Beyond the Cage
Beyond the Cage
As usual, I entered the laboratory without any thoughts when a voice close to a shout rang out.
"Director-nim! What the hell is this!"
The person approaching with big strides while saying that was Park Pro, who had recently been promoted to senior researcher.
He thrust a document into my chest and shoved his menacing face close as he spoke.
"We agreed to use AAV (*a type of gene carrier)! Does it make sense to change the core vector right before the experiment?!"
For a moment, I was baffled.
'Is the problem that we suddenly changed it?'
I wondered if this was a time to exercise empathy since Park Pro had a severe F-type personality, but when I absentmindedly looked down at the document in my hand, it seemed that wasn't the case.
'Request for Reconsideration'
No matter how much Park Pro was a macho man with a girl's sensibility, when it came to responsibility, he was a diligent talent that I could vouch for.
He wasn't the kind of fool to sabotage an experiment that staked the fate of the research lab just because he was in a bad mood.
Then what was the problem?
While reading the request with a serious face, I realized.
'The side effects of permanent modification cannot predict the extent of harm, and ethically, this is...'
There it was again. That damned ethics.
Park Pro was too sensitive about this.
When civic groups or the legal profession raised objections against our lab, he always came to me to act as a mediator, and that was also due to his morality bordering on obsession.
Thanks to that, many things worked out well.
There were times we delayed the experiment start date to avoid becoming an issue, and times we reduced the sample size to save investment funds.
Above all, I learned a lot.
'So this is the standard of ethics that the public thinks.'
By observing Park Pro, I figured out what level of application to which lifeform would avoid criticism.
So I understood the situation, but I couldn't accept it.
"Even if we use AAV, aftereffects can remain. Besides, permanent change was what the test subject wanted, wasn't it?"
As I handed back the document and asked, Park Pro immediately countered.
"Who knows what will happen later? Right now, because they're desperate, they're drawn to permanent change. But if it actually succeeds, can you know, Director-nim, how long the subject's satisfaction will last?"
I'm sick of it.
I had already vomited out the common sense answer of why I should care about something like that, until I was sick of it long ago.
The fact that that answer didn't work on Park Pro was so tiresome and infuriating.
How should I persuade him this time?
Just as I was about to rack my brains, a fact I had overlooked came to mind.
"I heard your daughter is entering our school this time."
When I lowered my voice and said that, Park Pro's eyes widened.
It was a face that clearly showed embarrassment and displeasure.
I gave him just enough information to understand, as he simply opened and closed his mouth.
"Professor Choi was boasting. He said he made you owe him a big debt."
Park Pro was an emotional person.
He had a lot of affection, a lot of anger, and pathologically hated being disliked.
That's why I liked him.
He was a very precious teacher for me, who was learning emotions,
"Go and prepare the experiment. If you want to keep playing the role of the head of the family well."
and a guinea pig that was easy to use.
The day of the final experiment.
As I entered the sterilization room where the test subjects were gathered to check the results so far, Park Pro was checking a chart.
I stood next to him and observed the rats in the cage.
Suddenly, I became curious.
"Do you think these guys also became unhappy?"
Silence flowed.
Only after a long while did Park Pro speak, as if muttering.
"I don't know. It's scary because I don't know."
It was a strange thing to say.
If you don't know, it should be fun, why feel fear?
Since it was a topic I had been interested in since childhood, I grew thoughtful.
'Come to think of it, that friend also said something similar.'
The countryside I moved to suddenly when I was young.
At the branch school that could only be reached by a 30-minute hiking course, I always caught insects.
Even while waiting for morning assembly, during break time, while eating lunch, I would go to the backyard or playground and search through the grass.
There was only one person who spoke to me first.
A tomboy girl who was my only classmate among the less than twenty students in the whole school.
"Eww! You caught something weird again!"
It was a strangely vivid memory.
As if her childhood self and I were chattering right before my eyes.
"Aren't you scared? How do you always pick and catch only the disgusting-looking ones?"
"Disgusting?"
"Of course. At least catch something pretty like a butterfly."
"I've caught almost all the butterflies."
"You can just catch them again."
"Catching something I haven't caught before is more fun."
"I like butterflies better."
"Really?"
"Yeah."
All other memories were blurry.
I don't even remember if I caught butterflies after that, and I forgot the girl's name.
If there's any intact memory among the related ones, it's that the girl's funeral was unusually quiet.
Why did this memory come to mind?
I recalled some relatively recently published neuroscience papers, but I couldn't find the answer.
I emptied my mind and moved my steps.
As I opened the door, I recited the lines I had prepared in advance.
"Even if you hadn't helped, I wouldn't have said anything about the admission matter. I'm sorry. I was impatient and said some nonsense."
It wasn't a lie.
I threatened only because I was confident the threat would work; exposing Park Pro's corruption would do me no good.
Besides, I also had something called emotions.
I irrationally often preferred jajangmyeon over jjambbong, was more interested in randomness than patterns, and liked people who handled rats well over people who coded well.
So Park Pro was also someone I liked.
Losing such a person would be a big loss for me too.
So I planned to treasure him forever...
The next day.
I thought some girl had come into the lab, but it was Park Pro.
"Because of you, my life...!!!"
Seeing him holding a kitchen knife in one hand, shedding tears and shouting, I thought.
'What happened? I lowered the transmission rate of the virus used as a vector to near zero.'
There was no way the experiment could go wrong.
The 'TS Cells (tentative name)' we had developed for over seven years was a safe new drug where even the RNA that exerted the effect was customized for each individual.
'Even if by some chance the vector became contagious, the TS trait should not be expressed normally.'
While I was frozen in the midst of such a confusing situation,
"If you hadn't changed the vector!!!"
Puk-jjik
The knife plunged into my heart,
And in my fading consciousness, I faced a new confusion.
'Is this worth getting that angry? It's cute, why?'
And I realized.
'Ah, right. Humans originally...'
When I opened my eyes, what I saw was the ceiling of a cave-like space.
I tried moving my body.
My strangely light hand touched the cold ground, and soft hair flowed from my strangely heavy head, draping over my oddly small shoulders.
When I fully sat up, I saw iron bars.
Beyond the iron bars was a wide dirt floor, and beyond that, another set of iron bars.
A scene reminiscent of an ancient underground prison.
The jarring visual information jolted me awake.
I hurriedly stood up and was surprised once more.
'What is this body...'
Hands as small as fern sprouts.
Soft white hair tickling my frail shoulders.
Soft cheeks that wobbled with a 'ttuing' when I touched them.
'Don't tell me I got infected too?'
I couldn't help but think that.
No matter how I looked at it, this was the expression of TS Cells.
First, I examined my body and confirmed that the clothes I was wearing were just a shabby rag, then I quickly ran and pressed myself against the iron bars.
And the scenery outside that I faced was far more wretched than I had imagined.
Dozens of holes with iron bars like prison cells were carved into the wide cave wall, and inside them, two or three haggard people were each confined.
At the innermost part of the cave, five dogs that looked bigger than lions were tied up, and the food they were devouring was astonishing.
Hairless beasts.
People.
As I watched a young woman's ankle that had fallen off due to a dog roughly shaking its head, I organized my thoughts.
'It doesn't seem like the government could secretly operate such a prison, and TS Cell transplantation places a significant burden on the human body, so surgery is impossible during the expression period. That means I, who was stabbed in the heart, would have been one hundred percent dead...'
Since I didn't deny the existence of an afterlife, I could reach a fairly reasonable inference.
'Is this hell?'
But I didn't want to accept the conclusion I had drawn.
'Is developing TS Cells such an evil thing that it warrants going to hell?'
I had done all sorts of things before that too, but if they send me to hell for just that, how many people would go to heaven?
The number of angels is a problem too, but I'm seriously concerned about overpopulation in hell.
I frowned and plopped down to sit.
Just as I crossed my arms, an unfamiliar voice came from behind.
The sobbing sound of a little girl who was extremely frightened.
"Mom... you said you would come..."
When I turned around, there was a strange creature huddled in the corner.