PLUMBING PROBLEMS: PART XIV

          PLUMBING PROBLMS: PART XIV

What did he do with the animals once the experiment was terminated?  Worthy only studied the animals when they were young and then projected the potency and yield of the adult animal.  He did not keep the animals until they were mature.  I thought of how I disposed of dead goldfish when I was a kid, why there were supposedly alligators roaming the sewers of New York.  My thoughts return to my plumbing problems.  Thank God this house is nowhere near the ocean, and that it has its own septic system.  But there must be a connection between the septic system and the pond.  That’s perhaps why Jack had seen fluorescence in the pond and that is how the creatures managed to survive.

I continued to read Worthy’s lab book, absorbed with the progress of his experiments.  Then I came to the final few pages and photos.  Worthy had found a substance made by jellyfish of interest.  He also found a similar molecule in starfish.  What followed were the technical details of creating a new creature.  The data was accompanied by two photos, which I found both curious and interesting.  One photo showed just a mass of tissue with the caption, resting state.  The other photo was that of a jellyfish, but the likes of which no one had seen before.  The body of the jellyfish had a star shape, rigid with tentacles jutting from the star tips.  This photo had the caption, excitation state.  His notes went on to explain the two states.  Resting state was when the animal was not being stimulated by the presence of food.  Excitation state was when the animal was hunting or sensing danger.  It appeared that the animal was covered with millions of tiny scales.  The scales were separated from each other during the resting state, but when the animal was excited, the scales interlocked giving the animal a solid body with flowing tentacles.

Before I knew it, I had spent hours going over his notes and photos.   Going up the stairs, I took one more look around the lab and thought of the joy Worthy must have experienced in his subterranean laboratory, free from the inhibitions of corporate society.