The Babysitter and the Red Button

“Don’t worry. I’m sure she’s quite capable. She’s one of our best grad students. She should have no problem looking after the compound for a short while.” Edna is adept, in her professional manner, at making the best of a Zoom call. Perfectly framed in the monitor, in an executive chair set against a bookcase sparsely filled with artfully arranged books and pottery, she almost seems to be there with Harold, holding his hand.

 But Harold does worry. He worries about the security cameras, the automated feedings, and the environmental controls for the cages. “By God, Edna.” He looks at the woman on his laptop with her dark hair (no doubt dyed at her age) cut into a fashionable bob. “If anything should go wrong. If word got out. The program would be ruined.” 

He catches a glimpse of himself in a small square part of the Zoom call, yammering on like an old fool with a massive gray beard, wireframe glasses, and fisherman’s cap. He is well past the age of worrying about something so trivial as vanity. But respect. That is a different matter. “I’m serious. I won’t leave the compound in the hands of a dilettante or a fool.”

“You have no choice, Harold. The board is demanding your presence at the next meeting. It's very important. They could pull your funding.”

“Oh, I see. It's a conspiracy of pea counters.” He strokes and pulls at his beard. “Why can’t they just do it as a Zoom call, like we do?”

“Some of our members feel the importance of events as they have unfolded warrant you be there in person. There are certain intangibles, body language, the vibe in the room that don’t come across in a Zoom call.”

“Vibes? You must be joking. Do they want me to fly halfway across the world for vibes? I didn’t realize we had become Berkeley. What are we going to do when I get there? Drop acid?” 

“Why must you be so difficult? Think of it as a trust-building exercise.”

“As if after twenty years they don’t trust me. I’m right on this, damn it. And you know it.”

Edna pushes her glasses further up her nose. “My hands are tied. Your ticket has been purchased, and you will be on the plane tomorrow. That’s it. Or you’ll be fired.”

“Fired? They can’t do that.”

“Wanna bet?”

Harold fidgets with the paper clips in his desk drawer. “So, when is this girl scout supposed to arrive?”

“I’m here now, sir.” Harold jumps six inches in his chair and throws the paper clips up in the air. Swiveling his office chair around, he finds a tall angular young woman at the door.

“How in the hell did you get in here? Edna, why didn’t you tell me?”

“I was getting to that.” Edna’s voice is calm.

“They gave me a key. Nobody answered when I knocked. So I let myself in. Hello, my name is Cordella. Cordella Clark. I’m in the Bio-Chem program.”

“Do you always stand unannounced and eavesdrop when you go someplace new?” He takes off his cap and scratches his bald spot.

“I’m going to log off and let you two get acquainted.”

“You haven’t heard the last of this, Edna.”

“Tell it to me in person, on Tuesday.” Her Zoom screen goes blank.

“You really shouldn’t keep your desk turned with your back to the door. It is poor Feng Shui.” The young woman is plain. Very pale. No makeup, blonde hair pulled back. Her dress looks like a rucksack.

“Feng Shui? Did you learn that in Bio-Chem? Nevermind. Looks like you’ll be babysitting while I’m out of town. I might as well show you around.”

Cordella looks around the room, noting the stacks of papers and books which have toppled and spilled onto the floor. Bits of electrical components filled bins on floor-to-ceiling metal shelves; some are hobbled together and evidently functioning.

“Sorry, I wasn’t excepting guests. Follow me and I’ll take you to our little zoo.”

The animals filling the cages are the results of gene splicing – bio-engineering research internationally banned by U.N. treaties decades earlier. At first, the experiments focused on creating more resilient domestic animals – chickens, pigs, cows. These animals seem unremarkable, but healthy and well-fed in their pens as Cordella and Harold pass.

As the tour progresses, the hybrid animals become more fantastic, as if torn from books of mythology. A winged cobra flies in circles inside its glass enclosure. A large cage of iron bars houses a rambunctious cross between a kangaroo and an orangutan. A winged horse resides in a nearby stable. 

“Unfortunately, Pegasus weighs too much to fly. These were from our earlier experiments. Very interesting, but no real application. But things get really exciting once we get to our aquatic division.”

“Is that a sea monkey?” A blue monkey with gills sits on the floor of a huge aquarium. He seems content to stare at them as his breath bubbles to the surface.

“Yes. Isn’t he a fine fellow? I wish I could show you the rest. But I can’t. Too top-secret.”

Cordella’s blank expression reveals neither disappointment nor curiosity. “But what if something happens while you are gone? Shouldn’t I know how to take care of them in case of an emergency?”

“In the unlikely event of an emergency, call me, and I will talk you through it. Now if you will follow me, I will show you the control room.

The “control room” is as much of a mess as Harold’s office. A tangle of cables connects several generations of computer equipment. A console board with flashing lights and buttons fills an entire table.

“Command Central. I’ll leave you a schedule of which buttons must be pushed at which times to ensure feedings and climate control continues as needed during my absence. All very easy-peasy.”

“What’s this one do?” She points to a red button in the lower-left corner of the console.

“Slow down. Never touch that one. I have to write this down first. It’s all up here.” He points to his head. “Like I said, I wasn’t expecting guests.”

###

The next day, Cordella relaxes her shoulders for the first time since she got to the compound as she watches the taxi drive off with Harold. Breakfast had been uninspired. Harold cooked nothing from scratch. His skill was in taking prepackaged food from the freezer to the microwave to the plate. 

She gathers the notes he left and goes to the control room. He had very briefly gone through everything with her that morning. She vaguely followed because he spoke so fast. 

Easy-peasy. I can do this. She starts to read his notes and realizes he has horrible handwriting. It is a scrawl, to begin with, and the ink in the pen had begun to run dry. Her hand starts to tremble and she feels short of breath 

Pull yourself together, Cordella. You’re a Ph.D. candidate. 

But really, it is very simple. The upper buttons on the right are for feeding. That’s all she needs to know. She sees no harm in turning on one of the computer monitors and is rewarded with a view of a pig in its pen. So long as she doesn’t push that one red button.

Emboldened by this simple victory, she flicks on another computer screen. The flying cobra appears. What good babysitter does not use all nannycams available? She starts flipping on all the screens.

“Who are you? How did you get in here? Where is Harold?”

Cordella stands bolt-upright and turns around. In front of her stands a beautiful young man wearing a white lab coat. He is the most beautiful man she had ever seen. He is of an indiscriminate race, with emerald eyes and shoulder-length wavy ginger-red hair, built like a gladiator. He looks to be six-foot-five. He fills the doorway with his arms crossed, blocking her exit.

“Harold’s gone on business. I’m the babysitter. Who are you?”

“I’m the lab rat.”

“Harold said nothing about you.”

“I’m top-secret. And Harold is a fool.”

Cordella lets out a short breath, her version of a laugh. “I guess it’s nice not to be here alone. Do you know anything about all these buttons? It’s getting close to feeding time.”

“Like I said. I’m the lab rat. You want to push these ones here. Starting from left to right. Then wait five minutes, and punch them again, right to left.”

“What’s this one do?” She points to the red button.

“That kills all the lab animals. It detonates an explosive implanted in their hearts.”

“Isn't that grotesquely barbaric? Why?”

“A security measure. You can’t have the animals taking over the farm.” His green eyes seem to penetrate her soul. She realizes she is a woman alone in a room with a strange man who could easily overpower her. She thinks of the stark contrast between her stick figure and this action figure. 

He moves close to her and puts his hand on her shoulder. “I’m surprised Harold didn’t tell me about you. He is getting sloppy in his old age.”

“He had to leave in a bit of a hurry.” She pulls away from him and says, “What do the animals eat?”

“It depends. They all have special diets. Mechanical arms place their food in their feeding areas. The buttons activate the arms, and the doors to let in the animals to their food.”

“So, are you a researcher or an experiment?”

“That’s rather an impertinent question. I’m an experiment that got out of its cage for feeding time. I’m a man who has been given the instincts of a lion. Can you guess what I eat for dinner?”

“Babysitters?” Her hand hovers over the red button, uncertain of if she should push it then, or wait.

“That’s right.” His smile reveals his fangs.