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GEMINI
BY TROG
CHAPTER
1



Chapter 1

“Am I suppose to eat this? What the fuck is it suppose to be?”

Chuck Springer looked on as Tukluk ladled tonight’s special into a bowl and slapped it on his tray.

“American chop suey, Inuit style. Made with caribou meat. Good for your heart. Eat up, yum,yum,” said Tukluk, a native Inuk with a round, amiable face and long, beaded braids who ran the kitchen and seemed to do most of the odd jobs around the place. He was also the most well informed individual Chuck had ever met. If you needed to know something, Tukluk was your man.

“Well, it looks like sled-dog vomit,” said Chuck, as he poured himself a coke and grabbed some rolls and butter from a nearby counter. Looking around the nearly empty cafeteria, he noticed a young man with a large nose and glasses sitting alone in the far corner, reading something.

“Hey, Tukluk, who’s that? I’ve never seen him before.”

“Fresh meat. Just got here yesterday.”

“And then there were two,” muttered Chuck. “This place is like a fucking ghost town lately. Sometimes I feel like I’m the only one here.”

“Lots of cuts, no money. The place is broke I hear,” Tukluk whispered, looking around cautiously, making sure no one was listening. “I hear that the Old Man died!”

“Who the fuck is the ‘Old Man’ anyway?”

“No one knows, but he’s gone, and no more money for the place. That is what I hear.”

Chuck shook his head, not certain he believed what Tukluk said. Nobody talked in this place and most of the stuff you heard turned out to be fiction or lore. The biggest myth was that of the “Old Man,” the supposed benefactor of this place. He apparently started the institute because he wanted to live forever but no one ever verified this information and there was only Tukluk’s word for it.

Chuck walked over toward the dark-haired young man, a dead ringer for a young Groucho Marx, and extended his hand.

“Chuck Springer, Harvard Medical.”

The bookish young man stood up and shook his hand.

“Michael Palladino, Tufts Medical School. Wow, we were practically neighbors in Boston.”

Chuck sat across from him.

“So, what the fuck brings you to the Drolrotciv Research Institute, or ‘The Droll’ as we like to call it because it’s so fucking bizarre around here, like a zany house of horrors.”

Mike laughed.

“Well, I’m fascinated by HGH, human growth hormones, and there are few places in The States where real research is being done, I mean real hands on stuff. Plus I don’t have to deal with the bioethics crap here. So, here I am in the Northwest Territories of Canada, in the middle of nowhere at The Droll, as you called it.”

“Yeah, I was like you when I first came here, had big romantic notions of discovering something and turning the scientific community on its ear. Fuck, I’d already designated a spot on the illustrious family mantle for the Nobel Prize in molecular biology: Charles Eldridge Springer III, the youngest recipient ever, but the shit they have me doing here is no better than the stuff I did in my dorm room back at school.”

“What’s your field?”

Chuck took a bite of his food and spat it out.

“FUCK! This tastes like shit!” Taking a long, cleansing swallow of coke, he laid his fork down and looked across at the thick glasses resting on Michael Palladino’s face. “I’m interested in replicative human capacity. Do you know what Somatic Cell Nuclear Transfer is?”

Michael looked stunned, pushing his thick glasses further up the sweaty bridge of his Roman nose.

“What? You mean...cloning?”

“Yeah, but not just cloning...human cloning. It’s happening, right here in this place, or so Tukluk over there tells me,” said Chuck, pointing his head toward the cook. “That’s why I came here.”

“But...human cloning has been banned, both in the U.S. and Canada, not to mention in most of the civilized world.”

“Well, an organization called Clonaid turned me on to this place, but, to tell you the truth, I’ve been here three months cloning fucking mice and rabbits and I’ve seen no evidence of it. I think I’ve been had, my man, and now, I’m contracted for a fucking year. A fucking year! I still have 9 fucking months of this sentence left to serve. Hey, have you met Dr. Reese? Hymen Reese? He runs this place.”

“Yeah, he gave me the grand tour yesterday. Tells me he’s very interested in my ideas for the uses of HGH!”

“He’s full of shit! Told me the same crap when I got here. Now, I’m nothing more than a lowly lab assistant, monitoring the growth of cloned mice and fucking rabbits. This place is a ghost town, and in the fucking middle of nowhere. I mean did you ever in your life hear of the fucking Beaufort Sea before? I went to fucking Harvard and never knew there was a Beaufort Sea! I’m telling you, Mike...can I call you Mike....we’re fucked.”

Mike Palladino laughed. Chuck’s use of the word “fuck” seemed standard issue for Harvard grads. Somehow they their perceived superiority convinced them that even profanity sounded witty coming from their lips. He had the good looks of an Ivy leaguer: the blond locks, the clear blue eyes, the square, Waspy jaw line, the ease of someone who’d never worked very hard for anything and somehow wound up getting it anyway.

A middle-aged woman with dark hair walked into the place, throwing them a suspicious look. She had a receding hairline, sunken eyes and wore a wrinkled lab coat. They watched as she got some food from Tukluk and sat at the table furthest away from them.

“Who’s that? She doesn’t seem happy to see us,” said Mike.

“That’s Dr. Brunhilde Crespo, “Creepers” I like to call her. I’ve been here three fucking months and she’s never said a civil word to me...no sense of propriety. Not that I give a fuck...she’s hardly my type. I mean, a bald chick? Lost her hair from thinking too much, that’s what Tukluk says. Anyway, they discourage any sort of fraternization around here. I’m sure she’s not happy to see us talking.”

“What’s she doing here?”

“Well she works downstairs, in the private lab, so I don’t completely know. I’m sure you’ve gotten the ‘don’t look in the basement’ lecture from Dr. Reese. Am I right?”

“Yes. He did say that the lab downstairs was off-limits. Private research or something.”

“Yeah, I’ll say it’s off limits. There’s a bunch of fucking armed guards at all the entrances.” Chuck leaned in closer to Mike, almost whispering. “And yesterday, they brought in some mysterious patient in the middle of the night. He arrived in Tuktoyaktuk by chopper and was transported here in an ambulance...taken downstairs immediately, or, so says Tukluk. But, everyone denies it. Tukluk says Creepers is an expert in mind control... psycho electronic technology! Mind implants.”

A shiver ran through Mike as he watched Dr. Crespo eating slowly, all the while watching them. She finished quickly and came walking over, scowling severely with her hands stuffed into her lab smock.

“You are not suppose to be talking...get back to work,” she said with a thick, Hungarian accent and a heavy lisp.

“We were just discussing the latest advancement in somatotropins, Dr. Crespo, estrogen versus progesterone as an effective anit-aging hormone. Apparently the newest member of our staff here, Michael Palladino, is very interested in HGH,” chimed in Chuck rather quickly and easily.

“I see...do, you are working. Very, very good. Carry on, boys,” she said, before walking away.

“That was great. You seem to know a lot about HGH, Chuck.”

“I know shit about HGH. I just know how to bullshit with the best of them, Mike. I’m a Harvard man, it’s what we do,” he said, sitting back and smiling.

Mike laughed. He couldn’t help but like Chuck Springer immensely.

“So how many are on staff here? I’ve hardly seen anyone.”

“I’m telling you Mike, it’s just you, me and Tukluk, over there. There are a few Asians who work with ant-like precision and don’t speak to me, a couple of ‘gifted’ geeks from Yale with the social skills of lab rats, and Wanda, a stupid, but fuckable girl from NYU who’s mysteriously disappeared on me. I’ve now lost my only source of amusement in this place. Everyone else works downstairs in the private lab.”

“You mean Wanda Beckmeyer? They told me she left a few weeks ago, I was hired to take her place.”

“She left, ha? Didn’t even have the decency to say good-by to me, the slut. Oh, well...women! Although, Tukluk, over there tells me that she was killed because she knew too much,” Chuck said with a wink. “Apparently, curiosity killed the cat. She wandered down into the private lab, saw what was down there and suddenly...poof...she’s gone. I’m going with Tukluk’s explanation. Better for my enormous ego then Wanda just leaving on me without a word.”

Mike chuckled as Chuck got up to leave.

“Well, Mike, duty calls. I have many mice and rabbits to feed, many cages full of crap to clean and dozens of colorful charts to doodle on. Four years at Harvard Medical and I’m a fucking janitor. I’ll see you later for dinner. It’s grand to have someone to converse with. Ta-ta.”

Mike Palladino looked out the window of Drolrotciv Research Institute, at the frigid waters of Bathurst Bay in the Beaufort Sea and wondered what the hell he was doing here?


part 2

Staring out the window, through the frozen, opalescent glass he could see the glittering waters of the Beaufort Sea in between the bars, large chunks of ice floating around it’s frigid surface like ice cubes in a glass. Grasping the bars tightly, he closed his eyes, dreaming he was adrift on one of them, floating away from this place with the arctic breeze flowing through his long hair...toward home.

He rubbed his arm along the itchy band-aids where blood had been drawn for the third time this week, leaving him light-headed and drowsy. Dr. Crespo bled him as an armed guard pointed an AK-47 in his face. In the past he’d fought them at every turn, but now, three years later, he had no fight left. He laid back like a willing victim and just let them have their way, let them drain the life out of him hoping they’d siphon enough to let him die in peace.

Looking around his austere cell dejectedly, he decided what he would do today...a daily ritual that kept him from going insane in this snowy isolation.

Tukluk, the kindly Inuk who brought his meals, said his people survived by adapting to their environment no matter how treacherous, how barren...how cold. They did it by not wasting time dwelling on their misery but by embracing their environment and concentrating on the practical: their need for food, for clothing, for shelter. Eventually, the Inuit prospered, conquering and mastering the Arctic. Tukluk had encouraged Todd to develop a routine to fill the hours that stretched sluggishly into days that never seemed to end...he’d encouraged him to survive.

His options were limited: a stack of books to read, a treadmill, some weights in the corner. A television was provided but the reception was so bad in this remote location he only turned it on occasionally to hear another human voice through the static.

First he would run for an hour on the treadmill, close his eyes and pretend he was running along the beautiful paths of Llanview Commons, chasing his beloved daughter Starr in the warm spring sunshine, when the pink azaleas she loved so much were in full bloom. Then he’d lift weights for an hour to keep fit and strong, each week adding one repetition, pushing himself to the breaking point till his muscles ached and tore and he was sweating and panting and smelling musky and gamy like a productive human.

Then it would be time for his shower, a long, languorous affair that would take up at least an hour of his day. This is where he thought of her. Her soft, husky voice would come to him in whispers, saying words he’d longed to hear for so long. And her dark eyes would materialize from the mists and there he’d see the meaning of love within their depth. Touching himself, he’d close his eyes and dream of Tea and the love they shared so briefly... remembering her mouth, her touch and the passionate cries only he could provoke from her while making noisy, feverish love for days in motels all along the east coast. It was the only time he’d allow himself to indulge in her memory, otherwise, the strain of their separation would crush him.

Now his lunch would arrive, delivered by Tukluk, who would listen politely to ramblings of his lost life, always under the observance of an armed guard who looked on. He would rest for a while...nap...dream of his future. When he awakened he’d read something out of context, perhaps another chapter of The Odyssey, by Homer, dreaming of being Ullysses, skimming along the azure waters of the Aegean Sea on the Argos, sailing home to his love and his life. By this time dinner would arrive, and he’d eat while watching the news of a world he’d lost touch with. And, finally, it would be time to sleep again.

Tomorrow he would alter the routine slightly, and do it all again, though it was becoming tougher since it was always light outside. He preferred the six months of winter darkness when he could sleep most of the day and escape into a nocturnal solitude, like some hibernating Polar bear dreaming of springtime, thinking that when he awakened, he’d be free. Now, the days seemed endless, their length made more ponderous by the spotlight of the constant sun shining on him like an interrogation lamp, making him much more focused on his confinement.

“Three years...thirty-six months...a thousand days. Three fucking years and no one’s come looking for me,” he told himself, feeling a dark depression creeping in, settling in his soul. “Why should they?”

He’d fucked up with Tea. Pushing her away after they’d shared a closeness that left him reeling with vulnerability. Love scared the hell out of him...couldn’t she see that? After they’d left Llanview together, he’d lie in her arms for hours indulging in her love like a lost, little boy, whispering, “I love you” like a powerless, needy fool. Later, he’d hate himself for his weakness, for tearing open his festering soul like a bloody wound for her to see, allowing her a glimpse of the ugliness he’d tried so hard to hide from her. Then he’d push her away with words that hurt and humiliated her, wanting her contempt and her punishment. One day he just pushed too hard and when he awakened, she was gone. And he was lost.

“Tea,” he whispered. “I thought you loved me? You were suppose to come back...the way you always did.”

“I promise you my laughter, my love and my understanding, for now and forevermore.”

“Liar. Liar...beautiful liar.”

Her faded promises brought tears to his eyes as he pushed his waist-length hair back behind his shoulders, having refused to cut it. Tukluk who trimmed his beard underneath the watchful eye of an armed guard, had offered to cut his hair many times, but...Todd refused, having promised Tea he’d let it grow after they’d left Llanview together. He wanted to keep that promise.

Long ago, he’d stopped asking why he was here. No one would answer him.

“Why the fuck am I here? What the hell do you want from me?” he’d pleaded with Dr. Reese on many occasions.

“Todd, you’re safe here, and your residence here is temporary. Just know that you’re a part of something greater than yourself. You don’t know this yet, but you’re making history as we speak. Someday, everyone will know who you are. Be patient, lad,” he said in a kindly Scottish brogue that betrayed his sinister nature.

“MY RESIDENCE,” Todd shouted incredulously, “YOU MEAN MY IMPRISONMENT, DON’T YOU?”

“Please be patient, my boy. It’s the only way. This won’t be forever.”

That was three long years ago.

It was the solitude that he found unbearable. Outside of Dr. Reese, the odious Dr. Crespo, guards who were ordered not to speak to him and a slew of Inuit who cleaned his cell, brought his food, and spoke no English, there was no one...accept, Tukluk. And Wanda, a young, pretty doctor who’d snuck in one night and talked to him for hours. He’d told her everything, told her who he was and that he was here against his will, and she had promised to help him. When a guard finally caught them she was ushered away and he never saw her again. Tukluk had told him she just disappeared from the place.

“Why? What the hell is so important about keeping me here? Do you know, Tuk?” He’d asked one day.

“No. Everyone who works down here is told that you are dangerous and deluded, suffering from paranoia. They are encouraged to disregard what you tell them,” whispered Tukluk to Todd as he trimmed his goatee with a guard looking on.

Now he was looking at another long, tedious day without a night. How long, he wondered, before he lost his mind?

*****
2003 Copyright by Trog







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