This choice: "Lab 154, nutritional science." • Go Back... I rode the elevator up one floor – kind of lazy, I know – and walked along the empty, echoing hallways looking for Lab 154. From the faded flyers on the pinboards and general feeling of disenchantment, I assumed that during the semester this place would be busier with students, but the only people I saw were the occasional harried grad student types in rumpled white coats clutching grimly to steaming paper cups of black coffee.
Lab 154 was at the end of a short side passage and the door did, indeed, read 'Nutritional Science', and underneath, 'Primary Investigator Dr. A. N. Tarpinian'. I knocked, tentatively, and a woman's voice said, "Come in!"
The scientist wasn't what I was expecting. True, she wore chunky black glasses and a lab coat, but there the similarity ended. She was in her late twenties, quite tall, with olive skin and black hair tied back in a messy bun. She also had the look of a woman who'd gained a lot of weight in a short amount of time – the seams of her gray pencil skirt, which was obviously built to stretch, seemed nevertheless to be groaning with every movement as it struggled to contain her wide hips, and her red blouse gapped to show diamonds of brown flesh between each pair of buttons. Above her bustline she'd clearly just given up, and bountiful cleavage brimmed over the just-visible lacy black cups of her bra.
She looked up from her clipboard and I pretended I hadn't been staring, forcing myself to make eye contact. "Uh, hi," I said. "I'm Conrad Greene, I'm here about the job?"
"Oh, of course! Anne Tarpinian," she said, shaking my hand. "Welcome to nutritional science! Sorry it's all kind of bare, I only just got in here last week." It was true, there wasn't much equipment around, just a metal vat connected to some kind of measuring gauge and various beakers, test tubes, and – bowls? And spoons? "Sorry I feel kind of weird being the boss!" Anne said with a smile. "This is my first lab, you see. I just got my PhD last month." She pointed proudly to a framed diploma on the wall. "Hesper U found out about my project and offered me this great job."
"What's the project?" I asked, doubting I'd understand a word but keen for an excuse to keep looking at her.
"It's right here," she smiled, walking around the lab bench and giving me a great opportunity to admire her wide, swaying backside, its weight shifting with every step so that its mass wobbled first to the left and now to the right. She reached a steel ladle into the vat and brought out something that looked an awful lot like frozen yoghurt. She dropped it into a metal bowl, and handed it to me – it was cold, too.
"My thesis was about how you could use reconstituted fats that are usually the waste products of industrial food processing to create an extremely cheap but nourishing substance," she said. "It was just a theory when I wrote it, but Hesper gave me the cash to see if I could do it for real." She tapped the vat proudly. "I don't really have a name for it, but in my original notes I called it Substance 7."
"Wow," I said – reconstituted waste food did NOT sound appetizing, nor did the thought of eating 'Substance 7', but the bowlful in front of me looked okay, and I was very curious. "So my job is to help make more of this stuff?"
"Hmm? Oh no – the process is pretty much automated," said Dr Tarpinian with a wave of her hand. "We're looking to move on to human testing."
"You just want me to eat some?" I asked incredulously. "That's the whole job?"
"Not just some," Dr Tarpinian answered, "quite a lot. Well, as much as you want, really – your appetite for it is part of the study. "She handed me a spoon with a smile. "Think you're up to it?"
I grinned back. "I think I can manage. So you mean – I'm going to be the first person ever to try, uh, 'Substance 7'?"
Dr Tarpinian replied:   indicates the next chapter needs to be written. |
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