Wissen had been practicing the lecture with a voice recorder for the last week. Since the accident he’d tended to talk in a quiet monotone. It was an effort to add tone and inflection, but he thought he’d done a decent job. He quickly flipped through several slides showing how most cells in the human body can only form tissues composed of those same types of cells. This was the dull part — the basic background that needed to be covered before getting to the point of the lecture. “We’ve known for a long time that bone marrow makes a wide variety of very specialized cells; that whole human bodies form from just a few cell types in the fetus. These stem cells have the potential to replace damaged cells in parts of the body that just don’t replace all that easily.”
He looked around the lecture room. By this point in his career, not to mention the week of practice, lecturing was pretty well automatic. The mouth moved, words came out, but he really didn’t have to pay much attention to what he was saying. Instead he looked again at the distribution of students in the room. As expected, the students in the front rows were attentive. The ones in the back looked bored, but a few heads were up and listening. As he went on to describe the many sources of stem cells used in current research: bone marrow, amniotic fluid, umbilical cord blood, transformed endothelial cells, and only very rarely, fetal tissue, he noticed that many of the front row students were writing notes, but the back row students seemed to be distracted or were starting to talk among themselves.
“But what use are we to make of stem cells? Our best example is the brain. For years, scientists felt that a human brain was born with all of the neurons it would ever have — that no neurons could be added or regrown. Now we know that certain areas of the brain, such as the dentate gyrus of hippocampus, have the ability to make new brain cells. Most brain areas do not. What if we could replace the neurons damaged by stroke, injury or disease? Like the old time alchemists trying to turn lead into gold, the Neural Alchemist turns stems cells into any brain cells we need.”
There was a stir in the back. Usually by this point in any lecture there would be questions. Medical students liked to gain recognition among their peers by asking questions that they hoped a lecturer couldn’t answer. The bragging rights of an unanswered question were a major contributor to student hierarchy. The two people who stood up in the back of the lecture hall didn’t look like students about to ask a question, though. For one, the standing male and female did not really look like students; most med students start off with a passing familiarity with personal hygiene and got better once they started performing patient exams. These two looked downright scruffy, unbathed, and wearing dirty clothes. What was that bag at their feet?
“NO ZOMBIES!” The female shouted. The male reached into the bag and threw an elongated object.
It was an arm. A severed human arm. Every face in the hall turned toward the couple.
“UNDEAD. EVIL. NO BRAIN-EATING ZOMBIES!”
The barrage of limbs continued. The man throwing them would certainly not make the big leagues. Most of the limbs were falling in the vacant middle range of seats. A foot made it far enough to hit one seated student in the head. His expression quickly cycled through horror, to revulsion, then pain.
Ah, thought Wissen. Mannequin parts dressed and painted to look cadaverous. A few of the students were getting up and approaching the couple, who now turned to exit the room. The movement rapidly turned into a chase, quickly emptying the back rows and part of the front.
“I guess that means today’s lecture is done,” Wissen told the few remaining students. “Read the assigned chapters and we’ll reschedule for next week.”
The disruption did have one positive outcome, the next morning there was a petition posted on the student bulletin boards all over campus:
“Got BRAINZ???” It said. “Support Professor Wissen. Support Science. Fight Ignorance.” There was an accompanying petition. The Dean’s office eventually reported over 1200 signatures. Considering that the Medical and Graduate Schools had 500 students — around 1500 people including faculty and staff, it was a strong show of support. Wissen, however, spent most of the intervening week in a depressed mood, retreating once again to his old basement lab. Only when the rescheduled lecture had full attendance, no disruptions, and a much higher percentage of eager, interested faces, did his black mood start to lift.
***
The lab was cold and dimly lit. Strange that it should be cold in the summer and warm in the winter, but the central heating and cooling conduits had access doors for maintenance on this floor, and they didn’t always seal well. The lab had no windows, stained ceiling tiles, broken flooring, leaky water pipes, and uneven pressure in the air, gas and vacuum lines. It was the least popular lab in the building, and was frequently called The Dungeon by the graduate research students. In the months between his ‘death’ and even after his reinstatement in the faculty, it had been ‘Emeritus Professor’ Wissen’s home and workplace in the basement of the old Pathology research building. Some day it would be renovated, but since an endowment had allowed the University to build a new research laboratory building last year, the renovation had become a low priority.
John Wissen liked The Dungeon. Restoration of his position and funding had been accompanied by assignment of decent research space in the upper floors of the same building, but the disruption at the lecture had convinced him to keep at least some research down here and not all in the new lab. Besides, students didn’t like the constant breezes from the HVAC and the smell of the vivarium on the same floor. The privacy had allowed him to perform a few procedures out of view of the students.
Research is based on repeating experiments, but how to repeat the singular experience of Undead Professor Johannes A. Wissen, Ph.D.? There was only one source of reanimated tissue, Wissen himself. Obtaining a tissue sample for testing meant taking a piece of his own flesh; and while John was not averse to taking small samples, the process left wounds that did not heal. Healing would have required him to be alive.
He retreated to the office in the back of the Dungeon. At one time it had been used for light-sensitive experiments; thus, once the door closed, there was no possibility of being seen from the outer lab. A large mirror was mounted on the back of the door. John lifted his shirt and stared for a moment at the reflection. His reanimation after the automobile accident had been delayed long enough that the coroner had performed an autopsy. His verdict: Cause of death was cardiac arrest due to rapid impact with a steering wheel. Large incisions started near each shoulder, joined at the center of the chest, then extended down to the upper abdomen, forming a ‘Y’. It was stitched closed with precise black sutures, but the edges of the wound remained raw and reddened. Several smaller incisions were not as neatly stitched, marking the sites of previous samples that Wissen had performed himself.
The skin should be cold, gray and necrotic. If I were truly a zombie, I’d look dead, he thought. Not warm and pink. Not red around the stitches. There was no sign of bleeding at the incisions, the heart didn’t beat, the blood didn’t flow, but aside from unhealed scars, he looked as alive as he had ever been.
Today’s sample was from the liver. He could get at that though the existing autopsy incision. He unwrapped the sterile covering of his surgical kit. I don’t know why I bother autoclaving it. It’s not like I’m going to get an infection. Using fine scissors, he snipped two sutures from the ‘Y’-shaped incision and inserted the biopsy probe. A quick twist captured the liver sample and he removed the probe and placed the tissue sample in a sterile culture dish.
A small drop of dark red blood lingered at the probe site. As he brushed it away to begin resuturing the skin he realized how complacent he had become about the whole procedure. Damn, I just stuck a whopping big needle into my abdomen without a second thought. I suppose that the lack of feeling — pain or emotion — makes it easier. Replacing the sutures took only a minute. Looking in the mirror John tightened the silk thread and snipped off the excess with the scissors. As he
moved to place the needle in a container for resterilization it slipped out of the grasp of the metal forceps. Reflex born of years of protecting delicate lab instruments caused him to grab at the falling needle. While he succeeded in arresting the fall, the sharp point of the needle jabbed through his protective gloves and deep into the palm of his hand.
Ouch. Wissen thought. It’s just as well that I can’t feel that. John had realized quite early in his new existence that he had very little sensation of touch or pain in his body. That fact had led to the next routine that Wissen performed while he was still alone and in front of a mirror. He pulled over a magnifying mirror similar to the kind used for applying makeup. Using the magnifier and door mirror, he examined each incision, then each patch of unbroken skin for new wounds and injuries. If he didn’t want to become a horror movie cliché, he needed to bandage and repair each injury before he risked losing body parts. The new puncture wound in his palm didn’t require closing, but it wouldn’t hurt to put some tape over it for a few days.
Inspection complete, John exited the office and returned to the outer lab. He would prepare a small sample for microscopy then send the remainder upstairs for the students to culture. Looking at the tissue sample in the sterile dish, he again noticed the drops of blood.
Dark red blood, He thought. … and that’s the problem. Live blood should have gotten redder when exposed to air; dead blood should be dark brown or black. There had to be oxygen though; somehow oxygen was getting to his brain, muscles and skin without being carried by blood and circulated by the heart.
John dabbed a smear of blood on a slide and looked at it under the highest magnification he could manage on the old light microscope. More sophisticated tools were available in the upstairs lab, but this would do for now. Red cells, white cells. That’s normal. Those filaments, though… It COULD be fibrinogen, except for the fact that they usually show up in clotted blood and as the basis for scabs and scars. None of THAT is happening, so why are they there? He moved the slide to a new location and adjusted the focus. Those small cells look very similar to the stem cells he’d been working with prior to the accident. Still, they didn’t look quite right, more like immature blood cells. He’d have a technician run some cellular labeling assays to check it out.
John was not even aware that he had been scratching lightly where he had taken today’s sample. Nor did he notice when he started pressing his palm against the edge of the lab bench to relieve the dull ache of the puncture wound.
***
One week later John again entered the privacy of the downstairs lab. The recent liver tissue and blood had indeed included stem cells, along with more of the filaments — not just in the blood, but in the liver sample as well. In order to start sustainable cultures, he’d need a larger tissue sample and considerably more blood.
He was facing away from the mirror as he removed his shirt. As he turned around and reached for the sampling probe he stopped…
…and stared.
The incision immediately over the prior sampling site was closed. About an inch of new scar tissue had formed in the middle of the autopsy incision.
I guess I’ll have to go in from a different site. He began to snip away sutures below the new scar and prepared to insert the slightly larger sampling probe. DAMN. That HURTS! He retrieved the probe and sample, but had to sit down and rest before attempting to suture the incision. He might have to try some anesthetic before collecting the blood sample.
Out in the lab he found an anesthetic spray used to desensitize incision sites during animal surgeries. The suture sites burned from the slight punctures of the needle, but the spray relieved enough of the sensation that John could consider the next step.
With no heart beat or blood circulation, it would not be possible to just stick a needle in a vein and draw blood. He had planned to make a longitudinal incision in a large vein near the ankle, and rely on gravity and pressure on the calf to squeeze enough blood into a test tube for culture. A quick test of the scalpel on the skin of the ankle revealed no sensation down there — yet. Still, he was reluctant to cut on himself and repeat the experience of the biopsy probe. This would require some assistance.
Phil Wohlrab had been a friend and occasional co-worker since college. John had spent a few years working in various labs before going to graduate school; Phil had joined the Army, become a medic, and then went to medical school after being discharged. John had just joined the faculty when Phil arrived as a first year Internal Medicine resident. They’d rekindled their friendship and become like brothers, even to the point of helping each other through the pain of losing spouses. Most recently, Wohlrab was working with the Aging Center to address problems of administering medications to the elderly populations. He had extensive experience with patients having collapsed veins, so John called him in to assist.
The basement lab seemed crowded with John, Phil and Laura Diaz in it. John was seated in a reclining chair while Phil inserted a cannula into one of the large veins in John’s neck.
“This is no different than a central line, John. I’ll insert the tubing far enough that it should be at the right ventricle, then draw blood.”
“Urgh,” was all John could manage. Phil had placed a high collar around his neck to keep it in the appropriate position for the procedure.
“I think that was ‘Thank You’,” injected Laura helpfully.
“No,” gasped John, “that was ‘Hurry up’.”
Phil drew 10 cc’s of blood and then quickly removed the tubing. The blood in the syringe was dark reddish-brown, but the drop that formed at the entry site on the neck was a brighter red.
“Definitely oxygenated blood, John,” said Wohlrab. He transferred the blood into a tube containing chemicals to preserve the sample, and then placed the tube in a bucket of ice chips. “Do you want me to take any other samples while I’m at it?”
“No,” said John, removing the collar and massaging the neck muscles. “Either this is it, or I’ll have to submit to a full surgical procedure to get all of the samples we’d need. Since I have no desire to repeat that autopsy, this had better be it. Thanks, Phil, you’re a good friend.”
Laura spoke up. “Did you know you actually smiled when you said that, John?”
***
The International Union of Pathology and Pathophysiology was being held in Innsbruck, Austria. The Congress Centre was a bare half kilometer from the old city and former residence of Holy Roman Emperor Maximillian. The juxtaposition of old and new was never more apparent than in the modern teleconferencing facilities of the Salon where Professor Wissen was scheduled to address the conference. The legal issues had long since been resolved to the point where he could have travelled to the scientific meeting, but an excess of publicity coupled with recent developments made it safer to address his colleagues over a closed circuit television link.
The university’s teleconferencing studio was a strange mixture of television news studio and academic office. John sat at a desk in front of a video camera; in front of him, two video monitors showed the assembled scientists and the master of ceremonies beginning the introduction in Innsbruck. To one side of the desk was a computer which would control and display the presentation simultaneously in the local and remote locations. On the wall behind him were the University Medical Center logo, a white board, and a bookshelf with books arranged to prominently display key Pathology textbooks.
In Austria, the speaker was finishing the introduction: “…and without further delay, I present this year’s Keynote Lecturer, Professor John Wissen.” On that cue, John tapped the computer keyboard and started playing a video that had been prepared over the previous months in anticipation of this presentation. It started with him seated in this very studio, addressing the camera:
“Fellow Scientists. I won’t dwell on the sensationalism and lurid background of this finding, but I am here to report that our research team has made an astounding discovery in stem cell research. For years we have known that
life is an intricate balance of metabolism and diffusion. The mammalian physiology consists of a closed circulatory system that supplies individual cells with oxygen and glucose for their individual metabolic needs, and removes the organic wastes provided by those same metabolic processes. But what if we could remove the redundancy of identical chemical processes in each cell and simply supply the energy through a distributed network between cells? Individual cells would not metabolize, nor would they excrete, but they would all receive exactly the energy they needed in order to function.
“We have determined that specific differentiation of stem cell line UMC325 into a novel cell type that we call UMC325.JW provides just that function. JW cells consume oxygen and organic molecules and transfer the essential energy storing molecule — ATP — directly to any mammalian cells. JW cells are highly mobile and quickly permeate living tissues, leaving an interconnected matrix in their path. This matrix makes blood circulation, and even a beating heart, unnecessary. My unique existence is because of JW cells.”
John watched the audience on the monitors as the video continue. There was much nodding of heads, whispered comments, and furious note-taking. The video continued with time-lapse recordings of the essential experiments that proved the thesis. Laboratory rats were injected with the JW cells, 24 hours later their hearts were stopped by electric shock. EEG and EKG monitors showed no activity for 30 minutes. To all appearances, the lab rats were dead. Between 30 and 60 minutes after the heart shock, each laboratory rat began to twitch, move its limbs, and eventually get up and walk around. EEG tracings revealed renewed brain activity even though EKG showed a complete absence of heart beat.
The video proceeded to show repeated demonstrations with cats, dogs, and monkeys. And that was when the real problems started, John thought. Organizations that fought to prevent animal “death” in medical research were strangely unsympathetic to the fact that those same animals were brought back to “life” in Wissen’s lab. The protests and death threats had caused him to move out of his apartment and take up residence again in his basement lab. At least the university had furnished it for him this time.
Science Fiction by Scientists: An Anthology of Short Stories (Science and Fiction) Page 9