Wait, wait! What kind of story is this? Blood? Invisible beasts? What kind of institute is this? Maybe Agent Black was right, and the kids are not ready for this.
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Ian McDonald was a biologist in a very special setting. Usually the other scientists in his area of expertise looked at Earth’s nature, through high-tech microscopes, or published interesting papers about the life of mice, bacteria in petri-dishes, or deep sea fish. But not McDonald. He worked at SIA,—a super-secret organization—for thirty-plus years and that did not let him write on a single piece of paper or into a regular computer. Everything he did was so secretive that not even he was able to look at all the data his experiments generated. That drove him crazy, but the work was so interesting and exceptional that it compensated for the drawbacks. Well, to be precise, he looked through microscopes that were super-high-tech and not available to the common scientists, because no university in the world could afford this sort of equipment. And he studied nature. He was not sure whether it was Earth’s nature, though. Everything was super-secretive.
He sighted his colleague, a small black-haired Asian woman, called Fu Song. She asked him “Are you afraid of going downstairs for lunch?”
“Our cook’s creations are even more out of space than our work here, Fu,” McDonald said. “So, like almost always, I’ll pass. Got my salad over at my desk.”
“See you later. By the way, the black overalls have this security exercise later off campus. Until that is concluded, they asked us to stop all experiments.”
“Shoot, I forgot. Need to bring our guest back to its habitat then,” McDonald said. “But need to finish the protocol first.”
“I’ll be back in thirty minutes tops, then I’ll help you with the habitat transfer,” Fu promised and left McDonald.
McDonald’s stomach grumbled. Let’s finish this experiment and then eat. He crossed the room to look through a large glass window into the security area room next door. An animal was strapped to the table in the middle of it. At first glance, it looked like a giant lizard, with a tubular body, approximately five feet long with four strong short ams and fingerlike claws. A short stumpy tail on one end and a short wide mouth with eyes on top. But the first glance was all you got. The beast looked translucent, as if your eyes were unable to see it. The fact was, it was translucent. Not only translucent, it could make itself invisible completely on demand. Amazing stuff. And McDonald, Fu Song, and the other scientists assigned to the research had no idea how this animal did it. They couldn’t even agree on whether it was an animal. It was a living being, but the mysterious circumstances under which the beast had been found—a tale for another time—did not place it in the categories of domestic animals or wild animals. It had the intelligence of a human being; they were sure of this. It was able to run simple and complex test patterns that simulated logical thinking, expression of mind, and reaction times on it. And it surpassed the scores of humans by far.
Time for the last probe and sample of the day. The security team’s exercise was a nuisance, as it disrupted experiments in the afternoon. But maybe it allowed him to get ahead on the paperwork. McDonald read the various displays of sensors connected to the beast. Then he prepared the small syringe to draw some of the blood. He approached the beast which was strapped down securely on the transport platform. He loosened the strap of the left forepaw a little bit to get its circulation going. Unstrapping even a single limb was not permitted and definitely dangerous The beast was fast and had a lot of strength, so it was better to be safe than sorry.
Its skin was cold to the touch, like a lizard’s skin, though they knew by now that the beast had heat-controlled metabolism like a mammal. The translucency of the forearm turned from glassy to completely invisible, as if McDonald’s touch triggered a camouflage mechanism. Tenderly he inserted the syringe. It did not seem to hurt the beast at all, unlike the other experiments they had already done. The effect of drawing blood was the most fascinating spectacle McDonald had ever witnessed and even topped the invisibility. The beast’s arm was now completely translucent; he could see the strap going around the paw and the arm and where it was fastened to the tabletop. The straps were under tension from the beast, but the beast itself was not to be seen. And to top all of that, the tip of the syringe that McDonald pushed into the beast’s skin vanished into the arm, and it was gone from view. Totally amazing. And then, as if from nowhere the brownish blood of the beast came flowing into the small test tube.
McDonald wondered when they would crack the chemistry and physics behind this effect. Surely not today. One more read-out and then lunch.
What McDonald did not realize was that he had not readjusted the strap around the front paw.
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