Lab Gremlins

by Cedar Sanderson

  He was sitting at the desk reading training material when Julian breezed into the lab. The big man stopped dead, lifted his chin, and sniffed deeply. “Did you spill something?”

  Julian’s booming voice rang through the lab. Steven knew he’d have to shout to be heard, so he got up and walked over to his boss. “No, there was a broken bottle on the floor when I got here. I thought you’d left it on the bench?”

  He wasn’t going to accuse the eminent Dr Thompson of having dropped it and then left it for his lowly assistant to tidy up.

  “Nope. Did you check the trap?” Julian didn’t rise to the bait.

  Steven shook his head. He hadn’t seen any point in looking at it. They weren’t going to catch anything in it. They both moved around the end of the benches. Julian bent and peered through the wire. “Shucks. Bottle is still there.” He straightened again. “What did the broken bottle look like?”

  Steven shrugged. “It didn’t have a label.” He went over to the glass box and reached into to grab the mostly-intact top.

  Julian moved faster than Steven had ever dreamed the portly older man could. “Stop!”

  Steven froze, bent over, his hand just hovering over the bottle. “What?!”

  “Don’t touch it. You didn't touch it before?”

  Steven jerked away from the box. “No, I just swept it up...” He’d used the dustpan on a handle, and hadn’t come anywhere near the glass, as was protocol for lab safety.

  “Hang on.” Julian grabbed a pair of his personal bright purple extra-large nitrile gloves and snapped them on. Gingerly, he fished out the top and turned it around, peering closely at it. “Phew. Smells like paracetic.”

  “I thought that was a lot stronger.” Steven could smell vinegar, pervasive, but faint.

  “Spilled 25 mL one time and had to leave the lab for 24 hours,” Julian replied absently, his focus more on the bottle. Steven wasn’t sure what was special about it. Other than the lack of a label, it was a bog-standard dark brown glass with a narrow neck and plastic lid. “You said the floor was dry?”

  “Yes, not even a stain.” Steven was relieved his boss wasn’t mad he’d cleaned it up. It had been a safety hazard and he’d had no idea it was... evidence? Of what?

  “Not that you could tell that on these floors.” Julian snorted and dropped the bottle back into the half-full box, where it broke more.

  “Where did it come from?” Steven’s curiosity was fully aroused now. “If it wasn’t you, and I know it wasn’t me...”

  “Hah.” Julian tapped the side of his nose, looking like a slightly-younger version of Santa with gray hair and beard only partly turned to silver. “You’re starting to believe in the lab gremlins too!”

  “Um.” Steven backpedaled. “Someone else who has access to the lab?”

  Julian chuckled and shook his head. “You aren’t going to give in and admit there might be lab gremlins unless you see one, are you?”

  “No, I am not. I don’t believe in gremlins. I probably put stuff down and forgot where it was.” Steven would rather not be having this conversation, but he’d gotten tired of evading his boss.

  “Or maybe I did? Fair point, that. I’m not always paying attention to what’s in my hand when what’s in my head is more important.” Julian shook his head ponderously. Then he changed the subject. “Did you get that last batch autoclaved?”

  “The waste petri dishes? Yes.” Steven, relieved at the out from the awkward subject, seized on it with gratitude. “I have the racks all cleaned off and ready for the next batch.”

  “No, I’m done with that phase.” Julian surprised him. Since Steven had started, there had been a weekly batch of petri dishes with weirdly fuzzy yellow colonies on a dark blood agar.

  “Done?” He said before he could stop himself. He knew better than to ask questions.

  Julian seemed to be in an expansive mood, though. “I’ve got the Methanotrix colonies where I want them, replicating in a low-pressure environment. Next step is to start using their sheath as a substrate. For that, we’re going to have to shift some equipment in here.”

  “Where?” Steven looked around the crowded lab with a feeling of confusion. He’d never even heard of Methanotrix bacterium, so he’d have to take Julian’s word that was what he’d been helping cultivate. There was absolutely no room in here for more equipment.

  The two men spent the rest of the day breaking down set-ups Julian deemed no longer necessary. It was not a fast process, because the stainless-steel shelving units had to be sterilized along with the glassware and other waste. Steven was hot and tired and very late getting home. He was standing at the counter wrapping himself around his second slice of cold pizza when Jay popped out of his room. Jay peered at him.

  “Dude. When was the last time you ate something other than pizza? And how old is that, anyway?”

  Steven swallowed. “I don’t know, and I don’t care. Food poisoning sounds like a great idea right now.”

  “What the hell, man?” Jay flipped a chair around and straddled it, resting his arms on the back of it. He tilted his head toward his roommate. “Wanna rub my head?”

  Steven snorted. Jay’s thick head of closely-shorn hair was a long-running joke. If you rubbed it, Jay would pant like a dog and pound one foot on the floor, which inevitably made his friends laugh. “You do look plushy today, but no. It’s work.” Jay was a goofball and it always made him feel better.

  “Ah. Yeah, sounded like Dr. Thompson was going off the rails.”

  “He’s installing a laser.” Steven leaned against the counter and felt like all his energy had run out through an open tap. “Just... I have no idea. I never have any freaking idea. I’m beginning to think I need to take this job off my resume because ghu knows what Julian would say to a reference.”

  “Nah. Just because you worked for a crazy man doesn’t mean you didn’t learn shit.” Jay shook his head. “Actually, you probably learn more stuff than most lab flunkies, because he’s got you running in all directions. A laser?”

  “A benchtop laser.” Steven stretched and yawned. “And nothing in the gremlin trap, thank goodness.”

  Jay burst into laughter. “You come home saying you caught a gremlin and I’m going to want blood samples. Because that’d be some good shit.”

  Steven groaned. “In that lab? I’ll start wearing gloves all day.”

  That night he didn’t dream at all. Waking up gremlin-free in the morning he actually beat his alarm clock, and by the time he’d had time for fresh coffee and actual breakfast that wasn’t pizza, he headed for work feeling on top of the world. He even caught himself humming along with the radio as he pulled into the parking lot. Not seeing Julian’s car in the lot certainly didn’t dent his mood either. Walking down the hall to the lab, he wrinkled his nose. The vinegar smell was strong again. Whatever had been in that bottle certainly lingered.

  Skunk is Positively Delightful Stink, in Comparison

  The air handlers in the lab were strong enough that Steven found his skin was usually dry after he’d spent the day in there. So being able to smell much of anything was unusual. Unless the handlers were down. That had happened once before, and it had reeked until his nose adjusted. Julian insisted it took the human smell receptors seventeen minutes to filter out a scent, but Steven felt like it had taken hours to be able to ignore it. So he took a deep breath while he was still outside the lab door and prepared himself as he punched in the code. It wasn’t enough. The smell rolled out like an almost palpable cloud, and Steven took an involuntary step back, coughing. The door swung shut again, and Steven retreated down the hall a little way so he could breathe again. His eyes were streaming tears down his cheeks. He swiped at that moisture and leaned against the wall, breathing as shallowly as he could. He had no idea what had spilled in the lab, but he knew what he had to do now.

  He had just collected himself well enough to start down the hall when the alarms went off. Nearly blind from the tears he couldn’t stop shedding, and
alternately sneezing and coughing, Steven opted to stagger toward the side entrance. The offices would know, now, there was a problem. They complained if there was a slight odor, say of cleaning supplies, and Julian had commented that they were all nervous nellies who assumed they were going to catch Ebola because they shared a roof with the lab. But now, with the alarm, and the smell Steven had encountered, something was certainly wrong and they would be right to be frightened.

  Steven put his hand on the door to the outside, and felt the handle turn under his hand. Off balance, he stumbled out and nearly into the arms of his boss. Coughing, Steven grabbed the railing at the side of the small landing. He hung onto it for dear life, feeling the world swim around him in the most disconcerting way. He sucked in a lungful of sweet, sweet air, and then another. The world righted itself, and then he realized that Julian was patting his back softly.

  “I’m ok,” he gasped.

  “I think you should sit down,” Julian suggested. “Before you fall down,” he added prosaically. “What happened in there?”

  “Gah.” Steven swiped at his eyes with both hands. They were starting to shut down the water factory, but he felt slimy and his nose was running, too. Julian pushed a big red bandana at him. “Thanks.”

  He felt better once the snot was out of his sinuses, and he savored the clear air. “Lab was full of something. Like the vinegar smell but a million times stronger.”

  “I can whiff it off you.” Julian sat next to him on the top step. Their small side area was quiet. The main evacuation was done to the front parking lot.

  Steven could hear distant sirens. “We should let them know we’re ok, sir,” he pointed out.

  “In a minute. Tell me what you experienced.” Julian’s voice was abnormally serious, and Steven felt a pang of fear for the first time. It hadn’t seemed real, when it happened. Only now, safe and talking about it, did it occur to him that opening the lab door could have killed him.

  “I could smell vinegar as soon as I opened this door.” Steven hooked a thumb over his shoulder at the door behind them. “But it was faint, you know? And it got strong as I got close to the lab. I figured we’d had another spill.”

  “Mhm.” Julian made a noncommittal noise.

  Steven sucked in another deep breath and coughed. His chest hurt a little. “So, I opened the lab door, like an idiot.”

  “Strong enough to knock you over?”

  “Pretty much. I slammed the door and backed up, basically long enough to stop coughing so I could walk.” Steven looked up and saw a pair of firemen marching along the building toward them. Julian lifted one ham-hand and waved it casually at them.

  “Did you see anything?”

  “In the lab?” Steven shook his head. “My eyes kicked into protective overdrive and blinded me with tears.” He blew his nose again. “And that.”

  Julian stood up. “Now to keep these idiots out of the lab….” He walked down the stairs. “Gentleman, my young associate here will need to be checked out....”

  Steven found himself in the back of an ambulance before he fully knew what was going on. Someone had put a blanket around him, which he appreciated because it was colder to sit outside than he’d planned for when he left the house. The oxygen mask he wasn’t happy with, but they wouldn’t let him take it off, and it was too much fuss and bother to fight them about it. So he hunched up on the gurney and felt miserable. He shouldn't have opened the door. Bad enough he’d been exposed to god-knew-what, but to have let it out in the air the office people breathed? It didn’t matter if they were cubicle-troglodytes, it wasn’t the right thing to have done. He’d screwed up.

  “He’s in here.” Julian’s voice sounded like he was right outside the ambulance. Steven lifted his head, and saw the big man pointing at him. He was looking at someone outside of Steven’s field of sight.

  Steven stood up and was displeased to realize that his legs were wobbly. He pulled off the oxygen mask with a guilty glance toward the driver’s side of the vehicle, but the paramedics seemed to have gone off somewhere. He made his way toward Julian.

  “Hey.” he greeted his boss.

  “Come on. You want to see what happened, right?” Julian waved for him to step down.

  Steven could see two men dressed in ‘bunny suits’ the floppy tyvek biohazard protective gear he knew from school. “Yeah. If there’s a respirator.”

  “Capital thinking. Hop down here.” Julian was holding a bundle of white suits.

  Steven had never felt less like hopping, but he climbed down stiffly and accepted part of the bundle, which turned out to be one of the suits. The two men helped them get into the suit and then, the helmet part hanging down their backs, led Julian and Steven to a black sedan, where they had four air bottles and what looked a lot like SCUBA gear. Steven had seen it before. He’d taken a class on hazardous material response and clean-up while still in college, and he had the pleasure of seeing Julian’s eyebrow raise in surprise while his lab tech strapped on the air tank backpack and slipped on his helmet, a floppy white hood with clear plastic face shield. One of the suited men gave him a thumbs-up after checking his closures, and the other man checked Julian.

  Silently, the four of them headed for the side door, climbing the five stairs to the landing one at a time. The lead man opened the door with the code, making Steven wonder just who they were and how they knew the code. It changed every few months, he’d been told. The man held the door for the others, and took up the rear once they were in. It felt surreal to Steven to walk through the familiar hall while breathing tank air and being surrounded by the voluminous suit.

  When they reached the lab door, the second man who had taken point stepped aside slightly and let Julian key in his code. He then pulled off his glove, which made Steven flinch to see, and put his palm on the reader. It turned green, and the man opened the door quickly while Julian pulled on his glove. Steven half-expected to see a wall of... something visible, but there was nothing. The bottled air tasted dry and stale, just as it always did. The lab, what he could see of it from his angle, was empty and normal.

  Julian put a hand on the man’s shoulder and stopped him from entering the lab. He shouted, “wait for me,” and then stepped around him and into the lab. The man kept holding the door, which was now shrilling the alarm that meant it had been open for too long. The other man... Steven decided he was going to call them One, and Two, for lack of anything cleverer... looked back at Steven and gestured for him to enter the lab as well.

  “Are you coming in?” Steven spoke loudly, hoping they would hear him over the hiss of air and the bulk of their suits.

  “You know the lab better,” One said. Two just looked at him, his face showing no expression. Steven shrugged and followed his boss into the lab.

  Julian was bent over the trap at the end of the bench. Steven felt a jolt of annoyance. This was no time for a prank. Julian straightened up and Steven took an involuntary step backward, bumping into the bench behind him.

  “What...” His voice came out as a squeak. He cleared his throat and stopped trying to back up. His body wanted to get away as fast as possible, but the logic part of his brain was kicking in, now. “What is that?”

  Julian turned his upper body, so he could see Steven through the clear face shield. “”S a gremlin, my boy. What did you expect?”

  “Is it... is it dead?” Steven wasn’t quite ready to move closer to the trap and it’s strange inhabitant. It wasn’t moving. It certainly looked dead, and the way the lab had smelled this morning...

  “No. Not yet. Here, help me with this.” Julian had been rummaging in a drawer and now he pulled out a handful of tex wipes. He shoved them toward Steven, who took them automatically. “Spread them out here,” Julian pointed at the clear space on the bench. “I’ll get him out of the trap.”

  “Him?” Steven parroted, spreading out the wipes as smooth as he could get them. “Be careful of his neck,” he said without thinking what he was saying.

&nb
sp; “What?” Julian, who had been opening the trap carefully, barked loudly enough for Steven to hear him. “You do it, then.”

  Steven knelt and reached into the trap carefully, hoping the weirdly shaped, green-skinned thing wasn’t going to wake up and bite him. He supported the head with one hand, and the oddly clothed body with another before shuffling backward and pulling the limp body out of the trap, oddly long legs and arms dangling limply. One leg was bending in more places than the other, and greenish, almost clear, liquid was oozing out.

  “Um.” Steven stood awkwardly with his burden. It was very warm through his gloves. He laid it out on the wipes. “What the hell...” he had no idea if Julian could hear him mumbling, and he didn’t care.

  Julian crowded up next to him. “Can you help him?”

  “I don’t know!” Steven snapped. “I’m not a vet. I’m an EMT, and this is...”

  “He’s not an animal.” The first man, One, was right up against Steven’s other side now. Steven started to sweat. He really didn’t like having people this close, even if it was, he told himself firmly, so they could talk through the suits.

  “How do you know? What the hell is it?” Steven knew he sounded angry. He was still trying to wrap his head around the whole thing. “It’s not dead. Why is it not dead?” He pointed at the small chest, which was moving as it breathed, in a more rapid pattern than a human, he noted with that still-rational part of his mind. The rest of his mind was gibbering around the logical cool part in circles.

  “A gremlin.” Julian explained.

  “How the hell do you know what it is? I thought this was just Julian being crazy. And how the hell did you respond so fast if you’re...” Steven’s words failed him.