Bell Tree: Prologue

[degringolade]

 
 Impressionism / Lovis Corinth/ Woman by a Goldfish Tank

So, spent the day at M&M's in a slightly altered state, writing and walking and talking.  An alcohol and drug sodden writers workshop if you will.

Managed to finish up the bit getting Jenny's blood and keeping anyone from attaching her blood to her.  I hope that I didn't step on any toes with this first bit.  Now I get to go onto setting up my characters and take, the connections being made.

Prologue
 

Jenny looked at the bulletin board at Armitage Union’s south entrance.  Justin had mentioned something about some extra money for giving a blood sample.  The study was pretty lucrative as far as these things went, $150 for a tube of blood and filling out a detailed questionnaire about family history.  Pretty straightforward stuff. it wasn’t every day that a backwater like Miskatonic landed a major NIH grant, so the money was welcome and the purpose innocuous.  So she wanted to make certain that she got her share of the pie.
 

She found it where Justin and Tish had told her, below the poster for Isaac Jax and the Cottonmouths.  She managed to grab the last of the little hand cut tabs that carried the phone number and the room location over in the medical school.  She looked at the long line of flyers across the top of every one of the boards, with EXPERIMENTAL SUBJECTS WANTED.  Why this one was lonely below the Music poster seemed odd, but the since this study was based out of the Munoz clinic at the Medical School and not over at the Noology Department at Belbury Hall like the rest of the flyers across the top, she just attributed it to a pushy grad student sucking up and not paying any attention to others.

She took the treasure home, on the way, she stopped by the grocery store to pick up some bagged salad and some tilapia.  For some reason, lately she had been craving fish and the tilapia cheaply filled the void.  
 

She got home and was relieved that no one was there and collapsed on the couch and shut her eyes.   She managed to get a half hour nap before she heard Barry and Kenji come through the door, arguing (they always called it discussing) some exotic Javascript code fragment.  This was her cue to head to the kitchen to get her dinner cooked before the rest of the house got home and left the kitchen a shambles.  An egg and some bread crumbs coated the fish, a couple of minutes in a fry pan with some cheap olive oil and the protein craving she has been having were beaten back.   White rice and a salad  completed the meal and filled the little footed bowl that she ate from every night.
 

After cooking and cleaning up after herself (Barry liberated the fry pan before she had to clean it) She grabbed her dogeared copy of Péladan’s Le vice suprême and headed upstairs to read.  
 

…..
 

The next morning she woke up later than usual and headed downstairs, as she reached the bottom of the stairs, Owen shouted a good-bye as he was closing the door and sent into the kitchen to grab a cup of coffee.  Surprisingly, Tish was sitting in the kitchen, sipping on a cup of coffee and there was a three-quarters filled pot in the coffeemaker.  Without even being asked, Tish motioned with her head at the pot.  Jenny grinned a thank you and headed toward the pouch of bagels that she and Owen shared (the standing rule was he ate four and she ate two.  Owen was kind enough to traipse down to the bakery outlet store once a week to collect the cheapest sale items for their breakfast.  She figured that spending the dollar she spent every week for the bagels was the best bargain in her food supply, it was even a good enough bargain that she didn’t even feel guilty about the smear of cream cheese.
 

Once the first cup of coffee was down, and the bagel consumed, Tish started the conversation.  

“Thank the Lord that they canceled class today, my brain was dripping out my ears.  When Dr. Jameson announced that we could take the day off from lecture the class literally cheered.”
 

Jenny winced at her sudden spike of jealousy, but just then her phone beeped and when she read the message from her instructor in the French Romantics, she let out a whoop.
 

“Girl, we are golden, Professor Amelie has a cold and cancelled my 11:00, I am free on a Wednesday”
 

The two of them beamed at each other and sat together in a companionable silence for a bit.  Then Jenny remembered the scrap of paper with the room number and the telephone number.
 

“Hey, I remembered to stop by over at the Union and get the number for that study that you told me about, do you think that we should do that today?
 

Tish got up and started to move toward the door while talking over her shoulder “I think that would work out just fine, Do you want to call or should we just walk over?”
 

Jenny thought for a second and answered while Tish paused in the doorway to the downstairs bathroom.  “why don’t we just wander over there around 9:30.  If we can get in on the study, great, and I need to spend this free afternoon in the library.  Maybe I can even get to a point where I am not panicking”.
 

Tish responded as she closed the door to her goal.  “Sounds like a plan”.

…..
 

The morning turned out to be better than Jenny had thought, the low flat clouds from yesterday were gone and the the sun peeked out from behind a set of big fluffy clouds.  She and Tish walked leisurely over to Munoz Hall and went in search of room 207,  They found the room in the back of the building in a hallway that shouted “Labs” to anyone who saw that kind of thing.
 

They knocked on the door and then opened the door slightly to peek inside.  The tells in the hallway were accurate, it was a lab and one of the more disheveled looking labs.  Jenny’s first impression was that of an industrial accident.  On further review, she realized that there was an odd order there, it was just as though someone had tried to put in a couple too many instruments into a small area.  
 

Tish raised he voice to a give out a “Hello”  when that happened a rather large head covered with a mane of orange popped up behind the aged divider placed on the side of the opening to the lab bay.
 

“Hi, what can I do for you?” rumbled the head, still standing behind the divider.
 

Jenny took the lead.  “We just stopped by to see if there was any opening for the research study?”  
 

The comment caused a gap-toothed grin to spread itself across his face.  “man, it great to see you guys, I was getting worried about getting my last two subject for the study.  For some reason things have dried up for subjects, my posters have been disappearing and no one is calling in on the phone.”.
 

He came around to greet them and they were immediately intimidated.  The man was six-four at the least probably topped out over 300 pounds and was built like a very strong fire plug.  Jenny almost recoiled when he extended a ham-sized hand and said “Hi, I’m John Widman, I guess that it Professor Widman now, but call me John.  I’m the P.I. for the study”
 

He walked away toward a door leading to a small room dominated by a stainless steel table and some very comfortable chairs.  “Come on into the multipurpose room, sorry, I haven’t set it up yet for test subjects, but let’s get you guys started.”  He motioned to the comfortable looking chairs in the scattered about the room around the table.  “Have a seat, I’ll get the screen down and fire up the presentation.”
 

Jenny waited while the overhead projected whirred to life and the laptop worked through the bizarre negotiations that allowed the words:
 

Isolated Blind Study comparisons of Coding Sequences for Spliceosomal Introns of Mitochondrial DNA
 

He paused for a moment and regarded the two young women intently, “I make all my subjects listen to this, how intense do you want me to get?, Some of the Liberal Arts Students have walked out, and I don’t want to lose you two”.
 

This comment brought a huge smile across Tish’s face.  She simply smiled at Widman and said “Bring it.”
 

Jenny’s head snapped and she looked at Tish in horror.  She had a sudden panic attack about being stuck in her Freshman Introductory chemistry courses.  Tish just returned a smile and said, “Don’t worry, I’ll explain what you need.”
 

Mollified, Jenny sat back and by the end was actually interested and came up with a couple of questions that Widman easily fielded.  She was impressed, between his explanation and questions from Tish that seemed to dovetail nicely into the parts where she started to get a glazed look, she felt that she actually understood the questions that the project would try to understand.
 

When Widman finally was satisfied that two women understood what they were signing up for, he cut to the reason they were here.
 

“So, in a nutshell, I get to draw your blood to the tune of around 100 milliliters, there are going to be ten big red top tubes coming out of the crook in your elbow.  When that is done, you are going to sit here in these chairs and drink juice and eat something and rest for an hour until your body is happy with the process.”  He paused and waited while Jenny worked up the courage to ask the two questions on her mind.
 

“So, why do we have to wait that long?” She asked point blank.
  

Widman shot her a sly look, he began slowly “because you have spend an hour or so spending some serious effort writing an honest autobiography and taking a Myers Briggs personality test.  You can’t mention any names, I don’t want to have any name anywhere, I don’t want to know about your family.  I don’t even want to know if you are a man or a woman, I just want to know how you ended up here.”
 

Tish was startled at this...”why in the world would we do that?”
 

Bluntly, Widman explained.  “because a side of this study is to establish is there is any correlation between perceived personality type and the gene product of the mitochondrial DNAs”  He paused, it is the diciest part of the overall study in truth.  We will send your autobiography to a colleague of mine and BYU and he will read your autobiography and type you as best he can, then when we finish the sequencing of your entire genome, we will see about correlations.  It is a shot in the dark and it stands a high risk of coming up completely empty.”
 

Jenny and Tish took a moment to consider.
 

Finally, Widman broke the impasse with the simple statement “To make certain you are certain that your blood and your autobiography are protected, before you leave, here with a block-chain key that is absolutely needed to protect your information.  All we will see is a number and a personality type when we look at the gene product profile.”
 

“From the point of the view of the project, we don’t need to know who you are, as a matter of fact, we don’t want to know.  But we want you to know that your information is anonymous, so we seal up your results with block-chain encryption and give you the only copy of the encryption key.”
 

He paused, sensing the hesitation.  “and for your trouble you leave here with three fifty-dollar bills”.
 

This last statement seemed to chase away all remaining doubt, they both readily signed the stack of disclaimers and filled out the forms provided by the bursar.  They started to fill out the questions for the personality test and Widman led Tish over to another room with a older women who had appeared from the depths of the overcrowded lab.  Tish came back from the experience with a glass of what appeared to apple juice,a bag bulging with pastries, a big cup of coffee in a paper cup marked with the logo of the upscale local coffee stand that usually only saw rich wives, tenured professors, and college administrators.  
 

Widman, motioned to Jenny to follow him, they walked into a small room at the front of the lab that looked as though it had been lifted from a local clinic.  The older woman (who she found out was named Debbie.  This knowledge was gleaned by the simple expedient of asking) sat in the corner while Widman prepared the phlebotomy equipment.  When Widman started donning gloves, Jenny shot a glance at Debbie, who just nodded and tilted her head at Widman “you want him to do the draw girl, he is a damn site better at it than I ever was”.  She giggled, an odd sound coming out of such a matronly figure.  “You girls showing up gives me a break from the gels and I get to watch over this, doing nothing, just to make sure there are no hanky panky.”  She giggled again.  “Same pay, less work, right John Boy?”
 

Widman’s mock glare was less than impressive.
 

Widman proved remarkably adept at the process, neatly snagging ten big tubes of blood with nearly no sensations other than the initial, almost painless bite of the needle into he antecubital fossae.  That task having been done, he led her down the hall to a lunchroom where she grabbed a couple of bottles of some overpriced organic green sludge that she never had the money to buy, a big cup of coffee with real cream and sugar, and two pesto rolls from the upscale bakery by the coffee-shop.  
 

She thought to herself that she would have almost let them have the blood for the lunch that they were providing her.  
 

So now it was back to the conference room where she polished off the questionnaire and the autobiography.  Since he belly was full of good free food and the coffee wasn’t at all short on caffeine.  She felt that she did a commendable job.
 

When the writing were finished, Widman came over and plugged a thumb-drive into the computer and walked them through the block-chain encryption process.  At the end, their autobiographies were sent to Provo with nothing but a number on the top.  Widman handed them the thumb-drive with their block-chain key and three crisp fifty dollar bills.
 

He seemed relieved when he finally closed the deal.  “thanks so much you two for coming in, I was starting to get worried about getting all my subjects.” he paused for a second, looked at the two young women, and then appeared to make a decision.
 

“A couple of weeks ago the Noology program started pasting those posters up everywhere and mine started disappearing.  I haven’t had a volunteer for two weeks now.”
 

He plopped down into the biggest of the chairs.  “I was furious when I found out that they outbid me by a hundred bucks and then asked their subjects not to volunteer for another study for a year.”  He sighed deeply, “I went in to complain but no one anywhere cared.  You two gave me my minimum universe.”
 

Jenny and Tish were shocked by the news but held their comments.  Finally, Widman stood up and asked if they were good to go.  Stuffed and content, they nodded assent.
 

As he showed them to the door (with a stop by the break rooms’ refrigerator where he made them take two or three bottles of the yuppie juices that they had so obviously relished), Widman asked them what they were going to do with their hard-earned rewards.  Tish told him about Isaac Jax and the Cottonmouths, he nodded politely and said the appropriate things, thanked them again as he walked them to the front of Munoz Hall.  
 

He smiled gently at the two women as they walked away, excited about an upcoming evening of music and eating and a brief respite from being a poor student.  He found himself slightly jealous of whoever Owen was, spending an evening with those two would be a rare pleasure.
 

He noticed the tall man in the black coat and the hat watching the women as he turned to head back to the lab.  As he turned to go back to the lab, he saw the man looking at him, smiling.