by Mel Todd
Next time I’ll have to pay attention to the heat being shed. I wonder how I can do that? I wonder if I can change to another animal? Why a wolverine?
All the questions rattled around her head and she wrote them all down in the notebook. At this point it deserved a name, and she labeled it “Wolverine Aspects,” Hunger licked at her but nothing like what had hit her the day before. Eating while in animal form had to deal with some of that.
Good to know. Some weekend I’ll have to run a test to see if there is any difference for how long I stay in animal form.
But even the idea made her a bit nervous, thumbs and being able to talk were important things.
She whipped up a quick salad with more chicken and felt free to laden it with calorie rich toppings. Maybe watching her weight wouldn’t be that big of a deal now. Her testing done, humor and curiosity bubbling up her spine she put herself in front of the computer with her salad and wine and started to research wolverines. Making notes as to new tests and things to play with as a wolverine. She spent time researching wolverines though she avoided Shifter related news. Tainting her discoveries would be frustrating. When Cass had hit her limit, she logged off, refilled her wine glass and grabbed her kindle.
"Life is good. I’ve got a neat new ability. I may have found a new cancer treatment and have a new novel to read. Yay me." With that, Cass curled up, cracked open her kindle and fell into the arms of a husky highlander who had to have her.
6
Deadlines
The world is still reeling from the impacts of shifters, but life hasn’t changed. Shifters still go to work, have families, take vacations. Why are we treating this as something so major? It doesn’t seem to have any life changing impact, so what if you turn into an animal? Does it matter? My view point is treat it like you would a radical hairstyle and nothing more. We are all still human, still on the same planet. Why allow this to be yet another reason to hate your neighbor? ~ Opinion Editorial calling for peace after riots
Cass had spent the weekend researching but not shifting. She needed to get a feel about what was going on in the world a bit more before she tried it again. Instead she shopped, cleaned, and called her niece and nephew on Saturday. But mostly she tried to pretend the world was the same.
Monday morning, she woke up before her alarm, excited and anxious to see what else her lichen might be able to do. She had a hunch the cancer attacking properties were just the tip of what else they might be capable of. The idea they might attack other bacteria had also occurred to her. They had standard samples of e-coli she could use for a test.
Mood bubbly, she avoided news on the way in as she had no desire to deal with anything that might bring down her euphoria. Instead she listened to music from her phone and planned the research process facing her over the next few weeks. As usual, the parking lot stood empty this time of the morning. She parked in her favorite spot and headed inside with a bounce.
She dove right into the research. It took a while to grow cultures and extract what you needed from them. Cass lost herself in the intricacies of her research, even as she went back and forth in her mind about her wolverine form. Coming up with new experiments to try with her wolverine and what else this lichen might have up their twisty DNA.
The tap on her shoulder pulled her out of her own little world and she paused what she was doing to pull off her headphones and turn again.
She repressed a sigh as Chuck stood there, a look on his face she hadn't seen before and it didn't bode well for her.
"I need to talk to you," he said. His eyes boring holes in her making her want to step away from him.
"Yes?" She cast a glance back at her table to make sure her pausing wouldn't create any issues.
"You filed a request for protection for the lichen at that lake?" His voice absolutely neutral as he stared at her, arms crossed on his chest.
"Yeah." She smiled, a fast expression that faded quickly. "I found some great and promising reactions. I'm working on expanding to see what else can be done, and if they have an-"
He cut her off. "It's been rejected. The verdict is your test and results were flawed."
If he had slapped her, Cass couldn't have been more surprised.
"What?"
"If you want to get the protection, you'll have to submit a whole new set of cases, with proof, rigorous testing, and the evidence to prove why this area should be protected." A smile slid across his face like oil across pavement. "You have three weeks to prove your findings, after that you're screwed. Good luck." The tone of his voice told her how much he didn't mean that. The smirk as he turned and walked away left her stunned, staring at him in horror and confusion.
She headed out of the lab not even bothering to hang up her coat or remove the hair net, instead going directly to her computer and pulling up her email. There it sat, bold subject mocking her as she read it.
Fallacies... flawed tests… irrelevant data…
The words jumped out at her and she had to close her eyes and concentrate on breathing to not scream.
How dare they? My testing methodology is perfect. I document everything, validate every result multiple times, and make sure nothing contaminated anything.
She kept reading, stewing as her blood pressure rose.
Okay, deep breath. You redo it. You can replicate your results. But why did he say three weeks?
Cass took another minute to breath and focus.
Deal with facts. You can work from facts, not your emotions.
Opening her eyes, she began to carefully read the entire thing. When she reached it, the sentence jumped out at her. "All evidence must be submitted by the mentioned date to be considered prior to construction activities scheduled for a new complex at this location. The review will be completed prior to an official start."
That date gave her three weeks, barely. And it had taken her two months to find out everything she had written up. Her stomach twisted and turned and the idea of going and throwing up sounded appealing. But instead she looked around the small space. No one else was there and she'd hear the door open if they came in.
Cass got up and began to pace, thinking about loud. "I know this has benefit and they haven't found these lichen any place else. I have new avenues as well." She walked to one end of the room, fifteen steps then back to the door. "I know what worked, what didn't. I can avoid any dead ends. I can get the tests in that time and resubmit. But it will take all the time I have. I can't afford to destroy my samples and I need to make them prove beyond a shadow of a doubt this is worth protecting. Which means money, pharmaceuticals, and attention." Three weeks.
"Do it." She sat back down and began typing, reserving machine time, detailing out the experiments she would run, taking the time to create new ones, letting what she had learned guide her. The only reason she looked up was the ring of her phone, her sister.
Cass blinked at the display. "Oh wow, 8:30 already. Fudge." All time had disappeared as she tried to figure out how to save a plant that might save others.
"Hey, Helena." She said as she answered. Saving all her work and routing it for approvals and telling it to print all the experiments she'd laid out.
"Hey, you never called yesterday or today. You mad at me? You are coming over this weekend, right? Since you missed last weekend? Though thanks for the vid call. The kids enjoyed it, but I miss you."
The hurt tone in her sisters' voice pulled at her attention. "Give me one minute, okay?"
"Uh, sure?" If anything, her sister sounded more hurt and confused but Cass put her mute, grabbed the print outs, locked down her computer and headed to the locker area.
"One more second." she said into the phone as she took off her coat and hair net.
"What's wrong? Why aren't you talking to me?" Helena asked.
"Just give me one more minute."
Cass didn’t want to be in the building, she wanted to be headed home. Getting out and getting in her car, she connected the phone and waited for it to transf
er over. Then started to talk as she started up the car heading home.
"Hey. Sorry I was still at work and needed to finish and get out of there. No, I'm not mad at you, but no I won't be coming over next weekend or the weekend after."
"Well if you aren't going to tell me what is wrong, I can't fix it." Her sister snapped and Cass could tell from the frazzled tone the kids had been driving her crazy today. She'd be so happy when they went back to school but since she wasn't in a year around district, she still had two months.
"Helena, nothing is wrong I swear. Listen. You know the lichen I've been so excited about? The ones I've been working with?"
Her sister heaved a sigh. "If you would get as excited about a man as you do about those plants, but yes."
"These are more interesting than any man. But..." she told the story about everything that had happened with Chuck and the denial and why she thought it was so important.
"They what? You don't make those sorts of mistakes. How dare they!" Her sister's outrage on her behalf made her feel much better. "What are you going to do?"
"Well, for me to make that deadline I'll be at the lab almost day and night for the next three weeks trying to replicate everything and prove this is valuable. And this time I'm going to fight nasty."
"Cassandra, what does that mean? I know you. When you get pissed, you're scary."
Cass preened a bit as she drove. "Yes, yes I am. Though I don't usually get pissed."
"I know. You never stand up for yourself, only for others. It is one of your many annoying habits. If you cared as much about yourself as you do about your plants." Helena sighed. "Then you wouldn't be you and I'd wonder who kidnapped you and replaced you with a pod person. Fine, go save the world but every Saturday I want fifteen minutes of video call time with the monsters. All they can talk about is how great Aunt Cass is. Makes me feel like chopped liver."
Cass laughed. "Now you know how I feel when Mom starts in on me. Helena is so happy. Don't you want to be happy like her? She has a husband and kids. Don't you want that, Cassandra? Are you gay, Cassandra? I'm okay with that, but you know you can adopt."
"You know I hate it when she says all that right? She just cares. She can't understand why you aren't happy and married."
"Because I'm not pretty, vivacious, and good at flirting like you are?"
Helena snorted. "Bullshit. You just don't like to take the time to do your hair, makeup, etcetera. You have the bad habit of wanting a guy who can actually talk to you instead of just buy things for you."
"Oh, the horrors." Cass deadpanned and Helena broke up.
"Yeah, I know. How dare you?" She heaved a sigh. "I was really looking forward to you coming over as an excuse to not be supermom for a while. Oswald likes you, so he tends to pick up the slack a bit when you come over."
"What?" Cass gasped in mock horror. "Your Norwegian prince isn't perfect."
"A. He's not a prince. B. He's Swedish, and C, he's a man. Of course he isn't perfect." The exasperation that came through made Cass snort.
"I stand corrected. Yes, I will call on Saturdays. But now I am almost home, I need food, and I have a long few weeks ahead of me."
"Go for it, I know you'll prove to them you don't make those mistakes. Let me know if you need anything. You're the best sister I have."
"I'm the only sister you have, so you're kinda stuck with me."
"Point. Think I can trade you in for a different one?"
"Doubt it. Besides mom would throw a fit. I might be single, but I am a 'doctor'."
Helena laughed. "True. Okay good luck. I'll talk to you later."
Cass finished the drive home and looked at her Wolverine notebook mournfully. "I won't have time to play with that at all for a while”. She put it next to her computer, made dinner, ate while reading her romance, then crashed. The next few weeks would be insanely busy. But with a smidge of luck, she'd have something to make them grant her the legal protection that she needed.
7
All or Nothing
All scientists live by deadlines. Deadlines for grant applications, deadlines for funding being cut off, deadlines for papers to be submitted, deadlines for specimen viability. In a reaction to this, many scientists do their best work under deadlines but the amount of mistakes rise quickly. With funding at a premium, experiments are rarely able to be repeated and the first set of data is assumed to be valid, no matter how rushed the experiments may have been. More and more published studies are being called into question as errors are found in the methodology or even the actual data gathered. This epidemic of error can have catastrophic results on any organization that may have acted on those results. ~ Science Advisory Board
The next morning set the tone for the next three weeks. Cass’s alarm went off at 4:30 AM and she made it to the lab by 5:30. The biggest constraint on her experiments was the lichen. She only had a limited amount, and it grew relatively slowly. It took a bit, but she set up multiple growth terrariums and tweaked everything to be the best environment possible for it. This is where the last four months of research paid off. She already knew the best environment for them, so she didn’t have to stress that, though she stilled needed to watch it carefully.
Lichen were odd things, in some ways so robust and in other ways extremely fragile. She needed them to grow as fast as they could, so she did everything she could, then turned back to her experiments. Each sample she took increased the chances she might kill it, but just as important she needed to make sure she could replicate the results and provide better evidence.
Again, the past helped as she already knew what had worked. But she recorded every step via extensive documentation both written and with photos. She uploaded it every night attaching it to the master files, then sent copies to herself. While she couldn’t make money from these discoveries, and any resultant patents, her name still would be associated with it and that mattered down the road.
Time went by in a blur and she barely spoke to anyone as she lost herself in long days trying to replicate four months worth of experiments in three weeks and not kill what might be the only lichen left and the basis of her research. Her world narrowed to the lab, her office computer late at night, and bed. As she worked she typed and organized the other aspects of her defense of her research.
Seventeen days later at four in the afternoon she sat at her computer and uploaded the last of the test results and filed the application again. She’d lost weight, not because she’d been shifting but because she hadn’t taken time to eat. Pushing herself each day to run all the possible variations she could, she hadn’t shifted for weeks. If the journal hadn't been mocking her with its presence, plus all the news stories, she might have thought she’d imagined it. Then she finished pushing send on the final email, the Hail Mary that might give this lichen a chance until they could find a better place to grow it. Occasionally she had dreams of creating a greenhouse for nothing but lichen.
With a smile she leaned back and stretched, feeling like a huge weight had been pulled off her body.
"I don’t know what you think you’ll accomplish besides putting yourself into the hospital." The words could have been supportive or even concerned. Instead, since Chuck said them, they came out as contemptuous.
Cass turned to face him, too tired to even take offense. "I’m hoping to do my job and maybe save a species that has even greater medical implications than I realized."
He rolled his eyes at her. "Don’t you get it? Someone has plans for that area, and one little researcher in a podunk lab isn’t going to change it. Hell, I wouldn’t be surprised if the owners suddenly get pressure to ‘release’ you since your research wasn’t viable."
Cass stiffened then shrugged. "They can, but they might want to check the publications first."
Chuck straightened up from where he’d been leaning against the door and looked at her. "What does that mean?"
"I took all the results and formulated them into a paper and published it. It’s pending for three jo
urnals right now. Assuming it is accepted, and I’d be really surprised if it wasn’t, my findings will be in a few journals, so the scientific community will know. The patent application is filed in the company’s name with me as head researcher as usual. They trash it now, they will have a lot of people asking questions."
Rather than looking impressed or however she expected him to respond, he shook his head at her. "You’re an idiot. It’s going to be interesting watching what happens to you. The kind of pressure that is coming down on this doesn’t care about you or your research. It’s going to be fun watching you get burned. Always love watching the goody two shoes find out what reality is really like. Whatever, Borden. I warned you, so it’s on you now." He just snorted shaking his head at her and walked away.
Cass rubbed her face tiredly. There wasn’t much else she could do right now. She blinked at the clock on the bottom of the computer. Thursday. Huh. She’d been working weekends and time had blended together into a long stream of days. Shutting down, she headed to her car and called her sister as soon as she got in the car.
"So, you’ve crawled out of your research hole? You alive?"
Cass laughed. "Barely. Taking tomorrow off. Want some company?"
"God yesssss." her sister hissed out that last word. "I’ll have the bedroom ready for you. Please hurry, otherwise there might be dead children and a dead husband."
Helena worked from home so having the kids home would be driving her crazy. She did event planning, her natural elegance and taste making it a good fit, and the flexibility helped with having a family. But the summer was the busy season and the kids at their age required lots of activity.
"Will do. I’ll be there before noon tomorrow. That work?"
"Thank you! I’m not telling any family members, but swear I’ll have all the wine you want. I can’t thank you enough for rescuing me."
Cass laughed. "Honestly a few days with the uncomplicated emotions and actions of the kids will be good for me. I’ll see you in a bit."
