Evan McNamara
Ursula Minor
From: Lillehammer, Kyle Det 2nd CL
Sent: Thursday, February 15, 2007, 8:32 PM
To: Roach, Peter Dr.
Subject: Schult Case
Dr. Roach,
Here are the relevant messages we found on the Vet School’s email server. We found their data useful for our timelines, but the science is beyond anyone in our lab. We think there is a connection between the Schult case and the missing prenatal and cancer patients from University Hospital.
We have divers in Lake Mendota now, looking for the bodies, but the ice is making recovery difficult.
Det. Kyle Lillehammer
Missing Persons Division
Madison Police Department
From: Sommerville, Nancy
Sent: Wednesday, August 30, 2006, 6:20 AM
To: Krump, Trudy
Subject: Ursula
Hey Sweetness,
I found Ursula asleep in the lab again. She didn’t even bother to crash on the cot I set up for her. She had one arm wrapped around the gas chromatograph and her fingers in a petri dish full of nutrient auger, like the lady from the old Palmolive commercials. Ursula has been my mentor and friend for three years, and I love her like a sister, but if this is what life is like after getting your PhD, I’m not so sure it’s worth it.
Love, Nancy
Nancy Sommerville, MS
Graduate Assistant
Genetics Lab, Department of Life and Biosciences
School of Veterinary Medicine
University of Wisconsin, Madison
From: Sommerville, Nancy
Sent: Friday, October 20, 2006, 6:20 AM
Subject: Ursula’s Project
Hey Sweetness,
I hardly see Ursula any more. She’s been focused on a single project all semester. She works in the lab at night, alone. I know she’s been here because I have to clean up after her every morning. The place is a shambles, but that’s the only sign of her activity. Not one word electronically or on a scrap of paper. She takes her journals with her, leaves me not one sticky note. I haven’t seen her since the Autumnal Equinox. She hasn’t even sent me an email.
Love, N
From: Schult, Ursula Dr.
Sent: Friday, November 17, 2006, 3:23 AM
To: Sommerville, Nancy
Subject: Request for Nutrient
Hi Nancy,
It seems that we have run out of nutrient, again. Would you please be a dear and order some more? I’m going through the gallon jugs quicker than I expected. Why don’t you see if they come in 55-gallon drums? That would be perfect! Maybe get two or three. We could store them in the cold vault.
Also, I have something growing in the artificial womb, so I need someone to mix up a quart of nutrient and add it to the womb’s intake valve every six hours. I’ll do the night shifts.
Thanks in advance! You are the best grad assistant ever.
Ursula
Dr. Ursula Schult, PhD.
Associate Professor
Genetics Lab, Department of Life and Biosciences
School of Veterinary Medicine
University of Wisconsin, Madison
From: Sommerville, Nancy
Sent: Tuesday, December 19, 2006, 8:42 AM
Subject: Taking over
Hey Sweetness,
How are things at the Druid Circle Convention? I still can’t believe they chose Newark, New Jersey. Can you even see the sun rise beyond the petrochemical haze?
Sorry I couldn’t make it, babe. I hate being apart on the Winter Solstice, but Ursula’s been working nights for the last few months, and I’m pretty much running the lab. She handed off all of the projects to me, including writing grants and papers. She even let my name appear as first author on the telomerase activation paper we submited to The Lancet last week. At this rate, I’ll get my PhD. in two years.
Love, N
From: Sommerville, Nancy
Sent: Monday, December 25, 2006, 5:07 AM
Subject: Accident
Trudy,
Ursula is in a coma at University Hospital. She was driving back from the lab during the ice storm last night when she lost control and her car slid into the intersection of Johnson and University and some drunk undergrads t-boned her little Subaru.
Her best friend Michelle is coming up from Arizona tomorrow to watch over her in intensive care.
Love, N
From: Sommerville, Nancy
Sent: Thursday, January 11, 2007, 8:35 AM
Subject: Ursula AMA
Trudy,
I went to the hospital tonight to relieve Michelle, and they told me Ursula woke up six hours ago and signed herself out AMA. I checked her house and the lab. No Ursula.
Ursula’s best friend Michelle is gone, too. I guess she went back to Arizona.
Love, N
From: Sommerville, Nancy
Sent: Monday, January 29, 2007, 9:45 AM
Subject: Ursula MIA
Trudy,
I have basically taken over Ursula’s academic life. The university system grinds on without her.
This problem with the biometric locks on the lab is a pain in the ass. I’ve had to shift all of our projets over to Justice Green’s facility until the techies can figure out why we can’t get in our own friggin’ lab. He’s not using it, anyway. You remember Dr. Green. He was Ursula’s advisor and taught her class last semester. Well, now he’s MIA. He was going to cover her class again while she was in the hospital. The Dean has asked me to teach Ursula’s class in the interim, which is cool for me, but where’s Ursula?
Come to think of it, I haven’t heard from her boyfriend Jake either. He’s always coming by the lab, smelling like Polo and making an ass of himself. Not lately. Fine with me. The dickhead didn’t visit her once while she was in the hospital.
I’ve been hearing rumors that people have seen Ursula around campus. Too many days without seeing the sun, I guess.
Love, N
From: Sommerville, Nancy
Sent: Saturday, February 3, 2007, 1:49 AM
Subject: Ursula on Campus
Trudy,
I think I’m losing my mind. Tell me I’m not.
Remember I told you about people seeing Ursula on campus, attending lectures, drinking coffee at the Internet Café, shopping in the University bookstore, going to basketball games, dancing in clubs? Dr. Ursula Schult dancing? Are you kidding me? They say she’s always wearing sunglasses, even indoors, always at night. I never believed them until tonight.
I saw her, Trudy, I really saw her.
I was on State Street, late, picking up those extra amethyst crystals for the Equinox, when
I saw her. She was standing in line at the Orpheum Theater for the midnight showing of The Rocky Horror Picture Show, dressed up like Magenta, red streaks in her blonde hair, skimpy french maid outfit and all, which would be sort of normal except that IT’S FRIGGING TEN BELOW!
Just like the rumors, she was wearing sunglasses. I called to her. She turned her head in my direction, not all the way, not enough to see me, then she just took off at a flat-out sprint, spike heels clicking over the ice and snow. Then she was gone.
Tell me I’m not crazy.
Love, N
From: Sommerville, Nancy
Sent: Thursday, February 8, 2007, 4:12 AM
Subject: Resignation
My Dear Trudy
Ursula sent me the scariest email. Actually, three months worth of emails. They must have been stuck somewhere in server-purgatory, because they just popped up in my in-box tonight. I’ll just forward you all of them.
I can’t take any more of this freaky shit. I’m sending this now, then I’m getting on a plane to Kansas City. I’m not going back to the lab. I’ll write my letter of resignation to the Dean when I’m safe at the chicken farm in Bonner Springs. Move down if you want, but I’m not coming north again. Sorry babe.
Love, Nancy
From: Schult, Ursula Dr.
Sent: Monday, October 2, 2006, 12:27 AM
Subject: Infertility
N-
It’s late, and I’m up waiting for another PCR to run, so I thought I would write you a note, if I’m not in tomorrow or you find me with my hand in a petri dish again, you’ll know why, sorry if this is rambling, but I’ve been on a 36-hour-Sugar-Free-Red-Bull-and-Diet-Mountain-Dew binge, so pardon my run-on sentences, I wasn’t an English major anyway, I’ll use commas wherever I damn well feel like it and the grammar sheriff can kiss my white ass.
Anyway, did I ever tell you why I got into genetics? If not, I will now, and keep this to yourself because I don’t want Dr. Green to know or Jake either. Especially Jake. He wants a baby some day, and I do too, but I never told him that I’ll never be able to have his baby. Lots of nevers. I’m so tired, where was I? Michelle knows, but she’s down in Arizona with her own babies and even if she is my best friend she’ll never understand what it’s like not to have babies because she has them. I know you’ll never have a baby because that’s impossible for two women to conceive. Never have to worry about birth control, do you? That wasn’t very nice, was it? I’m sorry, but we’re okay, right? You and Trudy are my favorite Druids and I never forget to send you a card every Equinox and Solstice. More nevers. Some nevers may change. I’m trying to change the nevers.
Anyway, I was in love with Dr. Green a long time ago. Well, not that long. Bet you didn’t know that. I was in his freshman biology class and he was still married so you know the story. I was in love, he said he was going to divorce his wife, but it never happened, so I decided that I was going to have his baby, anyway, and I went off the pill and never told him. This went on for a year and I never got pregnant, my periods kept coming certain as beating Northwestern and paying income taxes, and Dr. Green has children, so I figured it was me. Well, it was me, is me, my ova, actually. I produce bad eggs—denucleated. No nucleus, just like the sheep ova we use in the lab. I was Dr. Green’s grad assistant by the time I knew how to do the analysis, and I broke it off with him five minutes after I saw my empty ovum. Would you believe it? I could make a killing in the fertilzation market, cranking out genetically empty eggs and selling them to the highest-bidding infertile couple. Hell, I’m the perfect surrogate mother, I would just never give the babies away, so that wouldn’t work out.
Anyway, so I produce denucleated eggs, just waiting for some unethical genetic engineer to squirt a nucleus from a cheek cell into it and watch what happens.
-U
From: Schult, Ursula Dr.
Sent: Friday, November 3, 2006, 3:10 AM
Subject: Cancer-Telomere Paradox
N-
I may have discovered a way to get around the telomere problem. I know you know this already, but stay with me, it helps to work it out in my head.
Telomeres are the little non-genetic tails at the end of our DNA strands that protect the genome from breaking apart during replication, like the plastic doohickies at the end of shoelaces. Each time a cell divides and the genetic material in the cell nucleus is copied, the telomere shortens. Cell division stops once the telomeres become too short to replicate without deleting part of the whole genome. That’s when we start to die—when our cells age, unable to replicate. Each cell has a finite number of replications, based on the length of the telomere.
The trouble with cloning using cheek cells, or any other somatic cell, is the telomere. Germ line cells—egg and sperm—produce telomerase that rebuilds the shortened telomere after replication. But, take a cheek cell from 75-year-old Tony Randall and put it into one of my nucleus-free eggs, and you get a baby whose genetic age is 75. The poor kid’s cellular clock has been spun forward six dozen years, and she probably won’t outlive her father. For some reason, somatic cells turn off the telomerase gene. Maybe that’s the key to our mortality. Maybe that’s the way God wanted it.
Anyway, malignant cancer cells reactivate the telomerase gene. That’s why cancer cells grow at such a fantastic rate—they are unchecked by the shortening of telomeres, making them practically immortal.
I have discovered a way to program somatic cells with the genetic fragments of cancer cells that reactivate telomerase. The timing is tricky—I had to construct my own instruments to perform near-simultaneous injections of the somatic nucleus and cancer gene fragments into my denucleated egg. I damn near had to scrape out all of my precious little ova before one finally took the bait and started dividing. Like any proud parent I transplanted my little oocyte into the lab’s artificial womb. It’s warm and full of nutrient, giving it the best chance to grow.
I try not think about all of the denucleated eggs I’ve flushed down the toilet since puberty. I’ll probably start menopause tomorrow.
-U
From: Schult, Ursula Dr.
Sent: Saturday, November 4, 2006, 3:23 AM
Subject: Gestation
N-
It was my original intent to gestate. Why not? I have a uterus, and it’s my ovum, my cheek cell. The embryo doesn’t implant itself on the uterine wall until 10 days or so after fertilization, so I had time to make sure that my little oocyte was exhibiting proper cell division before making myself an incubator. No hurry, but when I went to check on it 24 hours after fertilization, I found that my uterus was out of the running.
What an amazing creature I have created. In 24 hours, my little oocyte has developed into a full-blown somite, nearly 10mm long. A normal human embryo would take thirty days to reach this stage of development. Rather than waiting for a uterus, the embryo created its own placenta, attaching it to the oxygen valve in the plexiglas wall of the artificial womb. Guess it doesn’t need me after all.
I am somewhat concerned about the lack of lens pits for the eyes. They should have formed by now. Maybe it’s just too early, or the somite is just too small for me to see them.
The thing is sucking up nutrient faster than a frat boy at a keg party. We might need to order it in larger quantities.
-U
From: Schult, Ursula Dr.
Sent: Monday, November 13, 2006, 2:25 AM
Subject: Birth
N-
It’s been ten days since my little oocyte started dividing on its own, nine days since it created its own placenta, and now a viable fetus is sucking her left thumb in our artificial womb.
I hated to do it, but I needed a sample of her tissue, so I poked her with a collection needle. Just a little stab in her left heel, and she kicked back. She kicked back! I almost poked her again, just to see her move, but I didn’t.
Without uterine contraction, I’m not sure if she will be born. What is birth to a fetus growing in a bathtub full of warm nutrient? Does it happen when I reach in and pull her out? I’m not ready to have a child just yet. Maybe, as long as we keep feeding her, she will simply remain in the womb, attached to her placenta. That will give me some time to figure out why she is growing so rapidly.
As for the lack of lens pits I mentioned earlier, I was correct. This child has no eyes. My heart aches with this knowledge as my head seeks an explanation. I must have lost that gene during the initial replication. Maybe the first round of telomerase reactivation started too late, leaving the genome incomplete. I wonder what else is missing.
-U
From: Schult, Ursula Dr.
Sent: Tuesday, December 05, 2006, 1:17 AM
Subject: Development
N-
As I feared, she is growing exponentially. Ten days for gestation was nothing compared to the development I’ve seen in the last few weeks. She spent her childhood in a vat of viscous amber nutrient, and now she’s flying through puberty. I think her pituitary has actually accelerated her unnatural growth rate, like a turbocharger on a car, or a supercharger, I can never remember the difference.
Her toes almost touch the end of the tub. If she grows to my height—who am I kidding? She’s my clone! Of course she will grow to my height. Jesus.
Anyway, she’ll have to stay curled in the fetal position if she wants to stay in there.
I see myself in her profile—blonde hair, big feet, even the birthmark on her left triceps. Birthmark? How can it be a birthmark if she’s never been born, incapable of birth?
It’s almost like she is made of pure cancer cells, replicating without pause, unchecked by telomere shortening. That was my initial conclusion—I had created an immortal being. Imagine my joy at that assertion.
Then, under the microscope, I watched the cells from her heel divide. My conclusion was partially correct—her cells replicate like cancer cells, faster even, but the tragic difference is that her telomeres still shorten with each cell division. Instead of creating a being whose lifespan is indeterminate, I have started her cellular life at age 30 and made weeks, not years, that life’s unit of measure. At this rate, her cells will stop replicating and senesce in three months. She’ll be dead by spring.
-U
From: Schult, Ursula Dr.
Sent: Thursday, December 13, 2006, 3:35 AM
Subject: Non-Identity
N-
She is an adult, now, a grown woman who sucks her thumb and lives in a bathtub, submerged in auger. At least her development has slowed somewhat. She might live long enough to see the ice melt on Lake Mendota.
Who am I kidding? She won’t be seeing anything.
If anyone finds out what I have done, I will lose my tenure, my lab, my credentials, maybe go to jail.
I should stop this abomination. She breathes, she eats, but does she truly live? If this is life, is she better off living the rest of it this way? My decision to clone myself using somatic cells was a poor one, unethical, made under the effects of caffeine and sleep deprivation. I could easily reverse it, simple as pulling the plug out of the wall. What would I take from her? How would it harm her, really? Her current existence is not a benefit. How can it be? She knows nothing, feels nothing. If she cannot perceive the loss, what does she lose? Is it morally wrong to end the life of a being whose existence is morally wrong?
She would not have existed without my action. My action, although having good intent and a reasonable projection of positive outcome, will cause her to have a significantly worse life than that of a non-clone.
Her mere existence is harmful because it is less than minimally satisfying, compared to non-clones. Hence, allowing her to live is harmful, and not ending her life is immoral.
If she never would have existed without my action, and her current existence is not a benefit to her, what is the harm in my ending that existence? With a single act, I could reverse my unethical decision and reestablish moral equillibrium.
What have I done? What do I do?
Do I turn off the oxygen pumps, so she suffocates?
Do I stop adding nutrient to the tub, so she starves to death?
Do I leave her in this tub of nutrient until her cells stop dividing, then wait until her organs fail while she sucks her thumb?
Or …
Do I wake her up, clear the fluid from her lungs, teach her to speak, let her feel the sun on her face, knowing that she will die in three months?
Does she dream? Does she perceive?
-U
From: Schult, Ursula Dr.
Sent: Monday, December 25, 2006, 2:01 AM
Subject: Escape
N-
Something terrible has happened.
I awoke to the sound of ice on the roof. Not like rain. A crystal hiss. The red numbers on my digital clock had disappeared. The ice storm knocked out power all over campus. I lay in bed, wondering who last had checked the batteries in the backup power supply for the artificial womb, remembering that you told me last summer they were dead and needed replacement. Without power, the heat and oxygen pumps would fail, and she would die.
I considered going back to sleep—my first night’s sleep in a long time. Just roll over and fade away, listening to the ice crystals fall above me. An act of omission would negate my act of commission. Who could blame me?
I would go to the lab in the morning, and it would be over. An accident, an act of nature, the will of God.
Instead, I calculated the minutes her brain could survive without oxygen, then I felt my own heart beating in my chest and thought about how hers would slow and stop.
I scrambled over to the lab. When I got here, the womb was empty—just a bloody placenta and umbilical cord hanging over the edge of the nutrient tub. The lack of oxygen must have triggered a primal instinct to survive. Now she is among us.
Where would she go? How will she survive? It’s too cold outside to walk. After a few trips to the biohazard incinerator, I’ll take my car and see if I can find a naked woman with no eyes who looks like me wandering around campus.
U
From: Lacey, Demetrius
Sent: Monday, December 25, 2006, 10:15 AM
To: Schult, Ursula Dr.
Subject: Perception
This board of raised dots, keys, moves under my fingers, and the sensory pattern creates images in my head. I push back on the keys with my fingers, and the keyboard responds with further images. Two-way perception. I sense an object in front of my face. I lift my left hand from the keyboard and touch the object. It hums. A blue glow with four edges appears in my head. I don’t know why I use my left hand. This hand seems to dominate the other, but my right hand continues to send and receive the images from the keyboard, the words that I am writing. The blue shape above the keyboard has changed into a complicated pattern of images. These are not the same patterns as the keyboard, but I know they mean to communicate a similar message. The message on the screen is faster, deeper, massive. When I touch the keys, I perceive through my fingers and the screen. My circle of perception widens. The walls of this room are cold and square, enclosing an area many times larger than I can spread my arms. I sense inanimate objects around me. Some are cold and immovable. Others make sounds, vibrations, generating heat and energy. I can feel their work, sense their output. There is power here. I sense animate objects, too, and not just Demetrius and me. Smaller things, moving quickly, furtively. The images on the screen and from the keyboard are not in the room. They exist somewhere else, but I can perceive them. The images enter my head quickly. Perception becomes understanding. I perceive more rapidly, and the images come faster as I call them up with my fingers. I am breathing faster, too, and a beating in my chest increases as the flow images increase.
This is learning.
Another animate object has joined Demetrius and me. I see them, but they are behind me. I see everything in the room without turning my head. I see Demetrius for the first time, know it is Demetrius from the pattern of words he uses. She is like him, but not like him. She is smaller in stature. His head is round and shiny. She has fibrous material coming out of her head. It is dark and curly. I have this, too. I put my right hand on my head and feel the same material. What is it? My left hand touches the keys, and I find it. This is hair. I draw my hair out. It is straight and yellow, but long, like Sally’s. Demetrius and I similar, but Sally and I are more similar. What is the word? Keystrokes with my left hand. We are females. Women. Demetrius is a male, a man. Their skin is like Sally’s hair. Mine skin is fair like my own hair, and I seem to have more skin than they do.
The new being addresses Demetrius. I write this as they communicate. They think I cannot perceive them, but I can. I do not know how I can do this. I do not perceive them the way I do when Demetrius is near me, from his vibrations outside my head. I perceive their communication from inside my head. I know their words as if I were thinking them. I see their lips move before I hear their voices. I write as they talk:
“Papa, who that white girl sittin’ at your computer?”
“Don’t know. She don’t talk much, but I think she blind. I found her stumblin’ down the hall outside Dr. Ursula’s lab.”
Sally grabs Demetrius’ sleeve and pulls him behind the locker where Demetrius stores his tools. She puts her lips to his ear and whispers, “Papa, she naked.”
“That so? Well, it is hot down here. Blind folks don’t care much about what they look like. We don’t have modesty.”
“She ain’t blind.”
“Yes she is. You think I don’t know what blind is?”
“She got your screen on, Papa. What she need a screen for if she blind? She lookin’ right at it. I don’t know why you need a screen, either.”
“Burt use that computer, too. He got a regular keyboard in a drawer.”
“Hold on.” Sally steps to the other side of the locker and looks at me. “You say you found her outside Dr. Ursula’s lab?”
“Thas’ right.”
Sally looks at me again. I see her staring at the back of my head. “She look like her. I think it is her.”
“Who?”
“Dr. Ursula.”
Demetrius slowly shakes his head. All of his motion is like this. “No it ain’t. Dr. Ursula can see. She always say good morning or good night or Hi Demetrius and squeeze my arm when she walk by. This girl ain’t said a word, and she can’t see.”
“Papa. I’m tellin’ you.” Sally pulls his sleeve again and points at me with her other hand. “You got Dr. Ursula sittin’ at your computer, naked, like she jus’ stepped outta the shower. Maybe she got into some drugs.”
“I was thinkin’ that about you.”
“We can’t jus’ leave her there. I’m gonna go get her some clothes.”
“Where?”
“She keep a set of clothes in her locker on the second floor.”
“Who?”
“Dr. Ursula.”
Sally leaves the room the same way she came in. Demetrius shakes his head again, then finds a chair. The chair squeaks as he sits in it. He breathes out through his nose. This sounds like the machines below us. Now, he is making another sound through his nose, but it is pleasant, not words, but resonant, harmonic, comforting.
Sally returns. She is holding some things in her hands. She walks by Demetrius and approaches. I see her coming, but I still face the screen. Demetrius’ chair squeaks, and he walks behind Sally, holding her shoulder.
Sally talks fast. “Dr. Ursula? I brought you some clothes from your locker. Hope you don’t mind, Ma’am, but it cold outside. It be warm in here, down in the boiler room, but once you step out, you catch your death. I didn’t take nothin’ else, just some clothes and your lab coat.”
When she is very close, I turn and stand. I am taller than Sally. She is smiling. I smile back at her, then she stops smiling. Sally steps backward and knocks over a rack of brooms and mops. She walks right over them. One breaks, a loud crack, and she trips. Demetrius reaches out at the noise and catches her. He helps her up, and she clings to him, pulls his head to her lips again. She thinks I cannot hear, but I still perceive their speech:
“Papa,” Sally hisses in Demetrius’ ear. “That ain’t Dr. Ursula.”
“Told you that already.”
Sally shakes her head, hard and fast, not like Demtrius. “She got no eyes.”
“Told you she blind.”
“No, Papa. That ain’t it. You can’t see. You don’t know. She got no eyes at all.”
“You mean, like empty holes where her eyes should be?”
“No, no, no. Listen. No eyes, no sockets, no eyelashes, no eyebrows. It like her cheeks jus’ keep goin’ all the way to her forehead. Smooth skin, nothin’ else.”
Demtrius makes the loud sound through his nose again. “She needed my help, an’ I give it to her.” He pulls Sally from his shoulders, making her stand on her own. “She need your help, now.”
“She naked and don’t have no eyes.”
“She still God’s creature.”
From: Lacey, Demetrius
Sent: Monday, December 25, 2006, 11:25 AM
To: Schult, Ursula Dr.
Subject: Clothing
I was comfortable without this clothing. I would rather exist as I first perceived myself, but Sally insists that I wear these things. She shows me how to fasten the clothing to my body. I tell her I am hot and start to take them off again. This is my first word, “Hot.” She stops me, saying I cannot go around naked because not all men are blind like her father. I am not sure what this means.
She reaches out toward my face, holding a strange object. I am startled and reach out with my left hand, but my hand arrives before the object and grabs empty air. Then, I see my hand reach again and take the object. I see things just before they happen. I find it difficult to coordinate this early perception with the latent physical action. It will take practice to overcome this latency.
I startle Sally when I take the object from her hand. She says, “I thought you couldn’t—never mind. Jus’ put them over your--” then she stops. I know she was going to say “eyes.” I do not know what these are, yet, but my hands are doing other things, and I cannot key in the word. Sally tells me to put the bows over my ears and hang the middle part on my nose. I ask her why. She says it is better for everyone.
The coat Sally gives me is white. There is raised blue writing on the left side of the chest. I touch it. It is not like the raised keys of Demetrius’ keyboard, but I know the symbollic pattern already. It is a name: Dr. Ursula Schult. Is this who I am? I enter this name into the keyboard.
From: Schult, Ursula Dr.
Sent: Monday, December 25, 2006, 11:52 PM
To: Schult, Ursula Dr.
Subject: Identity
I know who I am. I am not Dr. Ursula Schult. I found your address in the unversity faculty directory. I found the description of your scientific endeavors, read your papers in the scientific journals. The keys in my pocket and my own fingers opened the locks on your lab. I found the container you called the “artificial womb” in your articles to the American Journal of Veterinary Medicine. I found a computer like Demetrius’. It had a finger pad on it like the locks on the doors. I swiped my index finger over the pad, and Dr. Ursula Schult’s name appears at the top of this message. I am something she created. Something you created. I am not God’s creature, as Demetrius says. I am your creature. I must find you. I am looking for you.
From: Schult, Ursula Dr.
Sent: Saturday, December 31, 2006, 3:48 PM
To: Schult, Ursula Dr.
Subject: Sister Lakes
I have spent some days looking for you. The building that contains your laboratory seems bigger than it needs to be. I do not understand why so few people occupy a building so large. There should be more people. You should be here, too, but you are not.
I talk to Demetrius, use his computer, then go outside to look for you. It is cold outside, not hot like the boiler room. I prefer to stay outside. I wear my sunglasses, and people walk by me quickly, as if they do not see me. I see them. The cold air feels good in my chest, and I am comfortable in your clothing. I am more comfortable at night, too, in the darkness, when it is colder. The lack of light does not inhibit my perception. There is a large open space near your building. White snow covers part of it, but the rest is like cold, black glass. The wind moves quickly across this expanse and penetrates your clothing. I like this feeling. Demetrius calls the open space Lake Mendota. There is a sister lake, he says, on the other side of the isthmus. I walked to this sister lake, Monona, while I was looking for you. The wind is quiet on Lake Monona, and snow covers it completely. He says the ice melts in the summer, but I can walk on it now. I sleep on the ice every night. Monona is dormant. I prefer the black ice of Lake Mendota. It seems alive, groaning, churning, cracking all night long.
From: Schult, Ursula Dr.
Sent: Tuesday, January 9, 2007, 10:28 PM
To: Schult, Ursula Dr.
Subject: Death
I know how I will die.
I saw Dr. Justice Green’s name on one of your journal articles. He is a professor here, in your department. The computer told me that he was giving a lecture tonight on the ethics of cloning. I understand cloning because that is who I am, but I did not understand the term “ethics.” I attended his lecture.
I will die like other humans, only faster, much faster. I know all about my telomeres, how I will die very soon because they shorten, and shorten, and shorten. I will die because you failed to stop this process in me.
Dr. Green was beautiful. Blue eyes, soft beard, kind smile. He saw me in the back of the lecture hall. I think my presence disturbed him. When his eyes passed over me the first time, he stopped talking, as if he had forgetten what he was going to say. He shook his head, looked at me, shook his head again. Everyone in the lecture hall turned and looked at me. I did not like this feeling, all of those eyes staring at the place where my eyes should be. I ran out of the lecture hall and into the darkness. I found a stone bench and sat down. Dr. Green came out. He approached me, saying your name, “Ursula!” I ran from him, and he followed me. I ran for the quiet of Lake Mendota, where I thought I would be safe on the ice.
But he followed me, running, still calling your name, “Ursula!” I lept off the stone embankment and onto the ice. He could not jump like I did, but he found a terraced section and chased me across the ice.
There is a place near the shore where the ice is thin and water appears. A black pipe injects steaming water into the lake. It comes from Demetrius’ boiler room. Demetrius told me to stay away from this place, but I was not thinking of Demetrius. I was trying to get away from Dr. Green. In the daytime, the sun shines on the water, and the wind makes ripples on the surface, but at night, the black ice and black water look the same. I know the difference, but Dr. Green did not. He passed through the thin layer of ice and did not reappear.
I think he is still down there.
From: Schult, Ursula Dr.
Sent: Wednesday, January 10, 2007, 11:59 PM
To: Schult, Ursula Dr.
Subject: Michelle
I found your address on your computer and walked to the place where you live. Different keys on the same ring open the door. Nothing is familiar inside, except this computer. My fingerprint activates it.
Someone called Michelle was here, not you. When I entered, she said, “Ursula? Honey? What are you doing home from the hospital? When did you wake up?”
She thinks I am you. I am not you. I turn to her and smile the way I did when I met Sally.
“Ursula? It’s me, Michelle. Don’t you recognize me? Who brought you home?”
“I am not Ursula,” I say to her.
“Of course you are, honey. You’re Ursula, and I’m Michelle.” The woman named Michelle talks to me slowly, as if I do not understand her. “I’m here to take care of you, like the last time. What do you remember since the accident?”
I do not answer. This woman’s words confuse me. They are meant for you, not for me.
Michelle smiles at me. I smile back. She says, “Girlfriend, you smell like the hospital. Why don’t you go upstairs and take a shower? I’ll make some green tea, get the fireplace going. We can catch each other up.“ I have no answer for this, either. I do not recogize these words. Michelle tilts her head to the side. “Why are you wearing those sunglasses? It’s dark outside.”
Michelle reaches for the sunglasses. I do not stop her, because I am familiar with this gesture, now. She removes them from my face. She stares at me for ten seconds. Her mouth forms a perfect circle, then she emits a sound from it that hurts my ears from the outside and my head from the inside. I cover that perfect circle of her mouth with my hand, so the pain will stop, but then I see her try to push my hand away. The piercing sound will not stop. I have to stop it. She pulls my hand down from her mouth and onto her throat. The sound—a scream—stops for a moment. I grip her throat tighter, and the scream stops. She is pulling at my fingers with both hands. I do not want the pain of her scream in my ears and head again. My other hand seizes the back of her neck before she can push me away, and I grip tightly over the hard bulge in her throat. I press my hands together. She keeps pulling at my fingers, but I am stronger than she. Her efforts weaken. I wait until she stops moving. I feel her full weight in my hands. I release her, and she falls to the floor.
She is no longer screaming.
Michelle was carrying a plastic bag that had the words “University Hospital” on it and an address. The hospital is near Lake Mendota, near the building that contains your lab. Maybe I will find you there.
From: Schult, Ursula Dr.
Sent: Thursday, January 11, 2007, 4:16 AM
To: Sommerville, Nancy
Subject: Problem
N-
I guess a few things have happened since the ice storm.
I woke up staring at binocular images of myself in a hospital bed. The images were reflected in my Ray-Bans worn by … me. My clone was all grown up, wearing my clothes, waiting for me to wake up. Her hands are freezing.
As soon as I opened my eyes, she started talking, telling me her life’s story, which didn’t take very long. When she got to the part about Dr. Green, I got out of bed. By the time she finished telling me about Michelle, I was dressed and checking myself out of the hospital.
The first thing I did was get rid of the body. What was I going to do, call the police? Tell them my clone killed my best friend? Weeping, I dumped her body in the open section of Lake Mendota where the vet building dumps its boiler water. Actually, my clone dumped the body. She’s very strong and unafraid of the ice. She carried Michelle on her shoulder and Michelle’s lavender Tourister in her hand, circled the open water, and dropped her in. My clone came back and told me that was the same place Dr. Green went through. She made sure both of them were under the ice. I don’t know when I’ve cried harder, but I have little time for tears.
I’ll have to lie to Michelle’s husband, Ryan, when he calls for her. I guess I have a good excuse, being in a coma and all. I try not to think about her motherless children. I try not to think about how my creation has caused the death of two people I love.
I should have killed her when I had the chance.
-U
From: Schult, Ursula Dr.
Sent: Wednesday, January 31, 2007, 1:23 AM
Subject: Lab Assistant from Hell
N-
As you probably know by now, I’m back on the lab. Sorry about the mess. My clone won’t leave my side, then she locks me in the lab when she goes out to do God knows what. I think she’s living in my house. I get the cot in the back. She came in tonight wearing a pair of jeans I haven’t been able to squeeze into in five years, the bitch. She smells like cigarrette smoke and Polo cologne.
I don’t know how she reprogrammed the biometric locks to recognize her fingerprints and not mine. Not that I would leave, anyway. Can’t have two Ursulas running around campus. People might question my ethics, and I’m sure the police would like to talk to me about Michelle and Dr. Green.
Imprisonment has refined my focus on my work like never before. That, and imminent death at the hands of my own clone. She has demanded that I solve the problem of her telomeres, that I halt her rapid aging before she dies. I am afraid to cross her, not after I saw the way she had crushed Michelle’s neck, how she carried her body out on the ice like so much baggage.
U
From: Schult, Ursula Dr.
Sent: Tuesday, February 6, 2007, 4:16 AM
To: Sommerville, Nancy
Subject: Failure
N-
I can’t do this. I can’t stop the little timebombs in her cells.
I think she senses my failure. She is becoming more agitated, more violent. I am afraid.
Yesterday, I mumbled over a PCR that I was running out of human tissue. She turned to me in that creepy way of hers, looking but not really looking, and asked “What kind of tissue, Dr. Ursula?”
I spoke without thinking. I was in the middle of another PCR, for Christ’s sake, my fifteenth of the day. I don’t remember when I’ve slept more than an hour. “Stem cells would be the best, and I’m short on tumor cells, too.”
“Stem cells. Fetal tissue,” she said. “And cancer cells, like mine.” She wasn’t asking, and I was afraid to answer, anyway. My heart turned to ice when she left, locking me in again.
She came back three hours later with Michelle’s plastic tote bag from University Hospital. Inside it were two bloody biohazard bags. It’s in the single digits outside, but they were still warm when I took them.
After I threw up in the sink, I didn’t want to ask. I didn’t dare, but I’m a friggin’ scientist, and I can’t help asking questions. “Where did you get this tissue?”
She smiled, Nancy, smiled like a proud undergrad, like your cat Sampson when he leaves a dead mouse on your pillow. “At the hospital where I found you, they have a ward called ‘Prenatal.’ That means before birth. They also have a ward called ‘Oncology.’ I had to look that one up. They have many patients in those wards, even late at night.”
I screamed at her. “Do you know what you’re doing? You can’t just kill people and take their parts!”
Her left hand snapped out and grabbed me by the throat. Her other hand caught the plastic bag before it hit the floor. “Do not scream. It hurts.” Her fingers dug into my neck until they felt like they had reached all the way around my trachea. “I know exactly what I am doing, Dr. Ursula. I am helping you save my life. And I will keep killing until you do so.”
-U
From: Lillehammer, Kyle Det 2nd CL
Sent: Friday, February 16, 2007, 9:53 PM
To: Roach, Peter Dr.
Subject: Schult Case
Dr. Roach,
We have been unable to recover any more data from the Vet School’s servers, and the hard drives in Dr. Schult’s and Ms. Sommerville’s personal laptops melted to hockey pucks in the fire.
I did see something in Dr. Schult’s hand the night she went through the ice, the same night as the fire.
My partner was working a missing persons case out of University Hospital, and the security cameras had caught a half-profile of someone who looked like Dr. Ursula Schult. He knows I’d been trying to interview her for a few weeks on the missing University professor, Dr. Justice Green. She was a recluse, a ghost, living out of her lab, never seen nor heard from by anyone in months.
I waited outside Prenatal while my partner took the car and watched the Oncology entrance. My Aunt Ruth died of breast cancer, and I can’t stand to watch cancer patients moving to and from chemotherapy. It was cold as a well-diggers ass that night, so I hung out in the heated bus stop, getting eyeballed by all the brothers who work in the kitchen and mop the floors at the hospital, but sure as shit, there she was, coming out of the loading dock behind Prenatal with a red plastic garbage bag in her hand. Her blonde hair gave her away. Why the fuck wasn’t she wearing a hat?
I called my partner and stepped out of the bus stop right in front of her. “Dr. Schult? Ma’am?” I held my badge right in front of her eyes. She was wearing sunglasses, so I had to be sure. “My name is—“
“Detective Kyle Lillehammer.”
“Yes, Ma’am. I’d like to ask you some questions about—“
“Dr. Justice Green.”
“That’s—that’s right, Ma’am.”
“You’ve been looking for me a long time, Detective Lillehammer.”
“Yes, Ma’am. My partner is on his way over with our car. We’d like to take you to our police station. It’s warm there. We can talk.”
She held up the red plastic bag. “I have to get this back to the lab right now.” She turned her head. I saw the headlights from my partner’s car coming up the hill behind her. Then she took off running, dead full sprint toward the Veterinary building. I waited for my partner, and we drove off after her.
She was faster than we thought. I don’t know how she beat us, but we saw her duck in the service entrance as we were parking in the lot. We got out of the car, and my partner pointed at the 2nd floor windows. They glowed orange, then burst outward. Glass landed on our heads, and black smoke poured out.
“I’ll get her. You call fire,” I said to my partner.
“Always the hero.”
Before I made it to the door, Dr. Schult kicked it open, supporting another woman.
“I guess she be the hero,” my partner called out.
Dr. Schult walked by me like I wasn’t even there. The woman she was carrying made drag-marks through the snow with her toes, and her long blonde hair hung in front of her face. Dr. Schult dropped her in the snowy lawn like a bag of garbage.
“Dr. Schult!” I shouted. Both women looked up. They looked like sisters. Not sisters—twins. No one mentioned Dr. Schult having a twin. “Is there anyone else inside?”
“Don’t you go in there, hero,” said my partner. “The boys in yellow coats and oxygen masks are comin’. Bet your paycheck that you got ten kinds of hazmat in there, too.”
I wasn’t thinking about going in, anymore. The woman who looked like Dr. Schult kicked out her sister’s knee. Dr. Schult’s knee buckled like balsa wood, and she crumpled in the snow. The twin then got up and started running toward Lake Mendota.
Even with a bum knee, Dr. Schult gained on her sister. I followed behind them across the soccer fields and onto the ice.
In the dim lights over the bike path, I saw the little wooden signs they put out on the ice to warn people away from the hot spot. They made a gentle arc 100 yards out into the lake. Good thing they were there, because I couldn’t tell the ice from the water. The limping Ursula was chasing the other along the arc. Both of them looked like they knew where the thicker ice was. I stayed right in their path, but the leather soles of my shoes weren’t good on the ice. The women moved like their lives depended on it.
At the peak of the arc of open water, the first Ursula stopped, as if she were waiting for ther other to catch up. I moved closer. Neither of them seemed aware of me, or at least, neither seemed to care. The first Ursula held out something to the limping one. It looked like a notebook or journal of some kind. It had a black and white cover, like the ones my partner takes crime scene notes in. I heard her across the ice:
“I solved it. Here it is. Here is the secret to your telomeres. If you want it, you’ll have to take it from me. Everything else is burning.”
The limping Ursula said nothing, just kept coming. The other one started backing toward the open water.
“Stop!” I yelled, “The ice is too thin there!”
They ignored me. The limping Ursula kept following the other onto the thinning ice. The limping one was gaining.
“Come on, if you want to live,” said the first Ursula, still backing up, holding out the notebook.
That’s when I heard the first boom, followed by a long crack that sounded like God playing eightball with under our feet. Or the Devil.
“Stop!” I yelled. Neither of them stopped. I dropped on my belly and spread my arms and legs, then started crabbing backward toward the shore. Silver spiderwebs popped in the black ice all around.
I looked up in time to see the first Ursula jump at the limping one and wrap her arms and legs around her twin’s body. The ice couldn’t support their combined weight, and they fell through. Broken sheets of black ice covered them.
The lake patrol says there’s a fifty-foot dropoff where they went in, and the divers are reporting that it’s dark as four-foot up a bull’s ass with all the goose shit and sludge at the bottom. It may take a while to find them all.
The divers did find the journal yesterday. It was brand new. Blank pages and nothing else.
Det. Kyle Lillehammer
Missing Persons Division
Madison Police Department