The Mother of Invention

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“Confound it! Why is nothing ever where I need it to be?”.

“Because you leave things where you don’t need them, when you’re done using them?”.

“Well. Yes. There is that I suppose”.

“Is this what you’re looking for?”.

“What would I do without you?”.

“Starve. Rage. Smell”.

“Yes, don’t hold back, tell me what you really think. Genius comes at a price, you know”.

“So what is your genius giving us today, in trade for this human cost?”

“Ersatz”.

“Who zats?”.

“Ersatz. It’s German. It means replacement. But more than that”.

“And what is it?”.

“It’s how you’re going to fix me, and then how we’re going to get rich”.

“I’ll fetch a mop and bucket then, shall I?”.

“Hold the mop. I’ll have the bucket though. With a nice crisp sativa, if you please”.

Some hours later it is hard to tell which smoke is from the soldering iron, and which from the primitive bong which the esteemed doctor Richard Hume insists he uses for medicinal purposes, but which he in fact mostly utilises when deep thought is required. What passes for a laboratory, but is in fact a garage with some rather eccentric modifications, is strewn with the detritus of a furious search for answers. Cannibalised devices are connected to each other in haphazard fashion, the designs coming from far left of field, their purpose unclear, in many cases even to the ever-distracted mind of their creator, the very same Dr Hume.

Unannounced, sudden movement from one of the hastily assembled and never replaced workbenches, startles Mary, Dr Hume’s partner. She knows better than to comment though, even on realising that the culprit is a strange hybrid of some unspeakable torture device, and what is unmistakably her sandwich toaster, missing from the kitchen these seven weeks. She discreetly unplugs the device’s power cable, and turns then to see what The Great Mind is working on.

In spite of the roughshod general appearance of the ersatz lab, his workspace is immaculately tidy, and in the centre of the surgically clean work board, sits an organ. It is a useless, functionless organ, approximately kidney-shaped, but a good deal smaller.

“What does it do?”.

“It doesn’t perform any function at all”.

“So what’s the point?”.

“To see if my body rejects it”.

“And if it does?”.

“Then we start again”.

“Sounds good. So what do you want me to do with it?”.

“I want you to implant it, Above my stomach”.

To Mary’s dismay, Dr Hume chooses to have local anaesthetic, allowing him to remain conscious to oversee the operation. In between curses from Mary, and directions to bloody well keep still, he animatedly explains how he has found a way to make the silicon organ produce its own immunosuppressants, based on his own DNA, meaning that his body should heal the surgical connection, rather than attack the organ. If he is successful, he tells her, it will mean replacement organs which will outlast their recipients, can be grown in a lab.

They run tests twice a day for the next week. A whole battery of them. Scans, blood tests, DNA tests, ultrasound imaging (Dr Hume wanted an MRI but Mary politely declined the opportunity of breaking into the university hospital), stress tests, physical exercise, everything they could think of that might make the body respond to new stimuli, to see if it inhibited the new organ. For a week, everything was fine. No symptoms of his immune system being on high alert. In fact, no symptoms at all. Were it not for the fact they could see the rogue unkidney on the scans, they would both be questioning whether they actually implanted it, or just imagined the whole episode. in any case, they are heartened that after a week, the graft seems to be taking without issue.

Day eight is not so forgiving. Having enjoyed a thoroughly satisfying breakfast at seven thirty, following what he insisted on telling Mary had been a “spectacular” movement, by eight oh three he was hunched over the basin, wasting a thoroughly satisfying breakfast. By eight seventeen he was demanding his pipe and some whisky, and by eight thirty-two, he was in the foetal position,  begging Mary to find a contact number for his estranged friend and onetime partner, a Professor Wells.

“Henry?!”

“Yes, Henry!”

“You said you’d die before talking to him again!”

“Well then let’s bloody well hope I was wrong!”

“But I can get it out, why do we need him?”

“Because, Mary, whatever has gone wrong, I don’t think we just need to take the dummy organ out, and call me fussy, but after we do that, I’d quite like to have something to put back in”.

Professor Henry Wells is an arse. He doesn’t mean to be, he’s entirely free of malice, he was just raised by his rather eccentric grandparents, and it wasn’t until he was biologically an adult that he ever really discovered things like personal space, social cues, or tact. Despite his great mental capacity for understanding technology, and complex systems in general, it seems that it was left too late for him to learn these basic skills. Or perhaps there was just no more room in his brain alongside the hundreds of books he had more or less memorised. When they shared a lab, Richard used to joke that Henry was so intelligent it made him stupid. Laying in agony on the floor of what passes for a lab, Richard hopes that his former partner is focusing on more positive memories of their tenure together.

“Cretin”.

“Good to see you too”.

“What is it then?”.

“Silicon, plus stem cells recoded with my DNA”.

“Cretin”.

“Yes, I believe you mentioned that. Anyway, that’s not what you’re here for. Mary has more recent experience, a steadier hand, and knowledge of the exact whereabouts”.

“Well it’s a good job I brought my kit then isn’t it? What am I building you? a stomach?”.

“We’ll know when we get in there, so you’ll need to work pretty quickly”.

“No pressure then”.

Dr Hume, it turned out, has had stomach cancer. His work with Mary has been diagnostic - they knew something was wrong, but didn’t know what. While they searched for the rogue ailment, he continued his work on replacement organs, in the hope that once they found what needed replacing, he could grow one and get himself sorted. A week was how long it had taken the cancer cells to make contact with the nutrient-rich unkidney, and had then turned it overnight into a tumour. Mary had been forced to remove all of the stomach, and while she did, Professor Wells had caught up on his peer’s research. So when presented with the the predicament of needing to replace an entire stomach, under pressure, he rose to the challenge and made some adjustments to his design, based on what he had just read.

“So you gave me a new stomach? You crazy bastard how will it ever get accepted?”.

“I gave you an ersatz-stomach. A replacement, but more than that”.

“More than? How so?”.

“I read your stuff. Not quite so cretinous as I imagined”.

“How very gracious”.

“You’re welcome”.

“So you’re saying you used it?”.

“Yes. What you’ve done replaces organs. It would have worked but for the cancer. But you haven’t managed to actually grow an organ yet, have you? hence the tumour snack”.

“Harsh, but fair.”

“I have a series of ersatz organs - things that not only replace, but improve. They prolong life. On paper at least”.

“But they’re being rejected?”.

“Every time”.

“Until now?”.

“So, I guess the real question is? Hume & Wells?”.

“Wells & Hume rolls off the tongue better”.

“How about Ersatz Labs?”

“Mary, I think that might just work. Are you in?”.

“I’ll start making spreadsheets”.