Before I tell you how I escaped this cul-de-sac - yes, I am currently writing from the safety of

home - I would like to revisit a scene from my childhood:

Father was in his navy-blue Armani-suit, the image of masculine perfection
incorporated from his ads, ready to march off to work - maybe a mistress? - with his elegantly
greying hair combed backward, every strand of his hair in its right place, sunglasses that
reflected no emotion. I started to drag him up the stairs to my room. Well inside, I pointed to
my decorated Snow-white castle. Father was a difficult man to please, so I had to get his
attention within a couple of seconds, just like his commercials aimed to do. He raised his right
eyebrow;
“Am I supposed to be impressed my soon-to-be twelve-year-old daughter is still
playing with dolls?”
“No, look, daddy, I am telling a story, just like the brothers Grimm!” - My father
had bought me the first edition of Grimm´s Snow White, the version where the witch was her
birth mother (Oh, I did take that to heart!). Here, I had reversed the roles; the daughter had
this overgrown witch outfit, boiling secret recipes in a kettle, while the mother became
trapped in a far too narrow Snow-White dress. I had torn the dress apart to make her show a
lot of flesh on the belly, half a breast out in the open, like a slut, and she was horrified before
the reflection on a mirror I made from father´s old wristwatch, time ticking away while she
held her hands to her face in despair.
He removed his sunglasses, eyes gazing the drinks of cognac that mother hid
under her bed, the cigarette smell was there as well, and a small notebook lied besides a
miniature-phone. He picked up the mini-notebook that just fitted on his thumb, went for a
magnifying lens and studied it; ´Tom´ I had written inside a heart ,with great care, and a
phone number. He scratched his chin, squinting at the scene of depravity, no longer able to
confide his heart´s distress. He took up a cigarette and lighted it up, his eyes on my mother,
the skank doll. When he inspeced more closely, he found the peephole in the tiny home
towards the shared toilet in their bedroom.
He went to my real bathroom, and found the same hole on that wall, straight into
the mother´s bathroom. He came back, exhaling smoke through his nose. He said something
like this;
“There is this drive inside the human heart…you need always to find it, and then
you will know how to catch anyone´s attention. This drive is quite often a shameful thing, not
consciously acknowledged by the client. It might be jealousy, hatred, lust, or even love; love
can be dirty sometimes.”
He stroked my hair; my body tingled down to my toes, “Father, the witch needs
a new dollhouse so that she can escape her crazy mother, she needs an Alice in Wonderland
dollhouse… I pointed to a hole on the ground, and whispered to his ear; “so I can escape into
my subconscious, things get so crazy here when you are away…” He hugged me, kissed my
forehead, and said: “I will get you something much better, darling…”
That was just before he left me to be drowned by my mother´s bitter tears. He
never gave me the new doll-house, but he sent me you; Mirror, Mirror, with his enigmatic
comment about war and love on your last page, it was only now starting to make sense. In a
stranger´s toilet, I dug inside my purse and found a secret weapon…
Back to the present, I walked out of that toilet with my head erect; the professor
was cutting sausages into bits, mounting them over a loaf of bread.
“Andrew March!” I said.
The professor twisted his thick neck, gazing at me, pondering.
I came closer and whispered; “You hate him, don’t you?” You hate the only
man who cares about you.”
“He doesn’t care about anyone; he´s trapped in an egoism as untreatable as
anyone I have ever seen, his DNA has the wrong genetical markers on every level! As a
matter of fact; him sending you to me, selling out his girlfriend, only so you can dig out my
secret, that is beyond…”
“He DID WHAT? You knew…”
“Yes. He told me he would send a beautiful girl, truly stunning, to dig for my
secrets and that might give me headway to show the best side of myself. It may have been
immoral from my part, but now you found out my secret.”
“Wait - You think your dolls is THE SECRET? Do you even have a love
serum, or was that too part of his fucking maze?” I was barely able to breathe.
“You…you…know about the virus? The dolls…will you tell?” Sweat was once
more building up in beads on his forehead.”
“Oh, c’ mon now professors, focus on the virus, not on your neurosis.”
He adjusted his glasses, “Why should I?”
“To change the World, to change men like him…why do you hate him?”
“I would have to say that I hate the concept of that man, though, it might be an
emotional bias, neural pathways prone to ignite primal emotions…memories of pain deeply
rooted in my hippocampus, his kind beating me up in the school´s playground, crushing my
glasses. This instinct towards mindless cruelty…again, and again crushing things under their
boots. They represent the irrational aspect of humanity, and the more self-conscious they
come, the more I cannot stand them. A brute animal would be easier to forgive!”
“I know…so, is there a way out for his kind of sophisticated brute?”
“ “Well…that is the thing, when I got home for school, all bruised up, I would
crumble down in a corner and read Immanuel Kant, obsessively, my secret treasure; morality
born out of reason,”
“Wait, how old were you?”
“Seven…Kant´s maxim that an act is a good act when you will the entire World
to do the same, it sounded so reasonable, I figured, gullible as I was, that no one would act
unreasonably when teached the reasoning of morality. So, I would do lectures before class on
how the reasons for a man to act ethically, throwing felicific calculus at them. It made things
worse. My bullies just found it to be a hilarity. So, after class, they would change places to
throw punches down my belly, tying the shoelaces between my shoes, all acting out the
communal will, as they told me, laughing at my folly as I fell to the ground over and over
again. I could not apprehend their sense of humor, I never could…” the doll kissed his
forehead and whispered something in his ear…
“Sorry, I have… Hyperhidrosis and Cushing syndrome, I get overstressed, my
body cannot handle stress, and they can sense my heart rate, and know how to lower it. I tried
to explain to my bullies my condition, and they would find complicated words for my disease
yet another joke. I figured I had to study neurology to understand humanity´s disease…”
I put on a smile, “Quite a harem of beauties you have here, professor. I quickly
figured out I could not compete…”, his face turned cherry-red. I was non-judgemental about
his sexual needs – human needs - for the first time. But no mercy would be given, I dug for
the secret weapon from my purse. I would now need to use it; ethics be damned! I picked up
the marijuana - the type that turn the victim suggestive - “I hope you don´t mind? – the
professor just shook his shoulders, and I lighted it up, smoking it first myself, while the
professor watched me with eager eyes
“I have become quite a smoker myself, these last couple of months. For over a
decade I worked in 18-hour increments, sleepless nights, piece by piece setting my
Magnus Opus together. Each piece predicated on every other, and, so no piece can move
without taking down the entire structure, every bit of code, every nucleotide can cause a
storm, minutely every sequence needs to be deconstructed and put together again to account
for chaos theory.” he stretched for the joint, and I handed it to him. He inhaled.
“In truth, that was not the problem. I was never stressed while I was
working, my obsession has, on the contrary, ever been a source of relaxtion …”
He started to cough lightly.
“It is only when I arrived at the end of the line, when I was complete
with my life´s oeuvre, that stress became overbearing, what to do with such a
great discovery? How to turn it to best use? ” He inhaled and closed his eyes,
coughing madly this time, wiping drool with his sleeve.
“Can it contaminate?”
“No,-.” His cough was now continually interfering with his speech,
“It is programmed…”- “not to…” – “leave the host…”
“Then why not find a guinea pig, beyond all rules and confinements
of society, why not…” His eyes skittered as if I had voiced some sinful lust in his
heart.
“It would be…” - cough.
“Unethical, I know. But how unethical would it not be to leave the
marketplace to hack such a discovery to pieces, or to leave us in the dark for so
many years…when you have utopia in your pocket. ”
His fists buried into his eye sockets, leaving red webbed eyes when
he put his hands down; “Every move is unsound, what to do, what to do …” His
fingers clattered on the table. He scanned me from foot to head and then back
down as if I was some creature to be studied in a laboratory.
I broke off the uneasiness with a question that could finally be asked; “So, you
have read Andrew´s DNA…you are sure you can read if someone can love from a set of
codes, but you can change that programming, can´t you? Take revenge upon the World…”
“Well, it will take a while to get my virus to reach the marketplace…but sure, if
I can make a cannibalistic mouse become…but as I said it would take, maybe ten years to put
it into good use. First, we will need to test on those warmongering, testosterone-pumped
chimps…”
“And you will have to go through phase 1, 2, 3…years and years of
testing…you sure you do not want to find a shortcut?”
“And the billionaire´s eldest got all the rights; God knows what he will use it
for…you know what? It would be the perfect test of living up to Kant´s will, for an act should
be good on its merit, not for the Nobel prize, or money, or fame…or girls. I am quite blessed
with what I already got!” he smiled at the doll, and she smiled back.
“But if I could get you a guinea-pig…and circumspect the..:” – I was about to
say law or ethics, but changed it mid-sentence- - “billionaire´s ambitions.”
“ok…” There was a stupid mannequin-smile to the professor´s face;
the cannabis compound was clearly assaulting his entire nervous system.
“Ok, what?”
“Ok, come to my laboratory by Saturday when only I work, and I go
through how to…”
“Make a bastard pay? ”
“Well…” he said nervously, “I wouldn´t phrase it like that, we need
to leave emotions out of the equation. ”

We shook hands. It tasted like victory. I gave him all the dope I had in my purse
before leaving — hopefully, enough to keep him in the haze until Wednesday.
“Of course, professor, of course…there will be no emotions,” I said,
laughing inside at the foolish pride of men: how could emotions ever be left out
of any equation?
Friday, 25th November

We sat looking away from each other, my eyes set on the finely decorated walls of this ´tres
chic´ French restaurant. The background-noise consisted of a jazz version of strawberries
fields forever, the clink of wine glasses, the silent murmur of elegantly dressed guests. Our
first ever proper date-night.
“You tried to pimp me out, for what? Money? Only to spend it all in one of the
finest restaurant in Manhattan??” I asked.
“Nah, I am just here to celebrate. Whatever I told the professor about sending
you…it was only a way to soften him up. Besides, I am sure to have overpriced my services
to the professor.” He smiled.
“I believe I have been in a restaurant this chic two times before; with Him 1.0
before he left me, and also with my father before he left me at 12, you know? This time I
might make the first move for a change. “
“Guess your life is a poem, a three-rhymed stanza, you think you got the
willpower to end this, right here and now?” he said, coldly.
“Sure, I will get over you. Nothing beats the first fire in a girl´s life, all else feels
like shadows of the real thing, you know?” In truth, the little tongue of amity between us at
least seemed like the beginning of something, ANYTHING, that lead to change.”
The waiter stood over us, a tall and gaunt mustached man, his body language
and countenance screamed of archaic French snobbery- were these manufactured for the
customer´s delight?
Andrew raised a finger, still reading the menu, the waiter turned to me, “And
mademoiselle?”
 “Something that has never been alive, please!” He blinked and pointed at
something; I just nodded, I was not here for palatial sensations.
“Give me something that has been, and still looks, alive, and a bottle of your
most expensive wine!” Andrew said. The waiter looked at him in disbelief, maybe wondering
if he was some Hollywood actor dressed as a commoner or something, he did look the part.
The tattoo was crawling out of his neck, where the hem of his cheap black motor-jacket
ended.
“May I suggest for monsieur a beautiful Ortolan served in Armagnac, dipped in
hazelnut fat, it is quite delicious and served full beak and bones…”
“Go for it!” Andrew said. He turned towards me as the waiter left.
“I wanted to ask for ketchup too, just to see how he would react!”
“My first love made me a vegetarian, will you try to turn me into some
carnivore, or does it suffice to turn me into a prostitute?”
“Change is at the heart of any narrative; it will serve your little journal well,
imagine a story without any bumps, who would want that? Ever read a love story with no
bumps?”
“This is no love story; it takes two to tango.”
“True, but it is the closest thing you´ll get in this post-monogamy era. Most men
are at home making love to their virtual reality, at least I am here in flesh and blood,
supplying the demand of the marketplace, but it is so tough to commit to one when there is so
much beauty in the World.”
“You truly cannot love, can you?” - Genetically speaking, the professor´s voice
echoed through my mind.
“I love as much as anyone else,” he wrote an equation on a napkin, sent it over;
Selflove+ Love of acquaintances + Love of strangers=LOVE.
“So, you have 100% self-love?”
“I am only more self-conscious about it…in truth it often is something more
akin to 90+9+1%, and those numbers might be conservative. Have you heard about the trolley
experiment? Pull the trolley, and a train might be sent off to fall over a cliff with a thousand
strangers on board, would you pull the trolley to save your mother? Of course, you would, a
thousand dead strangers are but tomorrow´s news, an abstraction. Typed words on paper.”
“Hmm, sounds like you have been talking to the professor on these matters, I
would gladly sacrifice my mother, even with no one on board of that train…”
He laughed,” Not your mother…nor mine, this only applies to normal people.”
The meals came, they were lined up, the small bird was before Andrew, he stood
there looking at the delicate yellow songbird, almost not knowing what to do with it. The
waiter gave him a napkin, “Tradition would have you cover yourself with a napkin while you
eat it, not to be ashamed of eating something so beautiful!”
 “I like to be fully aware of the crime I am committing, monsieur. I see this as a
true act of love.” The waiter nodded and walked away. Andrew turned to me, ready to justify
himself before his judgemental bitch;
“People like their meat to appear like anything but a dead animal, only so that
they may keep loving themselves when they commit murder, avoid all reminders of their
selfish heart. I am not like that, and I do not need to love myself, as long as I love life; the ID
over the ego.” He filled his mouth with the small songbird, chewing it down slowly, aroused
by my judgemental eyes.
“Sounds more like self-hate if you ask me,” I leaned forward, “Look, I am not
going to be your plaything tonight. I won´t tell you anything before you tell me about your
true drive, your purpose in all this. And I want full honesty.”
I drank some nervous gulps of wine, took a bite from my caramelized onion tart;
he was still chewing, with that annoying smile, as if all were part of some stupid game, my
anger was amusing him.
“Well…I show you mine if you show me yours.” He finally said.
“What you mean…is it not obvious? If the World just...:” - He interrupted me
mid-sentence, putting his finger to my mouth - “Don't you go there, this is not about the
World, it´s about you! Or what are you, Mother Theresa reincarnated? Do you want the Nobel
Prize? You want celebrations done to your name´s sake? You want me to love, and that love
to be reserved only to you, but you cannot even define this love, can you? You are utterly
unable, to be honest about your TRUE motivations.”
Strange as it is, I started to write a poem of sorts on a napkin;
What may it be? This thing that wakes me with fevers deep in the night, and
makes my nerves knot in a thousand tangles of despair, what squeezes my insides and makes
me implore, what may it be? This thing that cannot be dissimulated or concealed, it throws
me off to a landscape of no right or wrong…and it is inside me whether it should or not, never
to be satisfied, for it lacks any limits…what may it be?
I sent over the napkin.
“I like it, “he said with a tonality that gave away no feelings. He folded the
napkin carefully, only to scramble it down into his jacket´s pocket.
“So, having revealed the inner turmoil that might drive me to take the entire
World with me over that cliff…now it is your turn; why this desire to cut off the branch where
you are sitting? Or do you only want to get the professor´s inventions for the sake of selling it
on the black market? I won´t be part of anything so selfish!”
“Well, why don´t you do your homework and write in that pretty little diary of
yours the day we first met, come back tomorrow when you´ve done that. Just don´t insult me,
I care little about money.”
“Tomorrow I will meet the professor…”
“Sunday then.”
 We ended up not going home together, despite the full moon glowing amid the
wheeling stars - a night destined for passionate endings, or so it would seem. When we
walked out, he pushed me to a brick wall, and French kissed me, one that ought to have untied
the nervous knot in my belly, but it felt cold like steel – maybe I was losing faith in there
being any light inside him at all? “Do your homework assignment!” He yelled, before the
motorcycle grunted three times, and then, flown away to become a fainting red light in the
dark.
Saturday, 26th November

Alarm clock. Breath in and out, slowly, three times. Better now. Time to go to the laboratory
to change the World - or something!
We used fully covered white suits, looking like astronauts boarding some alien
mothership. It felt trippy. Everything was cold steel, and it shone under blue light. I could see
through the slit of transparent plastic that the professor´s eyes were blood-specked, he
confessed he had smoked a bit too much. Hopefully, he would be suggestive enough to trust
me.
He scanned his eyes to enter each new laboratory-hall, the doors would slide
open with a gentle ´whoosh´, and there would be these myriads of tubes, large robotic arms
revolting them, turning them back and forth in automation. A computer´s voice greeted him;
“How are you, professor?”
“Silence the operative system,” Professor said, his steps made loud iron-clanks,
he spoke on the nature of what he was doing here (prepare your brain for information
overload);
“Histone codes are modified enzymatically; we knew already that our DNA is
full of ancient viruses, which can modify DNA for many generations to come. Viruses like
HIV also introduce a nick into the DNA, then use a protein called integrase to insert
themselves into the genome, mutating, often interrupting genes, turning on silent genes. All of
this is very destructive 99.9% of the time, but sometimes it gives way to miracles; with my
nanobots, I believe in blurring the line of AI, cybernetics and biological modification; my
nanobots work as a collective brain, passing through the immune system by mimicking the
specific DNA of the host. Finally, they silently re-engineer the nucleotides one pair at a time.
With a core-programming is to activate the right genetic markers, while silencing the ones
that impede Kant´s rational maxim.”
“How long have you planned this…coup?”
“Oh, it is an old obsession of mine. When I was eight years old, I started to read
my father´s great volumes on neurology, and I started to understand that my bullies were
nothing but slaves to action potentials in their neurons, bouncing off each other randomly like
billiard balls — a deterministic system not of their choosing. Humankind won’t be reasonable
because their genetic coding won´t allow it. Nature´s purposes are more obscure, instincts that
go down a hundred million years down the road, will have us laugh at other´s misery, go to
war, feel pleasure from all the wrong sensations, copulate with the wrong people, pass on the
same irrational mess for generations to come. We are but monkeys who had too little time to
develop our neocortex fully, still having our core drive originating from the primitive
brainstem. But my code can turn that table upside down. It will be a coordinated attack
against the very heart of nature! Life is a thing to be corrected.”
He sounded so assured, indeed in his natural habitat here, acting like some God
at the dawn of creation.
 “How about romantic love?” I asked, and immediately I became somewhat
surprised that I had even uttered such a cliché (it must have come straight from that peasized
reptilian brain). He shook his head, smiling – I could almost read his mind: WOMEN!
“Once we got rid of hunger, the source of most misery and joy became spelled
´love,´ and above all romantic love. It divides people into the attractive, beautiful, those who
get to find their desires fulfilled, and then; those who remain in the shadows, alone and
unwanted. It´s the last injustice, so greatly amplified when other inequalities have come to
become mitigated by overabundance..”
“But you need to earn love, don´t you think so?”
“What you call love is nothing but a simple software we are born
with, forcing us to react to simple triggers; it might only be an odor that signals
good genetic traits in a partner. In any case, those triggers only made sense in a
paleolithic setting, for we had no time to adjust to a civilized scenario
instinctually. Even a mother´s reaction to her baby is not too complicated; big
eyes that mirror helplessness, asking for her to be there, have you heard of the
studies that show how a mother´s love cor relates with the cuteness of her baby? ”
His small eyes blinked at me, while our steps clanked on metal – Weren´t you
loved by your mother? I dared not go personal on him, not now.
“So, love has nothing to do with free will; it is as much a
programmed set of values as you will find in my virus. Did you know that even
dogs evolved into a babyface? Evolving into that set of parameters for what ´to
love´ that was hardwired in the human brain. Our task here is to broaden the
compass of love to contain all things , well beyond those set of variables inforced
by nature. Now, this requires some serious re -engineering of what makes us
human. We can´t go on acting like apes with big brains, not when we have the
ability for nuclear holocausts or engineered epidemics. Bu t let's postpone
daydreaming of changing the World; first, I need empirical data, I need to know
precisely how the virus changes a human, and with no placebo, we could even
dispense with control groups!”
I admit I was getting a bit dizzy by all this sickening packaging of human
emotions into a deterministic system of cause and effects; I felt like he was trampling with
dirty boots upon holy ground. He turned to me;
“You know there are ten squared 1800000000 possible combinations of the
human DNA - or that is the numbers of atoms in the Universe multiplied by itself 23 million
times! -, that is an absurdly large number to calculate, without this 8000-qubit quantum
computer it would be impossible.” He stroked, almost sensually, on the transparent machine
with the insides made of golden wires.
“So, you have every possible configuration of the human genome in there?”
“Well, kind of, it is just difficult to define what combinations the quantum
computer ought to search for, imagine a librarian going through an infinite library with every
book that could be, looking for a book that contains meaning, but…in what context? And you
might get the picture. My task is to formulate the context to the software. However, I limited
myself to configurations where selflessness trumps selfishness and received more
configurations than the numbers of atoms in the Universe, so there are plenty of ways to re-
engineer a human genome, or any genome, to fit my purposes, no need to worry about erasing
individuality, you know?”
“Can you give one example of such a gene?”
“Sure, why not…silence your boyfriend´s MAOA-2R Allele, and the propensity
to violence and irresponsible behavior, it should be easily fixed!”
“But I have never seen him violent…”
“Andrew first came in contact with me, wanting a full map of exactly what is
wrong with him, later he started to exchange favors for favors. He explained to me that he
doesn´t want to end up in jail, so he calms himself down, exhausting his overactive
sympathetic system with women and cannabis, turning into a sedated tiger, his own words,
not mine!”
“What about the mind´s power to change matter, all research on epigenetics…”
“Great…a Neo-Lamarckian! Partly true, of course, but where does the mind
originate? Does it fluctuate in some empty vacuum in hyperspace? Look at twin studies once
more; they won´t change the genetic markers despite different environments because their
DNA has already decided what and how they should think; To be pessimistic or optimistic,
depressed or happy…in theory an opimistic twin could change his markers, but it is not in his
nature to be so! They even have similar religious temperaments, independent of their families´
religiosity. They won´t question their nature beyond a certain limit, won´t break from the path
that was pre-determined at birth; everyone is ever becoming what they were in the first
place.” He scanned his eyes, and a new door slid open, “So, prepared to see my mouse utopia?

Yes, please!!! My mind had lost itself in a haze, and his words were like bullets
from automatic weapons fired from every angle, I had lost track on all syntax between words.

The lights turned on, overly bright, and I became surrounded by glass vessels containing
small societies of mice. I focus my eyes on one typed “Mouse utopia experiment nr 47”;
where the mice lied, exhausted, so thin that you could see their skeletal ribs, breathing
heavily. Their bloodred eyes staring at the ether of existence, some scrambling together for
warmth. In another cage - oh the horror! - There were bones and blood everywhere, and a
single mouse stood there, cannibalizing on the last remaining corpse.
I covered my eyes.
“Each virus is programmed not to contaminate, adapted solely to fit the host´s
DNA, mimic it, then mutate…look at them, same conditions, but only the ones without my
virus devoured each other, the mice injected with my virus would rather starve to death than
eat his fellow mouse!”
My first impulse was to scream, “You monster!” – It seemed to not follow
Kant´s categorical imperative at all – but I did not utter a word, this was but a drop in the sea
of suffering in the World out there, and it might save billions from suffering, all was for the
better good, surely? The same debauchery would be found in every trashcan outside, even to
produce my lipstick, I collected myself, tried to see the bigger picture to the horrors he
manufactured in this lab.
 “I want this to spread out to the World without big corporations, no playboy son
of some meglomaniacal billionaire will be allowed to get his hands on something so
precious!”
“Professor, you will need to dare play outside the conventional rules, or else
your nightmare scenario will play out, and the World won´t forgive you! Hand it to me, and I
will get you straight to phase 3…” - In my head, I kept thinking; why would he give some
stranger his life´s work? Would Andrew´s cannabis prove to be that strong?
“This will be my great masterpiece, but I do not know what to do with it. I often
get stuck in between decisions, lacking a certain assertiveness to chose one or the other
direction. IF I hand over this sample to you make sure to collect raw, objective data, about
changes in personality, I want no emotional bias mixed in, ok?”
I gave him a sincere stare and nodded, “This has already been agreed upon,
professor, remember?” My eyes remained fixed on his pair of clouded eyes as I dropped the
sample and some instructions into a pocket in my suit. Now, I wanted to rush out with the
virus, in casethe effect of the cannabis might end.
He opened a new cage, a bunch of fat, overfed rats, sniffing upwards to the God
that be, all standing on two legs to await what must have become a ritual of sorts by now. He
threw in a bit of sugar, and they all jumped each other, bit each other until the strongest took
the sugar all to himself and rolled it off to a corner, defending it with a threatening pose,
showing off its sharp teeth, all others cowering in fear. Then, he threw the bit of sugar to the
cage with his starved mice. They awoke, like elders, slowly halting forward with their tiny
paws, biting softly on the sugar, one carried over a small piece to one mouse which was in a
too weak condition to rise. When everyone had eaten, they sniffed at each other lovingly,
inspecting, to see if everyone was ok, I expected them to cry at any moment, but I was the one
crying.
“It is beautiful!” I said with a lump stuck in my throat.
“No, it is not beautiful, it is simply good science.”

It is late, 2 am, the sample is safe inside my purse, I barely have guts to look into it, afraid it
might have all been a dream of mine. I guess I still have to complete my homework
assignment:

THE TATTOO

Mirror, mirror…now I come to the scene of seduction: he was smoking outside, leaning on
the University´s brick walls after class. I had been annoyed by him from the get-go, how he
would trample on his shoe-wall, wrecking the sneaker in the process. It looked like a beggar´s
flappers hanging from the feet, this thing, probably built by deft child´s hand in
Indonesia…still, when he would glance at me while other girls flocked around him, it made
my bones shiver. He did not say a word to me for the first week or so. He seemed like your
typical cocky late-20s male with an attitude, somehow simulated; old idols exorcized in a
mirror? Rebel without a cause with all that swagger, his electric cigar (which looked so much
like the real deal) hanging sloppily from the left corner of his mouth. He glanced at me
sideways, smiled, blew out smoke;
“What you see is fake, this entire scene is an act, I am but trying to fit a
preconceived notion of a man, but that you already know, right?”
“Amusing introduction, I was thoroughly entertained by your James Dean
persona…”
“Sure, Hollywood acts like the great shaman, prescribing fuzzy rules for
seduction, but rules cannot plop out of nothing. You need to go deeper than that, girl…”
Did he say that? - I might be fishing for details in a fog; I cannot recall all the
features of that day; it did not seem all that important at the time. True, he was lovely to look
at, fit for some old-school Hollywood movie involving bikes and knife-fights. Exciting, but
also, somehow dull. I tried to push him out of his act, but then I was engulfed by the thing I
found inside his shell, what was it? A shared trauma, maybe? Anyway, take this as a close
representation of our overanalyzed meta-seduction;
“Oh, I know all about how ads and Hollywood created the eternal search for
coolness for young men, die at 50 with lung cancer to get girls to bed; will you, please? You
can´t say we are biologically wired to want to smoke…”
“Don´t worry, this won´t kill anyone…” he lifted his e-cigar, “But not a
vacuum! It mimics readiness for danger; you know it has been found that young men will take
more foolish risks when an attractive female is close by? Testesterone spikes, activating our
readiness to die. The primal man would, of course, have great fights before the campfire, a cig
works well as a stand-in for the fire-breathing dragons from our past.”
“Who are these dragons? Marlboro man was only an actor…”
“We are studying biology; you do not think there are deeper roots to these icons
Marlboro man, cowboys; it is only a sugarcoated retelling of more horrific mythological
beasts - ever read about the corded ware invasion? Ruthless Aryan invasion from the steppes
riding with bronze axes and exterminating the European Cro-magnon´s Y-chromosome
haplogroup some 5000 years ago? Every cigar is a symbolic trigger to more primal memories
of fire-breathing dragons, forever stuck in the collective unconscious of mankind. Memories
of the brutal victors of a game that will surely be repeated for eternity to come.”
“So where do women fit into this debauchery?”
“Well, my fellow biology student, the ancient European mtDNA was not
slaughtered. Imagine what kind of terrible beast nature had to force those poor deserted
women to love. Today man might be, somehow, a tame and well-behaved dog, but he needs to
pretend to be a wolf, the instincts haven´t changed, you know?” He fondled with my hair; I
took a step back.
“So, besides dirty hands, is there anything real about you at all?” He became
self-conscious of his dirt, staring at his hands.
“I am growing tired of pretending, of playing games…I am looking for
something real, not tattoos of dripping blood on a man´s arms; to me, tattoos are like make-up
for men. Fake! Not a turn on.”
“Yet you noticed it…” He removed his shirt, revealing the rest of the tattoo.
“A tattoo of a severed head; oh, I am so impressed.” I rolled my eyes, but it was
kind of impressive: the multicolored elliptic image of Khali: her tongue hanging out drooling
with blood, scimitar in one hand, with fangs as teeth, holding out the severed head of Shiva,
while trampling on the body of her God-husband.
“It is an image of the Cosmos, it all ends with the ruthlessness of Mother
Nature; he picked up his phone, pointed to a photo of family bliss: a happy child, a happy
mother, a happy dorky father smiling back at me.
“Now look…” He turned and showed his back once more, I looked closer at the
severed head, it began to warp into the father, and the mother…she was Khali!
“Father killed himself when I was 15, found out my mother had slept with some
psychopathic fuckup biker. I was not his child, see? No wonder, look at my jaws, my eyes
compared to his, so round and gentle, doesn´t it looks like some goat´s eyes? And I certainly
would not cut my wrists for some bitch.”
I stood there speechless; it was such a strange thing to find out about someone
within five minutes.
“Is this real enough for you...what was your name again?”
“Jennifer.”
“See you around Jen...and know that I am not, and never will be, the
monogamous type, that is; if you jump onto my motorcycle after class…”
“And why should I?”
“Oh, I´m sorry, did I not emphasize on ´if´?” he said, leaving me there.

I was quite enthralled, life had become so dull, and I wanted to play along, why does play
always get so serious for us? After class, he stood there, self-assured, waiting for me with his
motorcycle.

Sunday, 27th November

We lie on his bed after another session of lovemaking. I am gasping for air.
“I give that A-, that was a good fuck!” he says.
“So, what grade do I get on my homework assignment?”
“B-, you forgot some details. The first time we met, yes, I remember your eyes
looking down at me, judging, taking pity on your friend for falling for my boyish charms. I
remember how I told myself that I could not stand to have you judge me, a man´s ego on trial
by the female superego, a story as old as man himself.“
And then I understood; some part of him is disgusted by every woman´s
attraction to him because he sees the past mirrored in the present; his mother´s desire for his
biological father, some dirty sin that flows in his blood. That is why he was drawn to my
initial judgment - he hates himself. I resigned, knew it was game over. I had found the secret
inside the genie; now, the maze into his heart had turned into an unsolvable equation.
I was gnashing my teeth together loud enough for him to hear; “Doing my
homework, it became clear that You are stuck in that moment, you cannot get out, can´t you
see? Why not attempt to cut that umbilical cord once and for all?”
“Stuck where? My mother is a top lawyer, as sharp and ruthless as they come,
my biological father´s a beast; former alpha lion in the streets, and now top dog in some
prison hell-hole, my DNA is a perfect match of those two contrasting, copulating snakes.”
“Drop your selfish, self-glorifying act!”
“Well, my dear, is there a creature on this world more selfish than a woman
determined to anchor a man to her life, desiring to prolong life´s long struggle for another
generation to come? The actress awoken in her by nature is remarkable, that man has
witnessed the raging sea of Moses calm down to become a lake in a sweet summer night, but
little does he know, the Bermuda triangle underneath the surface is awaiting to strangle that
man in his sleep.”
“You are speaking of your mother now, love, not every woman. Besides, man is
still more selfish in his needs, at least that woman is trying to proceed with what mother
nature once started, part of something greater than herself, willing to sacrifice her body…”
He hushed me with his finger; “The jury is out, transcripts have noted the crime,
her own words: but she is not sacrificing herself for mother nature, she is mother nature! The
cruelest meta-representation of all mothers, she is not an individual entity no more, her will is
to prolong the suffering once ignited, tarantula brooding in her web, becoming one with the
most frightening craving known to mankind. Here, even the most heroic man shivers before
the grandiosity of what stands before him. Love is professed to him with fervor reminiscent of
those golden days of mother´s love in his little crib, and at the very moment when he glues to
her, he is no longer a thing needed - that man is to become a tamed shell of his former self,
carrying over the code, all that was ever required of him!”
I slapped him. Again, and again in an erratic wild frenzy. And he just kept
saying, “I see her inside you, I see it pouring out in a frenzy, I see your mask of love melting
down in tears.” – I WAS CRYING OUT BLOOD, OR SO IT FELT. I rushed to the bathroom,
and there, a mirror-image of despair, with black rivulets of mascara, was horrified to see me.
In the meantime, he just lied there smoking away the day, carrying the red marks left by my
slaps like emblems.
On the mirror, I get a glimpse of an electrical cigar hanging from a shelf, I pick
it up and fill it up with the sample in my purse. There, there; here it was decided how I would
play this game to its final conclusion.

I wash away the running mascara from my face, go out to face my beloved monster, with a
treacherous smile.
“Look, I found the cigar which wooed me into your game.” I said, “Shall we
smoke a farewell hit?”
“That is what I call a paradigm shift; how do you make a discrete jump between
opposite emotional states like that? “
I lay down in his arms, hand him over the cigar.
“I will lose this game, so I might just as well enjoy it before it ends,” I whisper
to his ear.
He inhales smoke; I keep wondering if the nanobots can get into his system
through vapor.
I take a hit myself to be ´fair game´ - we shall dive into the experiment together.
“I was conceived as a reaction to boredom, you know? I am but a mirror of that
moment; if there is one religious’ backbone in my body, it is the belief that the Universe was
conjured as a result of some similar kind of boredom. A wild night with a biker at some bar in
the middle of nowhere, nothing but the eternal will of the Universe claiming its rights…”
“And your father? The one who raised for you?”
“A helpless, pitiful man. A boring office clerk, what kind of a man rots on a
desk every day, doing God knows what? Such an abbreviation from nature´s original
purposes, the man whose reality fades in a grey blur, maybe my mother should not be
blamed.”
“I did not ask about that…did he love you? Did you?”
He shut his eyes, the voice became soft, as if another soul had been exorcized
into his body; “My father would push me to live out my wilder nature, he lived through me;
the childhood he never had because of his strict upbringing by his mid-western Mormon
mother. Truly, it must have been genetics through and through; everything else was but an
excuse for a life not lived. The “essence of him” could not break free; a free spirit cannot be
put to chains by strict upbringings. But he imagined I was a parallel version of him, with the
freedom he lacked…the opposite to his anal-retentive personality, what is it called?
“Anal-expulsive…”
“Yeah, that is it! Not that it matters, neurology has proven Freud wrong, but my
father believed in the power of nurture to create some opposite of himself, he would come and
hug me after rough battles in the schoolyard, carry me on his shoulders ´Did you give him a
beating, son?´ I looked at him with blood pouring down my chin and said, ´Yeah! Of course!´
And he would ask me for all the gory details; this was the closest thing to love I ever felt.
When the school principal ordered a test to examine what was wrong with me after I had put
the library on fire.”
“The library on fire?”
“Well, it was poorly planned, only one shelf turned to tar, and the books I was
aiming at survived…” He inhaled from the electric cigar, and it glowed an orange ember in
the dark, “First there was all kind of signs of personality disorders in the MRI scan of my
brain, then they found all out the wrong markers on my DNA, my bad behavior had an
explanation, at last. Some days later, father looked up his DNA, and thus, one day, returning
from school; I found him with wrists cut in the bathroom, “I love you, son. Forever.” – this
was the only thing he had scribbled on his farewell note, and boy, did I love him. I still do,
whatever the professor might say about me being an empty vessel.”
“It is the Tao-symbol…there is a white dot in black, a black in white…no one is
just darkness.”
“Tell that to my biological father, the only good news I got from a visit in prison
was that I was not going to become bald, but please tell me a story of the black dot hidden on
that dress you wear with such pride, painted so very, very white…”
 “Ok. My mother would pick on me about my beauty or lack thereof, you know?
So, I would go to her toilet and drop three drops of vinegar into her beauty creams, every
single day after school I would do this…she never forgave me. Rightly so, for I am a
scheming bitch, maybe worse than her, hiding under the soft surface.”
He blew in from the cigar, lifted it, and inspected it; “Have you put some drops
of vinegar into this cigar? Are you drugging me into submission?”
I stared deeply into his eyes – and thus, he knew - he started guffawing, and I
did too, we laughed like maniacs through the night in each other´s embrace. Life was good.
Love was good.

Monday, 28th November

Next day I woke up to the calls of seagulls, and an empty bed. I stretched myself, walked over
to the bedroom, looked myself in the mirror; was that a different me? As I was doing my
make-up, I heard a scream, I ran out to the precipice and see Andrew - a small stickman from
where I was standing - stretching his body before the crashing waves. I rushed downwards,
flings of snow floating in the air. My bare feet were freezing on the thin film of ice that made
up the shore. When he saw me, he got into a fist of laughter, his voice was high-pitched, full
of angst;
“It seems that my superpowers are fading…like Samson when that bitch cut his
hair,” walls of waves were knocking him down again and again,”
“What superpowers?” I yelled.
“Indifference!!!”
My phone suddenly trembled in my purse, I lifted it; it was the professor;
“Come to the laboratory…URGENTLY! DO NOT TEST THE VIRUS ON ANDREW!!!!!”
Andrew swaggered out of the water, his fully naked body in a fist of convulsions
as he collapsed into my arms.
“I don´t feel like myself…” His green eyes shone like emeralds, rising to the
surface, he wiped the hair from my face, as if he had witnessed his savior, I stroked his, we
remained in that state, like fools, staring into each other´s eyes. My heart was beating so fast,
but when I reached for his body, I felt his heart racing much quicker, I kissed his lips,
embraced him to warm his body back to life - trying to be his rock, his mother. The wind was
relentless, and soon, his shivers became my own until I felt the rattling of my bones. The
crashing of the waves faded into devastating murmurs, and above, the clownish cry of
seagulls seemed to mock me.