Posted by Lieutenant Dr. Solomon Kane (Medical Research & Development) in Side Sim- R&D Lab- Bait Is Important When Fishing (Tag Bonner)

(snip)

“You just work on the compound and fabricating the data. I’ll handle the other stuff. Including the containment system. This is Research and Development, after all. Would make sense we have a bio-storage and containment unit in here.”

Kane, R&D

Alexis nodded, “I have to get a few things,” and then she left the lab without locking her PaDDs back up, trusting that Solomon would get what he needed and keep them secure. Trust…something Alexis didn’t do with her work. She was gone for the better part of an hour before returning. She cleared space on a back table and placed a large incubator on the table and a full grown bush on the table next to it. She pulled a orange off the bush and walked back over to her main work station and set it down. First was the ear buds, then several beakers, test tubes, petri dishes and several solutions. “Galen erect sound barrier and today let’s have the classic Chinese poems 山海經 (Shan-hai Ching - Classic of Mountains and Seas), and let’s hear it in Mandarin and not the ancient dialect. Oh, and provide the translation on my screen.” She grinned slightly, fully aware that despite the sound barrier Kane could hear the request through the ear buds. As she worked occasionally she would stop, look at the screen, go back a few lines of the poetry and repeat it. Sometimes wrong and sometimes correct and then she’d go back to what she was doing.

She took the orange and peeled it, taking the seeds and taking them back to the incubator and placing them each in a different pot, putting them inside and turned it on. Back at the table Alexis extracted samples of the juice, pulp, and peel and set analysis to run of each in both a Gas Chromatography and with the Mass Spectrometer. Alexis then turned to her old data and transferred the original DNA sequences to the computer and pulled it up on the 3D imager. As she worked a image of a seed changed and altered as she manipulated the DNA strand. The idea was provide the original and then the ‘enhanced’ DNA data, but it would be wrong, but she wanted to make sure it wouldn’t actually provide him any useful data. Alexis wasn’t worried about him showing it to anyone, he wouldn’t risk someone stealing it from him. Murmuring under her breath, “No Buldge McMicro&^%#$ won’t know what he’s looking at,” and she added the altered DNA data to the file she was creating.

Kane, listening to her through the earbuds, laughed out loud and looked back at her over his shoulder. “You are killing me, Bonner.” he said, knowing that she couldn’t hear him except through the earbuds.

She blinked, there was a half second pause in what she was doing as his voice came over the earbuds. What had she said and done that had caused that reaction? Her mind ran back over the last several moments and what she’d said registered. She bit her lip, she’d been muttering while she worked again. She hadn’t even realized what she’d said at the time. That was one of Solomon’s more recent nicknames for him. She glanced over at him and grinned and then went back to work.

Then with nothing to do but wait for the chemical tests to finish she opened the file on the neurons and DNA she’d been working on a week before, took out the samples and started making slides for the microscope.

Bonner, med research

Kane, for his part, was making a customized containment unit for the orange… with a little bit of a present for anyone who decided to tamper with it. As he worked he said under his breath “Hey, Lex. The pneumolysin you are using. Delivery… is it aerosol or liquid? Your a## looks great in those pants. Injection, inhalation, or contact for administration?”

Kane, R&D

She was reading the screen translation again and repeating the poem in Mandarin again at a soft low level so he could hear if she was botching it horribly or actually getting it through the ear buds. Especially since it was lyrical in rhythm and not regular speech. She finished and then stood up, switching her samples out from the case and labeling the slides while she answered him. Her voice dropping further more subvocal, “Liquid, aerosol runs the risk of getting into the air vents when deployed. And stop that, I’m trying to work.” She turned bright red and sat on her stool. The more she was around him the easier it seemed for him to distract her, and she wasn’t complaining but it definitely left her unbalanced. “I was thinking about that, we don’t want anyone to know where he contracted it right? I was thinking contact with the skin of the orange. I’ll alter it and when it comes into contact with human epithelial cells the entire bacterial colony will be totally absorbed. Do you want it fast or slow acting?” She paused and looked around the lab. “I can start once I have a containment unit and bio suit to work with it.”

Bonner, med research