Wojciechowski smiled at Werner as Dr. Ziegler hurried about, gathering equiptment. "I know we're not supposed to talk to each other, but I don't think Dr. Ziegler will mind." He said, loud enough for Ziegler to hear who chose to ignore his patient. Wojciechowski shrugged and turned his attention fully to Werner. "How are you doing, Werner?" Werner was tongue-tied for a second. Why was the prisoner worried about the health of one of the prison guards? But then he realized that this oldish and swarthy Pole was a doctor, and doctors couldn't help but ask how you were doing. Werner was about to answer 'I'm alright, thanks' when he realized that that would be incredibly inappropriate. He wasn't allowed to mingle with the victims of the concentration camps. He'd have to pretend that he despised Wojciechowski, or better - that he felt complete ignorance towards him and his life.
"Dr. Ziegler, is there anything I can do to help you?" He asked, speaking over the polish doctors head. Dr. Ziegler didn't turn around but he answered, which meant that he had been paying attention.
"Yes, thank you Werner. If you could go to the left cabinet, yes that one right by the door, and take out that small box."
"The red one or the white one?"
"The white one. Exactly, bring it here. Thank you, Werner."
Werner lay the squarish white box on the window ledge. Dr. Ziegler had laid out a two folders but no instruments. Werner had a bad feeling in his gut; why were there no needles? Usually the absence of instuments might be a good thing, but it seemed almost worse here. "Open the box please." Werner opened it. "Take the little packett with the capsules out and the little bag of powder. Very good. Perform or protocol?"
"What?"
"Would you rather execute the experiment or take notes?" Werner couldn't tell if Ziegler was joking or not.
"Notes. I don't think I'm qualified to do any kind of experiment." Werner said honestly. Dr. Ziegler smiled. He pressed a lab journal into his assistants hands.
"Write the date, my name and your name below it..." He dicated the precise way that Werner should jott notes down in the little journal. Werner would leaf through it later on, much to his own regret. He found things; sketches, sentences and titles that made him sick to the stomach. Dr. Zieglers experiments had often ended in death. On one page stood a detailed description of how he'd slowly injected poison into a childs blood, seeing how long it would take for the child to die. The experiment had gone on for two weeks. At the end he'd written of; crazed behavior, sleepless, heartrate abnormaly fast, pupils dialated, no reaction whatsover (and finally) death.
"What experiment are you doing today?" Werner asked nervously.
"WE are doing a harmless experiment. I'm currently testing a hallucinative drug. It's called Mesofrim. I've tested it before and it's worked wonderfully, they see things that aren't even there. So I asked myself if, in combination with hypnotisation techniques and verbal motivation, if I could make them think specific things that I want them to. "
"I'm sorry, I don't understand."
"I'm going to drug Wojciechowski, it'll take about thirty minutes until he'll be high. Then I am going to talk to him and try to steer him down a path. The hallucinations around him will confuse him. My voice will be the only unchanging thing in his surroundings so he'll take it as the absolute truth. I'll try to convince him that he is somebody else, somewhere else, I'll try to convince him to hurt himself. If it works, then we'll have a useful tool. Control over other people is the most poweful thing, Werner. Of course it could happen that he ignores me, or that he cannot focus enough for me to talk him into hurting himself. Or maybe the drug just isn't strong enough to make him hurt himself. The effect should last for three to four hours, then it'll start to fade and in around six hours after he consumes the pill he'll be back to normal. Exhausted and hungover, but not halluncinating." Wojciechowski had listened to Dr. Ziegler the whole time. His expression hadn't changed; he always had a soft smile on his lips. His smile was different than Nikolai's. Nikolai smiled out of cheeriness and out of charm, the polish doctor smiled out of protest. "Can you give me the little bag of greyish powder? Yes that one, thank you Werner. And the bag of capsules please...exactly." The Auschwitz doctor filled one of the little capsules up with the powder. He was very carefull about it; only filling it half-way up. He closed the capsule, proving how nimble his fingers were. "Fetch me a glass of water, Werner." Werner crossed the room to the sink. There was a cabinet of glasses next to it. He picked a smallish one out, enough for a big gulp to down the pills, filled it with water and returned to the two doctors.
Dr. Ziegler handed Wojciechowski the pill and the glass of water. "Prost." He said. Wojciechowski smiled. He tossed the pill into his mouth and chased it down with the water. He handed the empty glass to Werner directly. Werner put it on the window ledge. "It'll take about half an hour to start working. I'm going to go back to my desk, I need to finish a report. Werner, stay by him and make sure he doesn't try to puke up the pill. If he starts to show signs of hallucinations come to me, but ONLY if half an hour has already passed. He might try to fake the toll of the drug just to get you to leave the room." With this warning he wished Werner good luck and pulled his long gloves off. Why he'd had them on was a mystery to Werner, was the drug so strong that it shouldn't come in contact with skin? He threw the gloves into the trash bin and exited the room, closing the door behind him.
"You're lucky I have a watch, Werner." The Pole said, holding out his wrist for Werner to see. "Because this room doesn't have a clock and you don't have a wristwatch." Werner didn't know if he should answer. He wasn't sure if Wojciechowski would tell Dr. Ziegler that they'd talked and the last thing Werner wanted is for Dr. Ziegler not to like or trust him. "Don't worry, Werner, I won't tell Dr. Ziegler if you talk to me. Why would I? I'm dying for a bit of conversation..." If Wojciechowski hadn't been the man who had almost created a cure for cancer Werner might have been able to stay strong. But Wojciechowski was that man and he was the only reason that Werner had agreed to the position.
"Do you think it's going to work?" Werner asked hesitantly. "I mean, work the way that Dr. Ziegler assumes it will?"
"I don't think he'll be able to guide me. I worked in a hospital for while and I had to deal with men who'd taken this drug. They listened to me for a split second, but they never stayed focused for long. I found it impossible to even convince them that they were where they actually were, I think it would be nearly impossible to convince someone that they were somewhere they weren't...Mesofrim is a very serious drug, it's illegal because it's almost impossible to calm someone down who's on it. The ammount of hallucinations people experience are up to twenty times higher than by other hallucinatives."
"And what about you hurting yourself?"
"I don't think I will. I think I'd much more likely hurt one of you if I fell into an aggressive phase. Of course, it is possible that I hurt myself. But I doubt it would be in the way he told me too. As I said before; I won't be able to focus on what he's saying. I'll be totally out of it."
"Why didn't you tell Ziegler that it won't work?"
"Why would I? If I do he'd do something else, something worse. Have you taken a look in Ziegler's lab journal? I enourage you too, Werner."
Werner picked it up. Along with the aforementioned experiment with the poisioned child he read many other terrible things. Things he could never forget. He must have been engrossed with the journal for a quarter of an hour when all of a sudden, the captured doctor spoke to him.
"Werner, could you please go get Dr. Ziegler?"
"It hasn't been thirty minutes yet." Werner answered after glancing at Wojciechowskis watch.
"In another ten I'll be dead." He replied. "I'm allergic to one of the substances this drug is made of, if I don't get an allergy shot, I'll die." The Polish man was smiling again; which freaked Werner out for the first time. This man was being poisoned and was smiling? "I'm serious Werner."
"Why would you take a drug if you knew you were allergic to it?"
"So that Ziegler would waste a day of experimenting." Wojciechowski answered. The two men looked at each other for a second. Werner decided that he was telling the truth and rushed out to get Dr. Ziegler.