She Walks in Shadows(58)
The time difference to Helsinki is negligible, although she blamed her tiredness on that for the first few nights — she had to take the morning flight out and wake up at five o’clock Finnish time. During her second week, the viability of the excuse has run out.
Every morning, she is met by a chipper Bianca in the wetlab. Anna frankly doesn’t know why Bianca spends so much time there — she would have supposed a postdoc would have left the tedious, repetitive experiments to Masters students or lab technicians. Bianca’s chatter is a non-stop mix of hard science, interesting TV programs, and her own worldview, which is a collection of oddly science-based New Age beliefs. She has perfected the art of changing conversations from genetics to the power of thoughts to shape the reality and back again without a blink. Anna notes that Bianca, too, seems more and more tired, but the growing dark shadows under her eyes do not seem to affect her mood.
“So, how do you like Bianca?” Max asks on one coffee break, when Bianca has just abruptly left to check the temperature of her culture. Bianca’s exit leaves unfinished her long-winded story about people who have spent a lot of time together hearing each other’s thoughts due to quantum coupling.
“She’s nice,” Anna says noncommittally. “Very perky.”
“She’s under a lot of pressure, but she is a good scientist, you know,” Max says. “Just not a physicist. You have to let the force fields and twisted quantum telepathy go in one ear and out the other. What she does in biology is close to magic. In a good and scientific way.”
“So, you can be a good scientist without being a physicist?” teases Anna. Max smiles.
“It is rare,” he admits with a wink, “but you can be a good scientist even if you are not a physicist. Not knowing about SAXS, though, that’s another matter.”
Anna laughs.
“How do you feel about going home?” Max asks.
“Fine, I guess. I haven’t slept so well here. I guess I’m in need of a long holiday,” Anna answers truthfully. “Frankly, I miss my cat. My parents are taking care of it.”
On her last Saturday in Copenhagen, Anna fails to sleep at all. She cannot pinpoint the reason for the nervousness that makes her hands shake. She falls into a restless slumber, only to jolt back to consciousness mere minutes later, drenched with sweat and shaking from the cold. She is sure she has seen nightmares, but cannot remember. The feeling of dread lingers.
Anna finally gives up and takes a long, warm shower to wash off the sour-smelling night sweat. Not knowing what else to do sleepless in a strange city, she decides to go into work. Riding the noisy bus only strengthens her resolve. She cannot handle crowds in this state of tiredness — it is best to exhaust herself with work and maybe take the beginning of the next week off for some last-minute sightseeing.
The lab is almost as dark and empty as one would expect, but Anna notices a cone of light through the open door to the wetlab. Curious, she turns towards it and steps in a puddle of water.
“Perkele,” Anna swears, then looks around to see whether anyone heard her. The laboratory, which until that point was quiet, bursts into a high-pitched hum, drowning out the rest of her surprised, Finnish curses.
The water level is higher closer to the laboratory. There are waves going around in the liquid. Anna dials the campus security and tells them there is, at a minimum, a plumbing problem in the microbiology laboratory.
“Do you know what happened?” asks the bored-sounding person on duty. “Can you go and check? Perhaps this could wait until Monday.”
“I’m ankle-deep in water,” Anna retorts. “I don’t know what happened, but I’m certain it cannot wait.”
The phone operator promises to stay on the phone with Anna while she goes to check. Anna sighs. Her shoes and trousers are already wet to the knee, so there’s nothing to be gained by refusing. The light from the wetlab flickers and the piercing hum drowns out every thought in her mind.
She imagines burst pipes, wet laboratory books, and ruined experiments when she walks towards the laboratory. Nothing could prepare her for what she sees. The phone falls from her limp hand — the water has risen above knee-level and the foaming wave tops brush Anna’s fingertips when her hands fall meekly to her sides.
The laboratory is covered in water. Bianca stands a few meters in front of Anna, her face turned towards the middle of the room and her hands raised in a salute. Laboratory benches have fallen. There is a vortex in the middle of the room and from that vortex rises a familiar shape. It is green and yellow, and smells disconcertingly of salt and biofilms under the stench of rotten guts and sulphur.
Anna tries to look at the ghost-like shape of the cthulhu and her eyes are drawn to its short, thick, strong tentacles. The edges of them are lined with villi, each one a perfect miniature of the creature standing in front of her. The creature’s edges are dissolved into a fuzz. Anna suddenly realizes it is because every tentacle is lined with perfect little cthulhu shapes, which have perfect little tentacles, which have perfect little chulthu shapes ....
Bianca turns to face Anna. Her eyes are wide and bloodshot, her mouth frozen in a scream, but Anna cannot hear it. She does not know whether it is because Bianca is not making a sound or because the buzz of the creature fills her ears.
Anna tries to grab Bianca’s arm. “Come! Run!” Her tongue feels thick in her mouth, but she manages to spit the syllables out. Bianca looks at Anna without a sign of recognition. Waves of darkness emanate from the Ancient One and the dread almost brings Anna to her knees. The vortex spins faster — the water is almost up to Bianca’s neck.