The Claire Project

Chapter 9

The next day, Will once again arrived early to his lab as it had become his habit anyway, but today in particular he was especially eager for the day to begin so that he could see the brain model Veldin promised him.

He was very happy that he didn't have to wait too long. At 8:00am sharp, Veldin appeared and beckoned Will to follow him down the hallway, down to another wing of the building where Veldin's private labs were located. The entire wing was dedicated just to his labs, and Will had never been allowed to enter it before. Veldin placed his palm onto the scanner and allowed them entrance to the wing.

He led them down the hall to a room labeled only with a room number, and the entrance also contained a locked-entry palm reader. Veldin unlocked the door and entered, crossing to the back of the room. Will followed, curious and also mildly confused by what he found there.

The room was nearly empty except for an institutional bed with starched white sheets. On top of the bed a teenage girl wearing a hospital gown sat cross-legged, and she peered at him vacantly with a strange, empty expression on her beautiful face.

Will extended his hand to her professionally in greeting saying, "Hello, I'm Dr. William Young."

The girl simply looked at Will's extended hand silently, seeming disinterested and making no move or expression at all. Veldin watched these proceedings from where he stood behind her bed for perhaps just a little too long—long enough for Will to realize he'd done something wrong and feel the burning embarrassment setting in—before he began barking with laughter.

"Oh, it doesn't speak! Speech is a non-essential brain function," he explained finally, then added, "I call her Claire."

Will examined the girl, still puzzled. She was stunningly beautiful. Her face was perfectly sculpted as if she could have been a statue, with flawless cream skin that looked as if it had never seen the sunlight. And she had the most beautiful shade of pale blue eyes he had ever seen. Her long blond hair hung straight and shimmery and could have only been her natural color, and her lips were also a perfect shade of pink.

"This—", Veldin said now by way of introduction, "is my brain model. It's a humanoid model that I created right here in my lab. Every gene in her was handpicked by me, right down to her appearance, which I suppose is an added bonus."

He winked at Will, smirking as he began to run his fingers slowly through the girl's hair in a proprietary sort of way. It was, well, a little bit creepy to Will. He was caught off guard by this and he couldn't deny that he was feeling sort of uncomfortable at the moment. The girl, however, did not react in the slightest to Veldin's touch. She only sat there, perfectly still, no visible emotion on her lovely face.

Will had been sort of shocked into silence at this point, still trying to process what he saw before him. He had sort of expected the brain model to be just that, a brain, perhaps suspended in jars of fluid with medical equipment supplying it with life-supporting measures. Certainly, not this. He didn't know what to make of this creature before him, but in any case, his scientific curiosity was getting the better of him.

Veldin must have sensed his confusion, because he continued on anyway, "She's the perfect model. Since we know her entire genotype, every aspect of our experiment can be controlled, and I've engineered her brain to have the same unique learning and comprehensive abilities as you've seen in the neuronal cell line we've been working with."

"Fascinating," Will said slowly, still really not sure what to think, "but how did you gain approval for a human subject of this nature?"

Veldin corrected him then all too quickly, "humanoid. She's not really human, just composed of human genetic materials spliced together by me in the lab. Her brain is designed to have only life essential functions, and then of course, the ones we want to examine. She can't speak or really function for anything other than the scope of our experiments. I've been teaching her mathematics as a way to test her cognizance."

"I see," Will said, nodding, although he had to admit that was sort of a lie. He was certainly intrigued by his brain model, but he was honestly still a little baffled by what he'd just been shown. Veldin didn't seem to notice, and he continued on with obvious excitement about his work, and if Veldin was this excited, Will knew it must have been for good reason.

"Come this way, I'll show you what else I've done using Claire. We can come back to her later," Veldin said, beginning to lead Will out of the room again. Will passively followed, only throwing one quick backward glance over his shoulder at the strange girl, still watching him, blinking slowly.