The Lab

 

                At the Lab we are working on perfection.  At the Lab we are trying to destroy fear.  At the Lab we will soon have created the prototype for a superior race.  At the Lab we manufacture embryos, allow them to develop into fetuses inside bodies that we buy for the sake of science, deliver them, let them grow up on a playground of sterilized tile and tests and no mothers to check for monsters and put them to sleep like puppies at age eight when we can no longer use them.  At the Lab we hide in closets and pop out at pre-determined times to make them cry tears to be caught in small beakers and analyzed later in the day because at the Lab we are meticulous and always driven to further scientific knowledge.  At the Lab we do not use night lights or bedtime stories.  At the Lab we have a special experiment involving a puppy in a box that isn’t real and a monster in a box that is questionable.  At the Lab we like to make believe real.  At the Lab there are always lots of tears and blotchy porcelain faces, and taking down of numbers.  At the Lab we do not hold hands or give hugs or say it will be okay.  At the Lab we can’t be bothered with emotions.  At the Lab we are above ethics.  But some days I think about you and your forgiveness.  We at the Lab do not have use for weakness.  At the Lab we are not bound by laws of any nature except of nature.  At the Lab you are at the Lab and nowhere else.  At the Lab families and lovers and old flings are left behind.  At the Lab we love only Science.  At the Lab we live in a world of bodies anxious to birth this new and fearless race because they understand what is important.  At the Lab we do not have time for love or grief or silliness. At the Lab we only care about fear, and we are perfecting and destroying it.   

At the Lab, the process begins with females who do not mind giving themselves up to science and carrying a bastard fertilized egg to term.  At the Lab, we only accept virgins.  At the Lab we do not wonder how they will explain themselves to their parents or friends, or if they still consider themselves virgins or if they might do this just to feel some kind of holy.  At the Lab we feed the young women pills to make their fetuses smart and ironic.  At the Lab we cherish women and shower them with spa trips and vitamin packets and a hefty, tax-free check for their bodies to make sure they keep coming back.  At the Lab we know how to get just what we want.  At the Lab we use words like amniocentesis and blastulation and zygotically. At the Lab we never use the word children. 

 

         At the Lab we are building deity.    At the Lab we tear dripping newborn gods from wombs like boy-surgeon fingers pry squirming gypsy moth-babies from their gossamer nests.  At the Lab we feed them bottles of formula to make them like the rest of us, needing something to make them a bit more human.  When I nurse them with bottles, one by one, I watch their tiny feet and make myself forget that I once had a tiny body inside mine.  You used to tell me it’s okay to pray to Him like He’s just like the rest of us too.  At the Lab we make hyper intelligent subjects and never assume they could surpass us.  At the Lab we are the omnipotent.  At the Lab we are so sure of ourselves that we believe in second chances.  At the Lab we get another shot with each batch of new test subjects, and they are always better than the last.  That winter you made macadamia nut cookies every Saturday, to get it right you said.  You always needed it just right. 

At the Lab we think it is pointless to decorate for Christmas or any other holiday for that matter.  At the Lab w e do not pray for safe surgeries or accurate test results.  We see Jesus reborn every eight years.  And I try to imagine what you might say if you could witness this man made miracle.  But you always had too much faith, you didn’t ever need miracles.

At the Lab we are on the verge of something big.  At the Lab we are God.  . 

                At the Lab I feel unneeded.  At the Lab I do not have a full access security pass.  At the Lab I am disregarded except on birthing and killing days.  At the Lab I unlock the doors in the morning and close down things at night.  I wake the subjects and feed them, at the Lab I am always the first and the last thing they see.  When I go home from the Lab I try not to think about them.  I shut off my head with sleeping pills and red wine.  You would say this is unhealthy but if I don’t do it, I won’t sleep at all.  Some nights I fall asleep on the couch because I hate sleeping alone in our bed.  At the Lab I am the only one who looks after the children.  At the Lab I wonder why they chose a woman for this job.  But then I remember how you always said I was cold inside sometimes and maybe that’s why I’m perfect for this place.  And that’s why you chose church over me when I decided to come here.  At the Lab, I am a nurturing mother turned post-partum every eight years. Eight is the magical number at the Lab because after age eight, the human brain has set its fears.  And if we can destroy fear in the first eight years, it will no longer exist.  Without fear, we will be unstoppable.  At the Lab I wonder if there is a reason for fear.  At the Lab I am a blushing midwife.  I like to hold the newborn ones and search for us.  They never have the freckle you do at the arch of your right foot.  At the Lab I bring them into the world and send them back out to the unknown after with an injection that probably stings and makes my hands shake when I prepare it.  At the Lab I am more afraid than they are for this shot.  At the Lab I can taste my fear like morning coffee for a week before a killing day. And at the Lab it sometimes doesn’t make sense that it is my job to control life and death.  I always think something will go wrong, I have clumsy fingers.  But it never does.  At the Lab I think about how you always told me to put it in the hands of the Savior when I was afraid.  But there is no Savior, at the Lab I have traced His blue veins with my fingers, watched His eyes glaze like warm glass fogged by winter night.  He that giveth, shall taketh away, you always said.    

At the Lab the laughing makes me feel always stopped up inside like our first garbage disposal because I know that nobody else will ever see their happiness.  It will never be recorded and published the results of how funny, how clever, how kind they were.  At the Lab, I am the only one who sees that they are real.  At the Lab I use the word subjects except in my own mind and at night when I give them their nighttime sleeping dosage.  There are days when I wonder if you could ever do what I do everyday at the Lab, and I know you couldn’t because you are too sensitive and you are not a loner like you said I was always meant to be.   At the Lab I want to feel strong.  At the Lab I am in charge of something and it feels good to have control. 

 At the Lab I have begun to have dreams of dead praying mantises pouring from legs, their claws the tiny fingers of those who came into our effervescent nursery unmoving.  At the Lab I feel more alone than I do when I walk down the darkened hallway to my bedroom every night. At the Lab I wish I could cry sometimes because the perfect ones do and I wonder what it means that I can’t.  At the Lab I remember the time when I was more important than your God.  At the Lab I wish you still had faith in me.  At the Lab I try not to think about the way your car smells when it’s cold outside. 

At the Lab, lately things go wrong.  At the Lab there is no way to interpret methodically the reason why we are getting less than seven subjects per batch.  At the Lab we have corrupted the wrong gene.  At the Lab it is hard for me to explain to a woman why her first baby doesn’t cry, to explain that it isn’t her fault, that it wasn’t the right time or that it was God’s will.  Somehow I think God had nothing to do with it, even though He is hovering over her with a syringe of sedatives and a clipboard and a frown of disappointment and condescension that says it wasn’t his will at all.  And I am thinking it was her fault, because you stopped touching me like it was mine.  At the Lab, I find it hard to understand that even perfection can be born still.  At the Lab I am glad I will never be a real mother.  At the Lab, for once, I’m happy we lost our chance. 

 

 

~ by cgrubbs on March 17, 2009.