Refraction | Part 2 | Multiverse
8) Morganthal Family History
Dr. Harry Morganthal was a large, robust and happy man. He had survived the lean war years by taking his vast store of knowledge in re things extremely tiny to the government. They ensconced him safely out of the way as head of the nanotech division where his job had been to devise molecularly small machines that did battle with other molecularly small machines. Unfortunately for many, many people the large part of this unseen war was to take place inside of their bodies.
These Machines were not kind to the insides of human bodies.
He was not a murderer at heart and although much of his work centered on defensive and strengthening measures, his developments had oft been put to uses he had never known about and would be horrified to learn of. Blissfully, he remained unaware. He knew his machines had been tested on human subjects and that later those subjects had been removed from his program, but he hadn’t known they had become the world’s most prolific assassins.
After the war his department had suffered, much of it’s funding had been cut and the public’s backlash against nanotechnology had been mighty. Eventually all research of the science was outlawed everywhere on the surface of the planet. Dr. Harry Morganthal had been there the day the soldiers had come and simply started packing up the lab. Equipment, notes, computers, samples, everything must go. In the space of an hour Dr. Harry Morangthal was unemployed, the result of a decade of dedicated research and development, gone.
He was drunk for six weeks.
Then he straightened out and spent ten days in a skid row hotel performing a cleansing fast and reading the newsnets about the newest developments in the fields that were closest to his own. He became particularly attracted to the new Mega-Collider Program that was being developed east of Colorado Springs. It had a number of appealing and intriguing technical hang ups that were yet to be cleared up, and a man of Morganthal’s ingenuity and intelligence should have had no problem being hired onto the R and D staff. And he didn’t.
He was in fact welcomed with open arms, and he spent the next seventeen years of his life diligently micro-manipulating minisculosities to perform his desired tasks, deep below the planet’s surface. He grew happy again, met a lovely young British woman named Laura, was married, and grew large. He exercised, and played out of doors with his young son and infant daughter, but his weight seemed to cling to him.
Thus was he a large, robust, and happy man.
Especially today. Because today was the day the were going to fire The Machine. What the true purpose of The Machine was remained outside of Harry’s purview, something to do with dimensionality and power resources. But enormously important parts of The Machine relied on monitoring and manipulation by Harry’s infinitesimally devices. He was dread that one of them should fail. So when he woke up feeling a bit under the weather, it disturbed his usually jovial exterior. He felt worse and worse as he made his way through security and down, down the long shaft to his place of employment. By the time he reached his office he knew he had the flu. He sat down heavily at his desk and supported his head between his hands. His head throbbed between his hands, his throat clicked painfully with every swallow. He could not help thinking that these bacterial and viral pathogens would be a thing of the past if he had been able to continue his former line of research.
He called his assistant and made sure everyone in his section had been put to task, then he walked through the halls to the Medical Office. A nurse took a quikulture of his throat, gave him aspirin, still a wonder drug after all these years, and told him the culture would be force grown. He should know by lunch, and have a prescription, if needed, by the end of the day. He had decided to go to the commissary for a cup of tea, when he was interrupted by his PDA. There was a problem in Collider 5, and the head of the program Dr. Sequin had asked that he look into it personally. Normally he would be irritated, and he felt like shit, but Elena Sequin was a brilliant mathematician and scientist, he trusted that if she needed him there it was important.
He made his down into the tunnels and was surprised by the amount of last minute activity, realized that much of it must be reflex, checking and rechecking things that had been thrice checked already. He briefly ran afoul of a smirking young Corporal who demanded that he show his “goddamn ID”, but was so busy and ill that he barely noticed, he simply allowed his badge to be scanned and continued on down the corridor. It turned out that the problem was indeed one that needed his attention, his faith in the Director pleasantly unshaken, he turned his mind to the task. He finished his work a mere five minutes minus f-hour. He would have to pass the firing in one of the observation chambers built into the sides of the tunnel, they could not delay the test simply because he had not made it to the main observation room on time.
What would there be to observe anyway?, he thought to himself as his entered one of the small sealed immobile life boats. These rooms were a holdover from the age of nuclear threat, and so were hardened against any theoretical particle activity. Theoretically. Dr. Morganthal barely cared so terrible did he feel by this point. It was empty and the monitors were off, he left them that way and collapsed thankfully onto the small sofa against the far wall. Let them fire their Machine, he thought, his work was done and done well, he deserved a rest. He closed his eyes. His throat itched and he needed to blow his nose. He felt his pockets, one shredded remnant of tissue remained. He opened his eyes and sat up wearily, scanning the room for something besides his sleeve.
The lights went out. He checked his watch, they had fired the machine! What had gone wrong? Had it been his fault? Christ he felt so bad today! What if he hadn’t properly repaired the unit on the number Collider 5? Did the entire station lose power? He peeked out the door into the tunnel, it too was cloaked in darkness. Maybe it wasn’t number 5, maybe he didn’t have anything to do with the problem. He returned to the couch, wiped his still dripping nose on his sleeve and sat quietly in the dark, waiting to be alerted that he was out of a another job.
The air in front of him ripped open. Light flooded into the room, and Dr. Harry Morganthal found himself looking into the face of a woman who was easily twice his size. She was dressed as a cook, and he appeared to be looking out at her from one of her kitchen cupboards. Her oversize mouth dropped open in shock. He opened his mouth to say something. And then he sneezed.
The giant woman blinked and stepped back, giving him a sour look and lifting her broad apron to wipe at her face.
The air closed. He was alone again in the dark.
“I must have a fever.” Harry Morganthal said aloud to himself, “That could not have been real. I am feverish and sick and my perception is altered.”
Unfortunately for Grette Welsh, Head Chef of the Royal Citadel of Xavier, and so many, many others after her, streptococcus bacillus Group A doesn’t give a shit about the limits of human perception.
Nor is it kind to the insides of bodies of Giants.
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