just two nights prior to her lustful fulfillment of inflicting her intentions upon her intended. With a balloon burst "poof" my modeled scenarios of the possible unseen intentions of Dracula disappear with realization that his bride (one of three, I believe) must’ve been subjecting herself to some serious tease issues. For fifteen years. Ah.. so at this moment Dracula now also has to deal with another sort of weight that...
  He interrupts my slow realization asking me what I think I will try next. 

Wily Detective Helsing and some small dogs

  I instructed Igor to set the dogs loose for the purpose of flushing Detective Helsing from his decampment in the village. Keep in mind these dogs are not your run-of-the-mill rottweilers  with spiked collars, tearing towards the village in picturesque rabid savagery. Have you ever seen those increasingly smaller versions of doberman pinschers? Now picture in your mind a short filmstrip revealing successively smaller generations of dachshunds. Yes, the little dogs that resemble a long sausage with short legs and a cute face. Through the efforts of my meddling I have succeeded in reducing dachshunds down to the size of rats. My ultimate goal is a mouse or even roach sized specimen.
   When I first showed one of them  to Igor he made the horrific assumption that I had merely elongated a rat and used brown shoe polish on it’s fur. Only after I held the snarling little beast within the focus area of Igor’s myopia did he recognize the canine genus dachsundius sausuaglius characteristic in it’s shrunken state. As it snapped viciously at his nose Igor looked even more closely and then inquired if this was Sizzler. Not Sizzler himself, I beamed, but a sixth generation clone. I was delightfully surprised  that my reckless manipulation of Sizzler’s genetic donation had not resulted in further aberrations so horrific that a sixth generation replica did not visibly reveal distortions to physical characteristics beyond those purposefully intended. It caused a profound boost to my pride that even a visually impaired dolt like Igor was able to recognize Sizzler’s features in the clone’s, and that other than the glowing red eyes, razor-glistened double claws and reduced size it was indistinguishable from any normal dachshund. Indeed, in the longer view I am quite proud of the fact only about 96% of the results of my labours result in specimens too hideous for the unprofessional eye to behold without experiencing an immediate sense of loathing and broad scale prejudicial revulsion. The part that I don’t get is that these sensations are not reserved for any of the wretches thrashing in the formaldehyde of their display jars but for me?
 Anyway, Igor has released a squad of these small dachshunds to see if we can’t inspire Helsing to practice his snoopery on some other proto-biologist’s castle lair. I have a hard time picturing Helsing’s superior’s justifying to themselves the decision to further the support of his investigative efforts following review of his field reports: “Newton-Steyn’s miniature attack dachshunds cornered me on top of the radiator in my room at the inn. The claws on these things could open a can of tuna with one swipe.”
  I really need to call Dracula and get some kind of sounding on why Helsing is here instead of there in Transylvania camped outside of his castle. Their rivalry goes back through generations of Helsing blood lines; so to speak.

Mary Shelley (1 of many)

Ever since I met Mary Shelley and acceded to her solicitude for my collusion with an “embellished biography” of my work, I have been fascinated to continue to follow the extended coattails of that one story. Even years after Mary's passing I am intrigued at the vast industry of indulgent invention behind the myriad of interpretations. I am flattered for her. I reserve gratuitous self absorption for the efforts of my actual work; not the ludicrous charade as it is often depicted to be.