I Found A Knife

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.

Up Next: I Smell a Rat.