Goddard, Come Home

by Gary D. Snyder

Part 6:

Despite the occasional need to duck behind a hedge or other object to avoid passers-by the small group made it to Jimmy's lab relatively quickly. Once there Carl plucked a hair from Jimmy's head and held it up to the DNA scanner beside the entrance. Normally Sheen and Carl would not have revealed this method to Cindy and Libby, but decided that this emergency called for desperate measures. Besides, the boys reasoned, Jimmy could wipe the girls' short term memories once things were back to normal. After a few seconds of scanning the strand Vox's voice intoned, "Rejected. Pattern not recognized."

'That's weird," said Sheen. "Try again."

Carl held the hair up again, with the same result. Puzzled at this, Sheen plucked another hair from Jimmy's head and held it to be scanned. This time the attempt was successful, with Vox welcoming Jimmy and opening the door. "I guess that you just have to have the right touch," was Sheen's comment.

"That's totally strange," commented Libby as they all entered the clubhouse. "I wonder what's up with Jimmy's computer?"

"At least it didn't dump us into the trash," replied Cindy. "Hey, Sheen, if Jimmy's such a genius why doesn't he just carry around one of his hairs instead of having to pluck a new one each time he wants into the lab?"

"One of the mysteries of the Universe," Sheen grunted, carrying Jimmy across the clubhouse. "Why is it that every week the blackboard says we're going on a field trip to the planetarium on Tuesday and we never go?"

Carl snorted a derisive laugh and they accessed the ingress tube to the lab. "Yeah. And what's up with those same spelling words all the time? I think we all know them by now."

"Spell 'defenestrate'," Libby challenged.

Carl thought mightily. "Umm…'D'…'E'…'E'…'F'…'I'…umm…can you use it in a sentence?"

"How about, 'If you don't stop yakking, I'm going to defenestrate you'?" Cindy replied in annoyance, looking around the lab.

Sheen looked mildly alarmed. "Is that like something the vet did to my cat?" he asked apprehensively as he placed Jimmy on a padded couch. Jimmy muttered something unintelligible and shifted restlessly without regaining consciousness.

"No, you hockey puck. It means to throw something out the window." Cindy sighed impatiently. "Well, we're here like you wanted. Now what?"

Sheen looked around. "Well, I'd say we should figure out what Jimmy did after we left him."

Libby stroked her chin thoughtfully. "It might be more useful if we first knew what you were doing before you left him. That way we could try to figure out what he did."

"Well," began Carl, "Jimmy was over there by that machine putting together stuff to make a new pet for his project report next Friday. And then he tripped over Goddard and…"

"Whoa, whoa, whoa," interrupted Cindy. "What do you mean 'putting stuff together to make a new pet'?"

"He was going to recombine some TNT to grow a brand new pet," Sheen offered helpfully. "And he needed to make some new jeans to do that."

Cindy, by this time used to Sheen's semi-garbled statements, succeeded in extracting the meaning from what he said. "Do you mean he was recombining DNA to genetically engineer a new animal?"

"Uh…that sounds familiar."

Big-brained show-off, thought Cindy in disgust, but her features softened somewhat at the sight of Jimmy's still form on the couch. "Okay, I think I follow you. Then what?"

"Like Carl said," Sheen went on, "Jimmy tripped over Goddard and spilled the stuff all over the lab floor. Then Carl and I helped him to clean it up and we went home while he made a new batch."

"But first he yelled at Goddard and made Goddard leave," added Carl sadly.

Cindy thought about this. "What did you do to clean up the spill?"

"Well, Sheen and I mostly just handed things to Jimmy," replied Carl. "He collected all the broken glass and spilled liquid and put it into one of those containers over there." Carl pointed to several small canisters marked with the interlinked crescents denoting biohazardous materials.

So Neutron was the only one who actually handled the contaminated materials, Cindy thought. It's just possible that he may have been infected somehow. Maybe a small piece of glass cut him and some genetic material got into his system. Or maybe he breathed it in. But why would he react this way? "What DNA was Neutron using? Anything contagious or dangerous?"

"Well, there was some from Mr. Wuggles," replied Carl. "And some from Sheen, and some from me, and some from Jimmy."

"Those are all annoying, but not actually dangerous," Cindy mused.

"And some from a shitake mushroom," concluded Sheen, "so that it would grow fast."

Cindy gave them a sour look. "Mushrooms aren't dangerous either."

"They are to me," was Carl's defensive response. "I'm allergic."

Cindy was about to say, "So what?" to Carl but froze instead. "You're allergic to mushrooms?" she asked. Carl nodded. "And one of Jimmy's hairs didn't work on the DNA scanner." She bit her lower lip.

"What are you thinking about, Cindy?" asked Libby.

"Yeah, spill," prodded Sheen.

Cindy began pacing back and forth, looking and sounding, if she had known it, very much like Jimmy at times. "Jimmy used mushroom DNA to promote rapid growth. And he also used his own and Carl's DNA…"

"And mine," said Sheen, slightly offended.

Cindy ignored the interruption. "It's possible that some of the recombinant DNA was absorbed into his system…and because some of it was his own DNA it merged with the DNA in his own system very readily. Because the mushroom DNA was selected for rapid growth, it could be that the foreign DNA is replicating very rapidly and is taking over Jimmy's own DNA structure. That's why the DNA in one of his hairs didn't work. It's a mutant strain."

"OK," said Sheen. "So Jimmy's DNA is different. But why is he sick?"

Cindy looked impatient. "Don't you get it? Part of that DNA is Carl's. And part of it is the mushroom's. Carl is allergic to mushrooms. As the new DNA takes over, Carl's DNA is directing Jimmy's immune system to create antibodies in response to the mushroom DNA. Jimmy is becoming allergic to himself!"

"Uh…is that bad?" asked Libby.

Cindy looked worried. "Severe allergic reactions can kill people. If we don't find some way to get his DNA back to normal, Jimmy could die."

There was a moment of stunned silence from everyone. Then Carl began to sob. "It's all my fault! What else can go wrong?"

At that moment a warning klaxxon began to sound in accompaniment to a bright rotating beacon that filled the lab with dizzying waves of blood-red light. "Danger. Extreme emergency. Danger. Extreme emergency," Vox's voice announced in an eerily calm voice as the klaxxon continued to wail. "Thirty minutes to failure of Goddard unit's primary power system."

"He was just asking," screamed Sheen over the din.

End of Part 6.