Love Muscle

Jenna Thomas is a student at MIT majoring in biochemical engineering. So she said goodbye to her family and the few friends she had and packed up anything of importance and moved halfway across the country to Boston. She knew it was incredibly unscientific of her but she wanted to live in an apartment away from campus. The ride to school, watching people as they passed on the streets, those were some of the most inspirational moments for her. And though she’d never tell her parents, she wanted to live on her own. She had, of course, lived under their roof and their rules for her entire life and while those weren’t overly oppressive rules she didn’t wish to trade one parents house for another. At least for her first year, if she didn’t like it or couldn’t make it, for whatever reason, she always had the dorms to fall back to.

One semester in and she was feeling good about her prospects of finishing out her year in her apartment without any problems. MIT dorms prided themselves on diversity and mixing cultures but everyone there was a genius like her. She wasn’t bragging either; her IQ was a few dozen points above the minimum requirement to classify her as a genius. Though, like most geniuses, she didn’t put too much stock in IQ tests as they only measured a very narrow form of intelligence. No, the diversity she craved was from people of general intelligence, the “average”. She wanted to help them improve in ways they were too unaware to know they needed improving. For example her neighbor Natalie was a sweet but shy girl. Every morning they would talk as they walked to the train together. Natalie was…Natalie did not live up to european beauty standards, and Jenna could tell that that weighed on her. Her skin was splotchy and prone to rashes, her long black hair was greasy and oily, and the final nail in her shy coffin was the fact she was overweight and nearsighted. She was physically a cliche’ nerd without the trade off in intelligence. Natalie wasn’t dumb of course, she just wasn’t a genuis like Jenna. Jenna was not the cliche’ nerd physically. She was five foot seven, blonde hair, piercing blue eyes, and porcelain skin with only a light freckling on her shoulders, nose, and above her C cup breasts. Unlike Natalie, she didn’t care or even know anything about fashion. Natalie made sure she kept up with the latest fashions. Perhaps, Jenna mused, she did so as a way to compensate for her otherwise “lack” of traditionally good looks.

One morning Natalie was showing Jenna the sketches in her sketchbook, something she never saw her without. “See, having the waist flow in this direction gives the illusion of slimness.” Natalie knew her friend knew nothing about fashion but Jenna was always willing to listen and encourage her anyway.

“It looks great. This is for, what, a night out at the theater or a gala?”

“Nooo, it’s so comfortable you can wear it anytime. Why should we save our best outfits for special occasions?”

“True. You know what? It really does look comfortable. Are you going to make it?”

“I’m gonna try, I just need the materials.”

“Well, if you’d like you can get a little extra and make one for me.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. Back home everyone hassled me for ‘dressing down’. Really, I just like to be comfortable.”

“Sure I can make one for you, you know I mostly make clothes for…girls like me though.” Natalie didn’t rant often but when she did it was mainly the same subject, the lack of comfortable and beautiful clothing for overweight men and women.

“I remember. I can pay for the extra material, but also this way whenever anyone asks about my clothes I can direct them to you and maybe you can get a few orders in.”

“That’d be great! Jenna…who do you talk to besides me and your professors?”

Jenna frowned, her friend was right she didn’t really socialize with anyone outside of school and even then that was very limited. “...I go to bookstores on the weekend.” Both women laughed and continued their conversation before Natalie departed three stops later to go to work at the department store. Jenna opened her composition notebook, one of many over the years, and worked on the project she had been working on officially since she started at MIT.

The project in question is what had garnered her the attention of MIT in the first place, she believed everything about a human could ultimately be broken down into chemical reactions. Wolves became dogs due to a ‘defective’ gene that caused some wolves to be less weary of early humans. Those wolves thrived because humans would feed and breed them, making the gene stronger. So fear, it seemed, was genetically coded. Or what people called instincts. If she could alter these in humans could she kick start the next stage in human biological evolution?

Because of her research MIT allowed her access to her own lab and a team of grad students, all dedicated to this idea. Which is where she spent the majority of her time after classes, staring into microscopes and manipulating cells. This was one of the few times she was seen as “Giddy”. Normally she was a reserved person but seeing her theory in action and actually bearing fruit made her excited. Especially the following week after several successful tests she was permitted to proceed to animal testing.

A famous general once said, “No plan survives the battlefield.” This is as true in war as it is in science. Animal testing was much more frustrating than she had hoped it would be. Consciously she was aware this would be a stumbling block even for her, but she was not devoid of emotions as controlled as they may have been for her, she was increasingly frustrated with every failure. She had actually never been so frustrated by failure in her life, and her grad students could all but smell the ozone change in the air before she started hurling chairs and lab equipment across the room.

She could hear her father’s voice every time she finished every tantrum, “We never fail but we learn. We only fail when we give up.” It didn’t help her rage but it did calm her down enough to apologize, again, for her outburst and refocus on the task at hand. Understanding why it didn’t work. Her grad students did understand and her buying them a round at a bar or pizza was enough to at least make it tolerable.

That is until one late night after another failure she flew into another rage, hurling microscopes and empty beakers around the room, unfortunately she picked up the stool she had been sitting on and hurled that across the room blindly. Hitting one of the grad students. “I’m so sorry! I didn’t see you!” She apologized profusely. And while he had only suffered a minor cut on his forehead the school insisted he be checked out at a local hospital for liability purposes.

“Ms.Thomas,” Dean Whitaker started with a heavy sigh after calling her into his office, “We understand the frustration and pressure you’re under which is considerable and why we looked the other way on your destruction of school property. Until now it was seen as harmless. But we can’t allow harm to come to our other students.”

“Are you kicking me out?!”

“...” Dean Whitaker sighed again, “No. But you are suspended and you won’t be allowed back on campus until the new year.”

“But my research…”

“Will be kept under lock and key and preserved here as per our original agreement. We have a great deal of faith in your abilities. But…if another incident like this occurs then we WILL have **** but to expel you and confiscate your research.”

“You can’t do that! That’s my life’s work!”

“Then I suggest you learn to control your temper.”

Jenna walked down the hallway leading to her apartment where she stopped at Natalie’s door. Normally she did not initiate a conversation with Natalie or ask for her company…but tonight she could use her warmth.

Jenna: Nat?

She heard the ding inside the apartment, her friend was at least home.

Nat: Hey girl. Watsup?

Jenna: You’re not sleeping are you?

Nat: …Its only 10.

Nat: No im awake.

Jenna: Can I come over?

Nat: Of course. Are you on your way home?

Jenna: I’m outside your door.

There was a few seconds pause before the door swung open, “What are you doing?”

“I wanted to make sure you weren’t busy.”

“What’s wrong?” Natalie pulled her inside and walked her to the small table in the half kitchen. Jenna relayed the whole story to Natalie for the next ten minutes over tea. A lot of the science went over her head but she was a good listener.

“Wow. I’m surprised you can get angry.”

“I am human…unfortunately.”

“So what are you gonna do for the month?”

“There’s nothing I can do…they have my experiments locked up.”

“I meant with your free time.”

“...I don’t know. I’ve never really ‘done’ free time.”

“You’re not serious. You never go to the movies or watch tv?”

“Why would I?”

“Okay…you read though, I always see you with one book or another.”

“I usually read textbooks or hard sci-fi for inspiration. But even that only takes a day or two.”

“That…well if you enjoy it.” Jenna shrugged.

“I enjoy research.”

A moment of silence passed between the women before Natalie spoke again, “Hey, why don’t we go out to a club tonight.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, cut loose a little bit. Maybe you’ll come up with some ideas on how to spend your free time.”

“Are you sure one would even be open? It’s already eleven o’clock.”

“Oh, honey.”