Freezer

I've been mopping up for " Advanced Science experiments" I know, hokey name for years now. I'm the literally janitor, and although I haven't studied a lot, never even got my GED, I've learned a lot from my mostly nice colleagues. I've found a scientist is generally willing to talk to about their work adnauseum. Wilton especially, is always talking about his experiments to try to further his "city under the sea" idea. In addition to the mega ambitious idea of creating an undersea city suitable for humans as they are now he's also been toying for almost 20 years with the idea of modifying human lungs so that they can behave more like, well gills. He likes to grow guinea pigs from embryos in plastic sacks. He has made a lot of progress. The guinea pigs from 20 years ago are still piled in the bottom of the freezer and most of them died horrific drowning deaths. I was hear for that, and I watched how various people dealt with drowning guinea pigs, and sometimes rats, on a regular basis. Wilton himself never did this dirty work, although he seemed plenty exasperated by how slowly the process was going. Now it seems like most would be drowning victims survive. At least they live for several days, breathing through the air, swimming around, coming up for air. But by the third or fourth day they die anyway, as if there's something else besides breathing that makes them land animals. So now Wiltons idea is to try to change their skin, remove their fur and give them a more amphibious look that hopefully will translate into a more holistic and beneficial solution. The freezer though, filled with thousands of dead guinea pig heads, has always given me the creeps. Also the sloppy way the students empty out the water on to the floor. The floor is a wet room there's a drain in the center, but they just expect me or some other schlub to just come by and push the water into the drain. And the water stinks. To me it smells like the fear these animals experience as they are dying. I know that's not real, but tell me what you think after taking on a night shift or too. Anyway. The freezer in the center seems particularly disrespectful. It's not as if anyone is ever going to look again at the poor rodents at the bottom of the pile. They are trapped forever in their moment of fear, lungs filled with water. They are all stacked sloppily on of one another in a manner that seems antithetical to both order and science to me. The thing that really bugs me is the incessant beeping this freezer makes. These beeps are supposed to warn you all the time not to turn it off but everytime I walk by sloshing the water down the drain, I think about hitting the switch. It's not that I am against the science or even the methods of the science. It's a means to end, I have a grandchild and it's a dying world. But this freezer is an excess. It's more about a few egos than it is about science. All the information that could be obtained from these poor specimens has likely been obtained. So you can see why one night, after looking in at the freezer again and seeing Ed, that's the most pathetic frozen guinea pig specimen who seems to be constantly staring at me, that I decided to unplug the fridge.

Now I'm in jail and the news is reporting that I set them back 40 years and they will have to drown all these guinea pigs again. It's all nonsense of course, and I suppose it's my own life that's gone down the drain although I must say, there's no beeping in this cell.

— 7Roses