"Shit," Elliot moaned. His head was killing him. He tried opening his eyes, but they didn't feel like cooperating at all, so he just lay still. He seemed to be in one piece, and he was laying on a floor. It was really cold.
'Am I in the hospital? Or still in the lab? How long have I been out?' he wondered, more questions popping up. He wasn't sure who hit him, but he suspected one of those animal rights groups, or a conspiracy theory nut, had snuck in with the alumni group. Not the first time he'd been attacked for his work, but for sure the first time he'd been knocked out cold!
He tried opening his eyes again. It worked, but the harsh fluorescent light felt like it was hitting him. He could see that he was on the floor of the lab, and seemed to be alone. 'Strange, why would they leave me here in the cryo-lab. Why is it so cold?' he wondered. Regardless, he needed to get up. It was easier said than done, he was very woozy.
"Hello, anyone else here?" he said, wondering if anyone else was sitting or laying behind a bench as well, but the place just felt empty. He did a quick inspection, and everything seemed normal, except the lab's emergency doors were shut. He walked up to them, the multi layered steel and composite doors were designed to withstand explosions. His research brought out the crazies, clearly, and he needed to maintain the safety and integrity of his work.
He entered his pass code into the door lock. Nothing happened. He tried again and still nothing. The door seemed powered still, but the key pad was unresponsive. 'Guess I'm stuck here until they open it from the other side,' Elliot thought. He wasn't worried. He liked when he was in control though, and being locked in when he knew the pass code was way out of control for him.
Then, like any time he didn't know what to do, he decided to work. The chimps incubation chambers were self sufficient and automated, he could basically leave them there for months. It wouldn't be good for their psychological develepment, but he was less interested in them once he'd deemed the experiment a success.
He walked over to his mini office in the back corner, it wasn't enclosed, but his desk was there so he could be accessible to everyone in the lab. No one knew, but the walls in this corner were secret storage for him. They contained numerous compartments that were mostly filled with spare clothes, snacks, and some sensitive reseasrch he kept on flash drives. He grabbed the drive that contained some of the more controversial gene edits, therapies and viral vectors he'd been designing and loaded it into his computer.
Unbeknownst to everyone but the computer genius he employed, Professor Elliot had a custom program that he used to create sophiticated gene splicing and editing models. It was loaded with the discoveries they had made in the lab, which made it priceless in his field of research. This was the software he'd used to create the chimpanzees. And they had a 100% success rate so far. He couldn't count how many failures and unexpected outcomes they had when designing genes before this software.
Rearranging DNA, cutting, and splicing it was very messy before, a hack and slash job, despite what the media said about CRISPR Cas9. Elliot pulled up some interesting structures he'd been teasing apart. No one knew what they regulated yet, but he thought it was one of the pieces that caused aging. He didn't think he'd find immortality, he just wanted more building blocks and this might extend human's best years by a decade, maybe two!
Elliot smiled. Compared to his current cosmetic augmentation research, this age improvement would change the world. Imagine 70 year olds with the vigour they still had in their 50s?
The lab wasn't really completely quiet, there were the soft sussurations of air exchangers, regrigeration units, monitors for the chimps and more. The sounds, and the work took him away. When he next looked up from his research, hours had passed, at least 3 since he woke up. 'Why has no one opened the door yet? They must know I'm here, and several lab managers have overrides to open the door.
He went back to the door, and the key pad still didn't work. He tried pushing and banging, but no luck. "Hey, hey, can anyone hear me," he yelled loudly. 'Still trapped, this isn't good,' he pulled out his cell phone, but realized that, by design, he had no wifi or cellular data in here.
With nothing else to do, he decided to eat one of his secret snacks, and then get back to work. It had been a while since he could just focus on science for an extended period like this. He was actually a little happy about this turn of events.
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"Yes! Holy crap, I've done it. No one will freaking believe this," Elliot was more than happy, this breakthrough could cut open the Gordian knot of genetic aging. He needed to test if of course. Was this the elusive cellular process that, over time, let cell division degrade, shorten tellomeres, and cause the body's natural error correction to slide? 'Am I going to change the human race?' he wondered to himself.
That is when he realized he'd been in the Cryo-Lab for nearly 12 hours now. No one had even tried to come it, the door still wasn't working, and his cell phone couldn't make calls or text. 'Why has no one come? During the last 12 hours a number of Post Doctorates and other Grad students should have come to continue their own experiments. Hell, some of the 4th years and lab assisstants should have come to check on the chimpanzees also.
He didn't want to admit it, but Elliot was clearly trapped.