Project 773 – Exploration 8 –
Cont.
McComb was brought into the lab a further four days after we decided to revise Project 773. The child was playing at a work station in the centre of the room, quietly lining up test tube racks and imitating what he imagined his father did day-to-day, pretending to mix chemicals even though he had access to nothing.
Although he was well-behaved and spoke up only once (wondering if Walter could take him to the bathroom), his presence seemed to alarm McComb somewhat. When we were at our separate computers, I noticed that he had tried to gain the boy's attention. But Peter knew better than to converse with the students; and Walter, despite his otherwise gentle disposition, had a history of turning on his son, perhaps taking the frustration that accompanied our work out on him.
I remember McComb from Project 591 now. Whiny but understandably so. Annoying. Always talking, talking. The original neuro-stimulator was fixed to Peter with ease – although Walter did still have to dance for him to some old record. McComb was less calm. He continued to talk (what I can only describe as 'animatedly'). It was as if he was trying to talk the child into a tantrum, wanting him to resist the tests.
The boy's eyes didn't leave mine though. I don't think he particularly appreciated the inclusion of Roy McComb's personality into the mix. It was probably hard enough already playing lab rat to his father and co. let alone having to assure someone over a decade his senior that everything would be fine. Because he was bright enough to realise that everything would never be fine. We dehumanised him much too often for things to be 'fine' with him. Even his own father was guilty of that.
McComb didn't respond well to us sedating Peter. He became positively distressed, demanding to know what kind of work we were doing here and why either of them had been drawn into such a world.
Peter was Walter's hybrid, and an exceptionally intelligent one. McComb on the other hand – he was the opposite. Too senseless to deny us whatever medical experiment we wanted so long as the thirty pieces passed his miserable ignorant little palm. He was probably correct though, the child didn't really deserve to have his childhood taken from him. But childhood memories are a small expense for pseudo-science. One day... one day I have no doubt that he'll get it. He will be more than a part of our world. Our work will have opened him up to a whole new realm of possibilities. And when he is privy to such a dangerous and imperfect and brilliant pursuit of knowledge, he'll soon detach himself from the norm anyway.
McComb, unfortunately, is very much the norm. Pitiful, witless, dormant, blinded norm.
When McComb was finally sedated, Walter attached the newly-constructed device similar to the second neuro-stimulator but decidedly more... barbaric-looking. Required rewiring.
For once, although drugged, the boy was allowed to remain conscious. He seemed frightened. His eyes were on me again and quickly filling with tears. Perhaps he felt that he could appeal more directly to me because I was the only female in the room. He certainly didn't look to Walter to find that greater sense of compassion anymore. Which is a shame because if his work wasn't consuming him, Walter was oddly natural with children.
The child openly wept the whole way through the procedure – McComb's unconscious form upon Walter's injection scared him into believing that the man was indeed dead just like the animal carcasses we had been hooking him up to only weeks beforehand. I came to stand next to him, only to dry his tears and adjust a loose electrode, and he held my hand as if I had offered. I hadn't, but still. I couldn't rightly let go. I don't have any children of my own and frankly if Walter and William resigned them to any such fate I would gladly not be a carrier. It's own mother should have done a better job shielding him from his obsessive-compulsive father.
My colleagues bickered in a distasteful back-and-forth. William had moved to strike the boy (which wasn't uncommon), demanding he cease his crying and answer McComb, help McComb. Could he see anything? Was McComb telling him things? Walter took great offence – the boy held my hand tighter – paper was forced into his lap, purple crayon in his hand, and his father, suddenly in front of him, cupping his face and promising him ice cream was pleading that he draw whatever comes to mind.
He did. He drew of a building some four stories high, flames licking around its roof.
* Synaptic test three: successful. McComb came-to and told of a recurring nightmare wherein his parents were trapped in a house fire even though they had not died. A childhood trauma that Peter had connected with and translated for us.