The Proffesor´s secret

A grumbling Kensu made his way to his lab some floors lower on the gleaming skyscraper. Electronic microscopes littered the room, along with vials strewn around a multitude of desks each with their own sample of modified flesh. Three metallic skeletons hung from the wall, with a fourth hook hanging empty.

The sharp scent of formaldehyde permeated the room, paradoxically relaxing the scientist as he breathed it in. Kensu was in his home away from home. For all his bluster, it would be quite painful to leave the lab.

The scientist reached his desk entirely out of muscle memory, as he didn’t even bother turning on the lights. Kensu reached for the back of his neck, synthetic skin parting over his real flesh to open a small port near his nape. He grabbed a cable from his computer and reached to connect it to the port, but he paused.

“The old man is losing his touch; let’s at least make sure he sent the right file before I upload it…”

The scientist turned on his computer and sat down. The monitor became the only light-source in the dark room, at least until a faint blue light shone on the desk from behind. Kensu glanced backward to spot two blue dots floating in midair.

“Dr Kensu, this is the thirteenth time you forgot to turn on the lights. Workplace regulations state that-”

“Yeah, yeah. That’s why we have you AIDA. Someone’s got to keep track of the little details.”

“The accelerated deterioration of your eyesight is not a “small detail”, Dr. Kensu, and neither are our regulations.”

The lights in the room turned on, letting Kensu see the woman behind him. She had glowing blue eyes and straight black hair that weaved around her shoulders as she approached. Kensu always found it a bit mesmerizing how real each strand behaved, how it moved. If you didn’t know better, you would never guess it was a trick of the light.

“I’m detecting high-stress levels after your confrontation with the Professor. Here, I believe this beverage will bring back your nerves back down to acceptable levels.”

“Thanks, AIDA.” The woman placed a teacup on the desk. With a bow, AIDA retreated into the wall. She pressed her back into the empty hook next to the other metallic skeletons. The holographic skin turned off and the hair disappeared, leaving behind just a husk of chrome and plastic.

“Huh? This isn’t from the low-gravity project, this isn’t even cow DNA!” Kensu exclaimed as he opened the file. “The professor is getting senile, I was about to go clone ourselves a new baby! Where did he even get this? I thought processing human samples was illegal.…”

“Would you like to search the sample database for a match?” The speakers on the computer chirred with AIDA’s voice.

“Sure, run the search. Let’s see who is the poor sucker the professor tricked into giving him their DNA.” Kensu took a sip of his cup. “I bet it’s Aya, that girl is too naïve for her own goo-“

“Two matching samples. However, they can’t be opened. They are password protected.” A new tab opened in the computer, showing a database with only two blurred results.

“Wait, how can there be two matching results? Same DNA but two different donors?”

“Correct.”

“Huh, this is getting interesting. Did the professor scam some twins? Good thing the old man never changes his password… XLT17/M05-D24.” Kensu leaned back and took another sip of his tea as the database updated itself. “… huh. One sample is from the professor itself. Yeah, that makes sense. The other…”

Kensu dropped his tea mug, his eyes almost bulging out of his glasses. He leaned towards the computer as if the information in front of him was a trick of his tired eyes. It wasn’t.

“AIDA, has someone hacked or tampered with the database?”

“Negative. All changes to the database were made by authorized members of the lab.”

“Then who uploaded this entry? Don’t tell me this was a prank. I knew Aya was jealous of me, but-”

“Unlikely, Professor Katashi himself uploaded this entry.”

“Well, then he really is going senile to upload th-!”

“That is also unlikely. This entry was uploaded fifteen years ago, well before he exhibited any symptoms of neurological deterioration.”

“B-b-but that’s before I even started working here!”

“Correct. The entry is from eight years before Professor Katashi hired you.”

“That’s impossible!”

“And yet, the data shows otherwise.”

“…Are you sure YOU haven’t been tampered with?”

“Dr Kensu, I understand that you are distressed, but we both know that the information I’m providing you is accurate. I would appreciate it if you stop lashing out. Would you perhaps like to have another calming cup of tea?”

“What I’d like is to know what is the meaning of this!”

“Then I suggest you ask the person who uploaded the entry to the database.”

Kensu stood up and marched straight out of his lab. “You are right, AIDA, the old man still has a lot to answer for.”

--

Professor Katashi grabbed the side of his desk for support, his arm trembling as he struggled to stand up. His time was coming up, his frail body probably only had a couple of years left at most. Even modern medicine could only stem the tide for so long.

All the more reason to finish the project before he could no longer work on it.

The old scientist slowly trudged towards a control panel at the wall. AIDA could probably help him with the manual part of his work, but unlike his younger colleagues, he still didn’t like to rely on the robot’s assistance.

If he could do something himself, better not to get the machine involved.

Katashi pressed the panel's keypad, 170524. The wall whirred and retreated into itself, revealing the complex machine hiding on the other side. Two human-sized glass pods were connected to a metal box. A computer terminal stuck out from the side.

The screen turned on, showing a diagram of a body, red clouds swirled around the limbs and moved upward towards the heart.

“This isn’t good,” Katashi whispered to himself, a bad habit he had picked up in the last years of his life. “Like I feared, It seems like our little outburst is drawing it closer… hopefully Kensu returns from the lab soon, even an embryo will buy us some days...”

The old professor opened one of the transparent pods and went inside to begin to calibrate it, or so he planned. Katashi stopped as he heard a loud noise behind him. A red-faced Kensu was standing at the entrance of his office.

“Two fights in one night, Kensu? Can’t you just wait for-?”

“Why do we have the same DNA?”

The professor turned around, his expression grim. “How did you-“

“The file you sent me contained a human DNA sequence. I searched the database and found we have two human samples on file, yours and mine. They are both identical.”

“What? You opened the file? All you had to do was take it to the clone lab! And how did you even access that part of the database, you-”

“Don’t change the subject! As if that wasn’t bad enough, you had my DNA sequenced fifteen years ago while I was still a teen! What’s the meaning of this?!”

Kensu stomped forward, cornering the Professor inside his machine.

“Am I another of your experiments? Have you been altering my DNA to turn me into you?!”

“N-no, of course not! Why- how would I even do that?”

“I don’t know, but you are THE professor Katashi! If anyone knows how it’s you!”

The professor gulped as his assistant cornered him inside the machine. He felt as if the building itself began shaking. The clouds on the monitor swirled upward, getting dangerously close to the heart.

“C-calm down Kensu!”

“THEN EXPLAIN YOURSELF!”

The whole building began rumbling, not that the furibund Kensu seemed to care. The machine began whirring alert signals and the professor became pale. “N-now, look what you did! We ran out of time!”

“Ran out of time for what? Ack-!” In a split second, the professor reached for his pocket and fired a stun gun at Kensu. The young scientist fell like a bag of bricks, his limbs twitching as his chest heaved for air.

“Sorry Kensu, but I don’t have a choice. I hoped it wouldn’t have come to this, at least not so soon. You had such a bright future ahe-“

Kensu’s ear rang too loudly to hear the professor speak. The old man hoisted him inside the pod, which soon closed in front of him. An acrid smell filled his lungs as some sort of gas began to fill the pod. The world became increasingly blurry, the professor becoming nothing more than a white shape on the other side of the crystal.

But… he wasn’t the only shape in the room. There was something coming into the door, something black that looked like a …dark cloud?

It was no use, Kensu could scarcely keep a single thought in his throbbing mind. His body felt heavy as an anchor. His eyelids refused to stay up any longer. The young scientist closed his eyes and lost consciousness.