Catnip

by J. S. Frankel

  Well, almost solved. He saw the constructs on the computer screen, the matrices for life and change that danced like snowflakes in the wind…and then heard the voices of the police who’d arrested him and the voice of the judge who’d sentenced him to this place of reform. Like a video of a car crash being played over and over again in slow motion for the investigators to analyze the whys and what-ifs, he painfully relived the events of the past few months in living color.

  Call it overenthusiasm or plain bad judgment, this one silly little error in judgment had screwed him for life. He thought the court would have had a little more understanding, but no. His dream had become a nightmare and he wondered why things had to be this way…

  Harry’s mind drifted back to his junior high days, and he saw himself sitting in the empty hallway of his school. The sign on the door to his left read Guidance Counselor and right now Mrs. McNamara was talking to his mother. Putting his ear to the door, he eavesdropped to hear the straight dope on his future.

  “Child prodigy is an understatement, Mrs. Goldman,” the guidance counselor said. A kindly, middle-aged sort, Mrs. McNamara was keenly aware of Harry’s situation. Grade school had bored him out of his mind and the first year of middle school had been no less stultifying. The classes had been all too easy, and he raced through the homework, which earned him the praise of his teachers and the envy of his peers. While he enjoyed the praise, the latter quality—envy—made him an easy target.

  And he was an easy target. He was small for his age, skinny, weak, and with a face that resembled a baby robin’s—long beak, green eyes, and a mop of brown hair that covered a narrow, foxlike face—and the bullies got a kick out of whacking him before class, after class, and even during class. Lunch was a nightmare in and of itself. He learned to eat while he sat on the can and kept his legs off the floor in order to avoid detection. It didn’t work. They always caught him. “Harry, wanna come out and play?” they taunted.

  It seemed their idea of play differed radically from his. He had come home one day and heard his mother gasp, “Harry, you’ve been fighting again?”

  “How’d you guess?”

  She took a look at the torn shirt, bruises all over his face, and cuts that required the strongest antiseptic around and hugged her son tightly. “It was pretty easy,” she said. With a sigh of sadness, she got to work and cleaned him up.

  His parents complained to the school principal, but hey, kids were kids, so Harry suffered in silence while the other students had their fun at his expense. He wanted nothing more than to just read his books, do his experiments at home and have the world leave him be…but the world had other ideas.

  The elder Mr. Goldman, also short, skinny and mild-mannered, told him things had to change. “Punching someone isn’t always the answer,” his father said after the umpteenth black eye he’d helped treat. “But you can fight back in different ways.”

  Harry listened in silence, raged at his own weakness, and then reason prevailed and he quietly thought over what his father had told him. Then he thought some more before going up to his room to study.

  The next day, when one of the kids hit him, he hit back. Sure, it was conventional warfare, but at the time—during recess—he’d been cornered by the punk while the other kids watched. His tormentor should have watched the nature channels and taken a cue. When an animal is trapped, it lashes out.

  Harry lashed out, and while he didn’t think it was much of a punch, it left the bully with a bloody mouth. Two seconds later he got the living crap pounded out of him. “Why can’t I win a fight just once,” he wailed when he got home.

  Father and son sat in the kitchen and the elder Goldman carefully applied the bandages. Job over, he put the materials down and for the first time in what seemed like forever he got angry and gave his son a baleful stare. “You’re not cut out to be the next street fighter. That much is clear. But you can fight back in different ways. You’d better learn how. I can’t keep patching you up forever.”

  He strode out of the room and left Harry to search for the truth in his own way. Harry sat back on the chair and gently fingered the wounds. So I can’t fight worth spit and I can’t run fast, he thought. What else can I do?

  You can fight back in different ways. In his case, science came to the rescue. His father happened to be one of the foremost transgenic researchers in the United States. His specialty lay in cross-breeding fruits and vegetables for greater hardiness and growth. His company, a private pharmaceutical company named Leader Drugs, Inc., was located in the greater downtown Portland area. His mother also worked there as a chemist.

  For Harry, both fields meant more than their names indicated. Chemistry to most other people involved simply mixing chemicals in a beaker. To him, it meant creating something that could help solve people’s problems.

  As for transgenic research, when he got his first look at a real lab at the age of eight, the shiny centrifuges, the electron microscopes, the thermal cyclers, the DNA probes and the electric fields and dyes used, he lost his breath for a second. In the same way another guy lusted after a beautiful girl, he lusted after those machines.

  Using them, he observed the materials used to create and shape and mold the human condition, and when he saw his first DNA helix it was like he’d discovered the secret of the universe. He realized this chain, this strand that held everything he was, everything everyone was, could be manipulated and altered into something special.

  But first, he had to deal with the everyday facts of life, like survival. An extremely large and fat kid named Bob Hospers used him for target practice daily before school started and then would walk off as if nothing had happened. On an everyday Wednesday after his umpteenth ass-kicking, Harry snapped. Call it an epiphany or whatever you wanted, he’d had enough.

  He went to the bathroom, washed the blood off his face, and then doused his shirt and pants with a powder he’d whipped up at home. After entering his homeroom, he walked over to the desk where Fat Bob sat. The kid looked up and smirked. “Whatta you want?”

  Harry slapped him hard across his mouth and the other kids eagerly looked on. Massacre time at Hell High! “Go ahead, fatso, it’s time for round two,” he dared.

  The bully did not take kindly to being punked. Face red, he jumped up, grabbed Harry and hip-tossed him to the floor. The smaller boy went along with it and lay on the ground, arms spread out.

  Predictably, Bob sat on his chest and grinned at the other kids in triumph. “Aren’t you gonna try hard, punk?” he crowed to his victim. “You gotta get up first.”

  Harry remained curiously quiet and forced himself to fashion an equally enigmatic answer so as not to spoil the surprise. “Don’t have to.”

  He didn’t. Bob suddenly jumped up, frantically scratched his butt and his face. His fingernails scored deep gashes in his skin while the other kids screamed for the teacher to do something. “It’s burning me!” he cried and ran out of the classroom. Everyone heard his screams from down the hallway.

  While the other students got the proverbial WTH look on their faces, Harry simply glared back at them. Yeah, make way for the master, he thought. He walked out of the classroom, over to his locker, and after collecting his textbooks he waited calmly in the hallway. It was just a matter of time before…

  “Goldman, get over here!”

  The voice belonged to Principal Morgan. “Just what did you do?” he asked.

  “I made something.”

  “Tell me.”

  Harry took a deep breath. “It’s a combination of okra, rose hips and Mucuna pruriens.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It’s itching powder.”

  Harry got suspended for a week and then the junior high assessment came ‘round along with the meeting with the guidance counselor. He listened to the conversation and it made him smile. “His scores are perfect, and he has a knack for chemistry,” Mrs. McNamara said.

  Talk about irony! Whatever made them think that? It took
them only ten years to figure it out. “So what do you suggest?” his mother asked.

  Mrs. McNamara cleared her throat. “Home schooling would be best if you can’t afford a private school. His scores are way beyond anything I’ve ever seen.”

  It was time to smile. Home schooling—yes, I can have it all, he thought, and after his mother came outside, he stared at her expectantly. “Well, is it okay?”

  His mother nodded. “You’ve been eavesdropping?”

  “Yeah, I have. I don’t want to go to a special school.”

  Mrs. Goldman faced her son with a wry smile playing around her lips. In spite of their jobs, the Goldman’s were not rich, and Harry didn’t want to go to a private school. He’d visited one once and found the kids too snobbish. While he might have had nothing in common with regular school kids, he had even less in common with the other so-called prodigies. “You’re…you’re not gonna send me to a private school, are you, Mom?”

  His mother shook her head in resignation. “Do the homework. You’ll bring it in once a week and the rest of the time is yours.”

  Isolation might have sucked to anyone else, but Harry relished it. The way he rationalized the whole thing, sure, he lost out on some potential friendships, but he didn’t have much in common with anyone at his ex-school, and outside of his parents, nothing much in common with anyone else.

  He had made one friend, Jason Parham, in his first year at junior high. Tall and sort of geeky looking with a mop of dark hair and plain features marred by adolescent acne, Parham was an avid gamer, anime fan, and all-around nerd. For some unknown reason—perhaps because they were outcasts in their own, unique way—they clicked as friends, but had totally different views on life. While Harry left junior high to pursue knowledge, Jason continued on with the humdrum school routine.

  After reaching high school, his best and only friend moved with his family to New York and continued to get average grades. They sent mail to each other on a regular basis. Parham filled Harry in on who was doing what and with whom and served as his lifeline to the world outside.

  Jason existed only to play his games, connect with the various anime and fan-boy clubs around the world, and live for the here and now. You gotta live in the moment, man, he wrote one day. It’s the only way to have fun.

  As if Harry knew what the term fun meant. When he got the message, he was in the middle of perusing a biology text. To him, studying ribosomes was fun. However, Jason was a pretty decent guy, although his tastes in pastimes shifted from one week to the next. I got my moment in front of me, he texted back. I’m studying.

  Jason’s reply was typical. He sent an eye-roll emoticon, his way of saying Harry was taking things way too seriously. Lighten up, man, he wrote. Hey, I’m into Princess Yasuda now. You know about her?

  Harry quickly checked her name on his computer, found out she looked like every other anime he’d ever seen—long legs and arms, round eyes, narrow, pointy chin, and tiny skirt—and figured his friend had lost it. Living in the now doesn’t have to involve make-believe characters.

  At least I haven’t given up on reality, Jason replied. What do you do? You study all day, don’t talk to anyone, and stay inside. I go to school, man, go to the shows and comic conferences…I meet people.

  The truth hurt, but after a little introspection Harry admitted he was more than a bit of a shut-in. Still, his experiments took priority. In the sanctity of his room, he laid the groundwork on his computer. A place the size of a large storage area with drab green wallpaper, it consisted of his bed, study desk, computer, and held nothing more exciting than three shelves full of textbooks. Plain and ordinary, yes, but it served as his refuge from the world outside. He ruled here, the king of his domain.

  For the real work, however, his father’s friend taught medical ethics at the University of Oregon. Professor Morton allowed Harry to come in and use the lab. While he was still in grade school, the grad students looked on with amusement at the short, skinny kid who liked messing with the chemicals.

  The years passed and as he got more proficient with DNA manipulation, the looks of amusement turned to envy. One man in particular, Professor Nixon, often asked how he’d gotten to be so good at a subject ninety-nine percent of the world didn’t understand.

  “I just know,” Harry told him bluntly. He knew the prof was jealous, and also knew the man didn’t know jack about this aspect of research. He only pretended he did.

  The professor asked him a question about the idea of transposing genes and their effect upon the host body’s cells. Harry replied that he’d gotten around the problem by introducing a protein that formed a protective sheath around the newly transposed DNA. “That’s impossible,” the professor breathed.

  Harry pointed at the computer screen. “Tell me I’m lying, okay?”

  Nixon bent forward to look at the matrix on the screen and his face twisted with the rage of an adult outsmarted by a kid. “You’re just a punk,” he spat out and stalked off.

  In order to circumvent any trouble, Harry got his driver’s license on his eighteenth birthday and used his father’s car to go to the university lab at night when no one else was around. Professor Morton had given him a passkey for the outer door as well as for the lab, and even the night watchman never bothered him.

  It was a period of excitement as well as a thrill to do the heretofore forbidden. After working on his formula for transposing a pig’s genes to a dog in order to cure a heart ailment, he judged the computer simulation a success. The formula would work, he felt, but again, he said nothing to anyone.

  His father did caution him when the subject of using animals arose. “There is such a thing as ethics, son,” he said. “Crossbreeding plants and flowers is one thing, and genetically modified food is something else.”

  He stopped speaking for a moment and clutched at his side. Harry noticed the expression of pain cross his father’s face. “Dad, are you okay?” He touched his father on the shoulder as if to give him some kind of reassurance.

  “Just a cramp,” the elder Goldman said. He winced again, and after taking in a deep breath, he let it out slowly and nodded as if the truth was self-evident. “Anyway, what I was saying before is a given. What is not a given is using it on people, not yet.”

  Harry knew the score and while not offended at being read the riot act, he figured he had things under control. He’d done his research, knew about the Frankenstein Syndrome, and had no intention of proceeding with anything as drastic as human experimentation. “Dad, I know it’s against the law, and…”

  His father held up his hand for silence. “Transgenic experiments are probably being done as we speak, but aside from them being illegal, you can’t play God. This I know. Even if it’s to help people, who’s to say it won’t hurt them?” He shook his head. “There are some things better left alone.”

  Harry almost laughed at the cliché. He knew he was on the right track with his research, but heeded his father’s words and confined his research to various plants and flowers. He wanted to go further, but then things changed, as they inevitably did, and they were things he couldn’t control.

  Cancer was a mean mother. It came without warning although he should have seen the signs in his father. But how could he have? He couldn’t, and by the time they found out, it was too late. Pancreatic cancer struck his father in September of Harry’s senior high school year. Six weeks later, the inevitable happened.

  His quiet and devoted mother was inconsolable and followed her husband into death due to a heart attack two weeks after the funeral. Attending two funerals wasn’t on his to-do list, but life sucked, you died, and he mourned.

  Harry had never cried, even when he’d gotten his butt kicked in a fight. Weak or not, he had his pride. Pride wouldn’t let him show weakness in the form of bawling like a baby. He didn’t cry when the pain from the bruises hurt so much even breathing became an ordeal.

  The tears did come, though, when his mother’s coffin went into the ground. For
the first time in his life, he was totally alone. Having no friends had never bothered him. He’d had his parents. They’d always had his back and had given him comfort and support. Now he had no one.

  The family lawyer informed him his parents had left everything to their one and only child. “The house, the investments they’d made over the years…the good thing is you won’t have to go through probate court,” Mr. Munson, the lawyer said.

  “Which means what, exactly?”

  “You’re financially set for a few years.”

  Good enough, and as he’d turned eighteen, which made him an adult under Portland law, he continued to live at his parents’ modest two-story house. He continued his experiments, but a little cloud with the name of Professor Nixon found out about his lab tests and called the police…

  “Hey, Goldman, you’re wanted in the warden’s office.”

  Harry’s mind came back to the present and he looked in the direction of the voice. One of the guards—his nameplate read Walker—stood outside the bars, an impatient expression on his face. Large, dark-skinned with a pockmarked face, shifting from one foot to another, he tapped the bars again and then slammed them with his fist. “Get up!”

  Harry was still only half awake. His cellmate, a black man named Tim Withers, looked at the bars and kicked his legs upward. Small and skinny, barely five feet and a buck-twenty, Withers had been incarcerated for auto theft, but they got along and left each other alone. Harry felt the impact of the shove and peeked over the side of his bed. “What is it?” he mumbled.

  His roomie glanced up at him. “Hey, man, maybe this is your ticket outta here, know what I’m sayin’?”

  “Yeah…” Harry had been told to expect parole in a year, and it hadn’t been nearly that long, not unless Uncle Sam decided thinking wasn’t against the law…

  Another slam on the bars jarred him into wakefulness. He gazed at the guard through bleary eyes. “The warden wants to see me?”

  “What, are you deaf? Get your butt in gear.”