Leonardo by the Numbers

Doug Donnan

Executive Editor OM-GEN+

donnan.doug@yahoo.com

                    

"Leonardo by the Numbers"

by

Doug Donnan

             

              [ McCendry Medical Research Institute & College /Aimes, Iowa ]

                     [ Post Graduate / Course: 'Mastering Water and Beyond' 

                       Leonardo da Vinci's Secret World of Marine Research ]  

    

     "This particular Aquanatomy course we'll call it, for the most part, is going to be

very basic young man. It is scheduled to be an embryonic... I should say rudimentary,

hands-on, highly experimental lab experience. Only a baker's dozen or so of my most

gifted and open-minded graduate students are being allowed to enroll for this, its first

eight week trial and error semester," Professor von Petri declared chin held high as

he circumnavigated a large, curving, rectangular aquarium-like tank located there in

the center of the claustrophobic confines of the dingy sub-basement in the bowels of

the university's white stone quadrangle Medical Complex. Up until only a few short

months ago this dank and dark sub-surface section had been abandoned, locked up

and forgotten by faculty, custodians and students alike. It was to be the senior medical

professor emeritus one Vladimir von Petri who would finally get permission from the

MMRIC powers-that-be to re-open its subterranean doors for him to conduct and

instruct his recently discovered 'Leonardic' (as he referred to them) observational

anatomy experiments and radical surgical techniques. It was rumored that von Petri

had somehow 'come across' some long lost notes and sketches by the great Leonardo

da Vinci. The fragile pages, script and charcoal renderings being focused almost

entirely on the subject of water and its life force. The professor's new avant garde

course was to be specifically aimed and dutifully 'centered' around these mysterious

aquatic facts and findings by the Renaissance period genius so many centuries ago.  

    

     "I see," replied the now owl-eyed Calvin Cantwell. This was to be his very first

reportage assignment for the prestigious world news giant Reuters and he wanted it

to be a real doozy. He had read a tiny profile about this eccentric von Petri fellow in

the 'Believe it or Not' archives in the underground (so to speak) pages on the Internet.

He had hunted von Petri down and caught up with him at a local medical seminar

billed and advertised as: Leonardo: From Head To Toe/The Master's Scalpel &

Sketches. This chance of a lifetime, on-site interview seemed to be leading him in just

the right direction to the mysterious, medical masterpiece copy he was longing to pen

and present to the Lords of Reuters.

     "Please professor," he pressed on as he craned up on tip-toes to try and follow

the diminutive, white smocked von Petri as he performed his pedantic underground

parade all around and about the gurgling and bubbling glass tank, "give me, show me 

if you will, just what you're all about down here with this super da Vinci dozen of yours?

What do you expect to accomplish sir? What are your intentions, if I might be so bold?"

     The gnome-like professor came to an abrupt halt just shy of the pencil ready cub

 reporter. He studied the pale, probing youngster for a moment. His eventual response

to the brash and aggressive blonde, crystal blue-eyed lad was both curt and cautious.

     "Show you, you say?" he almost whispered and then rolled his black, half-dollar

eyes all around and about as if someone or some thing might be monitoring their

conversation. Then the professor shifted his attention just there to the right. In the

bubbling water tank, amidst the nebulous drifting green algae and semi-gelatinous

June grass was a decidedly odd, floating and flexing almost transluscent organism of s

ome sort. To describe it as a 'peculiar' (perhaps 'bizarre' would be a better choice of

words) other-worldly phenomenon of unknown parentage or purpose would have served

the keen-eyed reporter best in his spiral notepad.

   

     "Tell me something young man," von Petri tried as he stepped up and then leaned

in uncomfortably close to the scribbling Cantwell.

     "You just name it Doc," Cantwell shot back with his tongue now peeping out the side

of his cherubic lips in concentration on his notes.

     "Did you come down here to see me of your own volition? That is, from what you told

me over the phone earlier, this was to be a rather furtive... secret, if you'll pardon the

drama, undercover assignment for you. Is that not correct?"

     "Yes sir," Cantwell looked up and then quickly back down into his cryptic written

(hopefully Reuters bound!) observations.

     "So in fact, for the most part, absolutely nobody really knows that you've come

down here to my little underground medical hideaway."

     "Two out of two Doc. That's not bad hitting for a... say professor, as long as we're

exchanging questions and answers, what are your particular fields of study... interests

I mean. I guess what I'm really trying to focus on, for all the readers, is... What's up Doc?"

    

     Professor von Petri noticeably cringed at this rather flippant, boorish line of

questioning. He was beginning to feel rudely interrogated. He now had some serious

misgivings about this entire interview idea and was secretly mulling over how best to

handle it and somehow still benefit from it.

     "Come on Doc," Cantwell pressed on relentlessly. "You can trust me. I'm you

r buddy...right?"

     The professor squinted his dark, bug-a-boo eyes with a wrenching inner angst.

Then did open wide and roll them at the vaulted, bunker-like cement ceiling. That

does it he mused. This is nothing more than disrespectful impertinence. But, I'm

quite certain that I can use this little twit to help refine my experiments and avant

garde surgical procedures he thought to himself as he pulled down on his bank of

rolling chins. His particular 'parts' and 'pieces' might very well be just what I'm

looking for to complete my revolutionary aquatic automaton submersible!

This innocent young fool shall be the very first 'live'... volunteer.

     "Why just for your information alone Mr. Cantwell," he replied with now fixed

obsidian eyes not unlike those of some prowling, single-minded deep sea shark.

"I have degrees in many and varied fields of study. Icthyology, Salt and Fresh

Water Aquatics, Marine Biology, Botany. I've even dabbled a bit in Advanced

Alchemy and Astrology! I am a full-fledged Pisces. I'm naturally drawn to water!

The oceans and all the--" 

     "Okay, okay professor, slow down," Cantwell snickered somewhat as he tried

to keep up on his notepad. "I know that you're... smart, but for Christ's sake all I'm

trying to come to grips with is just what in the hell is going on inside your head way

down here in this subterranean scholastic--"

     WHACK!

     "There", the professor exhaled a deep, calming sigh as he layed the splintered

two-by-four board down behind him and dipped low to check the breathing and then

gingerly finger feel at the sprawling reporter's pipe stem upper neck for signs of a

carotid artery pulse. He was still alive. "Excellent!" the smiling von Petri whispered

to himself. He dragged the dead weight of the torpid reporter off by the collar and

eventually negotiated him into, through and beyond a large battleship-grey door plated

simply in bland hospital green with white lettering:

                           

                          [  VIVISECTION CHAMBERS / POSITIVELY 'NO ADMITANCE' ]

*     *     *

    

     The professor meticulously arrayed his various surgical steel implements on the clean

white table cloth; razor sharp lancets, pearl handled bone saw,forceps, clamps, suction

pump and recycling reservoir. He then proceded carefully as he followed Leonardo's

detailed sketches and now (after persistent harassing of the University's Language

Department) fully translated text of the dog-eared medical manual Acqua e il vaso

di Natura (Water/ The Vessel of Nature) which he had opened on a stainless steel tray

by his operating table. He had found the here-to-fore unknown, parchment-like manuscript

of Leonardo's in a remote and impossibly dusty curio shop on his side street and back

alley meanderings through and around the ancient cities of Florence and Milan only just

last year. It was a complete and total godsend to the maniacal professor as he had

already almost committed to his photographic memory the voluminous pages, data, and

detailed sketches of the all encompassing Codex Atlanticus, Leonardo's multi-page,

multi-field masterwork.

He stretched on his elastic surgical gloves with a satisfied snap! The lightly smiling

professor then checked his naked, sleeping, supine subject on the table before him

one final time. As he tied back the hanging tails of his white cotton surgical muzzle

mask he wondered just exactly how Leonardo da Vinci restrained his 'subjects' so very

long ago. Hands, feet, mouth, the ancient medical manuscript now at his side didn't show

or say. Rope or strong leather binding straps? Sanitary oral gags? Surely, 'the master'.

didn't have access to the crude (but decidedly effective) silver duct tape that he was

now using!

He brought low the looming, ominopotent stainless steel 'operation' light just above

his 'work area' and determinedly delved into his ghastly and unholy surgical business.

                                                                                                    

*     *     *

                                                                                    

                        [ Three Days Later / 'Mastering Water and Beyond' /

                                Initial Classroom Synoptic Instruction(s) ]

     "It was the great Leonardo da Vinci himself who coined the little known phrase

describing 'water' as the, 'Veturale di Nature'. Weakly translated by yours truly as the

'the vessel of all nature'," von Petri began as his collection of grad students gathered

'round him there in an ad hoc folding chair grouping just off to the molded convex corners

and sides of the great, gurgling, cigar shaped, oblongish underground water chamber.

 "Having said that lady and gentlemen," he continued with a respectful little nod to the

singular female student in the class. "I will say right up front, no pun intended, that this

class shall be conducted in a completely relaxed and open format style," von Petri

declared as he gazed around at the smattering of attentive note-takers spread throughout

the claustrophobic confines of the dimly lit laboratory facility and now micro-makeshift

underground lecture hall. "You select few shall be witnessing and discovering things and

things that you may never have thought of or even dreamed possible!" He held aloft the

crusted, leather bound pages of his adopted aquatic Bible artifact by Leonardo. "Here,

I present to you and you alone, a new beginning, a new pathway we'll say, into the open

fields of Aquatics, Anatomy, Icthyology, Submarine-Robotics, Biospherical-Bionics...

and beyond!"

     He halted his dramatic Moses-like soliloquy and looked around at the gaggle of now

gaping graduate students. Then eased back a bit lest he lose them in his, perhaps,

over-the-top display of Leonardic histrionics. "Now, forgive my exuberance won't you?

Please feel free to ask any questions... about anything whatsoever."

     There was an awkward gravelike silence throughout the little 'aquatorium' save for the

omni-present dull din of bubbling, gurggling and belching from the now eerily enshrouded

emerald green, bio-luminescent glass centerpiece of the underground room and rooms.

     Then...

     "Well professor," the lone blonde and buxom student tried with a dainty half-raised

hand and blue capped Bic. She was seated, cross-legged just along the periphery of the

pulsating anthropomorphic watery phenomenon. "I can't speak for everybody here, but

I personally am more than just a tad bit curious. How come this wildly animated aquarium

or whatever it is of yours, is all covered up with what I can only assume is some type of

photosynthetic chlorophyll paper? What's cookin'?"

     "Well, well young lady," he smiled back at her in what could either have been a

relieved manner or a startled one. It was rather hard to determine from his reaction to

her perspicacious observation and cutesy, double-barreled question. He took a few steps

closer to her there along the port side of the huge, torpedo-like tank. "You have come right

down to the  'center', the crux of things it seems. Excellent! I'll have you all know that this,"

he reached up and patted on what was the geodesic 'nose cone' of the apparatus, "is no

aquarium or fish tank! What we have here before us is our very first and foremost 'project'

in this revolutionary course involving the many worlds of water and its universal and

unbound dynamics. I cannot even begin to tell you wh-- "

     "Have a heart professor," a young man cut in with his naked palms held skyward as if

checking for raindrops. "What the hell is it?"

     " 'Have a heart!' you say," von Petri spat back violently at the rude interruption of

his mad, dream-like dissertational response to the vivacious blonde with the sexy legs.

"Is that a request for me or a question about the prototype we have here before us?

The Submersible Bio-Marine Android or 'Submaranoid' as I, its creator, its singular

parent have dubbed it. You gropping guppies, you fish and chippies that I believed in...

trusted in fact. You now betray me with your impatient, impertinent doubts and suspicions.

Cretins, common plebeians... all of you. I pity you... curse you. Fools! 

     There were now multiple stalactite and stalagmite strings of sinewy spittle adhering

to the professor's meandering, worm-like lips as he rambled on incoherently. He had

snapped.

     "Is this thing a nuclear device of some sort?" from another nervous student

off in a dark corner.

     "Can it hurt us?" from someone else as he slid his folding metal chair back

with a screech.

     "Look! There's a damn hand or something sticking out over the top edge of it...

the freakin' fingers are moving!"

     "What the Fu--  I can see a pair of wide open blue eyes up here in the front,"

another called out as he lifted up some of the paper shroud at the omni-directional,

geodesic nose-cone end.

     "Oh no! Oh no!" from a closely prying and inspecting student along the starboard

side of the now violently vibrating glass vessel. "There's something throbbing way

down inside here. It's pulsing. No, my God in heaven above... it's... it's 'beating'!"        

     All but a few of the chosen twelve aquatic apostles were now on their feet in various

forms of apprehension and consternation. For the first time down in these collegiate

catacombs there was a ubiquitous, palpable feeling of hydroelectric shock and tension.

The few that had chosen to sit just alongside or within touching distance of the

macabre-marine-machine were now, just plain...scared.

     The young blonde called out with a long, manicured pointing finger. She was livid in

her direct accusation of the now blathering von Petri. "You're certifiably insane sir.

This damn thing is... this 'whole' Goddam thing is... why it's alive with unholy connections

to living human parts and organs!"

     "Advances in science and medicine aren't always so pretty to look at my fair lady," he

replied with a hooded, wolf-like leer from deep inside his pitch black midnight eyes.

He pushed his fists into the sides of his pudgy hips in defiance. He finished with...

"Somewhere Leonardo is smiling!"

     "Leonardo da Vinci would have none of 'this' Professor von Petri," she offered back

with a cool confidence. 'This' is fiendishly far beyond science or medicine. Damn you.

You foul demon. You'll burn in hell for this. And only 'then' will the master Leonardo

truly smile. This class is dismissed and I'm calling the police. May the Lord God above...

have mercy on your sadistic soul."

                               

                                                   _____ The End _____