Pennance
Ethan rushed through the hospital hallway in full sprint, his mind in chaos. His thighs pained from running. The hallway knew no end. It felt as if the faster he ran, the longer the hallway got. He rested momentarily, his hands dropping to his kneecaps. Ethan panted like a dog as his lungs lit on fire.
He noticed the door come closer to him and the hallway shortened with every second he stood still. The damaged sign on the white door read ‘ICU’ in bold red letters. Ethan waited for the door to slowly slide in front of him before swinging it open to reveal one patient lying with a speck of life on a bed. His mother.
“Mom!” he shouted.
She snapped her head to Ethan in response and, despite her state, sat up in her bed. She looked just like the day he lost her. Her skin was rotted and peeling off, her eyes were sunken in and she had barely any muscle mass on her.
He tried to walk towards her, but the floor became sand making his feet sink. The more he struggled, the quicker he sank. From the sand emerged a pair of hands grasping his shirt firmly and pulling it down. Ethan tugged at his shirt with all his strength trying to free himself but their grip was too strong.
His mother slid her legs to the side of the bed, disconnecting the ventilator mask and standing up on her two feet. Walking towards Ethan as he was sinking, she stood on the edge of the sand pit. Ethan met her gaze. One that had only a hint of life in it that burned bright in her. I can still save her, he thought.
Ethan extended his hand asking for her help, but her eyes merely shifted back and forth between his eyes and his hand. The young scientist’s eyes pleaded, his entire body except his face consumed by the sand pit.
“Please,” he begged.
His mother finally grasped his hand and with one firm yank, pulled him out of the sand pit. Ethan looked at the woman dressed in a hospital gown up and down. She took a step closer to him. Swallowing the accumulated saliva in his mouth, Ethan resisted the urge to move a step back. She, with her frail, bony body, embraced him. Tears began to rush down his cheeks dripping onto his mother’s skin. He felt her skin soften at the touch of his tears, returning to their original color and texture.
When she released him, she had recovered; the effects of the virus were nowhere to be seen as if it never happened. He wiped the tears from his face and cleared his misty eyes, a small smile appearing. His face lit up like a lamp.
Suddenly, he heard the slice of a knife cutting through flesh. His mother’s eyes widened, and her face froze. She collapsed at Ethan’s feet, blood pooling underneath him. The blood flowed to the extent that Ethan began to feel it seep into the soles of his shoes.
“No, no, no…Not again!” he said grabbing his mother’s body, trying to stop the bleeding.
The faceless hooded figure stood with his arm outstretched holding the bloody knife. Underneath the hood was a dark and deep abyss that made Ethan dizzy. The hooded man dropped his head to face Ethan’s feet. The pool of blood had widened and somehow deepened.
“It’s time to go, Ethan. She’s not coming back,” the man said.
He advanced towards him. Ethan took a step back for every step his clone took forward until he hit the hospital wall. The hospital closed in on him until he was in a white box accompanied only by his clone and his mother’s body, the pool of her blood growing by the second.
The young scientist fell into the blood. He flailed his arms trying to keep himself afloat. His heart raced and pounded in his ear. His breathing spiraled out of control. He had always feared drowning in the sea but drowning in his mother’s blood was worse. The figure turned his head to Ethan’s outstretched arm.
“Wake up,” he said watching Ethan’s face disappear beneath the blood. A red tint washed over Ethan’s gaze as he tried to make out what the man was saying.
***
Ethan’s eyes snapped open, a primal scream echoing through his bedroom. He sat up in his bed, drenched in sweat and panting heavily. His heart was racing, and his hands were shaking. It took a few seconds for him to register that he was back in his room and the nightmare was over.
He looked around his dimly lit room, trying to ground himself in reality. The familiar objects and furniture helped calm him down. It wasn’t real, he told himself. It was just a dream.
Ethan drifted to his bedside, rummaging through his drawers before grabbing a breathing pump. He carefully placed it over his mouth and switched the pump on. It shot a burst of air into his lungs that would cleanse him of any inhaled impurities from the suffocating atmosphere outside. Ethan’s lungs cleared and he breathed a heavy sigh of relief.
Ethan got out of bed and stumbled towards the bathroom. He splashed cold water on his face, trying to calm himself down. He looked at his reflection in the mirror – pale skin, dark circles under his eyes, and unruly hair – he didn’t look like himself.
Just then, his communications device rang. Ethan rolled his eyes. My link is ringing? At this hour?
He grabbed his link and answered the call, afraid it may cut off.
“Hi, Max!” he said, answering his supervisor’s call.
“Howzit, Ethan. Sorry to bother you so early this morning but my day today is looking like hell,” he replied.
“Oh yeah... no problem. I’m an early bird,” Ethan chuckled, holding his link in one hand and stirring his coffee with the other. “What can I do for you?”
There was a brief silence over the line. “Look, Ethan...I meant to talk to you about some developments up top with your DNA destructor project.”
“Yeah? What about it?”
“This project of yours... it’s pretty much ground-breaking” he began hesitantly. “But even I can see that this doesn’t work without hybridized Secronium, which might I remind you is illegal.”
“I know,” Ethan said. “That’s why I labelled it as a proof of concept. Nothing concrete as of yet. Just a proposal.”
“Even so... It’s raising a lot of eyebrows in the PR department. So I’d suggest toning down the implementation part of your thesis and switching to a theoretical thesis instead. It’ll take off some heat from the university if it does get published.”
Ethan sighed. “Yeah... yeah, sure. I-I can do that. What about the models I have built already?”
“I-I appealed to the council. That’s what I will be busy with today. Prototyping... isn’t really a conventional methodology for a theoretical paper.”
Ethan rubbed his forehead. From what he gathered, it seemed his models may be disregarded entirely. “Okay, okay. Yeah...thanks, Max. I really need to get ready. I’ve got a new batch of students this sem and I really can’t be late. Thanks for keeping me in the loop.”
“Yeah, yeah...of course. I’ll see you in the afternoon. Cheers.”
“Cheers.”
Ethan cut the call. He grabbed a towel from behind his door and headed into the shower.
Great! Just great!
***
Ethan threw his backpack over his shoulders and headed out. He walked down the deserted street passing by the junkyard before stopping off at a miniature, face-brick house with a thatched roof. He walked up the steps to the house and knocked gently on the oak door.
“Hurry up, Sarah. You’re making me late! Don’t make me come in there and drag you out again!”
A thud came from the other end of the door after a screeching noise of shoes on the wooden floor. She probably tripped over her shoelaces again, mulled Ethan as he rolled his eyes but couldn’t hide the smile creeping up his face. Sarah graduated the same year as him but in a different profession. She was a surgeon and he was a biomedical engineer with a master’s degree in bio-weaponry. The door creaked open as Sarah adjusted her hair and dusted her jeans.
“Okay, let’s go.”
She was just a few inches shorter than Ethan. Her brunette hair was tied up in a ponytail and draped over her shoulder. She carried a briefcase with her laboratory coat wrapped around her waist, ready for work.
“Glasses? Link? Lunch? Papers? Card?” asked Ethan, counting off the items on his fingers.
“Yes, yes, yes, and... yes,” she said locking the door behind her.
The automated streetlights turned on as Ethan passed by them.
“So...” Sarah began in her usual inquisitive tone. “You ready for your new batch of students?”
“I don’t know. It’s a bit different this year. Teaching final years is a whole different ball game to second years. Examining them too can be quite the change of pace,” Ethan replied, running his fingers through his thick beard.
“You could use a change of pace if you ask me. These days you seem to be in auto-pilot mode in the classroom.”
“What do you expect, Sarah,” Ethan said twirling a coin between his fingers. “My interest is in my research. Teaching them can get tiresome and marking their bullshit? Even more so!”
“Come on,” Sarah teased, slapping Ethan’s forearm gently. “You’ve got to have a little soft spot for them, right?”
“The second years were cute and innocent enough for me to get attached to them. Final years just hate being there.”
“Great! You’ll fit right in!” she said.
The two approached the station. It was a lofty, elegant skyscraper. The magnificent building was shaped like a tree. The main column was like the bark. On the third floor, it split into two smaller columns that wrapped around each other in a spiral. Running through these columns were elevators that followed the path of the column. Ethan looked at the back of his access card. It read, ‘Teleporter 9088-4’.
“Well, I’ve got to be at branch four today. It’s a hell of a walk to the south wing. I’d better get going if I’m going to make it in time.”
“I’ll see you in the evening then?” she asked. “Don’t be late!”
“Yeah, have a good day at work!” he shouted as he ran to catch the lift that was about to close.
Ethan squeezed into the crowded elevator. The green-eyed scientist waited silently as it made its way up the building. The station was the highest in the suburb which meant that on the 4th branch, anyone could see the entire city. Perhaps a few decades in the past, it would be something worth seeing but now, you’d rather look at the blank floor than the view outside.
The elevator struck the 9th floor and Ethan’s card pulsed red telling him it was his time to get off. He forced his way through the people in the elevator and barely slipped out before the doors closed.
“88th terminal...88th terminal... Please don’t be busy...” he muttered to himself.
He walked around the corner of the building and spotted the terminal he needed to enter.
“Thank God there’s no line,” he whispered under his breath.
Ethan scurried over and swiped his card to auto-select his destination. Teleporting in 3...2...1... Please remain calm and keep your arms inside the terminal!
’Porting was a strange sensation. You were being assembled and reassembled, yet it didn’t feel painful at all. Perhaps a slight tingle down the spine on the other side of the device as all your nerves re-aligned.
Ethan was rebuilt, atom by atom from the feet up at his destination. Everything is going to be okay, Ethan.
Ethan took a deep breath as he approached the entrance of the lecture hall. The glass doors swung open, and he stepped into a vast space filled with rows of seats, each occupied by eager and expectant faces of the new set of students for the semester.
The low hum of conversation echoed through the hall as students discussed their trips over the semester break. The fluorescent lights overhead illuminated the room, casting a bright glow on the neatly arranged desks and the blank projection screen at the front. For such a prestigious university, the classrooms sure had some of the most outdated technology in the country.
Ethan scanned the room, his eyes meeting the gaze of a few students who looked up from their conversations. Clutching a stack of lecture notes and a textbook tightly in his hands, he made his way to the front of the room.
The creaking of chairs grew hushed as Ethan reached the podium. He placed his materials down with a deliberate hand. Glancing across the room, he could sense the collective anticipation from the students, their eyes focused on him.
“Morning everyone!” Ethan said, tapping the microphone on stage. “I believe the time is quarter to eight and we should start.”
The ruffling calmed down and the whispers soon faded as well.
“Welcome to Signals and Systems 2B. I am Professor Ethan Rider. Either one of those three names or a combination thereof is fine by me.”
Ethan cleared his throat. “I have uploaded all the admin information necessary to the cloud which I believe you should all be able to access. If you cannot, do not come to me. I do not get paid enough to be an IT specialist.”
A few giggles and some stifled laughter jumped around in the crowd.
That wasn’t really a joke, but I’ll allow it, Ethan thought.
“You’ve been in this university long enough, you know the usual stuff. Open door policy but not really, there are no stupid questions unless I say so and remember... I do care... very...very deep down...I do care. There’s just an infinitesimally small chance you’ll ever see me show it.”
The laughter loudened. They were a little more enthusiastic than his previous bunch. He looked down at his holo-pad and scratched off the ‘icebreaker’ category in his lecture plan.
Over the past three years, he’d found that micro-managing his lectures usually helped him stay on track. It got to a point where he was scripting everything he said to stop himself from going on unnecessary tangents.
He could usually judge by the first day whether or not he’d have to deal with one headache or two.
“Let’s just skip ahead to the part you want to know about, right?” Ethan said making his way toward the holographic board. He took a deep breath in.
Here we go again...
***
“And that concludes the introductory class for today. Understand the fundamentals of this course and you’ll be set to pass it with ease,” Ethan said in conclusion. “I think we’ll use the next fifteen minutes or so for an open discussion.”
There was a long, nervous silence filling the room. The students looked at each other as if indicating for their friend to ask their question.
As Ethan was about to wrap up the class, a small hand suddenly shot up from the front row. Despite already having a pile of work ahead of him, he forced his mental eye roll and groan into a smile as he acknowledged the student’s question.
“Yes, young man,” Ethan said.
“Prof...If I may ask,” he began. “I’ve read through your previous publications, many of which surround biowarfare. You also briefly touched on it during this class with respect to processing and signal integrity...”
“Sure,” Ethan said, following the students chain of thought. “During filter designs.”
“I was wondering... with biowarfare being a rather contentious topic coming off the heels of a war... How do you manage to navigate some of the...ethical concerns that may arise in some designs? Are you restricted in the types of papers you write or the topics or... I don’t know. I was just wondering...”
Ethan raised his eyebrows, scratching his head. “You’ve been thinking about that one for a while now, haven’t you?”
“Sorry, sorry,” the student fumbled. “I was thinking of going into that field next year and well... You’re the expert.”
You’re the expert?
Ethan’s hands began to tremble as he struggled to maintain composure.
You’re the expert...
His heart raced at the mere mention of it, and he blinked rapidly, desperately trying to hide his discomfort.
You’re responsible.
He forced out a response with a strained voice, “It’s... it’s actually a very thought-provoking question.”
He paused, running his fingers through his beard.
“Being an expert in such a... volatile field can be quite heavy on the mind,” Ethan began, placing his quivering hands in his pockets. “Which is why I did not sign off on any designs during the war if I sensed the possibility for it to be weaponized.
“In fact, all my research as of late has gone into eradicating biowarfare. I was an engineer in the army... while I never knew what happened on the front lines, I certainly saw the aftermath.”
He paced back and forth on the stage, his eyes darting nervously away from the expectant faces of his audience. A high-pitched ringing sliced through his ears and reverberated in his mind, drowning out any other sound.
It’s your fault...
As the ringing intensified, it transformed into screams - anguished and desperate wails that echoed through the theater.
“This very field of bioweaponry can also bring great health to society. A weapon used to heal...not to harm. But, as academics and forward-thinking minds in our field, we are often externally pressured to advocate or endorse things that have our country’s best interest at heart.”
A rumble of footsteps of soldiers echoed through the room. Soldiers running into a cloud of death. The decompression of the bio-bomb...the cheering of citizens...
“But in the long run...It doesn’t serve humanity any good. It only deteriorates it. I once served my country and that led to some unforeseen consequences. Now I’m trying to serve humanity.”
He mustered what he could into a smile. “Call it a penance.”
