Chapter 40 – Hematogen
The sea no longer bothered Richard. His new office, also in Triton Court, had a large window with an admittedly less-than-spectacular view as it was nearly all seaweed, but it no longer gave him the willies. Perhaps he imagined it, as he recognized that he was projecting a lot onto his increasingly anthropomorphized slug, but said slug enjoyed the view, or at least the acknowledgment of the ocean as opposed to Richard's avoidance of it.
Dynamic Metallurgy Laboratories had five employees now, himself not included. One salesman - as Richard discovered that he did not have the temperament to sell things - two laboratory and development assistants, a secretary, and Richard's 'fixer', who made sure that the mill that Richard had contracted adhered to the extremely high standards Richard had delineated. His office space, while modest, served his company's needs at the moment. He could hear Jane typing away at damn near the speed of sound. She was in her mid-forties and was exceedingly flamboyant, wearing thick bangles and the silliest hat Richard had ever seen in his life to work each day. But she was also highly competent, so Richard didn't care if she dressed like Carmen Miranda.
Richard stood at the window, gazing out at the seaweed and mulling over an idea that he'd been formulating for the last few days. His tie, a vestigial affectation from his previous job, was loosened and hung limply from his neck. The halo of soft light put off by the green glass desk lamp didn't reach him and the yellow glow of his eyes reflected back at him. His blond hair was tousled and he needed another haircut. His hair was growing faster than it used to.
It's not like the situation is going to improve anytime soon. Or ever. I may as well try. The modest but well-supplied laboratory was empty at the moment – his lab rats had gone home early for want of a new project. There'd be something new tomorrow – a new shipment of copper had been delivered to the warehouse and Richard wanted to begin work on producing electrical wiring. With a sudden burst of resolve, he turned from the window and opened his desk, pulling out a small leather case. He had already purchased everything he needed but had been putting it off due to its gruesome nature.
The general idea had been kicking around in his head when he had first left Dorothy eight months ago. Performing sexually every day had become grueling. And Lupe was no longer enjoying it either, despite the old college try she was giving it. But this was his responsibility, he had gotten her hooked on it, and he was going to remedy it, just like a faulty capacitor or a busted firing mechanism.
The breakthrough had come two weeks ago at dinner. He and Lupe had gone out for steaks and as they waited to be seated Richard got chatting to a very animated Russian who had also served in the war. The discussion had drifted towards field kitchens (Lupe had mentally checked out by that point and was doodling on the margins of a newspaper) and the Russian mentioned the blood chocolate. How great the blood chocolate was. The Western Allies missed out on them, very fortifying, rich in iron and minerals and a wonderful taste.
Everything else was already in the lab, waiting for him. Unlike his attempt at cooking chicken, Richard was prepared. He had bought a cookbook and the required ingredients. Initially he had planned on making chocolate bars, but after reading how much work went into making solid chocolate he decided to start with just chocolate milk.
He felt much more comfortable in a metallurgy lab than a kitchen. Richard opened the cabinet and set out a can of powdered milk, a box of cocoa powder, a tiny bottle of vanilla, and a bag of sugar. One more ingredient was needed, however. Richard unzipped the leather case. Fortunately he was very comfortable with needles, albeit more on the injection than extraction side of the equation.
In addition to the cookbook, he had also gotten a short but sufficient guide to the human body. According to the book the average ejaculation had a volume between two and five milliliters. As much as Richard would like to delude himself into believing that he was consistently pumping out thick, rich loads, he knew darn well he was running on fumes these days. Supposing that he was averaging around three milliliters a go, which seemed optimistic to him, Richard slowly and methodically withdrew thirty milliliters from his arm.
He inserted the needle right where he used to inject the morphine. A guttural memory of the relief the drug used to provide came to him – or rather, his consciousness of relief being provided. He couldn't remember the pain anymore. It hurt when the needle went in, that was undeniable, and coming out it ripped his flesh due to the skin growing around the needle, but once that was over, well, it was no longer a part of him.
Richard pushed the plunger down over a recently sanitized glass beaker. His blood squirted out into the flat beaker. He flicked off the light and noted that the glow of the blood had roughly the same luminosity of his ejaculate, and therefore presumed that it had a similar dosage. It was never wise to work with broad assumptions in scientific pursuits, but lacking the equipment and education in regards to ADAM, he was going to have to make do.
He switched the light back on. Next, he took ten paper cups out, set them out six inches apart on the countertop, and numerically labeled them with a wax pencil. And now it was an issue of experimentation.
The first cup got the base recipe. The second double the ingredients. The third, double chocolate. The fourth, double sugar but half chocolate. And so on until each of the ten cups had a different recipe variation in it. Then he studiously squirted three milliliters of his blood into each, then the requisite amount of water, and then stirred them up with a spoon.
He tasted the first one and made a face. How do those Russians do it? How do they cover up the taste? Crafty communists. The second one was cloyingly sweet and metallic. Maybe rum? Cognac? He was going to fix up Lupe with the best possible tasting human blood cocktail.
"Richard?"
He turned his head. He had instructed all of his employees to call him by his first name, as hearing his last name put him in mind of working at Stone and Sons still. "Yes Jane?"
"Someone rang up a while ago with a question and you and you weren't at your desk," she explained, the harsh light in the laboratory glinting off of her rhinestone studded glasses. "How much do you know about extracting gold from sea water?"
Richard snorted a laugh. That had been one of the first things he had thought of and researched when he moved to Rapture. Calculations had shown that even if he was able to process a ton of seawater a minute, which was the maximum possible load under ideal circumstances with unlimited industrial funding, it would only produce less than a two dollars' worth of gold in a twenty-four hour period. Of course, he'd be more than happy to consult on it.
"Enough. Call them back and set up a meeting." If nothing else he'd get some laughs out of the encounter.
Jane nodded, and her gaze fell upon the ten small paper cups of what looked like innocent, blood-free chocolate milk. "Do you need any help?" Jane asked, clearly puzzled as to what Richard was up to.
He shrugged. "Just trying to determine the optimal recipe for chocolate milk," he casually answered as if it was a normal way for a successful businessman to spend his afternoon.
"Are you particularly fond of it?"
"No. Possibly because I have not determined the best way to make it."
"Hmm. Well, use a cocktail shaker instead of a spoon, that's my advice," Jane offered and turned to go.
Solid advice, Richard considered as he worked his way down the line. Number seven, with copious amounts of chocolate and vanilla extract but only the regular amount of sugar, tasted the best, or rather, the least bloody. Satisfied, he circled the recipe in his notebook, gathered the ingredients back up and neatly packed them into a satchel, and then tossed the empty cups into the incinerator.
He informed Jane that he'd be out of the office for the rest of the day. It was already four in the afternoon so Richard felt not even the slightest smidgeon of guilt for skipping out early. Lupe usually got home around five-thirty, barring any minor crisis at her shop. Now that he had the ideal recipe in hand he was eager to surprise her.
Richard had an even bigger surprise planned as well. He had decided that duly divorcing Dorothy be damned, he was going to marry Lupe. Assuming she said yes, of course, although he couldn't imagine she'd say now. He hadn't purchased a ring yet though, as he hadn't found one big enough. Richard had browsed several jewelers but nothing was worthy of their relationship. He had slipped his card to the saleswomen, telling them to call him when something truly impressive was available.
He also needed to have the perfect words ready, despite his confidence that Lupe would say yes even if he just winked and tossed the ring at her. However, the perfect words did come easily. In the same notebook that he had been formulating the chocolate recipe he had been working on his proposal, but so far all he had was the phrases 'overwhelming feeling of attachment', 'enjoying your presence', and 'top-notch sexual interactions'.
On the train ride back to Elpis Close Richard tried to come up with at least another sentiment to work with. The carefully sharpened graphite scrawled 'admirable work ethic', which he stared at for a few moments. No, that's not what a woman wants to hear when she's being proposed to. He scribbled it out just as the train pulled into Elpis Close.
Alarmingly, the door to their apartment was unlocked. Fearful that she had been abducted again, or worse, Richard hurried inside. Lupe was lying on the sofa and sighed audibly when he entered.
Relieved, he set the satchel down on the table. "What's wrong, darling?"
Lupe sat up. Her eyes were faintly red from crying and her mascara had run, leaving black streaks down her cheeks. "It's not fair, it's not, a mermaid should be able to swim away, to be free, and not locked up like a criminal!"
Richard sniffed to catch a waft of alcohol on her breath to maybe explain her ranting, but she was evidently as sober as a priest. "What's happened?"
Lupe shook her head slowly and out of her mouth tumbled the most horrific thing Richard had heard since the war. Where he anywhere other than Rapture he wouldn't have believed her and would be concerned that she had suffered a massive head injury or stroke, but things being what they were, well, it was a good thing that he had the chocolate milk now as it would have been extremely challenging to produce with this fresh in his mind.
"I'm sorry," he offered weakly once she was done. What in the hell am I supposed to say to that?!
Lupe smoked her hair back and wiped her face with a handkerchief from her purse. "Would you help me help her?"
"I…um," Richard stammered, unable to fathom how he could help. "How?"
"She was trying to communicate with me, with thoughts, but I couldn't understand her very well. I understood her better than the security agent there did though. I was thinking that maybe someone who had more ADAM than myself could understand her better," Lupe theorized.
"I'll try," he answered, unsure as to the validity of her theory. "I am rife with the stuff. But maybe it isn't the ADAM, that's not always the answer. Perhaps it was because she knew you and not the security agent?"
Lupe frowned. "Maybe. If that's the case I'll have to puzzle it out myself."
Richard opened the satchel. "In that event, you'll need some of the Devil's own brew to get thinking," he said as he laid out the ingredients onto the kitchen table
Lupe was too distracted to be curious about what he was doing with the seemingly normal groceries. "Yes, I suppose. You want to do it here or shall we go to the bedroom?" Her lack of enthusiasm was palatable.
"Well, this may sound gross, but I have an idea," he cautiously offered, trying to gauge her reaction. "Now, it's not…gourmet by any stretch of the imagination, but…" he trailed off. He'd rather propose right then and there than try to parse the concept of 'please drink my blood cause my pecker can no longer take this'.
Lupe now eyed the ingredients with interest. "But?"
"I thought maybe I could offer you an alternative," he began. "I tested out multiple iterations of this recipe until I found the best one. At least the one I thought tasted the best. Should you prefer another formulation, I can of course adjust the recipe to your satisfaction." He hesitated, and then rather dramatically pulled the needle from the case.
She inclined her head up a touch. "Is that for your blood?"
"Yes. I thought that perhaps it would be preferable to sexual activity twice a day," he informed her as politely as possible. "I don't know about you, but I have come to not look forward to it."
Lupe stood up and got a cup from the tiny green-painted cabinet over the sink. "Me neither. Sucking on your joy every day really sucked the joy out of it." She set the cup down on the table. It was quite ornate, with etched flowers adorning the sides and a gold-painted rim.
"You are not disgusted by this vampiric act?"
Lupe shook her head. "No. To tell you the truth, I have considered it as well, but I didn't ask because I didn't want you to think I had tired of your cock. That and drinking blood is rather disgusting, isn't it? I was afraid you'd think I was crazy."
He smiled a little at her revelation. "Under normal circumstances, yes, but when everything is crazy the only solution is to embrace it fully yourself." He impassively slid the needle into his arm. "I'm not very good at getting blood yet," he explained as he wiggled the needle around.
Lupe touched his arm gently and watched. "Does it hurt?"
"No." He took out the needle. "Here, fifteen milliliters, I was thinking we try a low dosage at first, and then work from there." He squirted a small amount into the cup, then proceeded to fix her the optimal chocolate milk.
Lupe took it from his hand when he offered it to her. It wasn't much, just a few mouthfuls. She sniffed it curiously. "Bottoms up." With a quick flick of her wrist she drained the entire glass in two seconds flat, a trick that must have picked up at some point in her artist's circle.
"Your verdict?"
She coughed. "I barely tasted anything. But I didn't taste any blood." She burped.
"Perfect." Richard kissed her and then drew her in for a hug. "Don't ever be afraid to ask me for anything, even if it's crazy."
She put her arms around him as well. She sighed and leaned against him. Her distraught mood had settled on her again now that the novelty of the blood had worn off. "Do you ever feel other people's thoughts?"
"No, not once, at least not in the way you are talking about. Once though, about a month ago, I passed someone on the street, a stranger, and it was the oddest thing, but I felt like I saw them more clearly. It was as if I had landed in Oz and opened the door and instead of black and white it was color."
She looked up at him. "You never mentioned that before."
"I thought it was my imagination, but now that you've brought this to my attention, that there's something extra-sensory to ADAM, I thought of it." He gave her a squeeze and let go. "Other people got the slugs too, as tests, perhaps it was one of them I passed."
"Then perhaps you can talk to her," Lupe hopefully said. "Maybe we can fix her somehow!"
Richard seriously doubted the latter, but communicating with her may not be out of the realm of possibility. Evidently, something was happening with his mind and the slug and at least other slugs and other minds. His gaze fell upon the table and the ingredients upon it. The dark red blood left in the needle had a shimmer to it, even under the gentle glow of the incandescent light bulb over the table.
"Who knows what we can do," he wistfully said, almost to himself. "But I'll tell you this – no one should have ever found out what's possible with ADAM."