The Slut Rose: Hammer, Part 4
Vince and Dr. Charles Shamblin took the two bottles of the Hammer shampoo down to the lab on the first floor of the college chemistry building. It was after hours, so the rooms were dark, with all the students gone. They moved to one of the work areas in the back, out of the way, and started their comparison by taking dropper bottles to divide the known and unknown fluids for use.
"Ok, I want you to first do a little research and find out the chemical composition of the unaltered Hammer fluid," Charles told Vince, directing him to the lab computer. "I'll start with the Nuclear Magnetic Resonance spectroscopy since it's going to take a while."
Charles put on his smock, rubber gloves, and protective glasses, then opened the altered Hammer bottle. He tipped the bottle and began to pour it into one of the dropper bottles when he noticed solid fragments in the liquid.
"What's this?" he asked softly. He stopped pouring and grabbed a small strainer nearby to pour the fluid through. When he had enough fluid in the bottle, he carefully closed it again, then poured a distilled water solution over the strainer to clean off the four solid particles it captured.
"This looks like... glass fragments," he said, "from a test tube or something. Vince, did you notice any glass in the shampoo when you used it?" he asked.
"No... but it did stop up every now and then, so I had to shake it," he said. "I didn't think much about it."
"Well," he said, using tweezers to pull the glass out of the strainer and set them aside, "it looks like there was a vial or something in the bottle and it broke. Now how would a vial get into the bottle? Where did you say you got the shampoo?"
"Uh, just from the drug store in town," Vince said. "I just picked it off the shelf."
"Hmmm... the mystery deepens."
After dividing the tainted shampoo into three red dropper bottles and then dividing the good shampoo into three clear dropper bottles, he set all the bottles aside.
*****
It took them all night to divide the tainted fluid between the Hammer shampoo and the added chemical using a centrifuge and a little creativity. They set their bottles aside, the tainting chemical now sealed in several small bright red containers, cleaned up, then went home to sleep. They needed at least a few hours before classes started up again the next day.
The mystery of the broken vial inside the shampoo bottle haunted Charles all night and the next day. If someone had simply wanted to taint the shampoo, they would have simply poured the contents of the vial into the bottle. But the shampoo contained the entire vial... as if they were storing it in the shampoo bottle. Maybe they were coming back for it later. He supposed they didn't mean for the vial to break. But even so, why didn't they come back for it? What was in the vial they were trying to hide? Why were they hiding it? And who put it there in the first place?
So many questions were swirling around in his head that he couldn't sleep much.
*****
By the time Vince got back to his apartment, Jennifer had completely moved out and the apartment was empty. He walked around it a little, the door being left ajar in their haste. Small, left-behind items littered the floor. He shook his head slowly. He'd so hoped he could have had more time with them.
He wondered if he'd ever see Jennifer again.
*****
After classes ended on the next day, Charles started again on the decomposition, even without Vince there. He made a little more progress by the time Vince arrived at 4:00pm.
"Any more success?" Vince asked.
"Not much. We'll need to finish the NMRS, then work on the chromatography, the infrared spectroscopy, then the mass spectrometry. We're getting closer, but we still have a long way to go."
Vince was disappointed that this was going to take so long, but he was very eager to see it to the end. He needed this substance, whatever it was, and he wanted a good supply of it.
"You said this somehow changed the behavior of people, right?" Charles asked, preparing a sample for the chromatography.
"Yes... pretty drastically," Vince said. This was not anything he wanted to discuss. If Dr. Shamblin found out the real reason he wanted the substance or, more specifically, what the substance did, then he might have some real problems. He had hoped, very unrealistically, that the professor would remain completely blind to it and just give him a way to create it.
"Let's start some animal trials and see if we can figure out how it does what it does," Charles said. He gathered four mice and set them aside in individual cages. "If my calculations are correct from what you tell me, it should take less than a drop to cause a reaction. Let's see what a drop will do, shall we?"
Charles opened each cage, lifted the mouse, and placed a single drop of the fluid on the head of each mouse. Then put it back in the cage and closed it. Both of them stared intently into the cages, waiting for a reaction. But nothing happened. They waited even longer and nothing happened.
"Well... that's strange. I would have expected some kind of reaction. I think I need to get my wife involved with this, now," Charles said. "She's a biochemist and would have far more knowledge in working with live subjects on this. Is that alright?" he asked, picking up the phone.
Vince nodded but he was starting to get worried. Having more people involved only meant more questions he didn't want to answer and more problems later.
*****
Dr. Claudia Shamblin arrived at the school an hour later and walked into the lab. She quickly donned a lab jacket and grabbed a pair of protective glasses and gloves, then approached the lab table where her husband was working.
"A mystery, huh?" she asked her husband, referring to their telephone conversation earlier.
"Quite. Claudia, this is Vince. Vince, Dr. Claudia Shamblin." The two nodded to each other. Even under the lab coat, Claudia was an attractive older woman, in her mid-forties. Her body was shapely and her hair was beautifully styled, swept back from her face. Vince briefly wondered what she saw in Charles that had attracted her.
"So... give me the Cliff Notes," she said.
"Vince is a student of mine and brought me a bottle of Hammer shampoo that he says has been altered by some chemical additive. He says that the additive somehow affects people, drastically changing their behavior. Although," he glanced up at Vince," he's been reticent on what exactly those changes are. We've been working to determine what the chemical compound is, exactly. This morning, I thought we'd try some quick animal trials to see what effect the substance had. Our first test was a failure, I believe. So, I thought you might be of help."
"You gave the chemical to the mice?" Claudia asked, bending closer to the cages to get a better look at them.
"Yes... one drop on each an hour or so ago," Charles said. "And if my calculations are right, that should be an extremely high dosage for their body weight. According to Vince, the behavioral changes happen very fast."
