I saw that there was only 1 story in this fandom(which is kind of pathetic) so I thought I could contribute...I loved this book when we read it in class. It's Dr. Nemur's view prior to Charlie's death...
DISCLAIMER: Erm... I don't even think I was alive when this was written so NO!
I never meant for it to happen. I had observed mentally challenged people all my life, my own aunt being among them. I watched them be painfully oblivious to the ridicule and torment our society put them through. I watched them struggle, trying desperately to grasp the concepts a normal person could but continually fail. It frustrated me how people who try to be so good are given so little.
It was in my early years that I decided to dedicate my life to helping these people. It struck me during a classroom lecture by one of my professors. What if you could increase intelligence? I decided to enter into the field of psychology, studying the brain and its effect on intelligence.
It was after years of numerous findings and immense amounts of studying that I hypothesized that adding enriched brain cells to the brain could increase intelligence. I needed to test this hypothesis, so I invested in lab animals.
Right before I began testing, I met Dr. Strauss, an expert in the emotional side of psychology. He offered to help me with my experiments and I gladly accepted.
That was when the tests began. We performed the operation on a small mouse who we named Algernon. We were ecstatic at the results. His intelligence increased three times its original and we were very proud. We decided we needed a human subject to ensure the results. Looking back, I think we were much too hasty and if we had waited and observed Algernon longer we would have seen how horribly wrong we were.
So, we met up with the Adult Center teacher, Miss Kinnian, to see if she had any reccomendations. She greatly reccommended Charles Gordon, her most dim-witted student. She said what he lacked in intelligence he made up for in docility.
We decided to test Charles and brang him to our lab for some tests. He had a surprisingly low IQ of 68. I thought that was much too low, wanting to use someone in the 70 to 75 range. But with Dr. Strauss's heavy persuasion, I submitted allowing Charles to be our subject.
It was the day after this decision that we performed the surgery. There were no complications and everything went as planned. He showed little progress in the first few days. But after that, his progress skyrocketed. We gave him all kinds of material and he soaked it all in, keeping it in his memory. I was excited at such a successful experiment, but Dr. Strauss began to gripe about his emotional development, claiming that the two programs had to be in sync.
I had become arrogant, ignoring hs warnings, wanting to get such breakthough information out to the scientific community as soon as possible. I pressed on with the program. I soon noticed Charlie's superiority to everyone around him as his intelligence increased and became worried. I truly hoped he would stay level headed even with such a major increase.
We soon showed our findings to the scientific community in a presentation. Everything went as planned and we were accepted whole-heartedly.
But, I soon noticed Charles' vigorous studying prior to Algernon's unfortunate death. I didn't pay much attention to the mouse's death as I would later regret.
A week or so later, Charles presented Dr. Strauss and I interesting findings on the Gordon-Algernon Effect. It stated that the subjects intelligence would decrease at the same rate it increased. This was a major flaw, that the operation was only temporary. If this operation resulted in the death of Algernon I could only predict the same fate was in store for Charles.
I saw Charles' slow decline back into darkness losing everything he learned during the experiment. I felt horrible. I had not only caused the death of one being but two! It was in this realization that I decided to give up my studies in artificially increased intelligence. If this field of work would cause the death of innocent beings, I wanted no part in it.
As I sit here, crying at Charles funeral, I'm in shock. Is a wasted life worth the advancement of science?
Coolio I'm done! Hope you liked it! R&R Please!
