I Found A Knife
A Story site from EldonHughes
Willie & Frank--
Shakespeare?
In Nano-Time
Chapter 14 -- Meet
the New Neighbors
The bed from
the basement wouldn’t fit in my office, so I used the mattress and
laid it on the floor.
It
wasn’t bad at first, but in the night the cold from the floor
leeched up through it.
I
kept waking up shaking.
I was almost glad to punch the alarm when it first went off, and get
up.
I stacked the
mattress up against the wall, locked the guys safely in my office
and went down to shower and get dressed.
We were
back in the lab, safe behind the privacy screens, and watching the
morning news, before anyone else arrived.
Well, I was watching the news.
Willie and Frank were still asleep in the corner.
Jennifer
arrived, with the glow of an angel.
Ok, it
was the steam from the coffee in her hands.
“Oh,
thank you,” I said.
I
pointed to Willie and Frank.
“Ya’ know, mice may not seem to sleep that much, but when
they do, they sleep hard.
I think Frank is snoring.”
“It
would be rude to mention it.”
“Of
course it would,” I nodded.
“And, by that, do you mean that you snore?”
“It
would be rude to mention that, too.”
“I see.
Are you here for a bit?”
“Sure.
Go. Do. I’ve got them.”
I went
off to do the daily blinky light checks and clean up the last of the
sticky hardware from the gamer’s lab.
When I got back the screens were gone and the lab looked like
the top floor of Noah’s Ark.
All the
little animals gathered together, two by two.
‘What’s
up?” I asked.
“Ask
them,” Jennifer said, pointing at Willie and Frank.
I went
to the keyboard.
MORNING
GUYS.
WHAT’S WITH THE
CAMP FIRE GATHERING?
Suddenly
Willie was excited, chittering and squeeking at Frank.
Frank responded with a series of chitters and clicks.
The clicking seemed to be more soothing than anything else.
He kept it up until Willie calmed down.
Then he moved across the word pad.
FIRE?
NICE WORD CHOICE JAKE.
MICE ARE VERY AFRAID OF FIRE
IT IS A
GENE TIC
MEMORY PASS ED DOWN FROM CENTURIES OF TRAGEDY
AND PAIN.
OH, I
wrote. SORRY. I DIDN’T KNOW.
WHY THE GATHERING OF THE LAB ANIMALS THEN?
He moved
across the pad again.
JENNIFER SAID THAT THE LAB WANTED US TO
--
He
paused, like he was looking for the right word.
THEY WANT US TO
ENTER ACT
WITH THE
OTHER ANIMALS HERE.
TRY TO
COMMUNICATE WITH THEM. SEE HOW THEY RESPOND TO US.
IT IS POINT LESS.
Willie
jumped on the word pad.
YEAH.
WE DON’T SPEAK
RABBIT.
AND NO ONE
SPEAKS GUINEA PIG.
NOT
EVEN GUINEA PIGS.
Jennifer
was smiling at me.
She
apparently had already had this conversation.
WHAT
ABOUT THE OTHER MICE?
“Just
squeaks and chirps so far,” Jennifer said.
Frank
said, ALL THEY WANT TO TALK ABOUT IS THE NEXT FOOD TIME.
DOCTOR KYLE GAVE SOME OF THEM THE SAME DRUGS WILLIE AND I GOT
YES?
I looked
back at Jennifer.
She
shook her head.
“I
didn’t tell them.”
I
shrugged.
“Me either.
Doctor Kyle must have.”
YES, BUT
WE DO NOT KNOW WHICH ONES RECEIVED THE MEDICATIONS, I answered him.
TOO BAD.
IT LOOKS LIKE HE PICKED THE WRONG ONES.
“Crotchety this morning, isn’t he?” Jennifer laughed.
“Maybe
they didn’t get as much sleep as I thought.”
I looked
around at the other cages.
The rabbits were the large, floppy eared kind. “Probably a
good thing that it hasn’t taken with some of these guys.
Who wants to be up to their eyes in talking floppy rabbits?”
“Wouldn’t happen,”
Jennifer said.
“Standard
protocol, if test animals can’t be neutered or spayed they are kept
separated by sex.”
“You
guys… whacked Willie and Frank??”
“No,
nobody got… whacked.
The
reproductive systems in all animals have a profound effect on every
other bodily system.
It
would have added too many more unknown elements for this experiment.
That’s why it’s Willie and Frank in there, instead of Willie
and Wilhemina.
Same with
the other cages.
Males
together, females together, and lots of glass and space in between.”
“Oh… so
maybe some day down the road…”
“Maybe,
every mouse deserves his day, right?”
She smiled.
“Just
like every lab geek.”
“Not if
I don’t get off that damn floor.”
~~~~~~~~~~
And that's
pretty much how the next couple weeks went.
During the day Willie and Frank would hang out in their lab,
at night they'd hang out in mine, my office anyway,
sucking up the available network bandwidth on my wireless
internet connection.
They would work back and forth across the word pad.
Now and
then, at night, I'd look at the screen to see what they were working
on.
Sometimes they'd be
working on Frank's book. I really wanted to tap in and read what he
was writing.
But it
seemed rude, since he hadn’t invited us to.
Sometimes one or the other of them would be just wandering the web,
looking up one thing or another.
It was kind of funny.
Frank would be looking up the history of mice.
Willie would be searching the history of cheese, or Soul
Train.
Weird....
Mostly
they ignored what was going on around them -- unless someone was
talking to them, or football was on.
One night Frank was searching and he gave this loud squeek.
WHAT'S
UP? I typed.
I KNOW
WHY THE RAMS SUCK.
NO
DEPTH.
NOT ENOUGH GROOM
ING ON D.
THEY ARE
PREPARING YOUNG PLAYERS THOUGH.
THEY WILL BE BETTER NEXT YEAR.
OK. I
answered.
I lost
track of football weeks ago.
I stopped paying attention long before these guys did.
Who knows why?
Maybe they looked like something familiar, scurrying around on the
screen.
I know that
Willie thought so.
He
also liked to look at web camera shots; of the campus, the town,
anywhere, it seemed.
He'd sit and watch people coming and going below the camera's gaze.
Come to think of it, they looked like something scurrying
around, too.
WHAT ARE
THEY DOING.
He asked.
SAME
THING THEY DO EVERY DAY, I GUESS. I answered.
GO TO CLASS, GO TO WORK, GO HOME.
COME BACK AND DO THE SAME THING TOMORROW.
WHY.
I DON'T
KNOW.
I said,
truthfully.
SOME
ARE LEARNING.
PLANNING
TO TAKE OVER THE WORLD.
I GUESS SOME ARE JUST GETTING BY.
WAITING FOR WHATEVER THEY ARE SUPPOSED TO DO NEXT.
Frank
moved across the touch pad.
OR AVOID ING IT.
I
shrugged.
MAYBE, I
answered.
DOING
SOME THING CAN BE A WAY OF DOING NOTHING.
A WAY TO AVOID DOING WHAT YOU KNOW YOU MUST.
MOST OF THE TIME
IT IS NOT THE RIGHT COURSE OF ACTION.
IT IS BETTER TO BE STILL AND PREPARE FOR WHAT COMES NEXT.
YOU ARE
PRETTY DEEP FOR A SMALL FELLOW.
I typed.
THANK
YOU.
YOU ARE NOT BAD FOR
A GIANT.
Frank paused
for a moment, and then added:
JAKE,
SOME TIMES DOING ANYTHING IS THE WRONG THING.
SOME TIMES DOING NOTHING IS A WAY OF DOING EXACTLY WHAT YOU
MUST.
And
that's when I should have seen it coming.
But
dammit, Jim. I'm a computer geek, not a philosopher.
The next
day Willie and Frank stopped doing anything. Everything was all
“same, same” when I dropped them off in the morning.
When I came back that afternoon they were right where I'd
left them.
I mean,
“right” where I'd left them, sitting in the far corner away from the
monitor.
They weren't
looking at it.
Weren't
looking outside the cage.
They were staring into the middle of the word pad.
They were even staring at the same spot on it.
I tried
getting them to respond to my typing, but others had already tried
before me, with the same results.
FRANK?
WILLIE?
GUYS?
ARE YOU OK?
ARE
YOU HURT?
I looked
around. “Hey, has Doctor Weasel.. um, Wizell been in here?
Has he been anywhere near Willie and Frank?”
I know I sounded paranoid.
So what.
But, no
one had seen Wizell.
Turned out, he was sent home by Doctor Marten, some kind of forced
vacation.
I didn't know
he had actually been kicked out of the building.
Way to
go Doc Marten. Hey, but what about Doctor Kyle?
I ran
for his office, but he passed me in the hall.
He
already knew what was going on, or not going on, with Willie and
Frank.
On the way back
to the lab we ran into, and collected up, both Jennifer and Shaun.
They all
tried to talk to Willie and Frank.
Nothing.
Jennifer
did the usual mouse drills: weighing, measuring, doing temperatures.
When she set them down, they stayed right where she put them.
“They
seem to be fine,” she said.
“At least, physically.”
Shaun
tapped the cage lightly until I told him to stop.
Then I tapped it.
Nothing. Willie and Frank just sat there and... breathed.
“Well,
at least they're alive,” Shaun said.
I shot him a dirty look, then apologized for it.
“It's
not your fault, Shaun.
Sorry.”
“It may
not be anyone's fault,” Doctor Kyle suggested.
“It may be some side effect of the therapy.
Or, it may just be a stage that some mice go through.
Some as yet unseen condition they are subject to.”
“As yet
unseen condition?”
I did
at least try to keep the coldness out of my voice.
“Sure,”
Jennifer said softly.
“There's more we don't know about white mice than there is that we
do.”
“The
same can be said of most any animal,” Doctor Kyle said.
“Including us humans.”
I took a
deep breath and, finally agreed, with a small nod.
“And yet, we think it's ok to inject them with all kinds of
experimental stuff.”
“I have
to repeat myself here,” Doctor Kyle said. “We do the same thing,
everyday, with our own kind.
From new drugs to engineered food.”
“St.
Joseph's,” Shaun said.
“Take these, they're orange. There'll be other colors later.”
“I
sometimes wonder if George Carlin knew how right he was when he said
that,” Doctor Kyle said.
I nodded
again.
“So, what do we
do now?”
“I think
we wait, at least for a night, maybe another day,” Doctor Kyle said.
“Keep an eye on them.
See if they eat.
See if they snap out of whatever it is.”
“Do you
think they will?”
I
asked hesitantly.
“No
idea,” he admitted.
“But
I think that, right now, the best we can do is nothing.”
“Do I
take them back into my office tonight?”
I asked.
“I don't
think so,” he answered.
“Let them hang out here for the night.
Check on them a couple times.”
I nodded
my agreement, and we all went out into the hall.
Shaun
and Jennifer stayed around for a few hours.
We ordered a pizza and walked it into the lab, on the off
chance it would stir some kind of response.
I even left a piece in the cage.
Nothing.
Shaun
bailed around ten.
About
midnight Jennifer asked if I wanted her to stay.
The answer had to be yes, right?
I mean. She's beautiful.
I’m a guy.
Besides,
we have something, I think.
Hey, she kissed me first.
And yet,
I heard myself saying “No, that's ok.
I'll see you in the morning.”
She
left. I turned on the desk light and turned off the overheads, and
dropped on to the mattress.
Dummy…..
I tossed
and turned a couple of times, trying to get comfortable.
It just wasn't going to happen.
Then my office door opened, quietly.
I looked up and saw Jennifer, silhouetted by the hall light
outside.
“Hey, I
said I was ok,” I said.
It got
darker again when she closed the door.
She kicked of her sneakers and slipped into bed next to me.
“I know.
But, I'm not just here for you,” she said.
“I'm here for me, too.”
As my eyes adjusted to the darkness I could see her
expression in the half light.
“I
almost made it to the front door.
But hey, why go home?
Right now, what I care about most is here.”
“I'm
sure Frank will be delighted to hear that.”
She
thudded my head with the palm of a hand.
“Jerk.
I meant
you.”
“In that
case, I'm sure Willie will be very jealous.”
“Damn
straight.
They both
will.”
Then she
cuddled next to me and we went to sleep.
Maybe it was the shared heat, but I didn’t feel the cold from
the floor.
When we
woke up, they were gone.
~~~~~~~~~~~
Someone was
pounding on the door.
“Jake!
Jake!
Wake up!!”
It was one of the new research interns, Danny something.
“I'm up.
We're.. umm, I'm up,” I answered.
“I'm awake already.”
“Dude,
you better get down to the lab, quick!”
And I heard him beat feet back down the hall.
We
yanked our shoes on and ran down to the lab.
Willie and Frank's cage was gone
All around the room, cage doors were standing open. There
wasn't mouse, rabbit or guinea pig anywhere.
What the
hell....?
“What
the hell...?”
For a
moment I thought I'd said it out loud, but in Doctor Kyle's
voice.
He came in right
behind us and was making a circuit around the lab tables, doing the
same thing all the rest of us were.
We looked under tables, under desks, behind storage lockers
and in anything that looked big enough to hold even half a mouse,
whether that something had a lid on it or not.
No mice.
No rabbits.
No
pigs.
No Willie. No
Frank.
And no way in hell is Doctor Kyle going to
believe I had nothing to do with this.
Available Tales
--"Willie & Frank"
~~~~