Refraction | Part 1 | Darwin's Steroids
10) Observation
General Wanamaker took a deep breathe and exhaled it slowly, focusing himself. He had followed the lighted strip to it's end and now stood outside of an incredibly heavily secured door. He had been standing there only a moment , gathering himself, when an androgynous voice suggested that if he did not initiate security protocols within five seconds, he would be subject to static restraint foaming. An older, but highly effective form of non-lethal "personnel control", static restraint foam cocoons the subject in a noxious smelling, blue material which began to immediately harden. It was highly porous, allowing the foamee to breathe while being restrained for up to eight hours, but also extremely uncomfortable, and the powerful stink of the stuff had an effect on the inhaler of a very weak tear gas. The General had of course experienced this on several occasions in various training exercises as he rose through the ranks, and the warning of the impending security measure snapped him out of his reverie. He cleared his throat and spoke aloud, "General Itzak Roi Wanamaker 6233-oh-759,", he pressed a button on his watch and a constantly changing internal timer stopped and displayed on the screen the words "orange husky". The General repeated the words to the heavily secured door and was rewarded by a ping and the statement that orange husky was the proper authorization code for the particular time and date, and could he please place his hand on the flat panel in front of him. He did, and felt the familiar quick poke of the needle into the pad of his middle finger. While the computer attempted to match his DNA and hand-print to its database, the next phase of security began. A metal ring, one meter in diameter dropped down out of the ceiling and began bombarding the General with a number of invisible probes. X-rays, thermal spectrometry, chemical signature identifier isotopes, reviewed him inside and out to insure he posed no threat to the facility beyond the door. As the ring descended down the length of his frame, spinning one revolution for every centimeter it dropped, the General was rewarded with a second ping and the information that the computer agreed with him, that he was indeed who he claimed to be. The survey ring finished it's business and having found no threats either on or in the General, folded itself back into its recessed hiding place in the ceiling.
The door made a few thunking noises as the thick poly-steel girders holding it shut slid back into their cradles. There was a hissing as the door moved out toward the General, the pressure gradient sucking air from the hallway into the observation deck beyond. A standard precautionary measure in any biological or chemical lab environment, the "positive pressure" airflow prevents any possible contaminants from leaving the sealed area. The frame of the door was a fifteen centimeter wide band of intense UV light. A second device in place to keep the top-secret products of this lab inside, where they belonged.
The General crossed the threshold and heard the door hiss shut behind him. He waited for his eyes to adjust to the low lighting, and felt his ears pop as the pressure returned to the room, sealing off this section of the base. Standing in front of the observation glass was the man the General had come to see. He was a short, ugly little man, thin and sick looking, his skin the yellow color of someone fighting a losing battle against some malignant hepatic disorder. His head held a few thin wisps of hair that clung to his scalp in random clumps like someone who had received a lethal of radiation. He had the face of a rat, but moved with the slow deliberateness of a cat stalking its prey. The effect he created on people near him was an uncomfortable one, giving them the feeling of being watched by an animal with malicious intent. The man stood quietly staring out through the thick glass at a column of thick black liquid suspended in a tube, a barely discernible current coursing upward through the viscous substance. The General recognized the isolation chamber, and wondered why he had been asked to come all this way to observe something he had seen in use a thousand times. He was about to ask the meaning of this when Dr. Fook finally turned toward him and announced without preamble,
"General, you are right on time, the technicians should being evacuating the chamber momentarily. Our subject regained consciousness only a few minutes ago, must seem like a lifetime to him. Come, I think you'll be pleased with the results."
With that, the upward flow in the chamber stopped and the liquid began draining out of the bottom of the chamber, revealing the languid form of a naked man hanging inside.
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