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For weeks now, Frink had been working on his study on the effects of beneficial and harmful bacteria on rats. He'd start his strains in Petrie dishes inject them into rats and wait for the effects to take place. Some strains took only minutes to manifest themselves in the rats in the form of improvement or death, while others took weeks to months to show results. He'd injected a strain he'd been following for the past two months into a grey adult female. He kept her well fed and watered because if this experiment worked it meant that she would be more energetic and be able to fight off diseases better. That would be beneficial if applied to humans later on. Frink wrote down a few more numbers for his other studies then turned off the light and closed the lab for the night.
Bright and early
the next morning he came in to check on his tanks. Frink went
through his routines.
"Subject 1, check. Subject 5, check. Subject 3 a little
groggy. Subject…Oh dear no!!!" He said holding his
head as he came to the tank that housed his grey female. The
lid on the tank was off and she was nowhere in sight. Could the
strain have given her strength to get out, he thought, but quickly
dismissed that notion since he hadn't added any muscle enhancements
to it. It looked like someone had lifted the lid and made off
with her. The shavings were scatter everywhere as though she'd
tried to run from her captor. Frink walked into Caroline's section
of the lab. He almost didn't see her as she was bent over looking
under a cabinet.
"Caroline, I can't find my grey rat. The top was off and
I have no idea how she got out. Oh this is really bad goh hay
din. Hey what are you doing down there?"
"I can't find Buttercup. She's missing too."
"Zoi!! Someone must have broken into the lab and stolen
our stuff." He paused a moment realizing what she had just
said. "Who's Buttercup?"
"Buttercup's one of the snakes that I'm studying. Oh, dear."
She said as the thought of where their animals might be occurred
to her. Frink went pale as he had the same thought, and both
of them were soon on the ground looking for their test subjects.
After much searching Caroline called out from behind a desk,
"John, I think I found Buttercup….uh oh, and I think
I found your rat too." She said in a worried voice. Frink
walked up to her as she stood holding a long brown snake with
a huge lump in it's middle.
"Bwah!! Oh no, months of research and testing and growing
and waiting down the drain." He said holding his head.
Caroline looked at her snake.
"More like down the hatch. I'm sorry, John. I really am.
She's never gotten out before." Frink put his arms on her
shoulders and said, "Caroline, please put better lids on
your snakes. And try to keep them on your side of the lab. We
need to keep your lab animals away from mine. Oh glayvin, poor
grey thing. Well I guess I should start on something else. It
wasn't going well anyway, n'gey."
Caroline couldn't help but chuckle a little. Well at least Buttercup
wouldn't have to feed for a long time now. Frink was still looking
down at his empty tank scratching his head. Poor guy, thought
Caroline. Things never seemed to go as planned for him.
She weaved her
way around the workstations, slowly went up behind him, placed
her arms around him and gave him a gentle kiss on the cheek.
She had to stand on her tip-toes because he was so much taller
than her. He turned with a smile and looked at her pretty face.
He ran his fingers up her hair, fiddled with her bun a moment
and unraveled her hair band. As soon as he did so it poofed out
in all directions.
"Woe." Was all he said as her hair fell on her shoulders
and went out to her sides in wavy spikes. Caroline reached up
and carefully pulled the glasses of off Frink's face and set them
on the counter behind her. She gasped and her jaw dropped at
what she saw. She'd never seen him without his glasses before
and he was a very handsome man. Of course no one would ever know
this. She felt excited and energized just looking at him, and
he was hers. The two closed their eyes and gave each other a
sweet kiss as solutions bubbled, boiled and popped with colors
all around them. It was short but meaningful.
"I love you, Caroline." Said Frink.
"And I you." Responded Caroline with a quick hug.
As he turned back to his work, Frink tripped over his own feet
and landed flat on his face.
"Woe! Ow, pain! Pain in the glayvin. Caroline, dear?"
He said clearly hurting still.
"Yes, sweetheart?" She asked.
"Please give me my glasses back. I am completely blind without
them. Wah hey."
The next few days, Frink was flying high. The more time he spent with Caroline the more he grew to love her. He wanted to do so much more for her. It was amazing how much time had passed and it still felt like only yesterday that they had met. Frink had been working hard on a new invention that he hoped to sell. It was a pencil holder/sharpener and every office in town should have one. They were rectangular in shape with five holes at the top to hold five pencils. Simple enough, but each one had a button beneath it. When pressed a small arm would come out from the back, grasp the pencil holding it in place and an automatic sharpener should begin to spin where the tip of the pencil was resting. He'd also installed a sensor and the device knew when to stop so it wouldn't over sharpen and break the lead. One could sharpen one pencil at a time, a few or all five. There was a compartment below that would hold the shavings and once full, the sharpener would no longer work and it would have to be cleaned out. He'd already gotten a patent on them and he was ready to sell them off.
They were surprisingly
popular and he made a good sum of money on them. Just enough
for the little special something he'd been wanting to buy for
a few years now. Back in Oppenmeyer's lab he worked furiously
away at a microscope. He'd given up culturing his samples in
rats and was now working directly with the microbes. He had become
skilled at working with live cells; prodding and arranging them
with the micro-needles. Caroline would scribble some notes in
her journal and watch as Frink labored over slide after slide.
The control for the needles was on a joystick, one on each hand.
One controlled the left and right while the other controlled
up and down motions. She watched him throw away countless samples
into the sharps box.
"What are you working on?" She'd ask. "You've
been at that scope for days now."
"Something spectacular, I assure you my dear." He'd
respond and continue right on working. He then began staining
the cells and swiping them quickly through the flame of a Bunsen
burner. This would set the cells in place and the stains made
them visible against the clear background. Again, he'd be at
this every night and throw away hundreds of mistakes that he made.
It was a late
night and Caroline put away all her glassware and chemicals.
She came into the main room to find Frink still bent over the
microscope. Sweat trickled down his brow as he concentrated.
"John, it's late. We need to close, let's go." She
protested.
"No, not yet. Caroline please wait with me. I'm about to
make the break through here!! Zoi. This slide is speaking to
me, wah hay. It's speaking to me, and I think it will speak to
you too!" Excitedly he picked it up with tongs and swiped
it through the flame a few times. He let it cool in the air and
once again placed it under the microscope and focused it. He
gasped and a huge smile came over his face. Caroline knew something
was up and began to feel his energy as though it were filling
the room.
"Caroline, please have a look and answer the question you
see inside."
"Answer the question?" she said surprised then came
around the corner and looked into the microscope. She had to
adjust the two eye pieces to the distance that her eyes were on
her face then focus because her vision was different from Frink's.
As the set bacteria came into focus she gasped at what she saw
and just stared a good while. On the outside basillus and cocci
shaped cells floated in random order, but in the center, the basillus
ones had been arranged into letter shapes and they clearly spelled
out "WILL YOU MARRY ME?"
She looked up
wide-eyed, mouth agape at Frink who was holding a bouquet of red
roses. He passed them to her over the counter then came around
the side and got down on one knee. From the pocket of his lab
coat he pulled out a small black cube and opened it to revile
a sparkling diamond ring.
"Caroline, I love you with all my heart. Will you marry
me?" He said as he presented her the ring. She was speechless
a moment as though the wind had been knocked out of her, but finally
managed to blurt out.
"Yes!! Yes I will!!! OOOH!! I love you Jonathan Frink!!"
"I love you too….Mrs. Frink."
"Soon to be Doctor Frink." She added smiling.
"Ooh, Doctor. I like the sound of that."
"Goodness, how did you ever manage to make something crazy
like that? It must have been so hard, now I know why you've been
working on that so much." She said.
"Yeah, it wasn't easy." He said blushing.
"And how were you EVER able to afford this even crazier ring?"
She asked again.
"Well remember the pencil sharpeners I invented?"
"Yeah."
"Well I sold the design to an office supplying company."
"Oh wow!"
"And I plan to make more money for us. Don't you worry,
Sweety. I know the Springfield Institute of Technology is currently
looking for professors. With all the hours I've put in here,
goh hey, I have enough to teach over there. I'll do that for
a time, finish my studies then teach here at the university after
graduation."
She gave him a huge bear hug that nearly knocked him into the
wall. They bagged up the slide for this would be one that they
would keep for the rest of their lives.
