Dangerous Science

Chapter 3
NIH, CIA, FBI and more alphabet soup

The place they were headed to was a top secret branch of the NIH. The building was located on government land in Bethesda, Maryland but very few people even knew a government compound existed out there. In fact only the employees of the site knew the building was a part of the NIH for there were no distinguishing characteristics. Even the mail was delivered to a guard station, located at the perimeter fence. It was more top secret that the CIA or the NSA. Hell those two agencies had signs on the highway announcing the exits for their facilities. It hadn’t always been that way, but back in 1972 President Nixon’s driver had gotten lost trying to find the secret CIA building in Northern Virginia. Nixon was so angry about the wasted time he ordered them to put up the signs.

Once they arrived at the secret installation Rick was ordered to carry the stinky girl into the imposing government building. He really didn’t relish picking her up and cradling that awful diaper but what else could he do? So Rick undid the seatbelt and gently lifted her by the armpits into his embrace. She naturally wrapped her arms around him to return the hug. It seemed she had grown very attached to him. Rick felt the diaper squish as he let it rest across his arm. He just hoped nothing leaked out of it! Unfortunately for him Sara really enjoyed the sensation of her mess moving around as she was lifted and held and she began to jostle up and down in his arms, trying to make more squishes. Rick held her very tight to stop her wriggling.

As it turned out he only had to carry her as far as the lobby anyway. There a security guard met him with the kind of stroller they used for disabled people. “You can put her in this sir,” the uniformed guard informed him, trying not to look at the adult sized baby.

Rick nodded and set Sara down in the seat, doing up the straps to keep her from falling out. Sara seemed quite comfy in the chair. She waved her long bare legs in the air, grasping her toes and pulling her feet back and forth, then grasping the skin behind her knees and peddling her feet in the air as though on an upside-down bicycle. All the while she blew raspberries up at Rick and the guard, drooling down her chin and chest.

“Is... is she... smelly?” the guard asked, sniffing and scowling.

“Yes, she made a mess on the way over here. Be glad you weren’t stuck in the car with her,” Rick told him.

“She has no control then?”

“She ain’t in the diaper for show buddy,” Rick chuckled. “Poor woman was a genius not two hours ago. She was the brightest scientist in her field in fact. Obviously she’s not anymore. Now I think a rattle would confuse her.”

“How awful!” the guard gasped.

“Yeah, well she seems happy enough anyway. Ignorance is bliss they say.”

The guard nodded. “Yeah, maybe,” he said thoughtfully. “Well I’ll take her down, you can go now.”

Rick nodded and then looked down at Sara, giving her a little tickle on the bare sole of her foot to catch her attention. “See you later sweetie, hope you enjoy your new life,” he said in farewell.

Sara grinned ear to ear at his tickle, not understanding that this was goodbye. He walked off as she took to blowing another spit bubble.

**

It was two weeks later that Rick got the call to head back out to the secret NIH facility. The order came from high up and he wasn’t sure what exactly it was about. Nevertheless he headed back out as ordered, this time being led past the lobby and up to the fifth floor. There he was brought past several security doors into the inner sanctum of the facility.

Like most federal government buildings it was a cold and sterile place. The hallways were blank and stark white, lit buy fluorescent lights. The sound of his footsteps echoed up and down the corridor as he followed the guard to a large door marked “Special Project Lab 4.” Inside though, it was a much different room than what he expected. It looked like a giant nursery in fact. The walls were painted in pastel colours, nice and bright and cheerful. There were baby toys spread across the soft carpet and a playpen and crib, both ridiculously oversized, stood in middle of the room.

Of course Rick knew this had to be a room designed especially for Sara. He was surprised to see how much trouble a government agency had gone to in order to make the oversized infant happy. And happy she seemed to be. Sara was sitting in a big high-chair, her feet dangling limply with the toes just short of brushing the carpeted floor. She was still dressed in nothing but a big bulky white diaper, though now she also wore a little bib. Her cheeks and chin were smeared with tomato sauce. It was also on her hands, in her hair and of course on the bib. The woman spoon feeding the big baby turned around to look at the new visitor and Rick was actually quite surprised to see it was Dr Glassman herself.

“Hello there Rick, please come over,” she called.

The guard left them alone and Rick headed over to the high-chair, watching Glassman continue to spoon-feed Penne pasta to the girl. It was clear Sara had trouble eating the meal as she chewed with her mouth wide open, spilling half of the contents onto her chin, bib and lap as she kept pushing her tongue forward. She seemed to like the fact that some of it landed on her tray, using her hands to smear it around and rub on herself.

“She’s quite a mess,” Rick commented.

“Yes well it isn’t baby food. She has teeth of course, unlike a real infant. And she needs more volume of food, so real baby food simply would not do,” the doctor explained.

“I have to say I’m surprised to see you here, doing this. I didn’t take you for the mommy type.”

“I’m not. But she’s the only known subject exposed to the device. I need to study her, to understand its effects.”

“Couldn’t you get somebody else to take care of that kind of stuff?” he asked.

“The fewer people who know about her condition, the better. Georgetown still has no idea what’s happened to her of course, nor her parents. It’s all been classified naturally.”

“So that leaves you to play nursemaid,” he surmised.

“Yes and no. That’s why you’re here actually. I need you for two roles. One is to take care of this little unfortunate.”

Rick nodded, he’d expected that. “What’s the other role?”

Dr Glassman stared at him long and hard. Sara interrupted her thoughtful gaze, screeching “Ahahaheeeh,” and slapping at her tray.

Glassman tickled Sara’s feet until she took to giggling then picked up a set of big plastic keys, giving them to the young woman. As Sara took to shaking the keys and gnawing at them intermittently Glassman walked closer to Rick. She leant close and spoke very softly. “The second part of the your role is more... delicate.”

Rick scowled. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Now understand before I go any further, all this is classified. You got that, nothing leaves this room.”

“Yeah, I understand.”

“Okay then. Follow me.”

Rick followed the doctor through a doorway into an adjoining room. “Should we be leaving her alone?” he asked, concerned.

“She’s in her high-chair, she’ll be fine. She hasn’t got the mental faculties to figure out how to get out anymore and she’s entertained with her keys anyway. She can play with those for several minutes before she gets bored of them.”

Rick nodded, taking in the new room. It looked very much like Sara’s lab had, but with more equipment. One major change was right at the centre of the room. A chair fitted with restraints for arms and legs sat there. He recognised the halo device from Sara’s lab too. It was now fitted into the headrest of the chair. Dr Glassman led him to the chair and stopped beside it. Rick didn’t really feel comfortable around it, so he kept his distance.

“So what’s all this?” he inquired.

“This is the reason you are here Rick.”

He gave her a suspicious look. “Doctor, whatever you have to say, there is no way I’m getting in that seat, I’ll tell you that right now.”

The doctor smiled and shook her head. “No, no Rick. I don’t want you in this chair, not at all. Let me explain.

“I’ve now had a couple weeks to assess the Sara Sheppard. I’ve found her mind has been too far reduced even for standard IQ tests to be able to measure it. Technically she now counts as having an IQ below 20, meaning severe or profound retardation. Her mental age is less than three in other words. I think you would agree with my assessment that her mentality is on the level of a normal nine to twelve month old infant. Would you?”

“Um, yeah, that does sound about right from what I’ve seen. I take it she hasn’t recovered at all?”

“No she has not,” the doctor replied curtly. “In any case I’ve found that the effect of the halo on her mind has not been to simply lower her IQ. You see she has also lost all memory of being older than her current mental age. She doesn’t recall being a genius or an inventor. She doesn’t even remember potty training. The changes in her behaviours, her loss of motor skills all point to a total mental regression. She had literally become an infant again, at least in mind.”

Rick nodded in agreement, all that seemed to make sense. “So what does that mean? Why did you make this contraption then?”

“Rick, you work in the Pentagon. You know how powerful a weapon this kind of thing has the potential to be. But the CIA need changes made to it. This has the potential to be a powerful interrogation tool as well as a weapon you see. But the problem is it can’t wipe away memories or it would render the interrogation useless. We need a device that lowers IQ alone, leaves the victim with their memories intact but renders them a giggling, drooling mess willing to tell us anything we want.”

Rick was horrified by the very idea. “You’ve got to be joking! I mean, the publicity we got for so-called ‘enhanced interrogation’ methods was bad enough. If this ever got out it would be a press nightmare. But worse than that, you would be permanently destroying people’s minds.”

“Rick, we’re talking about terrorists here! I mean, if you knew there was going to be a nuclear attack on a US city and we had a guy who knew where wouldn’t you want us to use every means necessary to extract the info?”

“Don’t pull that Dick Cheney crap on me doctor,” Rick snapped.

“Look you don’t have to agree with it, you just have to do your duty and follow your orders.”

“And what about you? You’re a doctor! What happened to ‘do no harm’? Isn’t that in your oath?”

“Don’t get all high and mighty on me Rick, I’ve read your file. I know all about your special ops, that’s why I asked for you. That and because you were one of the only agents already read in on what’s going on with the device.”

“So what the hell do you need me for anyway?” Rick demanded, not wanting to go into discussion about some of the more questionable things he’d done for his country.

“I need to recalibrate some of the device’s settings to see if we can get it to leave memory intact. The problem is there is no way to test for that on animals, at least not effectively. If the mice still run the maze afterwards how do I know it’s lowering their IQ anymore? You see I need human subjects.”

Rick’s mouth dropped open. “And you’ve come to me to find you some!?” he blurted out.

“Not innocent victims Rick. We’ve come to you because the Pentagon has control of Guantanamo Bay prison. Nobody wants the inmates there, they can’t be brought to US prisons, they can’t be released, they can’t be executed. The President wants to shut the place down. You bring them here, one at time of course, heavily guarded, and I use the machine on them. The intelligence community gets a new tool, Gitmo closes, everyone is happy.”

Rick shook his head in disgust. “You think that’s what she wanted for her invention?” he demanded.

“Her?! She scrambled her own brains Rick! The woman’s got nothing but baby food left between her ears because she willingly used the thing on herself. Who cares what she wanted? I mean, all she wants now is to make a nice big poopy mess in her diaper to wiggle around in.”

“Well I am sorry, but there’s no way I can be a part of any of this.”

“You can’t be a part of this?” Glassman spat. “You really think you have a choice? Look around you Rick. Too much money has been spent on this to let the opportunity pass us by. If you can’t secure me test subjects from Gitmo, I’ll just have to find them somewhere else. All you’d be doing is passing the buck.”

Rick really did dislike this woman. Right from the moment he’d first set eyes on her he’d seen something ugly inside of her, something that really turned him off. But then it had been hidden below the surface, beneath a veneer of professional detachment. Now her power hungry nature, her raw ambition was on full display. She spoke of the safety of the nation, of stopping terror but what she really wanted to do was steal poor Sara Sheppard’s work for her own. Rick couldn’t let her do that.

“You can try to get all the subjects you want, but this is the kind of project that tends to get ‘leaked’ to the press if you know what I mean. We have a real problem with that at the Pentagon, so I can’t guarantee anything.”

Dr Glassman narrowed her eyes and strode right up to Rick, staring him in the eye. “You do one thing to mess this up and you’ll be manning a radio tower in Alaska before you know what hit you,” she threatened.

Rick laughed in her face. “You’ve been watching too much Mission Impossible honey, that kind of stuff doesn’t happen in real life. And even if it did, there’s no way you have any such power over me.”

Rick could see the anger rising up in the doctor’s eye, her rage at not being able to bend him to her will. He could feel the slap coming before she’d even raised her hand, and so he was able to catch her wrist and shove her back and away before her hand reached his cheek. His movement caught the doctor by surprise though and she lost her balance on her high heels, falling backwards and landing right in the seat. In a flash, the instant her weight triggered the automatic mechanisms in the chair, the wrist and leg restraints snapped closed around her limbs, trapping her in the chair.

“Oh shit!” she screamed in a most unprofessional way. “Hit the release button!” she ordered him, struggling against the restraints.

“Oh calm down will you. I’ll release you. Where’s the button,” Rick told the drama queen.

“Down tell me to stay calm, the machine is self-activating, you have to release me now! The button is on the control panel, behind me.”

Rick walked to the panel of buttons behind the chair. Unfortunately it was ridiculously complex. “Which one is it?” he called back. But there was no response.