A wife for Professor Mench

A Wife for Professor Mench
or,
New Age Prometheus

     It is Friday night, past quitting time at the university lab, and Doctor Mench is in a hurry. As the head of the College of Bio-Chemistry at the University, he’s  a man in much demand by his students and faculty, and is usually pulled about helplessly by every whim and current of the world around him. His life, it seems, has always been under the capricious control of others.
     But tonight, he’s hurrying for another reason. Tonight, for the first time in his life, he will be the master. He is about to radically change his own little world.
     The Doctor is one of those stuffy university research professors, who always seem to be  wearing  white lab coats. He is seen in one so often in fact, that his students wonder if he has any other clothes in his wardrobe. But they realize he needs the large pockets to hold the dozen or so pens he carries, not to mention his spare eye glasses, and, of course, his pocket computer. After all, this is the year 2035. His father would have been carrying a slide rule.
     He is a meek little man in his fifties, rather short and mousy, bald, with a pinched face, buck teeth and a long nose which supports thick, pop bottle-lens glasses. He looks very much like a bespectacled rodent.
     
     Being in a hurry to transit down the hall from the lab to his office, he makes a move that would impress a professional football player as he deftly side-steps one of the University’s football jocks, who is leaning on one arm against a locker, partially blocking the hallway. The senior linebacker is making a pass at a sexy, blonde cheerleader,  the sort of girl that wears a sequined pin on her blouse, in the shape of her initial.
     The Doctor makes a mental note, “I must remember to mark him down. He was absent from class again this morning! Not that it will matter . . .”
     But this evening, nothing will slow down “Doctor Munchy”, as his students call him. Tonight’s the night, the night he changes from victim to victor, from lowly lab rat to the king of Molecular Bio-Physics,  from meek and timid Doctor Munchy, to “Get out of my way, lower life form! Nobel Prize winner coming through!”
     
     Arriving at his office door after encountering  no further obstacles, he rustles through a two-pound ring of keys which he carries clipped to his belt, a ring so heavy that it threatens to pull his trousers down at any time. But as he grasps the door knob, he finds it to be already unlocked. Pushing the door open with his shoulder, he hurries inside, unconcerned about who may be waiting for him there. He already knows who his after-hours visitor is. He can tell by the lingering fragrance of Honeysuckle.
     “Good evening, Doctor Mench. Are you working a little late as well?”
     The young woman speaking is the doctor’s research assistant, a graduate student who has chosen to work with Professor Mench, the bachelor, because she feels safe from unwanted male advances from him. She’s far too concerned about her studies to have to ward off an unwanted relationship.
     Not that the professor hasn’t been tempted. He thinks she is “a damn fine looking woman.”  She has fair skin, long brown hair which she wears in an old-fashioned bun, and big, cat-green eyes hiding behind round eye glasses, which make her look rather like an owl. She is not slender, nor is she plump. The professor has been heard to comment to his colleagues, “She’s a fine researcher, and as a benefit to the eyes, she puts some real shape into a lab coat!”

     Her name is Sandra Stone.  She is thirty years old, a brilliant genetics researcher who plays with gene sequences like a puppy plays with a rubber ball. And secretly, she admires the stuffy professor very much.
     “Good evening, Sandra. You’re out late.”
 The professor, having stepped gingerly around his desk to the filing cabinet behind it,  begins to rummage absentmindedly through the mountain of papers stacked on top. This has  necessitated turning his back on his visitor, which is the intended purpose.    
     “Yes, professor. I’m just finishing up a few things. I took the time to attend your peer review lecture  today, so I need to make up some time on my work.”
     She notices that the professor pauses for just a moment, then continues to dig through the teetering stack.
     “And what did you think of it?”
     “Sir?”
     “The lecture. What did you think of it?”
     “To be honest? With all due respect, professor, and you know I admire your work. But your colleagues don’t seem to agree with your theories.”
     “Please, Miss stone. My colleagues are ignorant nincompoops!”
     “I’m afraid the theory does sound rather far-fetched. I mean, you’re talking about building organic life from a barrel of chemicals.”

     “My dear Miss Stone. In the laboratory right now,  you are nursing several different vials of Amino Acids and other complex compounds, made from nothing more than a barrel of chemicals. And what is your stated goal?”
     She recites the goals of her grant. “To ascertain if it’s possible for life to produce itself spontaneously,  given the right environment.”
     “Science has  been working on that project for forty years, I believe. Have you succeeded?”
     “No, we're finding the DNA sequence extremely complex. We haven’t been able to
produce anywhere near an intact string. But -“
     ”And you will agree that the DNA molecule, though complex, is simple enough that it can be considered no more than a very sophisticated computer code. We've broken the DNA code years ago. And have we not been working on converting the DNA code into computer code?”
     “Yes, professor, but -“
     ”And what will be the benefit of that eventual breakthrough?”
     He can sense her squirming uncomfortably behind his back. Her reaction is giving him no joy, but he is still a teacher after all. And she has gotten the feeling that he is relishing the play, like a cat plays with a mouse.
     Her answer sounds as if a student were reciting it. “If successful, we will be able to ascertain everything there is to know about a human while still in the womb.”
     “Correct! Miss Stone, you get a gold star!”
     She is taken aback by the professor’s playful-sounding attitude tonight. Usually, he’s as humorless and dry as a two week old crust of bread. Something must have happened to put him in this good mood.
    
      The professor has  found the overstuffed filing folder he has been looking for. Turning around, he plops it down noisily in the middle of his cluttered desk. As he does so, loose sheets of notes and student papers already in residence there, fly off the desk and onto the floor. Ignoring the paper blizzard, he slumps down into his chair, tips it back, and places his feet on the desk next to the folder. Then he interlaces long thin fingers together behind his bald head, and smiles. Not a warm, welcoming smile, more of a smirk, like a cat who has just caught the canary.
 
     “But professor, we can run graphs and printouts of individual aspects of a person’s physiology now. Your theory involves having all of the data contained on a strand of DNA available at the same time. There isn't enough computer power available to compile all of that data into one usable picture of the entire body. It would take millions of petabytes of memory. ”
    “Nine hundred sixty seven point five zero million, to be exact. Give or take five million.”
     “Professor? Nine hundred and sixty seven million petabytes? You’ve calculated that? How could we ever come up with that much memory? Is there even that much memory in existence?”
     The doctor,  swinging his legs back down, stuffs them under his desk. His white sneakers disturb a clutter of paper wads and a planter containing the dehydrated  remains of a Dieffenbachia plant.
     “What if I told you I’ve already overcome that problem?”
     “Are you pulling my leg? But how is that possible, especially on our budget?”
     “One day I shall have to introduce you to our University’s resident computer genius, young Doctor Aran O’Sheen, and his team of master hackers.

      The assistant sits quietly in disbelief. Her face is pale,  her big green eyes look even bigger, like two jade eggs.
     “But where -?”
     “The entire world has become a giant computer, Sandra. Nearly everyone in the world has three or four digital devices on line at any one time. Aran has just discovered how to harness all of that idle memory. There are billions of petabytes of idle memory, just waiting to be put to work. And besides, it’s not necessary to have it all compiled in the same place at the same time.”
     The professor watches his assistant a moment while her face  color returns to normal. “Have you wondered why the printer room  has been locked and sealed lately? The room I refer to is the one where we keep the 3-D molecular jet printer for  prosthetics research.”
     “The faculty has been inquiring . . .”
     “Come. I’ll show you. I think you’ll be amazed. No, I know you will be!”

     He takes his dazed assistant by the hand, and she follows him back down the hallway toward the lab. The professor notices that the jock and his blonde pigeon are nowhere to be seen. “Probably out in the faculty parking lot, stealing the wheels off my car again,” he thinks to himself.
      As they come to the door of the lab, he pulls out his ring of keys, unlocks the door, steps inside, and switches on the lights. Then he guides his assistant through the maze of tables and chairs, sinks, racks of lab equipment, and samples, until they reach a door on the far side of the large lab room. The door is locked, and sealed with a crisscross of yellow bio-hazard warning tape. He pulls the tape to one side, so that it can put back in place. Then, after a furtive look around the lab, he opens the door, and they step inside.
     The first thing Sandra notices is the brightness of the room. The lights have been left on. Then there’s the disinfectant smell, and the rhythmic whirring and beeping sounds of medical equipment.
   
     The printer is silent. But there is a box sitting next to it, covered with a white hospital sheet. They walk over to the table, and Doctor Mench carefully removes the sheet.
     Sandra Stone is shocked to to see what the box contains. Laying carefully padded in the box is a full human arm, from the shoulder down. And this is not the pasty-white, rubbery-looking, mechanical  prosthetic arm the printer usually produces, but a warm, pink, flesh and blood arm, connected to a table full of equipment by a tangle of wires and tubing.
     Sandra's face has become as pale white as one of the old prosthetic arms.  Light-headed and weak in the knees, the doctor helps her to a chair.

     “But the printer, how . . . ?”
     “Doctor O’Sheen and his team modified it. They added a few more jets and mixers, increased the sensitivity, and, there you have it.”
     “But the complexity, the minute details!”
     “My poor Miss Stone. As you know, the body and all of it’s parts are made up of simple chemical substances, combined into various complex compounds. It is just a matter of combining them in the correct way. This arm was designed with my DNA, using just a hair sample. It is fully compatible with my body, right down to the most minute detail. Because it is essentially a new part of ME, there is no chance of my body rejecting it.”
     His assistant sits silently, as her brain processes the realization of what she is witnessing. Her mentor patiently allows her the time to do so.
     “If that is true, this is the greatest breakthrough in medical history since Penicillin! But your colleagues,  will they believe it?”

     Three hours later at eleven o’clock, a team of interns and surgeons from the College of Medicine meet in the surgical theater to perform an act of surgical legerdemain. Their practice tonight will consist of an arm transplant. The lead surgeon is the only one aware of what is actually taking place, the rest are just there to assist and observe in what they believe to be a normal transplant operation. The lead knows what they are doing is highly irregular, probably unethical, and could get him fired despite his tenure. But because of the gigantic leap forward in the field of medicine it can provide, he feels the risk is worth taking.
     The patient, only his bald head showing from under the sheet, is wheeled in on a Gurney.
     “Are you ready, Doctor?”
     “I’m ready, Doctor!”
     With that, the anesthesiologist prepares the injection

     Five days later, Doctor Mench pulls his new red sports car into his driveway, and parks it in front of the garage door. He is just getting home from the University, after giving the peer review lecture of his life to his colleagues. And, as expected, he left them astounded. Showing them his new arm, all they could do was stand and cheer. The old Doctor Mench had never been cheered for anything.
     Entering the house through the front door as he always does,  he walks past his small study desk, which serves as his office. And as he hurries by, he tosses his leather satchel down on the desk top, scattering papers across the room. He snorts at the paper blizzard, as if to say, “Who cares?” Then he walks hurriedly through his tiny kitchen and down two steps into his garage.
     Opening the door, he is again greeted by the disinfectant smell, and the rhythmic whirring and beeping of medical equipment. Against the far wall sits a large white box, which looks very much like a long chest-style freezer. It is connected by a tangle of wires and tubing, to a stack of equipment situated in a steel tool rack. The doctor walks briskly over to the rack, and peers closely at the flashing lights and twitching gauges, thumping a gauge with his index finger to check if it’s reading correctly. Then he throws a master switch, which shuts the whole stack of equipment down.
 
     Stepping over in front of the recycled freezer, he pauses, takes a deep breath and lets it out again. Then he steps up and opens the latches securing the lid. As he cracks the seal, he hears the whistling sound of rushing air as the inside and outside atmospheres mix and normalize.  Then he tips up the lid on its hinges, opening the box.  Inside the box, a young  woman is laying on a soft bed. She is naked, but for modesty purposes, her body is covered by a sheet. She  is not slender, nor is she  plump. She has fair skin, and long brown hair, which has been fixed into an old style bun. As she awakens, her eye lids flutter, and as she fully opens them,  large, cat-green eyes are revealed.
     “Good evening, Sandra. Welcome to my world.”