GOODNIGHT, JELA

Time doesn’t seem to be on my side of the door right now, but it should hold for long enough for me to get this written down.  She’ll break through eventually.  All I can do is wait.  And write.  My sweet little girl, I’m writing this to let you know that I love you, and I’ll understand just how you feel before long.

The experiments seemed like a good idea at first.  I first began with lower life forms, such as frogs and fish.  But these simple creatures do not have as highly developed a sense of pain as we humans do.  Pain rules our lives.  We do everything we can to avoid pain, because pain is a warning sign of death.  If we were liberated from death, liberated from pain, we could realize our full potentials as intellectual beings.

So by experiment #40, I’d moved to using growth-accelerated human embryos for testing.  It was illegal, but I didn’t care-- besides, the research was taking place in my basement anyway.  No one would find out about it, I thought.  My wife was opposed to the idea, but she tolerated it for long enough.  I don’t blame her for leaving.  By experiment #106, she had divorce papers served.  The deputy sheriff had to come by the house three times to catch me outside the peace of the lab.  My marriage was almost as much of a failure as experiment #107 became.

But without the nuisance of human contact, my research progressed ever faster.  My wife once complained that I never spent enough time with her, that I was always so busy with my work that I didn’t spend any time at home.  When she had her first child-- I realize now this was before she moved out-- I didn’t think anything of it.  I never met the man she moved in with, Rodney.  I have no idea what they are doing now.  I never will.

The experiments wore on like the months of solitude.  Experiment #111 seemed so promising… he was almost totally viable before the necrotizing bacteria set in and killed him.  More antibiotics, I thought.  Experiment #150 finally emerged from the vitreous chamber alive, but he died during my initial exploratory surgeries.  The next two experiments lived for almost a week before their bodies rejected the hormonal stimulators and gauge monitors I had installed.  But you-- you, my sweet, sweet child-- you survived.

Experiment #153, you were viable in ways that none of the others had been.  From the test tube to the vitreous holding tank, from the birthing colander to radiation adaptation chamber, from the metabolic and pineal stimulators to the regenerative enhancement implants, you were a survivor.  And since you were a survivor, you needed a name.

At first, I had the temptation to name you myself.  But I would let you make your own name for yourself.   I decided the first word you said would be your name.  And it was Jela, to the best I could determine.  You were my sweet Jela.  After that, you would have no need of speech—that was the reason I sewed your mouth shut.

Things went well for the first few years.  The daily cardiovascular cold-sweeps and disinfections were carried out without a hitch, even when your temperature dipped down near 0 °C.  The semiweekly interior development vivisections and weekly organ inventories never caused a problem, and you became quite accustomed to them.  When you were seven years old, I finally had completed the cerebral interface probes and inserted them into your skull.  I thought I would finally understand what you were thinking.

But the probes inside your skull did not tell me anything useful.  I could measure your brain activity and chart your alpha and delta waves, but this didn’t tell me what you were thinking.  For that, I would have to teach you how to talk.  Perhaps I had been mistaken in silencing you before; I simply assumed that my devices inside your head would be as fully functional as I’d hoped.

I was amazed at how well you picked up language skills.  Once the stitches were removed, you showed that you’d been listening to everything I said.  Your vocabulary and grammatical skills had already been developed inside that head of yours.  You knew the songs I sang to you while I conducted the monthly tissue biopsy.  You loved the way I spoke when I read off your vital signs and charted your growth.  And now I could hear you laugh and giggle along with me as we tested your increasing regenerative abilities.  Never did I think that the good times we shared would be something to worry about.

It was on your tenth decantment day that I first became concerned.  For the first time, I had loosened the bolts from the operating gurney, disconnected the electrical myostimulators, and let you roam around the lab as you pleased.  I’d just gone upstairs to get the latest delivery of materials and canned goods; when I came down, I had a lot of scolding to do.

There you were, sitting on top of one of the generator casings with a scalpel in your hand.  And I don’t just mean you were holding it.  It was in your hand.  As I entered, you showed me the twin bleeding gashes in each palm.  “Daddy, look!  I can be a surgeon just like you!”  You were so proud of yourself.  You thought you knew what you were doing.  But I snatched the scalpel from your hand and left you bolted down for three days alone down there.  I couldn’t bear to see you in pain like that.

It wasn’t the first time you did things to hurt me.  You couldn’t feel pain; you’d been cybernetically enhanced so that it was impossible for you.  You couldn’t permanently harm yourself; the triumphs of my research had enhanced your regenerative abilities to the point where any injury, no matter how grievous, would heal in time.  By the time I came back down in the basement to check on you, your hands had totally healed without a mark.  I told you not to do things like that, but you knew you were invulnerable.

Around three months ago, I forgot to tighten the vises back down on you to keep you in place during your quarterly marrow canal and analysis.  While I intended to use the bone saw to make a clean cut into your femur, you began thrashing around, throwing a fit.  At first I was afraid that somehow the pain nullification probe had malfunctioned, and that I was hurting you.  I never wanted to hurt you.  But when I noticed you were laughing hysterically, I knew something else was going on.

I asked you, “Why are you making such a mess of your leg like that?  You know Daddy needs you to lie still during the marrow canal or it might cause a major compound fracture.”

“Because I like the sharp feeling, Daddy,” you replied.

At that moment, I realized another one of my failings in you.  I had assumed that the pain transformation probe was changing that pain into a sensation such as touch—something that was obvious but not psychologically harmful.  At that point, I began to think that somewhere inside your brain, I’d gotten some wires crossed.  But you’d grown too much on your own for me to risk opening your cranium back up and fixing the glitch.  My experiment had failed.  I left the laboratory immediately.

That night, I went back upstairs and did a lot of thinking.  You were eighteen now—legally an adult.  It initially seemed far too late to abort the experiment now.  The first 152 experiments had been so easy because the end result was something dead, something that I could catalogue away in a file of final failures and lost pursuits.  You hadn’t died, but I still felt that you had failed.  And I refuse to fail.  I didn’t sleep that night.  I knew what I had to do.

The nights and days passed, however.  I kept putting off what I knew I needed to do.  I didn’t want to kill you, but it was going to be the best thing for you.  I started going outside the house again for the first time in years.  I met my new neighbors, none of whom had ever seen me.  I went to a club with a friend down the street.  I met a girl.  Her name was Naomi.  We really hit it off.  She wanted to come back to my place on several occasions.  And I had to tell her no last night because I was ashamed of her seeing you.

When I came back this morning, I decided it was finally time to rid myself of you once and for all.  All the things I’d tried to build in you were ruined.  All the things I’d hoped for you were over.  I got the shotgun out of my upstairs coat-closet and proceeded down to the laboratory.  When I opened the door, I nearly vomited.

You weren’t on the table where I’d left you three months ago.  But I could see that the gnarled remains of your hands and feet were there.  You must have rubbed back and forth against the straps until you were free.  Very creative of you.  And I heard the sound of your laughter from the next room.  Cocking the pump-handle on the shotgun, I prepared to do what I should have done eighteen years ago.

I stepped around the corner and saw you dangling your partially-regenerated foot-stumps over the side of the cabinet you were sitting on.  In one two-fingered rudimentary hand you held a piece of glass from a broken beaker.  And you were slicing it along your stomach, laughing as you bled.  It was clear that the time was now.  I aimed directly at the middle of your chest, half-healed wounds as crosshairs, and fired.
Behind the cabinet,  I heard a crash and a thump.  And I thought it was over.  I turned to leave the lab.

But then I heard a ragged coughing sound.  It was another laugh.

“Do it again, Daddy!”

I paused behind the operating table, crouching down next to the dried blood of your escape, shotgun clutched in hand.  You staggered out of the room, a gaping hole in your chest, giggling and gurgling as you coughed blood out your mouth.

“Do it again, Daddy!  I like the sharp feeling.”

I had no choice.  I unloaded another shell in your direction, a shell which caught you square in the stomach.  You flew back against the wall and slumped down on the ground.  I waited.  And sure enough, within three minutes, you were stirring again.  I hopped up on the table and fired down at you twice more, hesitating to unleash the fifth shell.  I might need it for another purpose.  I ran into a supply closet and locked the door.  Though I was tempted to run outside, I knew that I couldn’t take the chance of letting this monster roam free in the world.  I couldn’t let you out of my control.  That’s when I heard you start to beat on the door.

“Come out and play, Daddy.  Don’t you love me, Daddy?”

And that’s when I realized it-- I do love you, my sweet little girl.  I do love you, my Jela.  I have spent so many years of my life trying to make you the perfect person.  I have spent so much time and effort trying to make you invulnerable to pain, to harm.  I thought that the cybernetic enhancements, the regeneration hormones, the brain probes-- I thought those were all helping you.  But I was wrong.  I’ve showed you a life where there is nothing but horror and pain, where pain has become the only emotion you can identify with.  I have known I was wrong since the first time I saw the wounds on your hands; I have realized again that I was wrong since I wounded your side just a few minutes ago.  The only moments we spent together were times I was slicing you to ribbons and examining your insides, and there is no excuse for that.  

Please forgive me, Jela.  Your presence in this world has brought me more pain than I can ever tell you, and the way I feel pain is a way you will never be able to understand, all because of me.  I love you the way a child loves a loose tooth, and the way an old veteran loves a phantom limb.  And I’m about to love you in the only way you can understand-- by putting a bullet through my head.

Goodbye, Jela.