In seconds she melts into the city crowd and the spell is broken. I’m back in the present moment, and I have work to do. A lot of it. Today is a very big day. It could be, should be, the day all my work pays off. For fifteen years, I have been searching for a way to fix myself. I will not stay broken. No matter what.
Every day since that accident, I’ve been working on fixing myself. They said I wouldn’t walk. I walked. First with a walker. Then with a cane. I still have the cane. But not for much longer.
That crash sent me on a path that I have never deviated from. Science track courses, undergrad at seventeen, and into a research position by twenty-two. It has taken eight years to develop my unique formula, Regenermax, which is already showing incredible promise. In the course of my work, I’ve seen rats with broken backs regain full use of their legs. I know what’s possible, and I’m excited to share it with the world. Up until now, there’s been only so much science can do for damaged and dead nerves. I’m about to advance the field a very long way.
Accident and injury are realities of life, but I refuse to accept their effects as permanent. I have the means and the intelligence to not only fix my own injuries, but help others recover from theirs as well.
“Stay strong.” It’s the ironic thing people love to say to you when you’re crippled. But I’m not strong. And what kills you doesn’t make you stronger. It leaves you limping through life.
I have been weak too long. Not for much longer.
I pay the bill for lunch, just like I always do, and I take my cane and I limp slowly out of the restaurant. The regulars don’t look at me, but there’s always someone new to cross paths with in the city, someone who can’t quite help but stare at the man with the cane.
My rideshare is waiting outside. I take it back to my lab. On the way I delve into my smartphone, am absorbed by the data, and get some relief from the unrequited desire that makes me so restless whenever Briarlee is near. That woman is a drug like no other. Repeated exposure leads to increased heart rate, vascular dilation, and occasionally, priapism.
* * *
“How are the boys today?” I ask my research assistant as I hobble into the lab.
“We had to separate Titus and Archimedes,” he says. “They got past the cage divider and were fighting again.”
“Bad boys,” I quip. We know our rats better than most researchers. Part of the longer term study on the ongoing effects of the treatment. Both Titus and Archimedes were runts with spinal defects. They would have been euthanized as pups in most labs, but we made sure they stuck around long enough to get the benefit of my work.
“Did you give them females?”
“Had to pull the females out. They were getting fucked to death.”
“Is that the scientific name for it?”
“Look at them.”
He shows me a cage with six female rats all passed out fast asleep. They have some scarring around the back of the neck and ears, where overeager males have been trying to get a grip on them.
“Poor girls,” I sympathize.
“They’re all in pup,” he says. “Seems to be a significant effect on virility.”
I’m excited. This drug doesn’t just make the paralyzed walk. It transforms every facet of an organism’s functioning. It’s like a chemical rebuilder, getting into every physiological pathway and enhancing it.
Titus and Archimedes are twice the size they used to be. Someone has put a ‘swole’ sticker on Titus’s cage. I’m guessing that’s some reference to his strength. We’ve had to reinforce both their enclosures because they kept getting out. Usually when rats do that, you lose them, but we found both of them in the female cages, banging their little brains out in between bouts of battle with each other.
We’re not supposed to keep them alone because rats are social creatures, but the treatment seems to have some negative effects on them in terms of behavior. They will fuck each other to death if they’re not separated. Something to work on down the track. Something that probably won’t be as much of an issue in human subjects, as humans tend to have a lot more in the way of impulse control than rats.
“Good luck, boss!” My assistant waves me off to the meeting I’ve been waiting to take for years.
It’s up on the ninth floor. Room 42 A. I hardly ever come up here. The laboratories are on the lower floors. Mine’s technically in the basement. The research we do down there props up the tower above, produces obscene profits for people who wear suits, not lab coats. I don’t care about that. I just want to hear that Regenermax is going to help people.