Reanimatrix

by Pete Rawlik

  “Sooner than I would have thought probable we were once more boarding the horses at the Pierce farm, and accompanied by Ammi Pierce, on our way by foot to the Gardner farm. As we walked we explained to Pierce how we had tested the sample, and how it had or had not responded. I could tell that much of this was lost on the man, but his lack of comprehension did not derail us. We trooped down the path, carrying our equipment, our pace quickened by our excitement.

  “Nahum Gardner met us as we came upon the house and joined us at the impact site. At the sight of the thing he was as much taken aback as we were. In a day it had shrunk significantly, being now only about five feet long and the earth much caved in around it. It was still uncomfortably hot, and Lidenbrock suggested that it might even be warmer than it had been the day before. While Jekyll spoke to Gardner, I handed Lidenbrock a hammer and chisel. With a single blow, a large gouge appeared in the mass, penetrating five to six inches into the rock. A large chunk perhaps two feet across detached and tumbled to the ground. With gloved hands I recovered it and placed it into a large ceramic jar, which I then sealed with paraffin.

  “As I was finishing the bead, Lidenbrock let out a cry of discovery and called us all to his side. In the area exposed by our efforts there was embedded a glossy globule about three inches across. As the sun played across the surface of the newly exposed sphere, a brilliant display of color reflected outward which reminded me of the spectrum we had seen the previous night while testing the now vanished sample. We all watched as Lidenbrock gently tapped the thing and were surprised by the sound that echoed back, which suggested hollowness and a thin, perhaps even brittle, shell. Before anyone could act to stop him, Lidenbrock gave the globule a quick, smart blow of the hammer. There was an audible pop as the spherical jewel burst and I watched for the pieces of shell to rain to the ground. Instead, they simply vanished. Whatever material the object had been made of, it was apparently only stable when in that particular shape; in this I draw parallels to bubbles of soap and other such thin liquid shells.

  “The discovery and loss of that globule spurred us to search for others, and within the hour we had drilled a number of exploratory holes with no results. Disheartened by our lack of discovery, our spirits were lifted when Jekyll revealed that he and Gardner had worked out an agreement that allowed us to return the next day and remove the entire specimen. We left with our new sample and hurried back to Miskatonic University in order to make arrangements for equipment and a heavy truck. As we trundled back onto campus a summer storm was blowing in from the east, bringing rain, wind, and lightning with it.

  “That night we divided into three teams, each with a substantial portion of meteorite to work with. Lidenbrock was to repeat many of the tests from the previous night and ensure that the sample behaved homogeneously. Jekyll and Moreau were to pursue a study in which animals were exposed to minute quantities of the material, either intravenously or orally. In the meanwhile, West and I were to subdivide our sample and subject them to multiple treatments in an attempt to retard or cease its slow decay. After some consultation we decided to divide the sample into five pieces and attempt five different preservation techniques. The simplest of our designs involved a casement made out of lead, while our most complicated design involved containers made out of low-grade sapphires wrapped in magnetized wires which would then suspend the material in such a manner that it would not come in contact with any other solid.

  “It was in the course of subdividing our sample that West and I discovered a second globule, smaller than the first, only two inches across, but still as dynamic and beautiful as the first. Knowing that this sphere was likely to be as brittle as the last, we extracted it from its matrix using fine tools borrowed from the archaeology department. Once it was clean we transferred it to a porcelain crucible, which we then set into a cabinet for safe keeping. It was only after we had completed our evening of work, trying to preserve the meteoric matrix, that we considered going back to research the multispectral sphere. Unfortunately, by this time we were all too tired to carry out any formal examination and after braving the thunderstorm we all retired well after midnight.

  “The next morning, for the third day in a row, a familiar trio of scientists once more made the trip to the Gardner farm, this time accompanied by a heavy truck full of equipment and supplies. To our great disappointment, the great meteorite was gone, only a ragged pit remaining to mark its existence. I suggested that the rain had acted to accelerate the dissolution, but this seemed contrary to our laboratory experiments. When asked if he had seen anything odd the previous night, Gardner was reluctant to speak at first, but eventually revealed that the storm may indeed have had some effect on the object. The stone, it seems, had a tendency to draw the lightning from the storm, for he had seen tremendous bolts rain down on the thing six times in the first hour of the downpour. After that, Gardner lost track, though he admitted the strikes continued throughout the night. Half-heartedly, I dug around in the pit, but found nothing. We took lunch with the Gardners, a rabbit stew, and then bid them goodbye. Our return to Miskatonic University was solemn, the loss weighing heavy on our minds. Only the knowledge that some samples remained in our laboratory, including an intact globule, provided any relief to our disappointment.

  “Back at our laboratory, we found ourselves beset by the most boorish little man. Karel Colceag—Higgins identified the man as Romanian in origin—identified himself as a reporter for the local weekly newspaper, the Arkham Gazette. His questions concerning the meteorite were at first straightforward and we were happy to supply him with answers. However, as the questioning continued, it seemed plain that Colceag was more interested in exploiting the Gardner family, characterizing them as uneducated and superstitious folk, and trying to manipulate us into making such statements. I cannot stand such men who seek to profit in the documentation of the failings of the less fortunate. It is rare that I use my own stature to dominate others, but in this case I was provoked, and rising to my full height I made it clear to Mr. Colceag that he was unwelcome in our facility and that he should neither write about us nor return for a further interview. This encounter spurred a discussion of how to proceed with publicizing our work. All agreed that we should only publish our findings in respectable scientific journals, and that communication with the press should be avoided at all costs.

  “To accomplish this we devised a simple plan in which we provided to the public announcements that were designed to purposefully misinform. We made no mention of the surviving globule, nor that we had subdivided the sample, and neither did we discuss the act of animal testing. We did describe how we had sealed a sample in a lead casement, and after a week, when the fragment within had ceased to exist, we announced that event publicly. As planned, the stories written by reporters, including Colceag, detailed the strange properties of the material and lamented our inability to preserve any bit of the outré visitor. By the second week in July all inquiries into our work had ceased. We did not let it be known that some of our other preservation methods were slightly more successful, and allowed us to formulate a new concept for preserving the globule.

  “As I have said, our research into the nature of the alien material took many paths, and while West and I pursued the preservation of samples, and Lidenbrock explored its chemical and physical nature, the path chosen by Jekyll and Moreau was on the possible effects such material would have on the organs and structures of living creatures. These were, in a single word, astounding. The material had a profound effect on the tissues of the subjects, regardless of dosage. At extremely low oral dosages the substance acted as a desiccant, drawing water out of the tissues and cells to such a point that the tissues eventually became dry and gray before becoming exceedingly brittle. It was both astounding and horrible to watch vibrant creatures succumb to forces that in a matter of hours turned them slowly into masses of little more than gray dust. More concerning was that the lost water itself remained unaccountable, as if whatever process was occurring was
also acting to destroy the water. Attempts to determine the final fate of the missing mass proved fruitless.

  “Strangely enough, while the samples of the meteoric matrix were slowly disintegrating, the strange globule was noticeably expanding, albeit slowly. By the end of the third week of July, all of the meteoric material had dissolved, while the strange globule had swelled to slightly more than four inches in diameter. We treated the globule with care and examined it in the most passive and benign of methods. Unlike the matrix from which it was recovered, it was cold to the touch, and was not luminous. Indeed, tests of reflectivity suggested that the thing actually absorbed light, but only in select wavelengths. Experiments with direct heat produced no measurable change in temperature. This did not mean that there were no measurable changes in the object itself. Indeed, I have already commented on the fact that the object was growing in size, but it was also gaining mass. The surface area of a sphere is a function of the square of its diameter, while the volume of a sphere is a function of the cube of its diameter. The sphere was gaining mass at a rate that was proportional to neither of these, but rather at a rate somewhere between the two. This perplexed us for a bit, but eventually I realized that the rate of mass gain might be properly explained if the mass of the shell were held constant, while the quantity of whatever was held inside was increasing proportionately to volume. Essentially, what we were watching was a balloon made of extra-terrene material being filled with a substance the source and nature of which was unknown. Moreau thought perhaps that the surface material was porous and was drawing gaseous matter from our atmosphere to the interior, but we found no evidence of any currents or vortices around the object to support such an idea.

  “By the end of July, the sphere had grown to more than a foot in diameter. All attempts to halt its progression had failed, though we had achieved some success in slowing the expansion by placing it inside a lead chamber in which a vacuum had been created. Removing all light sources apparently helped as well. It was about this time that we began to detect a new property of the sphere that prompted us to ask Professor Higgins to join our research team. The sphere rested inside its chamber on a tripod of ceramic, which itself was set on a slab of lead. At irregular intervals the slab would be subjected to a low-frequency vibration, the source of which was obviously the sphere. As an expert in sounds and sound production we invited Higgins to apply himself to our literally growing issue. Of course, he readily agreed.

  “The subsequent events cannot be laid solely on Higgins, or on any one of us. We all agreed to take the globule out of the isolation chamber so as to facilitate the detection and study of the strange harmonics being produced. That those studies lasted for days, and that all of us failed to realize that Higgins had neither slept nor eaten during the time period, is a monumental failure that culminated on August 11th 1882 in what can only be termed a disaster. It was Evangeline West who first noticed the strain Higgins was under, for she had been assisting him nonstop for several hours and in a state of near exhaustion had suggested that they both break for food and a cup of tea. Higgins launched into a tirade, demeaning the poor woman personally, and her gender as a whole, suggesting that her constant prattle was slowly driving him mad, and if she were simply to leave him alone, perhaps he could finally finish deciphering what the damned sphere was trying to tell him.

  “For her part, Evangeline was most professional, and immediately left the lab to fetch me and the others. She returned with all of us in tow, perhaps no more than thirty minutes later. Higgins was standing next to the sphere with a large tuning fork raised up over his head with both hands. Jekyll shouted as he came through the door and then sprinted forward. He covered the distance between them in an instant while Higgins himself, in response to the sudden ruckus, spun around to face us. I do not know what Higgins’s intention was, that point is moot. What I do know is that the collision between Jekyll and Higgins sent the philologist to the floor and deflected Jekyll onto the table top and crashing into the sphere. The great multicolored ball was knocked into the air and seemed to hover there for a second before it suddenly shuddered violently, and then, with a tremendous, almost comical sound, popped.

  “The space once occupied by the sphere was now occupied by a brilliant green luminescence that quickly expanded in all directions to form a kind of thick blanket, or dense fog. So bright was the light given off by this gaseous substance that the others and I had to shield our eyes while we fumbled for protective goggles. Jekyll, who was prone on the table directly beneath the glowing mass, brought his arm up over his face to hide his eyes. West, who had obviously retained more of her rationality than the rest of us, donned a thick pair of protective gloves and then grabbed a large bucket. She dashed forward and, using the handle, swung the bucket through the odd gas, scooping a large portion out and down. I heard her cry out as her hand passed through the substance, but whatever had occurred, it failed to stop her. She kept the bucket moving, slid it and its contents beneath the lead chamber, and sealed it shut.

  “Her actions were not without consequence. The main body of the phenomenon turned from green to red and there was a sudden piercing sound that rapidly increased in frequency, like the sound of a train whistle moving toward you. The mass seemed to implode in on itself, condensed, and then surged downward toward Jekyll. It enveloped the poor man and he screamed in pitiful agony, but only briefly. The open orifice was apparently too appealing to whatever force was motivating the strange mass, and it poured down his throat, filling the man with a sickly glow that cycled through some strange alien analog of the spectrum. As it did so, the shrieking claxon subsided and was replaced with a low, almost satisfied, hum.

  “In addition to the droning hum there was still another sound, one not unlike the shrieking that had subsided, but of a much lower volume and somewhat muffled. It took me a minute, but I soon realized that the noise was originating from the lead chamber which Miss West was currently securing shut. Lidenbrock was first to act and fled out the door with a wild, fearful look upon his face. I called after him but it had no effect. Moreau staggered over to Jekyll, while I went to attend to Higgins. The poor man had collapsed and was mumbling incoherently in a language I did not recognize. I did a quick examination of the man, and finding no obvious injuries I made sure he was comfortable and then shuffled over to help Moreau.

  “Jekyll’s body was being wracked by arcs of blue electrical energy, the movement of which in turn caused his body to spasm and jerk. Moreau reached out to hold Jekyll down, but as his hand approached the body a spark of energy arced out from Jekyll and threw Moreau several feet back. I moved to help him but he waved me off and directed me to a pair of insulated gloves. I stumbled over, secured them, and then moved toward Jekyll’s energized body. The same manner of energy leapt toward my outstretched hand, but the gloves performed as needed and I was able to grab him by the shoulders and pin him to the floor. Moreau obtained another pair of gloves and was quickly able to pin the poor man’s feet. By this time West had finished securing the chamber and had unraveled a roll of rubber hose. Together, the three of us bound Jekyll’s arms and legs and created a crude stretcher. We cleared a low table at the far end of the laboratory and laid our friend out on it before covering him with a blanket. Once we were assured that he was secured we all collapsed in exhaustion.

  “Lidenbrock returned several hours later and apologized for his cowardly behavior. Despite this he remained fearful and was careful to avoid approaching Jekyll’s body. Higgins and Lidenbrock assisted West in transferring samples of the strange gas from the lead box and into sapphire containers wrapped in magnetized wire, while Moreau and I examined Jekyll. After several hours of testing and attempts to draw the substance out of Jekyll using passive or noninvasive methods, Moreau and I concluded that more serious methods might be needed. However, all of the ideas we came up with were dangerous, and likely to injure Jekyll if not singly, then successively. What we needed were subjects that were similarly infected by the same m
aterial on which we could experiment.

  “To this end we took the remainder of the sample in the lead box and placed it inside a glass cabinet with a dozen rabbits. West had prepared four containers with small subsamples of the gas which appeared to be stable, although both luminescent and energized. The rest of the green, cloudy gas was pumped into the cabinet, where it almost immediately flowed violently into the nasal passages of the small mammals. As with Jekyll, the creatures were suddenly wracked with strange energies and suffered severe convulsions. After some consultation we agreed to allow our specimens to undergo at least twenty-four hours of exposure before any attempts to force the gas out of their bodies was made.

  “To our astonishment, the exposed animals showed a wholly remarkable response. All twelve animals showed marked changes in morphology, with changes to the head, spine, and all four legs and to the front paws. The overall effect on appearance was disturbing, for the animals now seemed to be more comfortable in an upright bipedal position than as quadrupeds. It was obvious that the animals were in considerable pain, but they were also exhibiting unusual signs of aggressive behavior. Perhaps the most startling transformation was not the sudden restructuring of the front paws into grasping hands, but rather the speed at which the animals developed skill in their use. So adept had the creatures become that we found it prudent to add a lock to the cage latch and remove the key to a safe distance.