LobeProbe

Lobeprobe by J.B. Pravda

A pall fell over the overly florescent laboratory as if some
Germano-Swiss timekeeper had refined zeitgeist to depict even a few
intense moments.

And its name was dread, I remembered concluding after a swift survey of
both my hemispheres.

My sensate radar called my attention to the sensitive instrument as it
hummed an audible summons. Had I pressed the "ON" switch? Must have
been someone in there before my arrival&;#8230;..but, who, what? I
work alone, a matter of funding. No one else has authorization on
access to power up the electron microscope. Power surge. That could
glitch the damn thing out of calibration. Bloody surge protectors are
crap, fifty bucks protecting a $20Million device.

"Let's pause, Dr. Kinsey, you will remain under hypnotic suggestion but
I want you to move ahead to what happened&;#8230;..what you
s&;#8230;.."
Kinsey cut her off with a high decibel shriek. Sobbing, he gradually
and slowly hyperventilated to her prompting.

"I remember a flash of laser-intensive light, a pinpoint
really&;#8230;.and that was at 100,000X magnification. I was
blinded, I still can't focus my vision a day later."

The voice in her head told her he was too "stressed"-----let's proceed
to hyperbaric chamber isolation; that thought had been lurking in there
from the start of the session, S.O.P., really; they certainly would
concur.

In her study that evening Ms. Emma van Gerd droned out a summary report
of impressions into her hand-held recorder-like device: "As agreed, I
have been assigned to administer Kinsey's treatment; ostensibly, he
glimpsed the transmutational emission, happily at a time ineffectual in
terms of permanent effects but, still, sufficient to cause
difficulties; I intend to terminate the treatment at earliest possible
date for the sake of Kinsey and the program. While accountability
certainly falls to me for having left the device active, a mutually
satisfactory solution is at hand. End of report."

Wearing a seeming well-worn autonomic, weirdly knowing smile, her
demeanor betrayed it upon turning the corner to the elevators, then two
floors below where Kinsey floated, now, amidst his own suddenly
eliminated waste.

The sophisticated seemingly downward-looking microscope, she had
succeeded in urging, needed 'repair work'&;#8230;.at the secure lab
she would now call home.