CHAPTER 4-1

Matt couldn’t read in his room because Laura was there. He couldn’t read in the Snug because Joe was there. He finally decided to go to the Shoreline Cafe. Even though he had just eaten the big breakfast with Dr. Frankenstein, he ordered hash browns and more coffee. Then he carefully opened the precious envelope and slid out paper-clipped yellow lined pages, white pages and a cover note. Parts were printed out, parts were in Dr. F’s neat, tiny script with additional notes added in the margins in red ink. It took Matt a few minutes to decipher the handwriting. For a moment he was afraid he wouldn’t be able to read it. But then he caught the hang of it and found he was enjoying having to read slowly.

Dear Matt,

Here is what I wrote thinking of you, as well as a long journal entry I made after Laura’s, what shall I call it—creation? I hope you will find it enlightening. Please do not judge me on literary grounds. I’m trying to tell a story without wasting time on a rewrite. You need not edit, Professor. Just read and then into the shredder it must go. Enjoy! 

F

The Pelican Inn is set up as a safe house. Laura is there and Joe guards her. The experiment of having you, Matt, watch out for her emotional well-being is going to go well I’m sure, a great relief to me since I know Joe could not both guard her and be her lover. Besides, Joe doesn’t have the subtlety to handle the inevitable traumas that will arise as Laura both acclimates to a new time and place but also gets used to not being her old self, if I may put it that way. This is not to criticize Joe, who has skills of another nature beyond imagination. You are our best shot. I admit we are desperate. May I presume your love for Laura, and I dare not distinguish the filmic, the past and the present from the real person here, assures your loyalty? We hope so. Besides, dear Matt, do not take this the wrong way if I say we know you are not sophisticated enough to think of, or more to the point, know how to sell our secret even if you wanted to. I just can’t imagine you contacting the right government agency, or worse, Russian or Mid-Eastern spies or something. Hell, even I couldn’t do that if I wanted to. Joe could, but I trust Joe completely. But back to my narrative.

It was the middle of the night and I was sitting at my roll top desk reading by the flickering light of an oil lantern. The desk is in the far corner of my modern laboratory in the basement of the mansion. I like to surround myself with objects from the 19th century, leather and wood to contrast with metal and glass. But my aesthetic sense is not the point here. The warm pool of lamplight contrasted with the laboratory, which was dark except for spots of white electronic light from humming machines throughout the lab getting work done in the darkness.

I was wearing a red and black rugby shirt and jeans in place of my usual white lab coat, and was reading, yet again, my favorite book: Frankenstein: the Modern Prometheus. Over the years I had engaged in long, theoretical conversations with my fictional mentor and philosophical predecessor, Victor Frankenstein.

Above my desk was a framed picture, a glossy studio shot of Gene Tierney wearing a white blouse. My assistant Curt photographed our Laura and photoshopped the picture, which they substituted for the one of Gene. I never noticed. Laura was amused. It was her idea.

Laura.

I observed my own feelings and conflicts. I took notes in my journal in the flickering light. I’m giving them to you, Matt, in the hopes that I am not sharing too much too soon. I risk overwhelming you.

I’m a scientist who realizes the horror of a futuristic world in which this incredible achievement (Laura: how can I reduce her to an achievement?) can be turned to twisted eugenics by unscrupulous men in power replicating themselves endlessly. Was atomic energy not turned into the atomic bomb? Is Hiroshima not proof of what I fear: humanity’s capacity for common sense and logic lost, to what? To human squabbles, writ large. To the triumph of the primitive brain stem. I shudder at the image of a world in which many copies of some dictator could be let loose, like a virus gone astray. Pick your abomination: It does not matter what twisted demigod is in power. God and the Devil, the Devil and God, take the even take the odd. Infinitely repeating mirror images of self-righteously inspired religious terrorists dooming humankind to annihilation.

And yet, is Laura not the greatest achievement of science and art? Excuse me if I sometimes slip into seeing her as that instead of as the living, sweet lovely being that she is.

I love my nickname, Dr. Frankenstein, the man who gave life to inert human flesh harvested by grave robbers and sewn together with big sloppy stitches. I was recently on a surgeon’s table having a routine basal cell carcinoma removed from my nose. The curse of children who loved the sun. While I reclined on the surgeon’s table and he stitched my face, I told him the story of Victor Frankenstein carefully sewing his monster into a human. An amusing vignette, everything considered. You will note the scar on my nose. Digitally replicated, our Laura had no stitches to heal.

And I love Laura. She is in some ways my own child.

Matt took a break from reading to sit and think.

CHAPTER 4-2

Matt, I am going to print for you some passages of Victor Frankenstein reflecting, from Mary Shelley’s book. You probably know the story well, but maybe you will want to reread it now. This part is when Dr. Frankenstein realizes he has created life.

"It was on a dreary night of November that I beheld the accomplishment of my toils. With an anxiety that almost amounted to agony, I collected the instruments of life around me, that I might infuse a spark of being into the lifeless thing that lay at my feet. It was already one in the morning; the rain pattered dismally against the panes, and my candle was nearly burnt out, when, by the glimmer of the half-extinguished light, I saw the dull yellow eye of the creature open; it breathed hard, and a convulsive motion agitated its limbs.

"How can I describe my emotions at this catastrophe, or how delineate the wretch whom with such infinite pains and care I had endeavoured to form? His limbs were in proportion, and I had selected his features as beautiful. Beautiful!--Great God! His yellow skin scarcely covered the work of muscles and arteries beneath; his hair was of a lustrous black, and flowing; his teeth of a pearly whiteness; but these luxuriances only formed a more horrid contrast with his watery eyes, that seemed almost of the same  as the dun white sockets in which they were set, his shrivelled complexion and straight black lips.

 Dr. F wrote in the margin – Matt, this is what keeps me up at night. Keep reading.

"The different accidents of life are not so changeable as the feelings of human nature. I had worked hard for nearly two years, for the sole purpose of infusing life into an inanimate body. For this I had deprived myself of rest and health. I had desired it with an ardour that far exceeded moderation; but now that I had finished, the beauty of the dream vanished, and breathless horror and disgust filled my heart. Unable to endure the aspect of the being I had created, I rushed out of the room, and continued a long time traversing my bedchamber, unable to compose my mind to sleep."

Another margin note-- Good luck, Victor Frankenstein, trying to sleep ever again. And then the text continued:

Matt--do you sleep well? Should I? Matt--my perfect Laura is the opposite of a monster.

Mary Shelley's creation could not live in the world into which he was thrown. Can Laura? The monster was flawed. Does Laura have a flaw that will reveal itself in time? I worried most about the madness that later in life led Gene Tierney to walk out on a ledge with jumping on her mind and sent her to repeated electroshock therapy. But that was the madness of Gene Tierney and if it manifested now, it would not be because of my replication procedure. If Laura did show signs of madness, could modern drug therapy save her? Gene Tierney died of emphysema from smoking which she did to lower her voice for films. Laura will not smoke because we know that and won’t let her. She listens to us that much, at least for now. Even though she doesn’t know our reason for restricting this habit because she doesn’t know that Gene died that way. That’s your job to tell her. She will inevitably die of something else.  Nature nurture nurture nature.

Matt-- you understand about Gene Tierney’s madness. How to tell Laura may be the hardest part of your job with her. We all have to work together to figure how to save her from that, if we see it beginning. And to save her from a lot of other health issues as well. Laura need not repeat Gene, unless there are genetic abnormalities beyond our control. Whether to make DNA changes prior to cloning a human is an ethical issue. You can read the debates on the Kurzweil website. Do you know the theoretical longevity work of Ray Kurzweil? Do read it. Ray is a wizard. I admire his work. I would love to be able to share mine with him. Of course I can’t. But I digress.

I read, once again, the message of the monster to Victor Frankenstein:

"Cursed, cursed creator! Why did I live? Why, in that instant, did I not extinguish the spark of existence which you had so wantonly bestowed?”

Will Laura ever curse me for her creation?

I kept going over and over in my mind the night that I completed Gene Tierney’s replication and Laura was, what, born? Laura came to life? Took her first breath? I took out my journal and began to write my memory of that night. I would have to destroy it, but perhaps writing down what happened would ease my mind. But I didn’t destroy it--or rather haven’t yet--though I plan to. Instead I give it to you. Am I hoping for your understanding? Joe and Laura understand. But I find myself depending on your what? Forgiveness? No, if I must be honest, I want your appreciation. That which I can never get from my colleagues or the rest of the world.

So here is what I wrote.

Please do not judge me too harshly.

CHAPTER 4-3

It was almost one in the morning. A fierce thunderstorm was raging outside. I was alone. The team had gone off to celebrate the latest cloning victory, the body of a young man who had been hit by a car, #15. He had been autopsied and disposed of. They were reaching the point where there was nothing more to be learned from these routine replications.

The cavernous lab was dark except for the blinking blue and white lights on various machines. In the center of the room in a coffin-shaped aquarium filled with amniotic-like saline floated a slim white body with billowing black hair. I remember I was wearing blue pajamas, a dark blue terry robe, and bedroom slippers with a happy puppy face, a gift from my niece.

This newest project, the one I was working on that night, December 21, was somewhat different from the previous ones. I was experimenting with a replication using DNA taken from a living person, not freshly harvested from a recent corpse. In this case it was a fragment of hair and dandruff from a hairbrush that had belonged to Gene Tierney that one of the guys on vacation in California had snatched from a Hollywood museum. The idea of using DNA from a film star from the 1940s meant that I could see her as she was in movies. Not exactly a living person—not to violate my rule against knowing the person I was replicating—but a person who was alive when the sample was donated and is dead now. It felt like a middle ground. And I would know how her medical history played out from her biography. I was also experimenting with esoteric energetic fields in ways I’ll tell you about later. Do you know anything about esoteric energy field theory? No—of course you don’t. But you will. Indeed you will.

I hadn’t anticipated the intense emotion I felt as her body filled out in the tank. Over the past few days, we had laid down various systems beginning with skeletal, then cardiovascular and respiratory, and basic wiring—long spiderweb neurons. We added flesh and fat. Curt, my most gifted assistant, had done some of the more technical work—eyes, hands, and brain. Each clone progressed faster than the one before. The bugs had been worked out.

In some way while watching Gene’s movies I felt that in a way I knew her.  Better even than people I know now who are living. At each step I contemplated aborting the replication. I was entranced yet horrified. We had never worried about informed consent. After all, we were just walking off with a scrap of DNA. For the first time I thought of how upset a family would be if they knew their departed loved one was floating in effigy in a tank. Among ghouls. But why was I suddenly thinking this way? Hold it together, I told myself.

That night I had one routine of the program still to run. The final step, the brain. I hesitated. I knew I should wait until morning when everyone was there. Why did this seem like a private project, mine alone? It was all my work. None of the lab assistants had been involved in the science except Curt.

But there was something wrong. My usual scientific detachment was gone. I felt a range of emotions. Mostly fear. Perhaps it was because of the violent weather. Or because I was alone in the lab. But no— it was because the biological concoction in the tank looked so uncannily like the woman I had been watching in movies for the past few weeks. I could visualize her kissing Tyrone Power, riding a horse, dancing, arguing with Humphrey Bogart. And I had read her autobiography. Her success in film, her marriage, her poor brain-damaged child, yes—her electroshock therapy. I knew that the hairbrush had been taken from the movie set of Laura, which was made in 1944. When she was twenty-three.

What remained to be done was the most delicate part—the final brain wiring of the prefrontal cortex. Then, the exciting moment when the program asked "Finish? Yes. No." One keystroke and everything integrated, the result of thousands of parallel processors working in tandem.

I had finished the skin that morning and stared in awe at the result. From the meaty mass of previous days, the woman-form in the box became Gene Tierney, so perfect that for a moment I was breathless. But of course this was only a very precise replica of Gene Tierney. Just her body.

I made myself a cup of coffee and settled into the long and tedious process of monitoring the computer screen as numbers rolled by. The program would complete around one o’clock and then I could go upstairs and get some sleep. I was tempted to break my own rule and let the program run by itself. #16 was predictable. I could sleep, have breakfast and come back to press that final enter. And then I would have a perfect corpse of Gene Tierney. To do what with? Check off that #16 was just fine and leave it to his assistants to dispose of yet another body?

I stared into the tank. Seeing the perfect face saturated every cell of my body with melancholy. Aware of a feeling I could best describe as acquisitive, I said aloud, "Frankenstein. Be a scientist! What do you want to do? Take this upstairs and put it in the freezer?" I noted that I called myself Frankenstein. And the perfect Gene was “it”. Was this whole project getting out of control?

But there she was. This goddess floated, eyes shut.

I felt love. I ran my hands through my hair. This is fucking scientific necrophilia. But she was so beautiful. This is science. But rogue science. Have we done anything illegal? Will I ever have to testify, maybe even do hard time in maximum security for this godlike experiment??

I returned to my post in front of the computer and caught up on medical journals for the next few hours. Finally, the program flashed up the final question. Finish? Yes? No?

I tapped my fingers lightly a few times on the mouse and then slowly moved the cursor to Yes. I rubbed the tip of my index finger with my thumb.

It was 12:45. I decided to wait and do it exactly at one o’clock, Mary Shelley’s hour.

I enjoyed the weather’s cooperation. Lightning flashed just as I hit enter.

Across the screen ran the words “Final protocol initiated. You go, dude.” This last from my smartass lab guys.

CHAPTER 4-4

The purple scroll bar crept across the screen recording percent complete: 25, 50, 75. This last step, the final step of putting it all together, was fast. I had been up for thirty-five hours. I was too tired to think about tomorrow, the autopsy. Who would do it? I couldn't. The perfection. The body in the tank. The corpus delicti. I decided then not to allow an autopsy. Who was there to tell me what I could and could not do? No one. This experiment was mine alone from start to gruesome completion.

I was just finishing up and heading for bed when a loud thrashing and splashing made me spin in my chair to see what could not be. In the tank, the body was moving in all directions, violently.

Not possible!

I leaped to my feet. Before me, Gene Tierney's face, her eyes terrified, her mouth forming the word – HELP! Her black hair swirling around her in the water. Her limbs thrashing.

The tank was locked. Why did we lock the tanks? It’s not as if dead bodies would rise up like zombies. I ran to get the axe that was with the fire extinguisher. I smashed at the tank with all my strength. Nothing. Again. Nothing. I screamed.

The body spun in the tank. She looked at me.

Gene.

With what seemed like superhuman strength and a cry of AAAIIIEEEE I slammed the axe one more time onto the glass.

More cracks.

Gene spun in the water, her hands reached for me and then she was still. Was she dead? Had she been alive?

Again. The tank smashed and water flooded out. Glass cuts, bleeding. Glass everywhere. Water cascaded to the floor. A demolished fish tank.

She was a mermaid.

I took from her body the biggest shards of glass and raised her from the tank. Everything was slippery with blood and saline. I clasped her and pulled her from the tank. I fell to the floor with her on top of me. I was aware of her breasts.

I rolled her over joined my lips with hers in urgent CPR.

Again. Again.

Finally she gasped, came to life. She spewed up tank water. And then she passed out. She was blue. Delicate, light blue.

Hypothermia! I checked her pulse. Thready but there.

I ripped out more glass. I took off my blue terrycloth bathrobe and wrapped it around her. It was soaked with blood. I was bleeding, too.

I lifted her light body and ran for the door. Across the dark lab. Up the stairs. First floor. Second floor. Third floor, my apartment. Gasping for air. Heart pounding. I was aware of tightly clasping her perfect, naked body. What would I do if she woke up? Oh God! What would I do if she didn’t wake up?

I threw towels on the floor of the bathroom, put her body on the towels. Began to fill the tub.

Hot water, no warm. How to treat hypothermia? Proper temperature for cooled patients after heart transplants? Google? No time.

Attorney: How did Ms. Tierney die?

Expert witness: She drowned, she bled to death, she died of hypothermia. Life span of a few minutes.

Judge: Guilty. Murder in the first degree. Sentenced to death. Hang the monster.

I put the Gene-body in the claw-footed tub.

When she wakes up, she will feel at home in such an old-fashioned tub. Please wake up.

Little rivulets of red blood threaded into the water and dissolved to pink.

I put her arms over the edge of the tub to keep her from slipping in. Her dark hair was plastered to her head.

I checked her for serious wounds. There was a cut near her wrist. Close to the vein. Lucky. In the medicine cabinet I found bandages and antiseptic. I bandaged her wrist. Then I pulled a small piece of glass out of my chest and bandaged myself.

I added more hot water. The blue tinge was no longer visible but she was still deathly pale.

I let out some water and added more.

She must not wake up in a tub of bloody water or her first thought will be that she tried suicide. Especially with the bandage on her wrist.

Was she in a coma? Was she brain dead? What would they do with her if she was brain dead? Could a newly created person made of what? just chemicals--donate organs? We are all made of chemicals. What’s the difference? So much to think about. Not now.

I took a moment and sat on the edge of the tub, willing her to wake up.

Suddenly her eyes opened.

She stared at me with the cold, suspicious look that I remembered from the scene in Laura when Laura finds Detective McPherson in her apartment. And she said the same thing in that cool, suspicious tone.

"Who are you?”

Dr. Frankenstein had written in the margin in red ink:  “Hey, Matt. If you have read this far, I bet this is your favorite scene, too.”

I couldn’t speak. After a few moments of staring at me, she passed out. I waited to see if she would wake up again. Was she dead?

I turned the room temperature up. My drafty mansion was cold. Then I drained the water out of the tub and rinsed her. I lifted her dead weight out of the tub. I dried her with a towel and dressed her in a pair of my pajamas and carried her to my bed. She was breathing. Her pulse was normal. I didn’t dare leave her to get a blood pressure cuff. Other than that, all vital signs were normal. She rolled over and curled up.

I panicked. I called Joe and left a message to get there as soon as he could. “Joe, I mean get here seriously fast. Come up to the bedroom. Don’t ask questions. Emergency.” I went down and unlocked the door. When Joe arrived and saw this beautiful woman in my bed, he didn’t know what to say. I said, “She’s alive, Joe. She spoke. She’s one of our experiments and she spoke. She’s breathing. I made her from DNA from a person who was alive at the time of the sample. That can’t make a difference. But here she is alive. I think.”

Joe asked me who she was. “That’s Gene Tierney,” I said. “As she was when she had just finished making the movie Laura.”  

“Who’s Gene Tierney?” he asked.

“The actress, you imbecile. Don’t you watch old movies?”

But he didn’t. He didn’t recognize her.

We rehearsed different stories to tell her if she woke up again. She was in a movie. She’d been in an accident. We removed objects from the room that were modern and papers that had a date after 1944. Fortunate that I liked old things. We stayed with her for forty-eight hours, leaving only for pee breaks or to take turns getting something from the kitchen. Joe locked the room with the broken tank and flooded floor, never mind the missing most recent body. The lab assistants went about their work. When Curt asked about the Tierney project, Joe put him off.

Then she woke up. She saw Joe and smiled. I had a thought: this is what love at first sight looks like.

“Hi,” said Joe.

“Hi,” said Gene.

And then, against all our dubious doomed-for-failure rehearsed scenarios, Joe said, “Gene, I’m Joe. You’re part of an experiment. You agreed to be the first person to travel to the future. You are, right now, in the 21st century, completely healthy and ready for the best role of your life.”

My heart raced. How had my career as a scientist led to this moment? And now Joe had blown it. Damn him for saying that.

Already I was wondering if this person was in some way really Gene Tierney and if the other Gene might have ceased to exist because of what we did. She didn’t say anything for a long time. She looked confused. Then she smiled at Joe. “Good for me. I guess I made it.” And they beamed at each other. Then she said, “I’m really hungry, Joe. Could you get me a hamburger?”

CHAPTER 4-5

If I expected some kind of breakdown when Gene found out where she was and the date, I have to give credit to Joe for this audacious victory. Never mind there is another Gene Tierney who lived out her life from 1944 on. Never mind we haven’t a clue if she is healthy or will live more than a few minutes. Never mind we haven’t the faintest idea what to do with her or how to explain who she is. Never mind this whole thing is hallucinatory.  I was just thankful we didn’t have to dispose of her body.

Promising her a hamburger later, Joe went to the kitchen to make a three egg mushroom and cheese omelette. While we waited, I said I would rather not talk until Joe was back. Gene smiled and fell back asleep. I was dizzy to the point of fainting. I couldn’t believe she seemed to be enjoying herself. I realized she probably didn’t believe the time travel story. She thought she was still in Hollywood in 1944 and this was some kind of movie set thing. So the transition felt totally natural. As a man I was freaking out, yet I maintained some scientific observation.

When Joe came back with a plate of food, Gene was waking up.

She said, sleepily, “So describe this new role.”

Joe didn’t miss a beat. “You’ll take on a new 21st century identity. By the way, what is your full name and birthdate?”

“Gene Eliza Tierney and I was born November 19, 1920.”

“And what is today’s date?”

“June 30, 1944. We finished filming Laura yesterday and the studio threw a party.”

“So you are twenty-three?”

“Yes.

“Great. One more question. What did you have for breakfast?”

She looked suspicious. “Why all these questions? But OK- I had coffee and orange juice. The studio starves me to keep me thin. Oleg had Spam. I hate the stuff. Because I eat so little, Oleg uses most of our ration stamps.”

“Ration stamps?” Joe said.

Frankenstein added quickly, “She means war food ration stamps, Joe.”

“Oh. Right.”

“So for this role,” Gene said, back to business, “Do I have a new name?”

“You bet.

Joe paused, relishing the moment.

“Laura.”

Gene clapped her hands with delight.

“Call me Laura, then.”

If we were concerned about Laura’s mental health in those first days, we also watched her physical health like hawks. After about a week she started to complain of fatigue. I tested her blood and found her to be seriously anemic. And she had a fairly rare blood type. Joe disappeared and the next day came back with an ample supply of blood in packages in a cooler. After a transfusion, her vibrancy returned. I never asked Joe what contacts and what blood banks had been responsible for finding and procuring this life-saving blood. It felt like a scene from a vampire movie.

I put down my pen, relieved to have written my feelings and memories of this event. Even if they were to be shredded as they must eventually be.

CHAPTER 4-6

The manuscript continued in blue ink on notebook paper.

On the flight to San Francisco yesterday, I watched key scenes from my collection of Frankenstein movies on my laptop. Over and over I played a scene in which a corpse patched together from assorted grave-robbed body parts is lifted with screeching chains to the high ceiling of the clandestine laboratory in a violent storm, to be given life by a bolt of lightning. After the corpse-tray is lowered to the ground, the camera pans in on the monster's hand, hanging limply.  A pause. The hand moves. It lives!  Victor Frankenstein jubilates. "I am God!"  and -- "What have I done?"  "What HAVE I done?"

In my spacious first class airline seat, wearing headphones, I jubilated as well, feeling safe and free and anonymous in airspace between New York and San Francisco. The Frankenstein myth was nineteenth-century fiction, the science fiction of its day. Science fiction of one time becomes real science of another. Pandemic movies become real pandemics, as we know from the Corona virus. Laura was real science. Safe I felt, that is, until the woman in the seat next to me noticed what I was watching and lectured me about the abomination of man playing God.

Consigning my monster to darkness with a keystroke, I shrunk in my seat muttering, "Madame, you are correct. We will all burn in Hell."

I arrived at the San Francisco airport, rented a car and drove to the Pelican Inn.  I checked in and took my duffle bag (obviously having left home the blue Lands End duffle with "Frankenstein" in Germanic letters given to me by amused lab assistants), my bulging book bag, and my laptop to my room, where I finished this manuscript. Tonight I will have dinner at the Pelican with you and Joe and Laura.

The End!

Matt finished reading the manuscript. He was overwhelmed. What a story!  And what candor, what trust, for Dr. Frankenstein to share this saga with someone he barely knows. Me, Matt. At first he thought Dr. Frankenstein must be mad to give all this to him, but then he felt himself rising to the occasion. I can do this, he thought. Oh, how much I want to do this.

He paid for the untouched hash browns. He looked for Frida but she was not working. He returned to the inn.

Dr. Frankenstein was sitting in a chair on the front lawn. Matt sat down in the chair next to him.

“Are you in?”

“Absolutely. 100%.”

“Dear boy. Let the games begin."