𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐋𝐀𝐒𝐓 𝐎𝐅 𝐔𝐒..
In which Dr. Wendy Larsen goes to spend her holiday in America with her long-distance boyfriend, Pete Russell, but her birthday celebration turns into a quest of survival with unexpectedly long-term commitmen...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
📻 — PROLOGUE ..
GRAPES. WHY GRAPES? Hanging heavily in tender hands, a bowl of two green grape bunches was the subject of an elongated pensive observation, mainly blamed on the horrendously long corridor spreading both ahead and behind.
Passing under a dispersing bright stream of light, the nametag clung to the lab coat of the bowl carrier flashed prominence over her name: Dr. WENDY LARSEN.
On a much more colorful note brought to the formality of her presence and stance, hanging around her neck and dangling with each step she took more concentrated on the bowl than on the boring path ahead, a second identification tag held on its plastic cover scribbled a nickname which oftentimes she preferred over most formalities: Winnie. For obvious visual aid, the right corner of her badge was decorated with a Winnie-the-Pooh sticker, all worn out and old as her studies into genetical engineering.
So why grapes?
It was probably their vast ancestry of cultivation going as far back as the Neolithic era that formed an aura of appeal to discovery around them. They teased the daring minds to dream of the possible genetic secrets hidden in their structures.
Or it could be the chromosome changes in the genomes of the most famous type of grapes that LOAM seeks to replicate and clash the wine market with for some eventual significant profit. Then again, they probably wouldn't be funding all their donations into genetically engineering Thompson Seedless Grapes if they wanted to start making ridiculously expensive wines out of a cover-up foundation.
There was also the option that they chose these particular grapes because of the chimpanzees who show a highly educated preference for these fruits, as if they somehow knew their abundance in vitamins, phytonutrients and antioxidants. Even that theory however had a flaw: the volunteering aid of the Animal Rehabilitation Natural Centre in LOAM's final stage of the project had been but a fortunate surprise.
Truth be told, only one thing was clear after Wendy's stomach grumbled in response to her uncanny volume of thoughts and a prickling warm light slithering up ahead through the crack between two metal doors: she was extremely hungry. Certainly more so than the friend she walked all this way to visit; a friend who's been pushing back the termination date of the project for months now.
Stopping before the double doors, Wendy lifted her chin up and looked to the top right corner above it, right into the red blink of a security camera. Noting a second of eye contact with the technicians watching this play from behind their screens sufficient, she looked back ahead with a preparatory roll of her shoulders.
