Hello, World

Chapter 10

The lab was always cold and never quiet. Even at night, hours after the last person had left for the weekend, the machines hummed their droning tune, carried by the climate-controlled drafts like a mosquito carried in the summer breeze.

Even in the cool air, Jackson was sweating. He was doing the job of six men; for the first time, he wished that Dr. M was in the lab with him. Subduing Fred to inject him with a general anesthetic was proving more challenging than expected.

"Come on, Fred. Come over here," Jackson pleaded. "No one else gets it, do they? They don't understand what we're doing here. They want to shut us down, Fred, they want us to stop trying. Well, I figured it out, Fred. I know what the problem was. It's so obvious, now that I see it."

Fred seemed to think they were just playing some game that looked suspiciously like patty-cake to a casual observer. His hoots and hollers of elation as he evaded the point of the hypodermic needle mirrored Jackson's grunts of frustration.

"Come on, Fred. Don't move so much. I know it's sharp but it doesn't hurt so bad. You have to go to sleep, Fred, that's what we were missing. It's why Brian Harris died when we did it to him. He was awake like you are now and it was too much for his mind to handle. You can handle it though, Fred. I know you can. You just have to go to sleep."

Fred wriggled his forearm away again and Jackson snapped. He held the syringe like a dagger, thumb on the end of it, and jabbed it into Fred's shoulder with a quick swipe of his arm.

He looked into the chimp's eyes as they flashed with pain and betrayal. It was only a flash, though, and then the bright eyes closed and he slumped forward into Jackson's arms. He held the chimp like he had held his son, with his chin resting over his shoulder, as he carried him to the Imprint machine. Tears threatened to pour from Jackson's red, droopy eyes, but he wouldn't let them.

This is what must be done, he told himself. Humanity won't take the next leap without sacrifice. You are making that sacrifice. There is honor in that, not shame.

Jackson opened the door to the eight-foot-tall plexiglass octagon surrounding the Imprint chair, placed Fred gently on the blue faux-leather, and locked his wrists and ankles to the chair; the sedative wouldn't wear off for hours, but Jackson just wanted to be safe.

He swung the door closed and turned the lock on the outside, then took a seat at the triple-monitor station that controlled the Imprint. He looked in at Fred and realized he forgot to attach the nodes to his head. He ran back

in and secured the sticky rubber nodules to Fred's hairy temples then locked him in the octagon again.

"Adam, you there?" Jackson said.

"Always here, Mr. Jackson," the AI replied.

"We're running the Imprint tonight. I figured out what went wrong with Brian Harris."

"My systems show that we are still missing forty percent of the items on the checklist. Are you sure you want to proceed?"

"Yes."

"I need an override."

"Verbal override granted." Jackson stood from the workstation and stared through the plexiglass at the sleeping chimp. "Are all Imprint systems online?"

"Nominal."

"What about vitals on Fred?"

"Negative."

"What do you mean? Get vitals on Fred."

"Mr. Jackson, there are no vitals to get. The chimp is dead."

Jackson lost his balance and stumbled, catching himself with his hands on the plexiglass. "That's impossible. I gave him one-hundred cc of the sedative."

"That's the human dose, Mr. Jackson. The proper dose for Fred is fifty cc. One-hundred cc is a lethal dose."

Jackson slumped to the floor and held his teary face in his hands. A sharp pain began in the center of his chest and sunk down, settling in his stomach. The pain he felt was the grief of a broken heart, as real and tangible as a broken bone.

It was over. Everything he had poured his life into, dead as the chimp in the chair. This poor, innocent creature, life extinguished from Jackson's rushed carelessness. His son, gone in an accident that never would have happened had Jackson put half as much energy into his family as he did this foolish project. His wife, his Sara, the only woman he had ever loved, the only woman who would ever love him back, gone, leaving him long after Jackson emotionally abandoned her.

He had nothing left, nothing at all save for the deep, tangible agony of failed dreams, the lonely desolation of what could have been.