Sunday, September 25, 2005

Catharsys

I guess I’m still processing what I’ve done. Funny thing is...I feel no remorse. That part of me that keeps screaming that she’ll have it coming almost warms me. And isn’t it true? Can’t the world get on with one less drunk killing and maiming? Why do I have to ask? Am I still trying to justify to myself what I’ve done? Will I be able to live with this if capn crunch has a couple beers with her friends and suddenly keels over? Honeslty, Peter, I have no...NO remors. Am I fooling myself? God, I keep hoping to find something within myself that will reassure me that I am not a monster. I don’t want to be happy that I did what I’ve done.

I’ve exposed her, I was angry and I wanted ...what? Vengence? Some cruel justice? Worse yet, I will do nothing to correct what I've done. I couldn’t if I wanted to and I don’t want to. I’m glad I did it but I want you to know.

When I was in school some friends and I were screwing around with drug delivery concepts and of course trying to find an interesting way to party. We designed a nanotube that would carry alcohol to the brain. Host the various molecular constituents around the body until a catalyst brought them all together to do whatever we wanted them to do whenever we wanted them to do it. There were three or four ideas we threw around but we thought it would be cool to be able to self-inebriate sort-of at will.

The idea kind of grew, took on a life of it’s own. I always thought our creation would be a great deterrent for drug offenders. Use their drug of choice as the catalyst to trigger an imbedded deterrent. You know, perhaps making a drinker pass out as soon as their blood alcohol reached a predetermined level. No more drunk drivers. Terri wanted a weapon that could take down a target and make it look like alcohol poisoning. Funny, right. We thought we were so original and ahead of our time. Stupid, so stupid.

Problem was, like most eager kids, we hadn’t thought it through. Didn’t take into account the fact that alcohol is toxic until it is metabolized, first the enzyme alcohol dehydrogenase to acetaldehyde, an adrenergic toxin, then by the enzyme aldehyde dehydrogenase, to acetic acid. Our nanos bypassed that whole process. We were geeks, not chemists. One of my lab partners was our test subject. He died and that was the end of our project. Doors closed, doors opened.

To the point, I kept the nanos. And now I’ve used them. Mjr. Rojas won’t be out of hospital for a while but it doesn’t matter. They are very stable. Long decay. But no burn. They also don’t evacuate. When she goes, if anyone looks hard enough, they will find them. If they look hard enough, they will realize she didn’t die of acute alcohol toxicity. A good technician will notice this.

I’ve become a murderer. As soon as she drinks again, the acetic acid will act as catalyst. The tubes will conveine in her thalmus and toxin will flood her brain. Her CNS will fry in seconds. Her only repreive will come if she never drinks again. Ever.

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