CHAPTER 5-1
The next week was the happiest of Matt’s life. During the day, Joe, Laura and Dr. F were his companions. He hiked in the hills with Joe, played chess with Dr. F who, he suspected, occasionally let him win. He ate the delicious food with abandon. And even then he was losing weight from the long walks. The inn was closed to the public so the menu was simplified. The chef interviewed the four of them about their food preferences and cooked to accommodate them, adding special treats. Laura and Joe preferred a light fare. Matt was a meat and potatoes guy. Frankenstein seemed not to notice or care about what he ate, though he ate huge quantities of everything. He said he needed a lot of saturated fat to feed his brain.
Matt began his project with Laura by reading web pages about her and all her film friends, before and after 1944. When he googled Gene, the number of hits had exceeded one million a long time ago.
From Amazon he ordered her ghost-written autobiography from 1977 (his copy was at home). He watched YouTubes featuring Gene Tierney, including the trailer from Laura.
Matt and Laura moved to the larger Room 1 with a bigger bed and Joe took Room 5. Sometimes Laura rolled over and cuddled with him in her sleep. Although he had expected this arrangement to be challenging, for some reason it wasn’t. It was just the way things were and he accepted it all, everything.
Of course it wasn’t that she lacked sex appeal. To him, she was the most beautiful, sexiest woman who had ever lived. Matt spent a lot of time analyzing how he was able to share a bed with her with such asexual equanimity. Was she like a sister? Was it an incest taboo? Was it that she was Joe’s lover and he an honorable man? Was it that he was afraid of being rejected? Was it that he was so much older, that he feared his chubby self showing up as ludicrous having sex with the most beautiful woman in 1940s Hollywood?
After a lot of long walks pondering this most puzzling conundrum, he concluded that the real reason for his hands-off ability was that he idealized her. She was his black-and-white screen goddess. He felt reverence. That made him stop short. Was this a Madonna-complex thing? That was close. She was, after all, Gene Tierney, the Gene Tierney who wandered through hundreds of pages of notes for his unpublished biography. But she was also Laura, his contemporary. What about that? Was it that he was confused about her dual existence—the historical vs. the present? That he still wondered if Laura really thought of herself as imperious Gene and was only acting the part of nice Laura? Could he ever have sex with a woman who had slept with Howard Hughes? Or Jack Kennedy??? How could he sexually share a woman with Jack Kennedy? It made his head spin. His self-critical self screamed at him that he should GROW A PAIR—where are your balls, you pathetic wimp! But the answer was there, clear as spring water on a sunny day. He was romantically in love with her. As much as she was a real person, she was also to him, celluloid. As much as she was vibrant color, she was also black-and-white. The idea of in any way violating her trust made his testosterone meter fall to zero. And so it was that they shared a bed and he stopped worrying about it.
CHAPTER 5-2
Matt knew sometime soon he would have to begin telling Laura what happened to Gene, but not yet. No one was in a rush. About anything. Matt wanted this sweet interlude to go on forever, relishing it even more because he knew it could not.
At breakfast, Joe said, “Matt, I want to explain to you about the strudel drug.”
“That’s a weird name for a drug. You mean the stuff I smoked when I first arrived, the one that sent me into such a bizarre other world? That made me think I was going mad? Yes. What is it? Why strudel? What does it do? Is it dangerous? Is it necessary for Laura to take? Is it addictive? And what was it doing on the beach wrapped up in a chicken? For starts.”
“OK, here goes. The brain has many serotonin receptors that can get out of whack. Science has developed lots of drugs to balance this system, but it’s all hit or miss. No one knows which drug, what mixtures of drugs, to give to which patient. Other drugs treat imbalances that lead to bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. Psychedelics open up avenues of the brain. Narcotics induce euphoria. Smart drugs kick thinking up a notch. In short, medical and recreational experimentation with brain chemistry is in its wee beginning stage. The brain is a monster of a computer. It uses more than its share of the body’s calories.
“And Frankenstein discovered something amazing?”
“Yes. He found a way to correct imbalances and random firings in the brain as a whole. Have you ever used a disk utility to clean up, defrag, your hard drive?”
“Frequently.”
“Then you’ve watched the diagram as all the Swiss cheese fragments gradually get fixed. Sometimes if it hasn’t been done in a long time, it can take hours.”
“So Frankenstein’s drug is like a disk utility for the brain. After taking microdoses, we feel very different-- balanced, smart, emotionally level. In a word, happy. His drug is the secret to the real, true happiness everyone seems to seek but never attains.”
“Like the soma drug in Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World.”
“Exactly. But it doesn’t limit the range of emotion as Huxley’s soma did. It enhances it. Dr. F needed a name for it and just then he came upon a quotation from James Joyce that really tickled him. Our Dr. F has a wicked sense of humor. And he loves Joyce.
“By the age of 45, I knew I could no longer start a sentence with a mention of strudel. My fingers would want to do it but my mind just wouldn’t react.
“So he called it the strudel drug. And we’ve gotten in the habit of taking it with a sweet of some kind, usually strudel. Apple, peach, plum—whatever."
“So if that’s true, why did I get so messed up when I smoked the saffron threads?”
“It isn’t meant to be smoked, you nincompoop. You overdid it. The way he takes it, it’s time-released and anything excess is naturally discarded by the body.”
“And the beach episode?”
“When we first set up the Pelican as a safe house, Frankenstein was paranoid. We played a little joke on him, partly to relax him. He was afraid the mail was being monitored and he didn’t want any of us to fly with it and risk getting arrested. It does have some similarities to a controlled substance. So we arranged to mail it from a post office outside Long Island to my friend Stefan in Mendocino. He was sailing down the coast in his boat, Tango. So we wrapped the drug in the chicken statue, a cute little Maltese Falcon detail, and he dropped it at Tennessee Valley on a flotation device. That’s where bootleggers used to drop their booze. We had timed the currents. Frankenstein loved the whole plan. We never knew if he was on to us.”
“And me?”
“You were arriving at the same time and you just happened to take your unplanned swim then. I was hiding out in my wetsuit so nothing was going to happen to you. When you took the box back to the inn, we decided to let it all play out. We never thought you would find the drug and we certainly didn’t think you would smoke it. I mean, seriously, Matt, we had it labeled from the animal disease center. What were you thinking?’
Matt looked down and blushed.
“Anyway,” Joe continued, “we decided you might as well meet Laura then. And the rest was just us having some fun. We never meant any harm.”
“I thought I was losing my mind. And I didn’t like being kidnapped. And . . .” he paused, afraid he might cry.
Joe put his hand over Matt’s on the table.”
“I’m really sorry, buddy. It was childish and mean and we really meant you no harm.”
They were silent a long time.
Then Joe said with a laugh, “But, omigod, it was fun.”
Matt didn’t know what to say. Maybe Joe was just a bully.
“We kept Dr. F apprised of what was going on with the bizarre adventures we were creating for you. It was Dr. F who decided enough was enough. We wanted to amuse you, not drive you crazy. Are we forgiven?”
Matt answered truthfully.
“I don’t really know if you are.”
“The point is, if you want to start taking daily micro dose strudel drug with us, you are welcome to.”
Matt didn’t hesitate.
“Hell, yes.”
CHAPTER 5-3
Dr. Frankenstein walked to the beach and climbed the hill as far as the wooden bench that overlooked the ocean. Early for his meeting with Joe, he used the time to reflect and meditate. His reverie was interrupted when he felt a gentle hand on his shoulder and someone sliding onto the bench beside him.
"Dr. Frankenstein, I presume?”
Sweaty from his run from Tennessee Valley, Joe sat down next to Dr. Frankenstein.
For a number of minutes the two men were silent.
Then they looked at each other for a long time. The tension was that of burly wrist-wrestlers, straining to win. The first to look away, Frankenstein, was the first to speak.
"Could you do it, Joe? If it came to that, could you do it?" He stared out to sea.
Joe countered: "Could you, Dr. F?"
A long pause.
"If I felt we were sure to be caught and Laura taken prisoner to be studied in a lab someplace, and her secret used to dreadful purposes, military mayhem, I would want to know there was a plan in place, a plan I trusted."
"So you would be safe? That isn't like you."
"No, of course not, Joe. So she would be safe.”
“But if it was absolutely certain there was no other solution . . . You would consider termination?”
Frankenstein felt the word go right through his heart. Joe’s directness was necessary but not welcome.
"Yes. My cover as an over-the-hill doddering old over-funded government servant is intact. I'm a failure with a Frankenstein complex, who can't even clone that field mouse. Yes, I know the talk. As long as no one finds Laura. But if that happens, I'm the only one who knows the science. If they find Laura, then . . . "
"Then what, Dr. F?"
"Then I would have to, you know. Do the deed. And then bite down on the old cyanide tooth. Or something."
CHAPTER 5-4
Frankenstein invited Matt to have tea with him on the lawn. The chef relished making special sweets for Dr. Frankenstein's afternoon tea. Today was sugar-laced Queen cakes and Moroccan tea from the old Pelican Inn menu.
"So we meet for high tea," said Matt.
"Low tea. Outside, low table. That's where the name comes from, the table height. Ask anything, Matt. To you, I’m an open book.”
"OK. When you replicate your morgue bodies, they're in the same time. Gene Tierney's sample was deposited more than a half century ago. How did you do that?"
Frankenstein's mischievous smile showed how much he expected to relish this two-person seminar.
He dropped the bomb without preamble: "Time travel."
“You're kidding."
"Of course I’m kidding. There’s no such thing as time travel. At least not linear time travel as you may think of it, but Einstein gave us a new way of looking at time and space, new definitions of past and future that in various contexts can be compressed, twisted, reversed.’
Frankenstein continued.
“Let me put it succinctly, if I can. Science expands in baby steps and leaps, right? There was Copernicus, Edison, Einstein, Eastern mystics, pick whom you will as game-changers. Imagine what a change electricity made to our concept of the possible. Today there‘s the CERN linear accelerator, quantum theory, the Hubble telescope, string theory, parallel universes, dark energy, new additions to the table of elements, worm holes, space fabric, various definitions of dimensions. How many dimensions do you think we know about?"
"Eleven," Matt guessed, adding to what he had last heard. “Although I don’t go beyond the basic three physical dimensions plus time myself.”
"Scientific American just published an article saying there were ten. Sloppy writing, that, if you ask me. But yes, eleven is what most physicists agree on now. I think number twelve is in the wings and may explain how Laura can be here, a half-century plus later. But that’s a story for another day.”
“You’re the Einstein of today,” Matt said, recalling Laura’s analogy when they were talking about writing a film script.
Frankenstein paused. "There's no need for me to be modest here, when time is short. You know I'm smart.” He knocked on his head. “Maybe even close to Albert in the cellules grises, the grey matter. But I have three things he didn't have. What I just said, cumulative knowledge to the present, everything post-Einstein. Plus the interconnectivity possible with the Internet, instant access and collegial relationships with the best brains in many disciplines. But one thing that supercharges it all, makes it possible for me to make unique connections."
Matt guessed. ”The strudel drug."
"Yes-- but my own special batch. Brains use a small part of their capacity. From time to time I take on more real estate, so to speak, between my ears with the strudel drug. And burn more energy. Well, you may note that I eat a lot.”
“You really do.”
“And don’t gain weight.”
“Because your brain needs all that energy.”
“Yes.”
Matt had a momentary whim to steal a few saffron threads of Dr. F's special concoction but he immediately knew it would probably fry his brain and make him crazier than Howard Hughes was at the end. Matt had been rereading about Hughes in Gene’s autobiography. Frankenstein smiled. "Don't even think of it." Matt blushed, wishing once again that he could control that.
"Now think about the CERN linear accelerator. Operant word: linear. Many scientists are curious about the first trillionth of a second after the Big Bang. I myself fancy contemplating this hypothetical question -- what about a trillionth of a second before the Big Bang? Or multiple Big Bangs in parallel universes? As long as you base the imagery of your physics on a linear model with a starting point, well, that's where you are, that’s how you think. And even if that’s what happened, you’re still basing your hypothesis on the one personal biological model we all know and live--our beginning--conception, gestation, birth, baby, and so forth until The End. So ask what if the trillionth of a second after the Big Bang came first? Or simultaneously? What if there are on-going Big Bangs creating more rapidly expanding stuff? There goes your linear concept. I’m over-simplifying but you catch the drift. Einstein allowed us to collapse time and space in ways that are just being explored.”
"So you put a lot of things together. In an interdisciplinary way,” Matt said.
“Yes. I’ll tell you more tomorrow. But let me give you an assignment. Google, read, watch YouTubes about Rupert Sheldrake.”
CHAPTER 5-5
Matt did his homework. When he met Dr. F the next day, he reported that one of Sheldrake’s talks had been removed from YouTube because his thoughts were considered crazy pseudoscience. Matt read the debate.
“Sheldrake seems a little whacko,” he said.
“Actually he's just ahead of his time.. Today’s science fiction is tomorrow’s science--but the opposite is true, too--today’s cutting edge science finds it’s way into science fiction. Our Laura would make a fine sci-fi story, wouldn’t she? Or not, sorry. I didn’t meant to go there. Touchy. I know you would like to write about us.
"Sheldrake has proposed what he calls morphic field theory or morphonic resonance. In a nutshell, he says there’s a certain energetic, information-laden field that surrounds living beings. How do you explain that a bird hatches and without being taught it knows how to fly in formation and where and when to migrate? Is that in the DNA, that knowledge?
“Most intriguing is his idea that morphic fields are non-material regions of influence that appear physically in different times and places, wherever and whenever physical conditions are appropriate for their replication. Morphic resonance involves transmission of causal influences through time and space. Let that one sink in.
“For example: if you replicated a genome from a DNA sample taken from a living person and created a perfect physical body copy, would that be an adequate physical condition to engage morphic resonance?” Frankenstein was enjoying himself with his new student.
Matt was scrambling to understand if Dr. F was telling him a secret about Laura.
“Are you saying that’s what explains Laura?”
“It is a tiny, tiny understated patch of a twisted explanation, but good enough for now. Just so that you are open to considering that the concept may be workable. One more thing.”
"Enough. I am so dizzy.”
“We used DNA taken from corpses to replicate the people before Laura. Ergo they did not connect with a living morphic field. This is probably way too much to take in all at once. If you are to be Laura’s tutor, I wanted you to have an inkling of the bigger picture. By the way, do you know where memories are stored in the brain?”
“No.”
“Right, well, neuroscientists have different theories about that. Sheldrake says memory lives outside the body in the morphic field.”
“Dr. F, that seems really crazy. Do we walk around with memories swirling around our heads like bees? I did once read about akashic records--akasha being a Sanskrit word meaning sky or space or ether. According to this theory, all knowledge of human experience, all human memory as well as the history of the cosmos, is encoded in the fabric of all existence, like a hologram. I guess that would include Jung’s collective unconscious.”
Frankenstein shrugged.
They were silent for a bit.
“So, Dr. F. Are you telling me you believe all of this? And expect me to as well?”
Frankenstein laughed loudly. Matt loved his laugh. He seemed to find humor in everything.
“Of course not. I don’t believe any of it. I’m a scientist and I only believe what I can prove. Everything I’ve told you seems whacko to me. Sheldrake looks like a nutcase.”
“So, I’m completely confused,” Matt said.
“Here’s the thing. Our Laura woke up in my tank with Gene’s consciousness, her memory, perfectly Gene down to that last moment when she was brushing her hair. Something I did with my replicating process, with the super power of an enormous bank of parallel computers, made that possible.
“And here’s the kicker. I haven’t a clue about any of it. So you see why I don’t want to show the military how to do this. And I don’t want to go about willy-nilly making more human copies. I’m a clueless old scientist way over his head. But I know one thing.”
“What?” Matt waited for the one thing. And Frankenstein kept him waiting before he said,
“We’re fortunate to have our Laura. I’ve stopped asking questions about how and why. I suppose it’s how people feel when they make a baby. A miracle in one way, routine biology in another. I wouldn’t know about that. So now we just have to keep her safe for as long as we can.”
“Does Joe know about morphic resonance through collapsed time and space?”
“Joe’s a practical guy. He just loves Laura. And me. And now you. And he would die for us. He’s not a theoretical guy, our Joe. But here-- have some more of this delicious Queen cake."
CHAPTER 5-6
The next day Matt brought a new burning topic to the afternoon tea with Dr. F.
"I have another question about your,” he waved his hands around, “your, um, creation of Laura."
"OK."
"Well, you say you replicated her DNA and created an exact copy using chemicals in a 3D printing process."
"Yes."
"And yesterday you told me you replicated her entire whatever-you-want-to-call it -- memory and energy field. In some material way."
"Yes. We know our dear Laura is much more than a few twisted strands of DNA and a lot of chemistry. What is your question, dear boy?" Frankenstein was enjoying having a student, especially one who was not a scientist.
"So I'm wondering what else you replicated and how you did it. For example, I've been reading that the human body has 1 trillion cells but an average person has 10 trillion gut microbes. Some estimates are many times higher. So did you also replicate all Gene's microbes? If they're necessary for life, how could she live without them?"
"You might say, I replicated the entire package that is Gene, all the cells, including, apparently, something somewhat abstract in addition to her physical body."
"Microbes and all?"
"Microbes and all. Remember in Startrek when Kirk goes into the transporter and there’s a shimmer and he shows up in another place?"
"Sure."
"Well, do you think they transported Kirk without his 10 trillion microbes to some hostile environment where he couldn't hope to find new ones in time?"
"That's just science fiction."
"So is this," Frankenstein said.
"You're joking with me. This is real." Though real was certainly a slippery word these days. Real was a slippery slope with a mud puddle at the bottom.
"When the fictional, or rather filmic, Kirk was transported, do you think he arrived digesting the lunch he had just eaten?"
"I suppose so."
"Well I transported, so to speak, the whole package of what Laura was at that moment in 1944 when she was brushing her hair. Period.”
“The part that goes way beyond replicating DNA."
"Oh, way beyond. Way beyond. Way way way. At least way beyond what biology and physics currently think is possible. But you know that."
"OK, so Laura woke up in your tank with many microbes--bacteria, viruses--beneficial organisms, pathogens? Antibodies, antigens? Matt was having trouble imagining Laura as a package of microbes. Or himself, for that matter.
"Yes. Matt, you've been studying."
"Yes, I have."
"To put it simply, Laura, in addition to all her other charming aspects, arrived as the complete human microbiome that was Gene Tierney. Including all the pathogens. All the viruses and bacteria. I see you have been reading about the various human microbiome projects and theories.
“Another way of looking at it is that Laura really isn’t a copy of Gene,” Frankenstein continued. “She’s Gene transported, but leaving the original behind to live out her lifespan. There’s nothing different. You can’t say one is the real Gene and the other isn’t. All you can say is there are two Genes in two different times and places. Gene in Hollywood doesn’t know about Gene at the Pelican, aka Laura. Laura knows about Gene but only up to 1944. But the after part is just biography to her, not something she’s lived. Not her own memory. But I repeat myself.”
“Right. She’s Gene. And every day that she lives here and now with us, she becomes more and more Laura. Got it. Very helpful. Thank you,” Matt said.
“That should give you enough to think about until we see each other again. As you know, I’m flying home to New York soon. My day job at Plum Island calls. Though, you know, I almost think of the Pelican Inn as more my home these days.”
“Matt, I have a thought experiment for you for our next meeting. It has to do with my theory of Parallel Immortality. Tell me, please, what you think of when I say immortality.”
CHAPTER 5-7
“OK. Immortality. Reincarnation, I suppose. We make mistakes and are reborn in new bodies. We keep making the same mistakes until finally we get it right and are not reborn again. Or we are reborn as something other than human, like cockroaches. Do you believe in the soul, Dr. F?”
“No, I don’t. Try another theory.”
“Christianity. You die, go to some kind of atmospheric place with clouds and harps, or you go to a holding pen, or you go to someplace hot where you are tortured for eternity. That one doesn’t ring true with me either.”
“Another?”
“Genetic immortality. The on-going DNA line. Having offspring. Then there’s vampires, a literary concept. A vampire lives forever at the age at which it was made into the creature -- that is, until someone catches on and puts a silver stake in its heart. At least it never has to experience getting old.”
“Keep going.”
“I suppose there’s the possible immortality of the universe. And that’s about it. What about you, Dr. F? What is immortality to you?”
Frankenstein pondered. “My idea of immortality is a matter of physics. Matter and energy, time and space, that sort of thing. Living forever as a human in whatever form seems mythological and doesn’t appeal to me. Physical aging is no fun. And who would want to live into a future on a planet we’re wrecking? Imagine you’re immortal, right now, on earth. You’re Matt and you can live forever. What comes to mind?
“Getting very, very horribly old, unless I was locked into immortality at my age right now. The world is overpopulated. Starvation. There’s militaristic violence, probably nuclear bombs. Depletion of resources. Global warming, ecological disasters. Financial collapse. Extreme violence. Pandemics. Technology I can’t imagine. Mostly a globe and a species on it out of control, wrecked. Tsunamis, earthquakes. In a word, misery.”
“So the old idea of living forever gets less attractive going into the future?”
“Oh, super unattractive. I’m even glad I don’t kids in this scenario.”
“OK, now imagine you’re sitting at the big table in the Pelican dining room and there are ten of you. Each one of you thinks you are the original and the rest are copies. Yet only one of you is the original, but that doesn’t really matter. From this moment forward, each of you is free to choose a path. One of you can go back to Pennsylvania and teach film. The other nine have to choose a new path. Say each of you lives another fifty years. That’s five hundred more years you, Matt, in your glorious multiplicity, can live. In the current world, right now, that has not yet degenerated to your imagined horrific future. I call this Parallel Immortality, as opposed to singular, linear future-oriented immortality.”
“Wow.”
Silence.
“Dr. F, you really could make ten of me, couldn’t you?”
“Oh, piece of cake, dear boy. But don’t worry. I’m not going to.”
Matt thought of all the vampire movies of mortals begging to be changed to the undead and vampires resisting, saying hey--it really isn’t all that great. At least Laura lived on food and didn’t have to kill people and drink their blood. All the Anne Rice novels. The Twilight series-- sweet Bella in love with vampire Edward.
“I think that’s a very good thing,” Matt said.
“Why?”
“Some days handling one of myself is plenty. It hurts my head to think of ten of myself. All in different places. All of them, or do I mean all of us?- thinking they or we are me. All of them being me.”
“You see then why Joe and I are so concerned with keeping all this under wraps? Now here’s a science fiction plot for you, Matt.”
“More than the one you’re telling me already?”
“We now have sperm banks, right? So men can theoretically create many copies of their DNA by expending no more effort than jerking off in a jar. No finding reproductive partners--that’s all done for them. There’s a movie about a guy who fathered hundreds of kids as a donor and they all come looking for him. Imagine that. But men can also bank their sperm for their own use. Women can now bank their eggs as well, but that’s an iffier process as women have a finite, very limited number of eggs and they decline in vitality over years. I guess sperm declines, too. Or gets made less potent by pesticides. I’m not sure.
“Ok, now our new plot. People pay to deposit DNA in a bank where it’s stored. They make deposits say every ten years on their birthdays. Then they can go back and create another of themselves from any time. So theoretically, there could be a number of you walking around, each at a different age, each starting out on a new trajectory at the age you chose.”
“Clever. Dr. F, we all agree you are surreally brilliant. So much that’s it’s easy to be intimidated by you.”
Frankenstein was in a thoughtful mood.
“Let me explain something. I’m smart, ok, no need to be shy about that. I studied neurophysiology. And the effects of all kinds of drugs on the brain. I experimented with subjects, with myself. What I found was a way of enhancing brain function, among other things. The more I looked into various disciplines, the more I developed the drug, the more I could see way beyond. And you know how fast all these disciplines are developing independently, that being the operant word. Disciplines don’t share, they get stuck in their own little fish ponds. I just put it together, saw a bigger picture, with this new super-charged brain in my head to understand it. The gene mapping, chemical composition, three D copying got to be easy. Remember, we did it numerous times before Laura. It was the leap, so to speak, through time that was a break-through. Then I realized that someone who was alive yesterday and someone who was alive even hundreds of years ago could be replicated with no distinction.”
They sat in silence for a bit. Their tea was replenished. A new plate of cookies appeared.
“So I replicated Gene Tierney, including her biome of critters, including her memories, at the moment that the DNA was harvested on the hairbrush. The, excuse me if I say, meat that was replicated in our tank, woke up with the awesome distinction of the living from the inanimate.
“Think about that, Matt. What distinguishes living organic material from dead? Go around asking medical and scientific professionals that question and you get some inconsequential if not stupid answers and a lot of head scratching.
“Laura woke up as a perfect Gene Tierney, at the moment when the fleck of DNA was scrubbed from her head and landed on the hairbrush. And I live with the awesome responsibility of having accomplished that.
Matt wanted to ask Dr. F if he had ever considered replicating himself. But he knew the answer. He would not. Matt couldn’t say why he knew that. It was something to do with his God complex. Would two Dr. Frankensteins have to battle with each other for supremacy? Or would they cooperate? What could two such brains, supercharged with strudel drug, be able to accomplish? Dr. F had been amazingly open with Matt about everything. But this was one place that felt off limits. Matt respected his own intuition on that one.