Isaac double-checked his data and adjusted his glasses. It was a breakthrough on paper, but until he tried it with a living, breathing thing, he couldn’t know all the implications. He noted a few adjustments in his head, looked over his shoulder, and turned off his computer screen. A centrifuge spun up and he waited for the whirling mixture to slow to a stop. He grabbed the small cartridge and clicked it into a handheld injector. The liquid held a soft green light, an ebb and flow of energy within churning swirls. Isaac glanced around the lab at the white rats and hesitated. He wasn’t ready for something on the record. His calculations were either wrong, and he’d be docked a quota of the Breath, or his theory was right and the lab would claim credit. Another discovery for Madame Earth and the World Climate Organization. Isaac considered his allegiances. Whatever his long terms prospects, he needed a different test subject; something bigger, something wilder. Something outside of the lab.
The mountains surprised Isaac. He spent most of his life indoors, scrolling data sets and carrying out experiments. When he took a moment to appreciate the topography, he wondered what the mountains were like, whether the snow near the peaks was as cold and uninviting as it seemed from the valley floor. Most locals didn’t know the experiments carried out at the small research outpost where Isaac worked, they just assumed it was all part of the Org’s management of the parks. But Isaac knew the Org didn’t even know which experiments were going on at the lab. It was the nature of growing too large, having too much funding. But the Org didn’t need to worry about being shut down, it had the most valuable resource in the solar system; the Breath of Life.
Isaac stopped to catch his own breath. The small trail he followed led into the valley beyond the outpost, beyond the fences. He put a small inhaler to his lips, popped in a gold cartridge, and took a deep inhale of the Breath. For most people, the proprietary drug extended their lifespan. For others, a violent allergic reaction meant they would become guppies; outcasts banned from any parks and preserves managed by the Org. Isaac didn’t much care for guppies, few people did. He had a certain sympathy for their biological shortcomings, but history wasn’t on their side. Fueled by their exclusion, energized by short-sighted archaic beliefs, most guppies became ecoterrorists.
Isaac did care for the Breath, and as the gas filled his seizing lungs his asthma subsided and his heart relaxed. A longer life in service to Madame Earth was good, a life without his asthma was a bonus. The Breath did both. Isaac thought again about turning back to the lab, sharing his findings. The Org was good to him; it gave him a job, money, purpose, and the Breath. Isaac pocketed his inhaler and patted the injector at his waist. If he was going to climb the ladder, to get a research facility of his own, he’d have to take a few risks. The Org would thank him, eventually.
The wilds beyond the research outpost were under Org management, but they weren’t yet built out like the other parks. Overgrown forest roads wound along switchbacks and pine trees huddled together in the seams between ridges. The local methodologists had taken to feeding the local wildlife. With few rangers to stop them, the white coated researchers dropped piles of food and salt licks as entertainment for their Breath breaks. Isaac thought of one animal in particular. It was wild and bigger than a lab rat. He found a favored pile of feed left by his colleagues near a small spring and waited in the cool thermal breeze.
Isaac popped his head up at the sound of a cracking stick. Soft footsteps came to rest and a pair of antlers swung down to eat and drink. The elk pawed the ground and thrashed his rack back and forth against a tree. Isaac’s heart raced and his arm shook as he raised his injector. The elk raised its head and let forth a thunderous bugle that rolled over Isaac’s outstretched arm. He fired the serum into the side of the elk and the animal jumped, paused, cut off its bugle. The animal looked at Isaac and tensed its body. Isaac didn’t dare move. He imagined the sharpened antler tines the size of his arms goring out his insides. The fear for his life was one thing, but his admission to himself was worse. He should have kept the serum in the lab, with the little white rats. It wasn’t ready for wild things.
The elk breathed in as if to make another bugle. Deep within its throat a green glow shone out and as the elk raised its head to call a green gaseous entity crawled and swept out of its mouth. The sound of the bugle went with the glowing green gas and it flew and rose and trumpeted up the valley. The elk’s eyes turned a dark black matte green and it tried to huff and call and bugle and chuckle but no sound came out. The elk whirled in fear and ran up the shadowed slope into the valley. Isaac listened to the last echoes of the living, vibrating bugle before it flew too far to follow with his ears.
Isaac removed his fogged glasses and wiped them down, adjusted them back on his face. He felt a hacking, lack of oxygen rise in his chest. He pulled out his inhaler and took a hit to make the heaving in his chest subside. Isaac acknowledged what he had done. The serum did its job. He separated the very energetic vibration of the elk’s bugle from its physical body. It was all at once genius and completely insane. It was science, it was the Method. Isaac feared for his job, for his quota of the Breath, for his long life. If he was going to living another hundred years, he would need to fix his mistake, he would have to find the elk. And the bugle.
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