After 3 days, Elliot started to wonder if he had gone crazy.
"I guess, what really happened, is... I'm dead? Or maybe in a coma. That makes sense, and this is my happy place, my new lab, where I can study and experiment until they pull the plug." It should be a derpressing thought, but he couldn't really imagine anything better. In the last 3 days he'd made some promising discoveries that could be used to fund entire new labs. His only regret is that, dead or coma, he couldn't share these findings with the real world.
Elliot was a realist, he knew he wasn't the only genetics genius in the world, but his insights into aging were profound. He might have made a leap that was decades ahead of where other labs were. It was definitely the only thing he was interested in pursuing right now. However, he wasn't alone here. He had 12 chimpanzees in here, and they needed taking care of. The automated systems could only feed, clean and sedate them so much. He had to either take care of them, or euthanize them. He was a scientist so sacrificing them didn't bother him, in fact, that was the plan all along. Let them reach adolescence, and then do full autopsies to see if there were any defects or long term deficiencies introduced into them by tinkering with their dna.
And yet... he was feeling lonely, and he hadn't done animal work himself in a long time. It would be a waste to lose the data they carried just because he was too lazy to look after them. 12 chimps running around would be crazy though, he was pretty sure. He cleaned them all up, readjusted their sedation, and then placed 10 of them in suspended animation cryo-freeze. He figured he could handle 2, and the lab had plenty of nutrition for the animals. He kept Frill Head, and Baby Face. "I'm going to need better names for you two, huh? Oh well, I can worry about that when you wake up."
Elliot went back to work on his discovery. Every time he played with the models, he isolated the cascade of protiens and processes that seemed to control aging more and more.
He blinked and another 12 hours had passed. He now had 2 awake chimps to deal with.
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By day 6, he had run out of hidden snacks for himself. Dino and Baby were running around the lab by now, but he had locked up everything breakable or dangerous. They also had plenty of their own food and more or less let him be. He had to show them where the bathroom was, and there were a few mishaps, but they figured it out pretty well. At least, it was going into the toilet more or less.
Elliot had to face facts. He must be living some elaborate dream life while he as hooked up to a life support machine somewhere. "There is just no way the lab could be locked shut for 6 days like this. Yes I designed it to be completely closed off from the outside world, shielded electronically and with special filtration for air and water to ensure no contiminants are accidentally introduced, but a competent security person could bypass the fail safes eventually."
His work didn't feel like a dream, he was making progress, and he knew it wasn't imaginary. His hunger sure didn't feel imaginary either, but he was out of chips and candy bars. "Do I eat the monkey food? At least I have water, but still... I guess I could eat the chimps," he said out loud. Dino and Baby looked at him then, like they knew he was talking about them. "Or not." They were kind of cute, and, he had to admit, it was nice having pets around.
"I need another solution. Thank god I'm a genius."
He was in one of the most advanced genetics labs in the world. He had access to a library of genetic material from a wide variety of animals, and the kind of equipment that could let him clone full grown humans. Growing and slautering a lamb seemed crazy, but, after another day of monkey food, he decided to do the next best thing. So by day 9 trapped in the lab, he had rigged up an entire cell culture production line devoted to continuous growth of cow, lamb and chicken protein.
"It isn't going to be filet mignon or rack of lamb, but way better than monkey food." By now, when he spoke his two chimp pets paid a little attention, just to see if he was going to give them something to play with or eat. He was devoting a portion of his days to just talking with them or entertaining them. He thougth it was good for his sanity.
By day 17, he realized bunsen burner cooked meat patties was not going to be enough. Not only was it boring, he was going to get scurvy soon. He was worried about his monkey food supply too, so he did an analysis of the lab monkey meal, and it was packed with more nutrients than he thought. It was a mix of seeds, fiber, meat and legume protein, fruits and vegetables. He isolated the individual components as much as possible, saving any whole seeds he could find, and set up a whole lab bench of individual cultures to see if he could grow anything. The technique, Plant Cell Culture, was new to him, but not particularly complicated.
Day 20 saw some mushy growth in a few cultures that might have tasted like berries, bananas, and a kind of gross tasting green substance. They didn't look like the original plants, it was just coloured mush, but he felt a lot more confident in his future nutritional outlook.
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"Woah, I've gone full wild man, eh?" Elliot said, looking in the lab bathroom's mirror. His brown and grey hair fell into his face, and met up with his thick beard. He was much thinner than he was, but not unhealthy he supposed. He washed himself at the sink, like he did everyday. He knew the water was captured, filtered and reused. Still, it was weird knowing he was probably drinking water he washed with before.
"How long have I been trapped here?". He didn't really know anymore. If he judged by his facial hair, then several months at least. If he went by his research, then he estimated it has been a decade or more. He had uncovered so many secrets, and perfected so many techniques that he could go out and change the world. Forget cosmetic gene splicing, he could fundamentally alter a person in ways that seemed like science fiction. Assuming he would ever be allowed to test his techniques on humans. The scientific community was so timid. Sure, something may go wrong, people might die. It would all further the bounds of human understanding though.
Elliot really started thinking about time. He was in a black box, completely cut off from the outside world, with no information exchange. So though he felt like months, or years had passed, maybe it was only a week or a month to the outside world? He wasn't a theoretical physicist, but the thought that maybe he would still be saved somehow gave him hope.
"Or this is all a fever dream. I need to take the next steps in my research, I need to get out of here, wake up, or whatever and get test subjects."