Shifting scenes from the LAST BIT of the excellent post-apocalyptic adult hippie fairy tale, Alice.
x x x
In a vast interior space, metallic and sterile, hang humanoid figures, some whole, some missing body parts, some with the head connected tenuously by stringy nerve fibers. Scientists in white coats work with test tubes and syringes. A woman with a light blue vest, also in the interior of the lab building, stands at a door. A hallway stretches out behind her. The door is labeled “Materials.” She swipes a security card and enters the room with the humanoid figures and scientists. She does not stop but passes through, swipes her card against an air-locked door labeled “Data.” It opens and then closes behind her. This room is filled with color. The walls themselves are electronically configured, LEDs flowing horizontally around the room, indicating crests and troughs of monitored wavelengths in red, yellow, green, and blue. Above the flow of virtual waves, a ticker-tape of scrambled letters runs endlessly around the same circuit. White-clad doctors attend the display, some standing, some working at their personal monitors.
The blue-vested woman approaches one of the white-clad doctors and nods. She follows him to another door labeled “Oceanic.” He scans his i.d. to open the door, and the two of them walk into a smaller room with one table at the center and one woman sitting at it wearing a headset. The doctor gestures. The woman with the headset leaves, and the doctor and the blue-clad woman sit. The wall behind the doctor is entirely glass, an aquarium, with giant sharks lumbering past the window as the two speak.
“How’s it going, Antonio?” asks the blue-clad woman. She has freckles and high cheekbones. Upon close inspection, there is a faint pattern of fine white on her face, as if it were recently touched with the faintest layer of snow and the snowflakes had all but evaporated, leaving ghostly hexagonal outlines.
“The DNA people are still doing the sequencing, Dr. Salio,” says Antonio. “There’s a lot of history there. But the tissue engineering is going great! Spleens, gall bladders. It’s amazing.”
He smiles at the thought of fresh spleens and gall bladders hanging from the ceiling in Materials like so many Spanish hams.
Dr. Salio does not smile.
“Keep an eye on the DNA people,” she says. “And the people in Final Development, too.”
Antonio leaves. Dr. Salio rests her elbows on the table and reaches one hand up to hold her forehead. The largest of the sharks has paused, apparently watching these two strange creatures from her side of the glass.
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