-
Author Insight
Mixing Macabre into the Works
I was surprised when a reviewer said my Sci-Fi Medical Thriller was macabre – then I remembered a scene in it that definitely is. I started wondering at the wisdom of mixing macabre into what is mostly an adventurous story of discovery with a goal of curing an alien pandemic. I’ll admit I had a lot of fun going gruesome on illicit surgery. Subsequently, though, I got as much satisfaction finding a character in a tight spot, literally, and being able to laugh it up a bit. Perhaps it’s marketing madness to insert such a wide spectrum of moods, but with characters having different personalities and agendas, some proper, some personal, that’s the way they wrote themselves. I’m not alone in mixing a dash of macabre into medical mystery. I grew up reading Robin Cook’s Medical Thrillers, along with stacks of Star Trek and an eclectic string of other stories. Cook’s macabre descriptions of warehoused bodies in Coma planted seeds somewhere within the folds of my grey matter, and once sprouted, slowly wound their way into what I was creating. Exactly how the firing of neurons creates fiction is a topic for science, which I used to dabble in. All I can say as a writer of fictionalized science is that mixing in macabre felt morbidly right.
Book Excerpt
Ripped Genes
He tipped the box, and Sophie’s body thudded onto the table. Wincing, he gently adjusted her until her unfeeling body looked comfortable to him. Checking his Pocod, he followed the instructions to hook Sophie up to life support lines. The portable units he’d removed dropped messily around.
Quickly he lined up cases and opened one labelled “Replacement Cerebellum.” His research had shown Sophie’s frontal lobe was fine, and that’s where her higher functions such as personality and intelligence were. So this should be fine. The doctor it was from had donated her brain to science, and this was certainly science, so that was fine, too. He put it in a bath at the right temperature to replace the preservatives with synthetic blood, an enhanced circulation fluid available from the hospital supplies. He wasn’t quite sure if it was better than cloned blood from Sophie would have been, but it was available and safe. Anything he had to make himself was more learning time and risk of discovery. No sense in sucking Sophie through a black hole over blood.
Next, he had to get some bad bits of brain out of Sophie and bathe them in blood he’d enhance with repair nanodes. He sent his operating code to the DV and with startling speed it began sawing through Sophie’s skull. Once through, electric scalpels whined as they wended their way through grey matter that was black with death. Filamentous bot fingers flew, teasing out the cerebellum. Once that was in the disposal unit, it moved on to the temporal lobes. Those went into the special repair containers that went into a gentle centrifuge. The morbid morsels of brain swished around the dish, the motion simulating the flow of blood. With his plan so carefully orchestrated, it didn’t occur to Roed that to someone watching, this would be something right out of an Edgar Allen Poe horror tale.
As he watched the temporal lobes plump up and turn a juicy, healthy pinkish hue, he felt a warm glow. He had programmed the nanodes to remind the lobes how much Sophie had loved him. Since the temporal lobes involved facial recognition, he had loaded up the nanodes with all the faces he could find that Sophie knew. Of course, his own face was repeated many times, and in combination with all her loved ones so she’d be sure to remember how important he was to her.
Amazon
Click Follow to receive emails when this author adds content on Bublish
Comment on this Bubble
Your comment and a link to this bubble will also appear in your Facebook feed.