Youth is beautiful and optimistic and eternal. The trees and shrubs grow verdantly around an iconoclastic institution. A huge black onyx monolith grows out of the ground at the medical center. Soon all research will be done here. Already the huge dark windows without seams inundate the frame as it reaches up into the sky. Where the entire subsidy comes from is beyond recognition but the sweet smell of non-olfactory money permeates the atmosphere and suffuses everyone and everything that abounds here.
Wracks, there is a man here who wants to see you says Dr. Goodlife. Go to room 412 in the medical school and he will be waiting to see you. The Wracks puts down his 1G sedimentation apparatus that he fashioned from some catheter tubing and a large Nalgene tube.
I will need some more fetal calf serum for the vehicle for the column says the Wracks
There is some more in the refrigerator. You will have to autoclave it and do an osmolality reading on it before you use it. A man is waiting for you, don’t miss your appointment.
The Wracks moves slowly out of the School of Microbiology and Immunology in the Medical School. It is said that the students in this medical school all have a 3.8 to 4.0-grade point average and he is in awe of them.
How did they do it? I can’t figure it out?
Students sit in the halls on the ground in between rounds reading notes from stacks that are two feet high and Xeroxed from the main copy. They all look pale and emaciated and the Wracks wonders.
He gets to room 412, opens the wooden door and inside stands a man called Mr. People. Mr. People is of average height with brown hair, a slight build immaculately dressed in a charcoal grey suit with a dark matching tie. He extends a hand.
Hello, my name is Mr. People. I am from the pines of Lebanon hospital and I have the offer of a job there in the organ transplantation laboratory. You will be part of a large team doing cutting-edge research in tissue transplantation and you will meet patients from all over the world who wish to extend their life due to organ failure or cancer. We have millions of dollars in research grant money and wish to establish the hospital as the world leader in organ transplantation.
What will I be doing on the transplantation team asks the Wracks?
You will be engaging in HLA testing and genomic analysis of host compatibility with donated organs.
Mr. Peoples looks at him intently with dark very closely set eyes and a clean-shaven face.
The Wracks is young and altruistic and stupid. This is a true job opportunity but he says:
Organ transplants are unethical. The only way a host can get a good graft to work is to kill one of their offspring and take their organs or borrow one from an identical twin. Working with mice, we see that some brother-sister grafts are rejected by the host even in syngeneic species. We have had the best success transplanting arms and legs between brother and sister mice rather than organs or bone marrow. The organ trade is unethical and illegal.
This concludes our interview says Mr. Peoples. Thank you very much for your time. That way is the door.
The Wracks walks out of the room, down the hall amidst students sitting on the floor, back through the huge wooden oak doors, and into his laboratory next to the mice room.
How did it go asks Dr. Goodlife?
They wanted me to do HLA testing in their program and I am going to try and get into medical school says the Wracks.
It is your decision. You passed up a tremendous opportunity and these don’t happen much often says Dr. Goodlife.
I am too truthful for my own good says the Wracks. It is one of my failings. I have one more run on my velocity column and then we can publish. I have done all the statistics and standard deviations.
The Wracks did not know it yet but Mr. People is a very powerful and influential man. He did not know it yet but this act precluded his admission to a medical school based on research subsidies. The fans were done in Mudsville; the Mighty Casey had struck out. The campus is beautiful, well-trimmed and very watered. It is a nice place to hang out and appreciate nature. The libraries are spacious and well cared for. The Wracks pauses and has another cigarette like his father. He sits on the steps, of the hall on the campus in a metropolitan city in the heyday of prosperity and opulence in a society of cheap petroleum. Times may change but people don’t and today is another day in the life of a student seeking a nebulous future. The last bus is at 9:30 and they don’t wait so it helps to be there early. The Wracks never attended graduation because of the hazing and tomorrow the sun also rises.
Except for May and June the weather in southern Mexico is delightful In May the environment is so hot a person has to shower two times a day because the sweat desiccates on the skin and forms a crusty scum. The Wracks is on a bus like he was in the states going to a non-existent future. The six-foot-long smoke stack of the diesel engine belches huge amounts of black sooty exhaust into the air particularly when the bus climbs a hill. This is a lot better than nitrous oxide emissions from chemically treated gasoline in the states thinks the Wracks. It is a lot better. Soon the monsoons will begin, the corn will grow, and the beautiful sweet rain will bring life back to the earth for another season. All in all, it is the Tears of Allah breathing life into humanity.