June

Doctor Charles E. North had two doctorates, jokingly called himself, Doctor Doctor, and made all his assistants laugh, but he wondered if they laughed because he paid him, or because they thought it was funny.

He never asked because he wanted them to keep laughing.

Doctor North had several awards and was well-versed in the field of genetics and gene therapy, yet he was banned from practicing anywhere on Earth. He was very absentminded and had made a few mistakes, which he lovingly called happy little accidents.

That was not how the judge reasoned after his therapies had mutated several children and ruined their quality of life, banning him from practicing anywhere on Earth ever again.

Doctor North was not deterred by the judge’s ruling.

It was only on Earth, of course.

Doctor North scratched his nose, slightly bent to the right after a bad fall he took as a child down a flight of stairs and stood in front of the entrance to the Moon Base security checkpoint.

Absentmindedly he flashed his driver’s license instead of work ID and had to get that out and held up the line, and finally passed through the various metal detectors, was patted down, and allowed inside.

On paper and on digital records, Doctor North was an advisor for how solar radiation affected cell development in babies, but this was well-known information for a very long time, so it was a redundant task. Instead, his job was to create designer organs.

Walking down the bright hallways, so bright they still stung his eyes sometimes, Doctor North braced himself for another day of incessant calls and emails from his clients, pressure from the government, and worst of all, another threat from Maximillian Slater.

Pressing his thumbprint into the security pad, the door slid open, and Doctor North walked into the expansive lab, his team working around the clock to expand the boundaries of science.

His assistant, Lisa, approached him the minute he walked in to give him his daily update. She always wore her standard red lipstick, tight bun, a lab coat, and red glasses. She frowned, instead of her standard formal stare, and Doctor North sighed, another day, another problem.

“What does Mr.Slater want now, Lisa?”

“He says he wants the date moved up for the uh, the replication of the body, sir.”

“Lisa, I cannot, it is impossible, I’ve explained that to him already,” Doctor North huffed. He walked off, but Lisa chased after him, and he walked faster, to the other side of the lab, the others hard at work, the glowing, small, oblong vats of liquid and human organs lined up in a row.

“Doctor North, he said something about November 19th, and a dog, and-”

Doctor North stopped walking, and Lisa smacked into him. She muttered a quick apology and Doctor North shook his head in frustration, tired of Maximillian’s ridiculous threats.

“This man is trying to threaten me by telling my son I accidentally ran over the dog? Now?”

“Sir I-”

“I don’t give a fuck, Lisa. I told him I couldn’t replicate the corpse he gave me, and he refuses to believe me!”

“But I-”

“Lisa. Handle it. He has already ruined my marriage. My bank account. I don’t even see my kids anymore. He has nothing else left to take from me. Tell him to fuck off. ”

Doctor North stormed off, swung open his office door, and slammed it behind him, rattling the picture frames on the wall, his many awards, now meaningless, without his family to share them with.

He slumped into his desk chair, staring at a pile of papers, his glass tablet, a few holo-screens, and work piling in front of him, and Doctor North closed his eyes, tuning out the beeps, taking deep breaths, trying not to get a stroke before his time.

A knock came from the door.

“Lisa that better not be you!”

“I’m sorry,” she pleaded.

“Lisa, did you handle it?”

Lisa knocked rapidly on the door, and Doctor North leaped from his chair and swung open the door, ready to tear into her, but softened when he saw his assistant in tears.

“He said he’s going to tell my family about the favor you did for my cousin,” Lisa cried. “They’ll disown her if she finds out she got an organ transplant, they’re religious.”

“I’ll handle it, Lisa,” Doctor North promised. “I won’t let him hurt you.”

Doctor North rubbed her back, and sent her on her way, telling her to take some time for herself, maybe a few days off, and he shut the door behind him.

Doctor North could not replicate the corpse he was given, it was impossible. He had never come across any DNA like it, cross-referenced with every database in the seventh realm, and Maximillian Slater refused to believe him.

Test after test, the cells in the body would regenerate, whenever supplanted with blood, and they would attack other hemoglobin cells, but quickly die off, within a day. The body would heal, with whatever tools he prodded it with immediately, and all brain scans showed that it was not the corpse of an astral.

What could it be?

The corpse never decomposed, but it wasn’t alive, either. The more he observed the parasitic cells the more he was certain whoever died was possibly a blessing upon them all because whatever malignant disease inside of the corpse would spread like a plague.

As absent-minded and forgetful as he was, Doctor North took his Hippocratic oath seriously, to do no harm, and he did not intend to hurt the children he was entrusted to cure. He cloned organs, and specific parts so that people could have transplants, and live longer lives.

Many rich people came to him, wanting to clone specific people and create their own little dolls, but he always said no, and only did body parts if they wanted to extend their lifespan with organ transplants. Cloning an entire person was illegal. Even if a body was replicated, it was for the sole purpose of a specific organ, at a specific development stage.

Legality never stopped Maximillian Slater.

Doctor North stayed late, everyone long gone, waiting to enact his plan. He went into the deep freeze, pulled out the only corpse that didn’t need to be frozen, and put it on a metallic stretcher.

He wheeled it outside, through the lab, to find a proper area to destroy it, and the electrician saw him.

“What are you doing,” the electrician asked him.

“What are you doing!?!”

“I asked you first!”

“This is my laboratory, how did you get inside,” Doctor North asked.

“I’m the electrician, they give me keys to every part of the building if something needs to be fixed,” he stated calmly. “Why do you have that man’s body?”

Doctor North glared at him and kept moving forward, he had no reason to explain himself to a man he did not know. The electrician was relentless, and followed him around the laboratory, asking him what he was doing with the body, where he was going, and who paid him.

“Stop following me,” Doctor North barked.

“Never,” the electrician shouted. “I made a promise to Sara!”

“I don’t know who that is, and I don’t care, I made a promise as well!”

“Why do you care so much about the body of Santos Dominus,” the electrician asked.

Doctor North’s body went cold, he and the corpse now the same temperature, as the electrician was possibly not just an electrician, no simple man indeed. The electrician took a step closer to the cold men, and Doctor North gripped the sides of the examination table, walked away, and then hit a back wall.

“You’ve got to give me the body,” the electrician pleaded. “Maximillian can’t have it.”

“I know,” Doctor North agreed. “I’m destroying it.”

“You can’t do that either! He’s still alive in there!”

“Are you crazy? You must be, to sneak in here and-”

“If you’ve inspected that body, you know it isn’t normal, yes,” the electrician asked. “Sara told me to come here and find him.”

Doctor North’s stern face did not change and the electrician tried to talk him down, but it was no use. He had trapped Doctor North, an animal in a corner, and he had nothing left to lose. He was going to destroy the body come Hell or high water.

“You’re working for Maximillian aren’t you,” Doctor North whispered. “You’re evil, just like him, pure evil. ”

“No! I’m here to help! Sara sent me, she-”

Doctor North’s eyes glowed bright orange and he grimaced, heat spreading from the center of his chest. He would not let anyone hurt someone else with the knowledge he had gained, nor would he let his forgetfulness get in the way as well.

Doctor North had nothing left to lose, and he took his oath seriously.

Destroying the body even if it destroyed himself would do the most good.

“I swore to protect people,” Doctor North said. “We will die here together, and Maximillian will never get his wish. This body is not natural. ”

“Don’t do this,” the electrician begged. “I saw him trap those kids inside that dome! I saw him-”

Doctor North’s body grew larger and larger, his skin bursting at the seams, the body inflating and pushing against the walls, expanding into the room, crushing the electrician into the wall.

All parts of his body expanded, and then he popped.

Doctor North became interested in science as a child when he learned he could control helium.

So he turned himself into a balloon.

A very flammable one at that.

With his little pop, he ignited the southern section of the Moon Base, years of research forever lost, the body of Santos Dominus along with it.