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 _____
