All's Fair in Love and... Labs?

I strode purposefully towards a desk with 12 Manila envelopes on it, noticing that I was the first one up, as per usual. I scanned the desk, looking for the envelope with my name on it. I found it close to the left edge and I slid it off the desk on my way to the automatic sliding doors behind the desk.

When I got to the main hall, I looked down at my envelope, noting the number beneath my name and then searching for it on one of the many sign plaques. I found it on Floor Three’s plaque and headed to the lift. When the doors dinged open at floor three I peered down the hall, finding a plain door halfway down the hall with my name and number on it. I knocked gently, not wanting to surprise my subject. I opened the door and put the envelope on the countertop that ran around half of my little lab. There was a huge window on the wall the counter didn’t reach, it took up most of the wall and gave me a full view of the testing room. The only thing in the testing room was a metal chair with various straps and wires attached to it. And that meant my subject wasn’t ready. 

I sighed, opened the door next to the window and strode to the simple door adjacent to the one I had just exited. I knocked hard three times and waited, listening to the shuffling sounds coming from behind the door. The door flew open, revealing a tall, dark-haired boy who looked around 17.

“Nice shirt.” He said at the same time I opened my mouth. I frowned, closing my mouth and pulling my lab coat tighter around me.

“Charlie?” I asked, raising one eyebrow. He smirked.

“Yeah, that’s me. Are you room service? I ordered some Ready Salted crisps a while ago and they still haven’t come through. I’m going to have to talk to your manager if this is the sort of quality I can expect in future.” He leaned against the door frame, putting one arm above his head and looking at me with a half-smile. I narrowed my eyes.

“You know perfectly well who I am and why I’m here. Now get in that chair and shut up.” I whirled around, almost hitting him in the face with my dirty-blonde ponytail.

“Geez, easy on the sass.” I heard Charlie mutter under his breath. I stopped dead and turned on my heal. He crashed right into me, making me fall over. He was quite a lump of a guy.

“Need some help, darling?” He said, reaching his hand out towards me. I glared at him and got up myself, ignoring his hand.

“OK, let’s get some things straight. I know everything about you there is to know. I know you’re an orphan from America who stowed away on a cruise ship and then got chucked off at Bristol docks. You have no friends, no family and no education. You were given the option for either jail or here, to be experimented on, and you chose here. I am a top scientist at the Youth Science Collage of London and I will be experimenting on you which means I basically own you because you signed the contract. You will do what I say, when I say it and with no complaints. Do you understand?” He looked at me, his face blank. Good, I surprised him. His face changed slowly into a frown.

“You? A ‘top scientist’? You’re barely 14.” He walked past me and flopped into the metal chair. At this point, I wouldn’t be surprised if steam came out of my ears like it does in the movies.

“I will have you know I am 16 and so are you. Well, until July and then you’ll be 17, but that doesn’t matter. You’ll either be dead or someone else’s experiment by then.” I could see his eyes travel along my body, sizing me up. “And yes, I’m a short 16-year-old, but that’s not your concern. Now sit still while I hook you up to the chair.” I leaned over him, buckling him into the chair in case anything went wrong and then inserting the wires into their suction cups and placing them on his forehead and one on his left arm. He was smiling slightly when I pulled back to check my work and make sure everything was in the right place.

“What?” I asked irritably.

“Nothing.” He said with that stupid, smug smile still plastered all over his face.

“Well then wipe that stupid look off your face.” I stormed off to the lab, mixing some of the chemicals I had requested into a vile that I then poured into a syringe. I tapped the side, making sure all the bubbles were out of the liquid chamber and then I walked back into the testing room and told Charlie to hold still while I injected it into him.

“So what’s this supposed to do to me?” He asked when I stepped back.

“I was asked to commence experiments on your emotions, seeing if I could change what you felt based on the chemicals in your brain. There’s a lot more to it, but you wouldn’t understand. Just know that this particular formula is supposed to, let’s say, enhance your love emotions.” Another of those infuriating smiles slipped onto his face.

“So basically, you’re trying to make me have a crush on you?” He started laughing, probably from the look on my face.

“No! This is much more advanced science than a simple ‘crush’. I was tasked with making you feel a depth of emotions you have yet to feel, apparently. According to your file, you’re quite apathetic about most things in life. Except for, obviously, the things you find funny.” He hadn’t stopped laughing by the time I had finished so I walked out and started preparing the next injection. This one would take a bit of time as it needed to be brewed over an extremely hot flame for 30 minutes.

While the formula brewed I turned the coffee machine on and watched as the dark liquid filled the plain, white mug.

“Isn’t there a law or something against drinking coffee while you’re experimenting on someone?” Charlie said, his voice slightly muffled by the thick glass. I waited until the mug was full and then I went back into the testing room.

“It’s not for me,” I said, walking over to him and shoving the mug into his hands. “It’s for you because, in the science world, we know that coffee is a great way to get results quickly because it causes your body’s processing system to go into overdrive. So drink it all and drink it quickly so we can make some sort of progress today.” Charlie shrugged and brought the mug to his lips, tipping his head back and swallowing the whole mugful of pipping-hot, straight, black coffee. He spluttered a bit and made a face at the bitterness and handed me the empty mug. He cocked his head to the side.

“How many more of these am I going to have to drink?”

🧪🧪🧪

5 hours and 10 cups of coffee later I still hadn’t gotten any results from Charlie. At this point, he looked ready to go to sleep, resting his head on his shoulder and sighing deeply whenever I came at him with a needle.

“This will be the last one today. I can’t think why this isn’t working. I’ve spent months researching and testing on aminals and everything’s worked up until now.” I inserted the needle into his arm and pushed the liquid into his bloodstream.

“Maybe I’m a dud. Hey, did you ever consider not messing with someone’s head? Like, aren’t there people who will do stuff without sticking needles into their experiments’ arms? Why do you think the needles will work better than talking it out or something?” I sighed.

“I know the needles will work, but I don’t expect you to understand that. It’s science stuff. Now be quiet and let me get you another cup of coffee.” I walked back into the lab and grabbed another mug. As the mug was filling, I heard a moan from the testing room.

“What is it?! Are you ok? How do you feel, do you feel anything different? Can you notice any changes?” I said in one breath, rushing over to him and checking on the screen behind the headrest of the chair.

“Chill, I’m just bored and my arm is killing me. When can I go back to my room?” Charlie said, leaning his head back and looking at me upside-down. I rolled my eyes and sighed again.

“I said this was going to be the last one. Just drink your now lukewarm coffee and then you’ll be done in under an hour.” I brought him the cup and he drained it like he had all the others: in one gulp.

🧪🧪🧪

Later, once Charlie had been cleared as normal and I had shut my lab down, I was talking with my friend and classmate, Lucie.

“Do you have much luck with your experiments today?” I asked her as we sat down in the canteen with plates full of all sorts of good food.

“No, not really. I’m going to try a new approach tomorrow, my subject barely flinched even at the last injection. I just can’t seem to get through to him. I mean, why do boys have to be so macho about things like this? Why can’t they, for once, do what they’re supposed to and let the chemicals do the work?” Lucie also had a male test subject, although everyone in the class had someone notorious for not feeling whatever emotion they were trying to get them to feel. All of the subjects signed the contract and had no living relatives that wanted them so it was perfectly viable even if the experiments went wrong. But sometimes I wasn’t so sure it was alright.

“Do you ever get the feeling that maybe we shouldn’t be using people like guinea pigs?” I asked Lucie, shoving a piece of broccoli into my mouth. She looked at me strangely.

“No. Why would I? They signed the contract, they knew what they were getting into and frankly, we need them. I mean, why else would we be testing on them? We need to get this right and the only way to do it is to test it on someone. I mean, it’s all fun and games, right? We can’t really do much harm to them except for maybe driving them insane, but that’s a small price to pay for a scientific discovery like this will be.” We ate the rest of our meal in silence, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that something wasn’t right.

To be continued….