Roger Brown, Period 1, 12/07/21

 Roger Brown, Period 1, 12/07/21

I’VE FIGURED IT OUT
MEET ME AT THE LAB

        This was the message that appeared on Hector’s phone late on a cool autumn night. He had been working on a paper for his pharmacology class, but as soon as he saw his phone light up with that message, he sprang up from his desk, grabbed his coat, and ran from his dorm room to the biology building to meet his professor, Dr. Faust.
        Hector arrives at the entrance to the bio building and unlocked it with the key Dr. Faust had given him, which he technically wasn’t supposed to have as a student. He entered and locked the door behind him, and proceeded down the convoluted route he’d taken so many times. Dr. Faust didn’t have a secret lab, he’s not Batman. It just so happens that the biology building was constructed as a confusing jumble of stairways and corridors, and Dr. Faust chose a room in the most obscure corner of the building behind 3 locked doors that no one would ever think to go through to set up his own personal lab that he then didn’t tell anyone about. Except Hector.
        He entered Dr. Faust’s lab. Dr. Faust had converted the lab from a standard classroom lab to a nearly fully functional medical lab along with a few... extra touches, namely a cot and a mini fridge, and some machines, some of Dr. Faust’s own design. There was a tub of dry ice at the end of the room, which was new. In the corner of the lab, Hector saw the professor, hunched over his computer at his desk. His head snapped up when he heard Hector open the door, his greying hair falling chaotically over his unshaven face. 
        “Hector! You’re here! Come, look what I’ve done!” he exclaimed. He ushered Hector over to his desk and pointed excitedly at the papers littered across it. He looked down at the papers and could barely understand what was written on them. Hector looked up at Dr. Faust, and with a nearly manic smile, the professor said “I’ve solved death”. 
        Hector stared at him in stunned silence. After a pause the professor continued “Well, not completely, not all of it, but I’ve solved just enough that I will be able to die, see the afterlife and come back. This is what we’ve been working towards this entire time, Hector! It’s finally going to happen, and I need you to help me”.
        He began walking over to some of the machines and wheeling them over to the tub of dry ice. He continued, half to himself, “I am finally going to answer the heretofore greatest unanswered question of humanity. I am finally going to know what awaits beyond death. Everyone who said I was crazy for saying all those people who ‘saw heaven’ before they were revived is going to be proved wrong. Of course those people weren’t really dead. Maybe close to it, but not truly. We didn't have the means to cure real death. But now we do, I’ve cracked it. I figured it out. And now I’ll know what’s really after life. Hector! Come here!” 
        He had finished wheeling the machines over to the dry ice tub. He had taken off his shirt and pants, and was left only in his underwear. He laid down in the tub and started hooking himself up to the machines. He winced as he inserted an IV needle into his arm, and then two more. 
        Hector shook off his stunned expression as he realized what the professor was doing. “W-wait” he stuttered “we’re doing this now!? It’s happening now!?” 
“Yes” replied the professor, matter-of-factly “now come here I need to show you-”
“No no no wait, I’m not ready for this, professor. You’re going to DIE, and, and-”
“Calm down Hector, I’ll be fine” he reassured him. “I mean, I’ll be dead, but I’ll be fine. The machines will take care of everything. I have been waiting for this day my entire life, I can’t wait a minute  longer, I just need you to wait here for 24 hours while I’m dead, make sure nothing goes wrong, and it won’t, but you can never have too many failsafes”
“I- I don’t know professor, this, it’s a lot to take in, I can’t- I’m not- ”
“I know Hector, but this is what I’ve been working on for the past two decades, and you’ve been helping me with for the past 5 years. This is going to turn out just as we planned, nothing is going to go wrong. I just need you to stay here for the next 24 hours in the impossible scenario that something goes wrong, and to be here when I come back. You have to trust me.”
Hector took a few deep breaths and looked at his professor. He had spent his last 5 years at university helping Dr. Faust with his research, and now it was all coming to a head, perhaps a bit too fast. But Dr. Faust was a determined man. And a smart man. He trusted him. 
“Okay… okay” said Hector, between breaths “I trust you” 
        The professor's smile widened “Great, I'll start the process”. 
        He reached over and pressed a button on one of the machines. He leaned back into the ice, and exhaled. Liquids began to flow through the IV tubes into Dr. Faust’s arms. After a couple minutes, the professor’s body had completely relaxed. And after a few more all of his vital signs began to wane, until, after over half an hour, all the monitors declared Dr. Faust dead. 


______________________


        Dr. Faust awoke alone in his lab. The machines were turned off and his assistant was nowhere to be seen. 
        “Hectoooorrrrr!!” called out the professor, but he was met with only silence. “Where is that damn kid?” he mumbled to himself. 
        He climbed out of the dry ice tub and frantically checked the machines, suspecting the procedure had failed somehow. But when he checked the machines’ diagnostics it told him nothing, as if they had never been activated at all. 
        “Did it work?” he said aloud “Did I die? Am I alive? What the hell is going on here!?”
He walked over to his desk where he had laid down his clothes and put them back on. After he was dressed he picked up his phone to send a message to Hector, but it would not turn on. Frustrated, Dr. Faust marched out of the lab to find his assistant himself. But when he opened the door out of the lab, instead of walking into a classroom, he found himself in a field. 
        The field stretched out as far as he could see, and it was filled with innumerable varieties of plants. Grass, berries, flowers, trees, some plants Dr. Faust had never even seen before, all beautifully growing together in a harmonious rainbow of flora. The sky was a perfect bright white, with lighting coming from seemingly every direction, casting soft shadows on the ground. 
        The professor couldn’t believe his eyes. Could this really be it? The afterlife? A giant field of miscellaneous plants? 
        Just as he was about to start pulling up the grass around him to inspect their roots he heard a voice behind him. “Hellooo” the voice called out, “You must be new, welcome!”.
        Dr. Faust turned around to find the source of the voice to be a man sitting in the driver's seat of a horse-drawn carriage. Except there were no horses, the carriage seemed to be moving entirely on its own. The carriage stopped near the professor, the wheels seemed to pass right through the plants.  
        “Hop in” said the driver “There’s somewhere I must take you”
        Dr. Faust normally would have been cautious of strange people telling him to “hop in” to their self propelled, slightly incorporeal carriages, but he somehow knew, in the way that one knows something in a dream, that the man was trustworthy. He obliged, and climbed into the passenger seat of the carriage.  
        “I’m sure you’ve figured out where you are by now” said the driver, as the carriage began to move. “You always were very bright. I’m sure you have many questions as well. Worry not, they will all be answered in due time”
        He was right, Dr. Faust had many questions: Who was he? What happened to the sky? How was the carriage moving? How big was this place? Where were they going? Are there any other people? But even as these questions flooded the professor’s head, he did not ask them. He trusted the driver that they would be answered. He felt strangely at peace. 
        As the carriage continued moving along, Dr. Faust spotted something in the distance. It seemed like a huge spire, but as they drew closer he realized it was a building; a building so tall the top disappeared into a point against the blank white sky. 
        “Here we are,” said the driver, “The Library of All Knowledge. Inside you will find everything you could ever know or comprehend about the universe, and then some. But you must be careful, some knowledge is not meant to be comprehended, you must be able to recognize it and resist the urge to attempt to understand it. Okay, in you go!”
        “Wait!” said the professor incredulously “Is this it? Is this the entire afterlife? Just going through this infinite library for eternity?”
        “Well of course not!” said the driver “The Library of All Knowledge is only the first stop on your eternal journey, I only brought you here first because you spent your life obsessed with knowledge. If you make it through a couple eternities in here, then you will move on to the Hall of Experience, and the Theater of Time, and the many, many other landmarks in the journey through the rest of your existence”
        “Oh” said the professor “Thank you. I will, explore the library now, then”
        “Of course” exclaimed the driver “I’ll be back here as soon as you’re ready to continue”
        He watched the carriage drive away, and faced the entrance to the Library of All Knowledge. But before he could step through the door, something stopped him. He felt his knees weaken and his legs become rigid. 
IT IS NOT YOUR TIME boomed a voice in his head. He collapsed into the grass beneath him, and everything faded away. 


______________________


        Hector spent the last 24 hours nervously pacing around the lab. He didn’t sleep a wink. Sometimes he’d walk over to the tub and glance back and forth between Dr. Faust’s body and the vitals monitors. Sometimes he would sit and stare blankly at it from the other side of the room. At a certain point he tried to help himself to some food from the minifridge, but even though he was starving, he was barely able to stomach it because of his anxiety. 
        After what felt like years, one of the machines beeped. Hector rushed over to the ice tub and watched the IV tubes fill with liquid again. He watched the vitals monitors with bated breath, and after what felt like an eternity, they began to show signs of life. Hector was slightly relieved, but the professor still lay inert. After another 10 minutes, the professor’s vitals had returned to normal levels, and Hector breathed an enormous sigh of relief when he saw his professor’s eyes flutter open. 
        “Well, professor” asked Hector expectantly “What did you see?”