"What do you mean I'm a candidate for the experiment?" I ask. The medic was a small and skinny guy. He was one of the few authorities I could trust except for my aunt. He is squatting next to me, checking my wound. The pain in my arm is growing worse with each passing moment and I grimace.
"You have a genetic disorder, young one. That is why we need you for the experiment," he repeats, slowly, as if I am a child.
"Where… where?" I ask, looking around the room. This is the first time I've been in a place like this.
"We're in the basement of a research facility. The government needs your blood and we have no other way of getting it. It would be a violation of privacy to use your aunt as a lab rat, she is a fragile woman, for one and not in the best of health."
"You know what I am?" I ask.
"Yes, we know about your condition…," the medic says. "The government has received information that some of the disorder carriers, the gene carriers, are also outstanding (sic) intelligence. You are just one of these carriers. The trait can be latent or not, but in your case it is, and you have an outstanding intelligence. Tell me, do you think you can perform the experiment?"
"Sure," I say, and winced. "I can do anything." He grinned and I suddenly felt like a child again, I looked at my hand and saw nothing but two thumbs and two fingers. I have only one of each.
"You can keep your hand," he says. "That doesn't scare you, does it?"
"No. I can do anything, even more." I say, feeling like a little kid again.
"The gene modification they plan to do is going to make your genes more balanced. This immediately gives you better physical ability and your intelligence becomes outstanding. You will be like a newborn baby when it begins to function normally. Are you curious?" He pauses. "Your aunt will be fine," he says. "Even if the treatment goes wrong and you die, she will not be hurt."
"Okay," I say. The other part of my genes were not active.
I never knew who was going to be a carrier and then a guinea pig. I do not know if the law ever told me that I am a carrier and that my aunt was also. But I was a guinea pig. I was a guinea pig, and everything was happening to me. I was the one who was injured, and my aunt was being put up in the hotel room with the view.
"How long will it take?" I ask. I really like this guy. I am not the one who has to go through with this. I am going to be left out. And now I am standing with the anesthesia, and I am going to lose my senses.
"A few weeks," he says. "We have to do a rigorous physical examination before and after the experiment."
"But how long will it take?" I ask.
"It will be done in one shot," he says.
"I'm ready. What do I do?" I ask.
Two nurses enter and I sit on the table. My soul is being transfer into a wild animal, the physical one. The procedure is done by heating the tissue and it converts the body from the material that it is into a soul. The only way for me to leave the body is by dying. I have to. All the people are leaving their bodies for someone sweeter. They are leaving their souls behind with their bodies.
"I'm going to die," I say, carefully running a hand through my hair. "Are you sure?" I am telling you about a dying body, and the people are leaving their souls behind. And I am dying now. God, the body is really dying.
"What exactly happens?" I ask.
"There is an injury to your body that's why you won't be able to stay in your body because of the pain," the medic says.
"Don't you want to stay in your own body?" he asks.
"I feel like a mechanic. And now I am a mechanic that is becoming another soul. I don't have anyone left." My body is turning to a soul. I am becoming another great animal.
I am a rat sinking into the sewer. I step into the sewer. I turn into a rat. I am sinking deep into the sewer. I plunge into a viscous liquid. A rag is wrapped around my face. A rag that surrounds my face. I am a rat. I am sinking deeper into the sewer. I am sinking deep into the viscous liquid. I plunge into the viscous liquid.
I am under the hood, underground. I am sinking deeper into the underground river.
I am in the sewer, or is this a sewer?
I am in the deep sewers underneath the city.
