Glass Shatters (12 page)

“Um, sure. There’s nothing else I need to do first? I wasn’t expecting, well, it’s been so long—”

“It’s up to you, Charles. Whatever you want.”

“Of course, then. Of course.” I follow Peter as he starts out
at a clip down the corridor. I practically have to jog to keep up with him. His shoes against the hardwood are like a metronome to my thoughts, but my mind soon pulls away, diving and swirling. I know that I should consider myself lucky, that I should accept the status quo, but I want to know more, so badly that the questions blister like heartburn deep in my chest. Peter stops to take a key out of his pocket and before I can help it, the words spill out of me.

“Peter, what happened to me? I’ve been gone, haven’t I, about six months or so?”

“It’s all been taken care of, Charles.”

“But, you know what happened to me? Where I’ve been? Because I don’t remember. I know I shouldn’t tell you this, but I don’t remember at all.”

Peter unlocks the door. He pauses to give me a bemused half smile. “Come in. I’d be more than happy to explain.”

My office looks more like an aquarium than anything else. The white walls reflect a blue luminescence as fluorescent bulbs light up the tanks, enormous tanks of water that extend from the floor to the ceiling on three out of the four sides of the room. Each of the tanks is subdivided into sections, and in each section there’s a colony of jellyfish floating around. The bell and tendrils of the jellyfish are translucent, and inside each of the bells is a radiant red bulb held within a gelatinous tube. The only other light in the room is the glow of the computer screens. They are mounted on top of an enormous black printer and line the fourth wall. I reach my fingers up to the glass, imagining if I could touch one of the swaying jellyfish, what it would feel like. Peter flips on the
rest of the overhead lights and the room feels less eerie, less supernatural.

“
Turritopsis dohrnii
. The immortal jellyfish,” Peter says. I realize that I already know this somehow.

“The only known case of a metazoan that’s capable of reverting completely to a sexually immature state after having reached sexual maturity. Cell transdifferentiation—the jellyfish can alter the differentiated state of a cell and transform it into a new cell,” I say. I retrieve the knowledge from some far-off niche in my brain.

“That’s right.” Peter nods. He studies me again. I feel like a lab specimen. I sit down on one of the metal benches by the tanks and wonder what it’s like to be a jellyfish, if they ever wish they were more anchored. Peter sits down across from me, his feet rooted against the floor.

“You had a brain aneurysm, Charles. The blood vessel ruptured and you nearly died. You were in and out of consciousness for about a month and then spent the next several months in the hospital for rehabilitation. The doctors said that you would continue to have some issues with your episodic memory but that it will eventually return. I apologize for not staying with you the night I drove you home. I thought that you might enjoy some privacy.” Peter puts a hand on my shoulder, in a gesture that seems more artificial than genuine.

“And the old man who’s living with me? Do you know who he is?”

Peter’s eyes twitch upward for a moment, as if he’s trying to decide what to say. “I didn’t meet him. I would imagine a relative of some sort?”

Some gut instinct tells me that Peter is lying, either in whole or in part, but I have no idea why. I decide not to press him. I don’t want to ruin this.

“And you’re okay with this? With me working in the lab? I’m clearly not the person I used to be,” I say.

Peter smiles. “I would have you no other way than you are. You’re brilliant, Charles, beyond brilliant. Just look around you if you’re unsure.” The minimal wall space around the computers is covered with degrees and certificates, detailing and confirming my accomplishments.

“And if you can figure out a way to make our stem cells transdifferentiate,” Peter continues, “well, there would be almost no limit to our ability to renew dead or damaged tissue and organs in humans.”

I raise my hand to one of the awards, a certificate pressed in a frame, and when my fingertips touch the cool glass, a tingling sensation spreads through my arms and legs.

February 6, 2001

Age Twenty-Three

C
harles stands before a crowded auditorium. His face is still too young for his age, his cheeks too rosy, his glasses too big. He looks like a teenage boy wearing his father’s suit, without the clownishness of a child but lacking the bulkier body to fill out the shoulders and waist. His hair is shorter now, trimmed, an attempt at adulthood.

Charles should be smiling. Applause echoes through the auditorium as if millions of little girls are tap dancing. Another man with deep wrinkles and a fleshy neck stands next to Charles, shaking his hand as he gives him a framed certificate and a gold medal. The certificate is made out to Charles Lang, in recognition of his achievements in genetics and molecular biology. The man then takes a sheath of notes from his breast pocket, begins to speak. But the speech sounds garbled to Charles. He cannot focus on the man, the words. He cannot focus on anybody but Julie, Julie who he has not spoken to in four years, Julie who he imagines sitting in the front row of the audience, cheering and applauding. This moment should mean everything to Charles. He’s the youngest researcher to have ever received such an award. The award guarantees success, security, wealth, and a place in history as one of the most influential scientists of the twenty-first century.

Yet Charles can think of nothing besides Julie’s dark, flowing hair and silky skin. He feels an emotion for her that is beyond attraction, something that is caring and sweetness and longing and thirst, a desire for his chest to always be against hers and for his arms to be around her sturdy shoulders. And as the man garbles on behind him, voice booming, arms gesticulating, Charles realizes that he is in love with Julie, and that nothing else in the world can compare. After all this time, after all these years, he cannot believe he has never told her this before.

“C
HARLES
?” P
ETER SAYS, AND
I
GLANCE UP, CATCHING
my reflection in Peter’s glasses. My eyes are pink around the
edges, dark circles underneath. Four years? Why would I have gone so long without talking to Julie? Did we have a falling out somewhere along the way?

“Charles?”

“Mmm?”

“How does it all feel?”

“I don’t know. Exciting. Overwhelming. And what happens if I can’t replicate this cell transdifferentiation? What then?”

Peter folds his fingers together.

“Do you know when the vaccine was invented?” he asks.

“Of course.” I don’t actually know.

Peter paces around the office and then looks up. As he speaks, his voice is detached, barren, as if he’s reciting from a grocery list.

“You know, there was originally a great deal of tension regarding my takeover of the company and my active involvement in your research projects. I won’t say who in particular opposed it, but several of the scientists here thought I was completely over my head with my background in scientific history and consulting, that I should leave the research part to the ‘actual’ scientists. They thought all I was good for was the funding, nothing more.

“But none of them knew who invented the vaccine, British physician and scientist Edward Jenner. On May 14, 1796, Jenner’s patient, James Phipps, received the first smallpox inoculation, an inoculation that would go on to save millions of lives.” The name Jenner sounds familiar.

“But Jenner was only able to make such a discovery because of the scientific and historical stepping stones that
came before him. He couldn’t have developed his vaccine if it weren’t for Lady Mary Wortley Montagu in the early 1700s, who demonstrated to the British that variolation, or deliberately infecting healthy individuals with small amounts of smallpox, could make these individuals immune to the disease later in life. And before Lady Montagu was ever born, the Chinese and the Indians had been practicing approximations of variolation for nearly two thousand years.”

“Right,” I say. Jenner. There’s something there, at the tip of my tongue, memories that leave a bad taste in my mouth. Peter paces back and forth, as a professor might if he were just about to deliver the thesis to his lecture.

“You see, it is my belief that there is a paradigm for scientific breakthroughs, a recurring, algorithmic process that has occurred throughout history. And this algorithm that I have deciphered will enable societies to engage in more fine-tuned research practices and consequently lead to very accurate predictions about when a given scientific breakthrough is likely to occur. It’s my job to analyze these historical figures and statistics, and they point to you. You are the next step.”

The information comes to me, sour and heavy in the back of my throat. “Wasn’t Edward Jenner the one who first tested his smallpox vaccine on an eight-year-old boy?”

“Yes, and his discovery went on to eradicate one of the most destructive diseases from our planet.”

“Jenner vaccinated the boy without his father’s permission and then exposed him to smallpox. It would be like exposing a child today to Ebola or anthrax. The boy was violently sick for ten days. He could have died.”

“Sacrifices have to be made for the sake of scientific progress,” Peter says quietly. “It is illogical for our sentimental attachment to one life to get in the way of our potential to save many lives in the future.”

“And if I don’t want to make sacrifices? If I don’t want to be compared to a man who nearly killed a young child?”

Peter pauses. “You are going to be one of the most famous and prolific scientists who has ever lived, Charles. It doesn’t matter what you want.”

January 17, 2011

Age Thirty-Three