Saving Our Lives

Saving Our Lives

By - Robert Aaron Goldsborough

      Sometimes it is the daylight that I miss the most.  Then, at other times it is the stars.  Being confined has always been apart of my life.  I was born like everyone else escaping from the womb and hurrying into buildings that would save me from humanity.  My youthful home with its restrictions gave way through other buildings that educated me into the last self-induced cage.  The last cage before I came here.  We seem not to notice the confinements we place ourselves into until it is either too late or we are confined against our wills, such as what I am now dealing with.  The murder still seems too dreamlike for me to actually feel responsible, but maybe there was still a part of me that wanted it.  I struggle with these thoughts often.  It could be that I deserve to be here, kept away from others, maybe the best answer to what I tried to do.  It did not always feel like that though.  There was a time, not that long ago, that I thought I was providing a service to mankind.

         Up until just six months ago I was a research scientist, and a good one too, if I were to say so.  I had a name too.  I was called Doctor Rudolf Velt, but that was before things went wrong and I received this number stitched on my clothes.  I was on the forefront of genetic studies specializing in human organ transplants.  I was not responsible for the patient directly, but I still felt like what I was doing was benefiting someone.  There had always been problems in organ transplants.  Either there were not enough human organs to donate or there was the problem of tissue rejection in the patient.  The second problem was the worst because not only would the patient lose his or her new organ, but also you could not use that organ again.  It became a frustrating waste.  Something had to be done.  Many brilliant minds banged together for several years and came up with the idea of manufacturing artificial organs.  Great idea, too bad the synthetic components could not be made so that the patient's body would not reject them.  The brilliant minds banged together again and came up with the idea of harvesting organs from animals.  We already ate the beasts; why not use their organs instead of throwing them out?  They settled on experimentation with pigs.  As pigs have the most similar internal composition to man as any other animal.  This sounded great, but there was still the problem of a patient's natural immune system attacking the organ and rendering it useless.  So along came Dr. Velt, myself, with a brilliant degree in genetics.  I decided I would bang my head together with the other great minds and find a solution.  'We could trick a patient's body into thinking that the pig's organs belonged to it' I thought.  I was heralded as a genius and money was thrown at me to figure out how.

         To make a patient's body think that the new organ belonged to it you have to find a key that the immune system will react to in a positive way.  The whole body is a natural puzzle with one key that keeps everything in line.  Dio-Nuecleic Acid would be the key.  I would simply force human DNA on an unborn pig fetus giving its cells and organs the appearance of being human.  I was a hero and the first recipients were grateful.  I was helping to save lives.  I thought I was making everyone happy.  Then the first of the problems began.  Animal rights activists started commissions and petitions to stop us.  Threats arrived, followed by several nasty explosions reminiscent of the old abortion clinic dilemmas.  The medical community was aghast with a new situation.  Their way of saving lives did seem unjust and cruel to some.  They banged their collective heads back together and instead of giving up their new toy they came to me to improve it.  My team and I worked tirelessly, knowing that people's lives were at stake.  Every day that passed, we knew, meant that someone's Mother, Father, wife, husband, or child could be dying.  Within two months we came to a conclusion.  If we took the organs from something that did not seem alive no one could complain about us killing animals.  The scientific community applauded and threw more money at me.

         The original thing that we would make had to be organic as well as compatible with human beings.  The closest things we had to start with were our transgenic pigs.  We would start there.  Our first mistakes were exactly that.  We birthed monsters with our concoctions of custom manufactured DNA strains.  I was beginning to see the animal rights activist's view clearer with each failed creature.  Then it hit me.  We should stop trying to birth something crude and just grow it.  Our science had given us cloning in the past few years, so why not try?  We washed our hands of the unfortunate pigs and scraped up some of our genetic leftovers into a petri dish to start afresh.  The beakers boiled night and day separating strains of DNA from other assorted genetic stews.  We knew what we would find when we saw it.  On a magic day it showed up in test tube number twelve.  A mass of just the right tissues started to form.  We fed it and purified it trying to force growth.  It was succeeding.  In twelve weeks we had it formed.  A mass just larger than a basketball with a heart, liver, kidneys and other important organs was growing by help of oxygen and saline supply machines.  It was grotesque, being somewhat transparent and jelly-like.  As a matter of fact that was what we referred to it as.  Our jellyfish had no brain or other system that would give it true life.  We had created an organ farm that could be harvested without any fear of disrupting a living thing.  For, technically, this thing was not alive.  Machines were maintaining our jellyfish's organs and without them the organs would cease to function. 

         The medical society went nuts throwing even more money on us.  They forbid us from referring to our organ farm as a jellyfish and told us to keep quiet about the original mistakes.  No sense upsetting a community that was already tense about taking life away from innocent animals.  We proved to the world that the thing we created was not really alive and that it was nothing more than a sack of organs we grew and maintained by machines.  The activists gave a great sigh and consented, after long debates, that they could find nothing wrong with harvesting organs from a nonliving gelatinous sack.  We could manufacture and grow more of these organ farms but there was still one problem.  What could we refer to it as?  It was dubbed, unceremoniously (and rather hypocritically) by a head of the activists' community as just a 'Sack of Life'.  There were too many jokes whispered behind the activists' backs about this to mention.  Yet, all seemed happy about the SOL and the science of life saving continued.  I was offered the chair of American Genetic Research and the opportunity to run the first SOL organ farm.  I accepted and my team and I plunged forward.

         My most trusted fellow researcher was a young man we all called doctor Jax, even though he had not quite finished getting his Ph.D. he was invaluable in the first months of constructing a vast system of manufacturing and maintaining SOLs.  He worked on a new system of SOL support machines and the cloning procedure until he started to get the headaches.  We all thought it was just the stress; we were all starting to feel a little run down.  On a late Monday night right after I helped him set a new batch of SOLs to soak, Jax hit the floor in a violent seizure.  After three days in a coma he recovered and I sent him on a two-month vacation.  Another young student named Jill Sommers, who was not quite as diligent, but was almost as earnest, temporarily replaced him.  She faired well at first.  Then she was likewise overtaken by fierce headaches.  What was happening?  I had to know.  So I brought in other top-notch researchers to help me get to the bottom of the situation.  The medical community was hounding us for more organs and we had hit a snag.  Nothing could be determined and Jill's headaches subsided.  We plunged ahead.  The demand for our organs was increasing and I was forced to move into the SOL complex myself so I could stay on top of the recruits to keep the SOLs being manufactured as quickly as possible.  That was when I first sensed something weird.

         I was just beginning to drift off to sleep in the room I made for myself on the second floor, away from the actual lab for the SOLs.  The slight humming coming from their machines always had a way of singing me to sleep.  My head became very light and I felt like I was floating in a thick serum not unlike the solution the SOLs were laid in.  A chill crept over my semiconscious mind followed by a disturbing emotion of uncertainty.  I was disturbed by this because I knew (I do not know how else to say it) that the emotion was not mine.  Terror and claustrophobia built up on the foundation of uncertainty.  I began to feel smothered.  My mind rose up out of myself and turned to view my body resting in a large tank that resembled the SOLs receptacles.  I could see my body drowning in the thick fluid and my terror became unhinged.  I saw Jill standing a few feet away and called to her for help.  She turned with a sickening expression on her face and began to rub at her temples.  Jill was muttering something that I could not understand.  Panic made me scream at her for help.  I saw a dark trail that looked like blood trickle out of her left nostril and over her lips.  She was rubbing harder against her temples.  I shouted at her to stop and lift my body out of the receptacle.  Her hands were waving about, I thought I could almost hear her screaming, but as if she were quite a ways off.  More blood started to pour from her nose and her motions became even more frantic.  She started pulling away clumps of hair from her head.  I tried to reach out to her to get her to stop, but she just reached for a bench and grabbed a pair of sterile scissors.  With one fluid motion, that seemed to slow down in my dream, she struck herself in the left temple.  She stood there for a moment dangling her arms with the curved handle of the scissors protruding from her skull.  The blood was no longer coming from her nose and a look of peace came over her face.  I saw her turn on her heel as if nothing had happened.  Her feet moved a few strides before she stopped.  Her left hand went up to her head and the fingers felt at the scissors handle.  She stiffened as if she just realized what she had done.  Her arms went limp again, but her whole body followed.  She collapsed face first against a metal desk and I could swear that I heard it (as if from a distance).  The collision was devastating.  She contacted a tray full of sharp implements that tumbled with her.  She dragged down a burning Bunsen that had been heating more genetic material.  She became a short rain of fire and sharp metal.  What was left of her hair ignited first, followed by her white medical smock.  She landed face up with more lacerations visible than when she went down.  It took less than a minute for her skin to ignite and then I awoke.  My ears were filled with the screaming sounds of alarm.  The horrible blaring siren was warning of a fire in the lab.  I raced to the scene to see other interns extinguishing something large smoldering on the floor.  My stomach catapulted my dinner with the recognition.  I had dreamed the whole thing.  For there, on the floor, was the wasted form of Jill Sommers.  The whole incident was whisked away as an accident.  Too long of hours, too much stress, etc. had worn her down to carelessness.  I forced myself to accept this and told no one of my dream.

         The weeks passed and Jax returned looking tanned and healthy again.  He rushed about his duties with renewed vigor.  Yet, I felt that he knew something that he was not telling me.  After a few weeks, I cornered him in our modest cafeteria to pry his hidden secret out. 

         "You look a lot better Jax, my man." I was never really talented with either small talk or communicating to people half my age.

         "Yeah. A couple of weeks on the beach cleared me right up." He forced a smile.

         "Are you sure everything is okay?"

         "Sure. Why wouldn't it be?" He stuffed his mouth full of egg sandwich.

         "Oh, just checking. You just seem, um, different."

         "Well you know they say a coma is a pretty life altering thing. No matter how long you're under."

         "Yeah that's true, but do you remember anything from your coma. Just medically curious." I forced a smile.

         "Even though I've been a doctor since before you were born doesn't mean that I've had a lot of opportunity to talk to real human patients."

         "Always the researcher, eh Dr. Velt?"

         "Oh, yeah. I guess you could say that."

         "Well, let me see.  No I really don't remember seeing too much. But, I do remember a sense of great discomfort."

         "Really?"

         "Yeah. I remember still feeling that way when I came to.  I felt like I had been submersed.  I felt claustrophobic.  All I wanted to do was run out of the hospital room and find the biggest, flattest piece of ground I could find and lay there. I guess after being trapped in my own head for those days made me feel a little trapped." He stuffed his mouth with more egg.

         "Hmm. You're probably right. About the trapped feeling I mean. Thanks, see you in the lab."  I stood and left him to his meal.  I did not feel comforted by his omissions, but I knew that I would have to take what I got.  Besides, there would be lots of time to evaluate his behavior on the job.  The next week another young student named Kimberly came in to fill the spot that Jill had worked.  I was glad that things were getting back to normal.  I even started to feel like my dream was just a coincidence with the accident and that the others were right.  It was just an accident.

         The new SOL life support machines were coming along thanks to Jax's return.  He was back and I reveled in listening to him tinker new life into the inanimate objects that sustained our non-life forms.  We were storming headlong into the throws of not just completing our project on time, but ahead of schedule.  The big boys with the medical association were even hanging the carrot of bonuses over our heads.  We were more than pleased or proud of ourselves.  Then Jax suffered another seizure.  It was late one evening about two months after he had returned.  Kimberly was dolling out her strong and pungent version of coffee.  Jax sipped at his steaming ceramic mug staring at her through the heat waves.  I and Kim as well, had already taken the hint that Jax was rather fond of her.  Jax hand began to tremble and as I turned my eyes I beheld the sight of him jerking to his feet spilling the overheated contents down the front of his medical smock.  He did not utter the slightest noise.  I stood and approached to make sure that he was not burned when the arm that held his spilled mug shot forward launching the empty receptacle at my head.  I ducked but not before getting an image of his empty dilated eyes burned into my brain.  I scurried back to my feet and continued my approach asking if he was okay, or if he could even hear me.  There was still no sound from him.  I feared another seizure so I yelled for Kimberly.

         "Yes, doctor?" Her voice rang with her constant polite sweetness.  No wonder Jax was taken by her.

         "Quick, call Dr. Fallan in the infirmary. No, I don't care if he is asleep. I'm afraid Jax might be suffering a seizure."  Her face shot across Jax's smock with horror and turned away to find the phone.  Then Jax moved.  Like a somnambulist with a mission Jax leapt across a lab desk and landed on the floor in front of Kimberly.  She shrieked hurting my ears and rattling some beakers.  Kim took a step backwards in silence.  All I could hear after the shriek faded was the burbling of the fluids in the SOL tanks.  The eerie glow of phosphorescence in the tanks was the only illumination that was penetrating the gloom.  Shadows traced themselves in maniacal rivulets across the face of the sleepwalker.  I knew at that moment that he was no longer in control of himself or understood what was going on.

         "Kim, don't move." She let a tiny whimper escape.  Jax opened his mouth as if to speak.  Ignorant, his tongue flicked around his thin lips moistening them with spittle that trailed away down his chin to hang like a spider web left forgotten by its maker.  The jaw closed catching the wayward muscle in its clench.  Blood mixed with the spittle, but He was still as quiet as death.  Kim held a hand up to her mouth to choke back a scream.

         "No noise Kim."

         "He's going to bite it off Dr. wha..." and that is what he did.  The tip neatly severed by well-maintained teeth sprang away from the mouth in a red stream that painted the front of Kim's immaculate smock.  The useless tongue ricocheted off her bosom to lay limp again on the cold floor.  Jax took a step forward.  Kim was rooted to her spot with her own mouth hanging wide.  With a mechanical movement Jax stretched an arm around Kim and drew her to him.  Their faces met with a wet sound.  She was still silent as their mouths slid together.  Then, at what I first thought was her release from shock, she began to struggle.  His blood had slowed its streaming before he had grabbed, but now there was a new, steady flow issuing from their joined mouths.  She fought in his unwavering grip.  He looked more mechanical than I had thought at first.  Her fists hit him in the face over and over.  She kicked at him, but he did not even loosen his grip.  I lunged toward the two and worked my hands around his arm and behind her back.  Her assault was weakening and the blood was already staining her once pristine smock to a horror of bright crimson.  I felt the sticky blood slipping up my grip, but I knew I had to hold on.  With a wet sound like a kiss their faces fell apart.  Jax's grip loosened and Kimberly fell to the floor.  Catching her with my own fall I gazed back up into Jax's blank stare.  His face was now focusing on me. 

         "Please, no!" I screamed.

         "Please, no!" It screamed in Jax's flat monotone voice.  Then I felt his arm on mine shaking me.  I felt my body struggle.  I turned my eyes away from that gaping maw that held the dripping piece of flesh that was once a part of Kimberly.

         "No!"  I screamed again.

         "Yes!"  The answer came back in a different voice.  I rolled over to look at the speaker.  It was Dr. Fallan shaking me awake.

         "What the?" I staggered my mind through the normal hurtles of consciousness.

         "Come quick Rudolf.  Jax is having another attack."

         I climbed out of my bed feeling very alien in the waking world.  I did not need to get dressed for I sometimes, like now, would fall asleep in my lab clothes.  I stumbled after Dr. Fallan smoothing the harsh fluorescence into my eyes with my hands.

         "Where is he?"

         "In the lab. I sedated him three times.  Kimberly's got him straddled with a tongue depressor in his mouth. It's bad."  We rounded the corner and I half fell down the steps leaning into Dr. Fallan.  We heard a scream and picked up our pace.  The lab door stood wide and we both almost fell inside.

         "Kimberly! What?" Dr. Fallan begged.

         "He said something."

         "What?" I asked.

         "He said 'Please, no'. And then he just passed out.  Sorry about the scream, but it scared the bahoovies out of me."  She stood off of him to let Jax's prostrate form lay motionless on the cold floor.  'Almost like a tongue,' I thought.  I shook not remembering why.  I helped Dr. Fallan carry Jax limp body down the corridor to the infirmary to lay him on a cot. 

         "Sorry about waking you, Rudolf.  I just thought that you might want to know. I mean after last time."

         "Sure, yeah.  Let him sleep now.  He looks peaceful enough.  Steady breathing.  At least we don't have to worry about him going comatose on us." I scratched at my head and plied the doctor for answers to why and how.  Fallan said that no one was around when he collapsed; no one at least except for the SOLs.  Fallan tried to smile at his disjointed humor.  I dragged myself back up to bed.  Tomorrow would be another day.  Why was I having such a difficult time trying to get back to sleep?

         The next morning I went to check up on Jax.  He was lying there on the medical cot bolt upright sucking down some flakes drowning in milk when I peered in.

         "Morning Dr. Velt. Sorry about waking you up last night. I guess I'm just no good at dealing with stress."

         "Nonsense my boy!" I said in my best matter-of-fact voice.

         "I always wake up in the middle of the night to make sure that my most valuable researchers aren't convulsing on the laboratory floor." He smiled through face full of milk and flakes.

         "Now, don't worry about getting anything finished today. That's an order. Just rest. Okay?"

         "But..."

         "No I'm not taking any buts. At least not until Dr. Fallan clears you."

         "No, there's something that I need to tell you." His eyes went doleful and glazed with a secret fear.

         "What Jax?" My curiosity was peaking higher than my upturned eyebrows.

         "When I was out I remembered something from my coma.  It's probably nothing, but because of your interest last time I held onto it with all my might."

         "Well?" My eyebrows narrowed so as not to give away how much I wanted to hear this.  The events that surrounded Jill's unfortunate death swam behind my eyes stirring my brain into a soup of panic.  I maintained my composure, if for no other reason, but to hear what Jax had to say.

         "There were voices.  Well, not completely voices. More like ideas of voices.  They sounded like people I know, but I knew; don't ask me how; that these voices did not belong to who they sounded like they belonged to."

         "Go on." I urged making obvious mental notes.  He studied me to make sure that I was not sizing him up for a straight jacket or a rubber room.

         "The voices did not understand how to communicate at first.  They were saying random words like they were trying them on for size, to see if they would fit what they were trying to say.  When they started forming sentences I felt scared.  Not because of what they were saying, but what they were showing me.  Along with the words came images and sensations, feelings of being trapped.  Just as if I was trapped in one of those tanks like the SOLs.  The words backed this up.  I can't remember exactly what was said, but I know that it was about the SOLs. I know, sounds kinda crazy. But, since I remembered I thought that I should tell you."

         "Thanks Jax. No I don't think that you're any crazier than the rest of us. You're just over worked and are starting to empathize with our little sacks of life. Don't worry. Get some rest."  I left him to his bowl of flakes and worried myself with curiosity the rest of the day.

         The ideas that started to pervade my mind were irrational, illogical thoughts that belong more to a philosopher than to a man of science.  Yet, being a man of science I could not disregard any hypothetical situation.  I had to force myself to ponder the fantastic to help explain away the fantastic.  Even in the most unreasonable circumstances there most always be a reason.  The laws that hold our universe together govern everything and just because we do not understand all of the laws does not make it less plausible.  Old superstitions had to give way to modern science do to the fact that we began to figure out what they meant.  I was trying to build myself up to accept the possibility that maybe; just maybe, our SOLs really defied our comprehension of life and maintained a hidden consciousness.  That would mean that they were alive.  That would mean that they might be in pain.  My head was swimming with conflicting arguments all the way through supper.  I knew something had to be done.  An experiment of sorts had to be observed.  After dinner the project became clear.  If I was going to eliminate the possibility of the SOLs being alive I was going to have to find a way to communicate with them.  I dismissed my staff early from the lab and unrolled a cot mattress on the floor.  If the dreams I had been having were the SOLs trying to communicate with me I would give them as little interference as possible.  So I stretched out on the thin mattress and waited.  The coolness of the tiled floor seeped up through the coarse batting of the makeshift bed to drill at my bones.  My body was fighting to drag my mind into sleep.  My thoughts would not concur.  They were too busy playing against themselves with the arguments that had stung them most of the day.  Knowing full well that sleep was not going to be easy in coming I went for a sleeping pill.  I usually kept a small bottle of over the counter sleep aids in my room just for these type situations.  My mind would often wander, retracing or recalculating the day preventing sleep.  I popped two of the medicinal tasting pills with a glass of icy water and went back to the lab.  I had just begun to relax into the mattress and let my eyes roll up into my head when I heard a sound in my grogginess.  The door to the lab swung back on its hinges scrapping the plastic striker plates against each other.  A single pair of footsteps crept into the dark room towards me.  I forced my sinking eyelids apart and tried to stare into the darkness.  I had always been thankful for the speed with which the pills worked, but right now I wanted to see who was there.  Why was the light not being turned on?  The steps came closer toward me in the center of the room and it was becoming almost useless to fight my eyelids.  Right before they sealed my vision tight I thought I focused on Jax standing over me with a shiny silver object in his right hand.  His eyes flared with something I recognized from a dream. 

         I awoke with a burning sensation coming from my gut.  I could not move my legs.  Sometimes I was too stupid to eat properly before consuming my sleeping pills and in the morning I would suffer from a hangover sensation.  This was different.  Pain was filtering up my midsection and penetrating my waking.  A knot formed in my chest and shot a bolt of razor tipped energy up to my brain.  My eyes shot wide like stars through a telescope.  Jax was sitting on my legs playing with something in his hands.  My focus wavered in a mix of pain and left over pills. 

         "Get off me." I felt my brain stretch my lips.

I refocused and noticed that it was still somewhat dark in the lab.  The thing in Jax's hands was shinning with wet in the dim glow from the SOL tanks.  It kept sliding back and forth from one of his hands to the other.  The thing made a wet sound like raw meat.  I began to panic.

         "Jax! What did you do to the SOLs?"

His face formed a brief puzzled look and he gazed into his hands.  He held out his toy with open palms to show me.  To my horror I noticed that the dark piece of wet gore was attached to me.  A scream choked in my throat and I felt the room lean as if I was on a boat.  I felt the warmth of fresh blood that had been saturating my clothes, but the pain (which should have been immense) seemed dulled.  The horror at what I was seeing was not dulled.  I choked on several more screams as I felt more gore being pulled out from under my skin.  My face formed its own puzzled look as I tried to express my questioning.  Jax, or what ever was with him, must have understood somehow.  Its lips moved.

         "Me. We. Not like you. You not see. We make you see."

I felt the tugging increase with more pressure.  I looked at the neat wound in my abdomen to see Jax's hand enter looking for more to pilfer.  I was starting to feel faint, but the pain was becoming more bearable.  His hands came free with more dripping gore.  Intestines hung around his fingers like a fist full of deflated balloons.  I begged for more answers with my tightening face.

         "See. See. Say, 'No please.' You see? You see? Understand we. We not this."

The hands dropped the tangle of ruined organs on my chest filling my nose with a raw pork scent.  I worked at my throat trying to free it from its shock.  My lips moved.

         "What?  You're killing me.  Why? I'm sorry, I...I didn't know...No don't!"

The hands were back in me.  Digging, digging, I felt nails tearing into smaller pieces.  The pain surged small spikes to my spine.

         "You not this!" Another hand full of myself landed on my chest," We not this!"

         "I don't understand!"

         "We are more than just the some of our total parts." An unfamiliar voice forced its way past Jax's lips. 

         "I still don't..."

The hands tangled themselves around their own fingers.  Liquid gore of blood and water oozed between the tightly held digits.

         "Not single, but yes single.  Each individual is many individuals.  We are one and one is many."

         "I still don't understand."

         "Are cells alive? Do not cells comprise a complex organism?" The mouth filled with a familiar voice, one of the biology teachers I knew that had helped Jax change his name to Dr.

         "Each individual are many.  You kill many by killing the one." A tear traced down Jax's face.  The voices from his throat changed again.

Could it be?  Each SOL was not merely a single nonliving thing, but a thing much like a living planet made up of many living things?  That would help explain what had been happening.  We would never have guessed that every square inch of the SOLs was covered in living things.  We would have just taken it for granted that if the sack was not really alive than nothing outside of what we kept functioning was alive.  How stupid we were for not looking at life for what it is and just taking it for granted.  A tug at my intestines brought me out of my epiphany.

         "Not just us.  Everything.  E-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g.  Life in everything.  More than you.  Let life live.  Life knows best."  The fingers pulled themselves out of my gaping wound with a sucking sound.

Everything was alive?  Tables, chairs, test tubes?  Of course! How stupid. 

         "What can I do?  Is it too late? Help me."

         "Wake up!"  I felt a hard slap across my face.

         "Rudolf! Rudolf! Can you hear me?"  It was Dr. Fallon's voice and hand.

         "Wha...What?"

         "You have had a seizure Rudolf.  In the lab. You destroyed most of your work.  You're going to be okay."  I focused on a feeble grin adorning the old man's face.

         "Coma?"

         "No, no coma. But, your cut up pretty bad by the broken glass I'm taking you down to the infirmary as soon as Jax comes back with the gurney.  Are you staying conscious with me?"

         "Yes.  The SOLs told me to leave life alone.  It was a horrible mistake.  We should never have interfered."

         "Delirium is okay Rudolf. Let's just patch you up okay?"

         "No, you don't understand.  The SOLs were comprised of many, many living things. They weren't actually nonliving tissues like we thought.  Somehow, out of a need to satisfy life they communicated with me.  Probably, due to the absence of hands and mouth they acquired a form of telepathy to communicate with us through our dreams.  Life prevails.  It always will. Whether we want it to or not it always..." A sharp needle pierced my right arm filling my veins with a tranquilizer.  Jax flew through the swinging doors a second later with a gurney.

         "Is he coming 'round?" Jax asked.

         "Yes, but he's not real lucid.  Mumbling something about talking with the sacks.  He should be okay in a couple of days. I gave him a mild sedative."

         "Good. He's gonna freak when he sees this mess.  We're gonna have to start over.  People need these things.  Their lives are too important."

         That night under the influence of stronger sedatives my dreams were peaceful.  I saw what I had been shown.  A huge culmination of life comprising minuscule universes that spiraled around universes that became atoms and molecules.  Everywhere life and life in everything; life was buried in the molecules of pencils and in the cells of even the SOLs and even their tanks.  I even believe I saw the tiny angels that danced in the worlds alive on the head of a pin.  I just can not remember how many there were dancing.  It was all life and life needed to live.  Is that not what is truly important?  Or will life live anyway?

         I was thrown into jail for destruction of research.  After all it really was not mine.  It all belonged to those in the medical board that helped throw the money at me.  They said it was willful destruction and I could not disagree with them in court.  I tried to explain myself, telling them all that it was murder, but they would not understand.  They accused me of being a touch mad and when I continued screaming about the murder of all those helpless individuals they were even more determined to lock me up.  So, here I am caged for murder (my accusation).  Like I said though, my whole life was one form of cage or another.  At least now I can see beyond my bars.  At least now I can see what I have come to call angels, because they did save me.  Every night they dance for me, their dance of life.