Biogenesis (7 page)

When the work was finally completed at four, it was Ponta’s condition that suddenly began to deteriorate first.

Symptomatically, “No longer able to support his weight, his legs folded as if to rub his belly, and his wings lost tension and began to droop.” His ECG was being monitored through minute
electrodes designed for small animals. The waveform (whose specific characteristics will be described below) gradually decreased in amplitude, reflecting that heart activity was weakening.

Possible damage to internal organs due to the abdominal injection was suspected, but by five o’clock, when Ponta’s heart waves flat-lined, Ai was exhibiting similar changes including enfeeblement. Ponta’s body glowed for nearly ten minutes subsequent to his demise, then the light went out. A rudimentary cardiac massage was performed according to Dr. Akedera’s records, and the time of death, contrary to the official announcement, was 5:12 a.m. Then Ai’s death followed thirty-six minutes behind.

When the security guard arrived at six, Drs. Akedera and Sakakibara were simply gazing at Ai’s body and its fading glow rather than attend to the consequences. Quotations of a highly sentimental nature would appear in the next day’s paper.

“I sensed the moment when a species’ energy,
spanning millennia, was no more” (Dr. Sakakibara).

“I found myself thinking upon the many species of flora and fauna that vanish every day from this world” (Dr. Akedera).

It was only at seven that the need to perform a postmortem and to preserve organs occurred to Dr. Akedera. Ponta, the first to die, had to be dissected first, but Dr. Sakakibara, concerned about tissue degeneration given that some time had already elapsed, strongly favored preserving the body whole using liquid nitrogen, and Dr. Akedera could not but cede the point.

“He had no energy left to argue” (Dr. Sakakibara). Thus, by happenstance, it was Ai who was dissected.

In truth, up until then, there had been no basis for the sexing of winged mice outside of the local tales. Waseda University’s Professor Tomokazu Kato and others held that the mating attempts had failed for that reason. Those specimens with smaller wings were believed to be female and
labeled as such out of convenience, but dissections had failed to locate reproductive organs. While the researchers had come up with male-female pairs based on morphological differences, they had not sexed them for certain. The latest postmortem, however, proved the truth of the legends.

The instant the abdomen was incised, what appeared to be a fetus enclosed within a clear sac emerged from the area directly beneath the wings. When Dr. Akedera cautiously cut the sac open with a pair of scissors, a yellow liquid spilled forth, followed by a transparent fetus without any apparent umbilical cord. The fetus was placed in a disinfected Petri dish. As soon as Dr. Akedera attempted to resuscitate it, the fetus convulsed. In actuality, it may have been attempting to get to its feet, but at that moment, to Dr. Sakakibara’s eyes, it seemed to have undergone a convulsion. As the fetus’ body dried, its movements became more and more marked. It was the last of its kind, knocking down Dr. Akedera’s hypothesis regarding a large litter but proving in part his theory about an abbreviated gestation period. After that, Ai’s organs were extracted in the hopes of preserving
tissue.

At eight, Dr. Sakakibara called Mr. Tamura, and after a brief discussion among the three of them, members of the press, as noted earlier, were summoned.

The above represents the entire sequence of events. The issue of what happened to the newborn winged mouse remains, but I would rather present the matter in Dr. Sakakibara’s own words. I piece together only half of what was said to me as I sat at his bedside. It may not be the most natural piece of writing, but I believe an unedited account will grant the reader a more realistic sense of what had transpired.

At the time of our dialogue, Dr. Sakakibara was running a fever as a result of pneumonia and hardly in his best condition, but I should like it noted that he was perfectly lucid.

So as not to injure the fetus, Akedera-san used a
pair of curved scissors to carefully cut through the thin amnion and open it
.

The fetus that emerged halfway out of the sac was in an inanimate state. No, it was not that I thought so, Akedera-san said that
.

I had assumed it would be dead and had given up
.

He said it would really die if we did not hurry and from there on he employed the scissors with a new speed and precision
.

The umbilical cord may have torn somewhere along the way and I recognized none
.

It appeared to me that the fetus steeped in amnion was not even breathing
.

Without saying a word, Akedera-san put on a pair of sterilized plastic gloves and started to dangle the fetus roughly by its tail and to knock it against the edge of the Petri dish
.

I thought he had gone mad and made to stop him
lest we lose an important sample
.

After Akedera-san slapped it with the palm of his hand several times, the baby mouse suddenly convulsed to my surprise
.

I cannot describe the shock and joy I felt when I then saw it move ever so slightly
.

I could tell from the movement of its chest that the tiny little thing was slowly beginning to breathe
.

I was beside myself, but Akedera-san still had a scary look on his face
.

A really scary look
.

In time, the baby mouse’s movements grew more pronounced
.

I could not believe it when I saw it trying to get to its feet
.

The baby mouse starting to move in the Petri dish
was still moist from the amniotic fluid and did not even seem to know which way it was going, but it was unmistakably and fiercely asserting that it was alive
.

But Akedera-san dropped the heavy pair of scissors down on it like it was nothing
.

By the next instant the baby mouse already lay crushed in the transparent amniotic fluid
.

As translucent organs poked through its torn skin I wondered what had just happened
.

At first I thought he had dropped the scissors by accident, but Akedera-san’s expression remained unchanged
.

I was speechless
.

I could not believe my own eyes
.

No matter what I said, Akedera-san would not answer me
.

Naturally, Dr. Sakakibara was enraged by the sudden and unexplained action. But Dr. Akedera “offered no excuse or explanation” (Dr. Sakakibara).

Thereafter, Dr. Akedera continued to refuse to discuss the incident. The two doctors’ relationship was sundered, but as Dr. Sakakibara was an accessory to the crime, he could not bring himself to publicly accuse Dr. Akedera in the coming days, either. By his own admission, however, it was not as if Dr. Sakakibara had mustered any clear resolve to do so, compromised or not.

Oddly, while Dr. Akedera’s journal contains a meticulous account of everything else that happened that day, there is only one line about the baby mouse: “There were no markings on the wings of the newborn winged mouse.” Other than this sentence in support of his standing longevity hypothesis we find nothing.

In the final analysis, nothing that can be said about the incident escapes the realm of speculation. We are left with no option but to think
that Dr. Sakakibara’s comment –– “If one mouse did remain, what could ever have come of it?” –– says it all.

Immediately after the interview, pneumonia complicated by respiratory failure plunged Dr. Sakakibara into a coma from which he never awakened, and he died just three days later. I regretted having induced him to perform such a burdensome task on his sickbed, but it was too late.

Apparently, he used the word processor for as long as he could, and his last words as saved on the floppy disk were “the child’s” with no context.

Thanks to the interview and as per Dr. Sakakibara’s wish, I feel that some of the mysteries surrounding the winged mouse have been revealed herein, but others have remained unsolved. As the reader may already have wondered, prior to Dr. Akedera coming on stage, why had the mice not given birth even upon expiring in autumn? Perhaps, in the recent instances, having kept them apart
in cages facilitated the communication of a death signal but not the direct contact presumed necessary for mating, but things remain murky for the preceding cases. These pages also lack an explanation that can take the place of Dr. Akedera’s hypothesis about a large litter. We are left to devise our own conjectures on these issues, but given that the fetus in Dr. Akedera’s experiment was in an inanimate state, it is possible that at some point, and by some cause, a slight slippage had been introduced into the timing of death and birth (such that death preceded birth). Alternatively, the animals’ very reproductive capacity had deteriorated.

If I may be allowed a detour, there is something about the final scene that caught my attention as a doctor and that I would like to explore. I believe that it is a hypothesis that is accompanied by a certain degree of physical evidence. The issue, also noted in Dr. Akedera’s journal, concerns the ECG data taken in the last moments. The waveforms recorded via the front and rear paws of the winged mouse do not feature the sharp peaks normally
seen in vertebrate species but rather a gentle sine curve. In humans we observe the distinct P, QRS, T segments, corresponding to atrial stimulation, ventricular stimulation, and recovery from stimulation, respectively, a basic waveform that obtains even for frogs. This calls to mind the finding that Dr. Ishikawa presented about a heart structure that lacks chambers.
³
The slides from his academic presentation show a roller pump-like structure that would create a steady standing wave in lieu of the pulsing waves caused by heartbeats/myocardial contraction. In a book of my own, I have argued that the electrical pulse for a rotating artificial heart would describe a sine curve.
¹¹
This brings us to the pulse. While heartbeats per se do not exist for winged mice, if we consider one period of the sine curve as the equivalent, then the rate is as low as a single beat per minute. Since this value remained approximately constant from when bodily movements were still observed to just moments before death, it is unlikely to belong to terminal conditions brought on by enfeeblement. Given that the heartbeat for most small animals, including mice, is generally very high, ranging from one hundred to two hundred
beats per minute, this is indeed highly unique.

Animals with a heartbeat quite likely perceive each beat as a subjective unit of time. One beat for a human at rest is roughly equivalent to one second. In general, the smaller the animal, the shorter that time, and a mouse’s heart is said to beat an elephant’s lifetime’s worth in one year. While an elephant is an animal that moves extremely slowly from the mouse’s perspective, what this means in terms of awareness is nothing other than that a mouse’s life and an elephant’s life are equally long. Likewise, the movements of turtles, which are said to live longer than humans, seem awfully sluggish to us. Winged mice are a species with an even slower heartbeat, in line with the fact that they are animals with a meager concept of time (= pulse). As Dr. Ishikawa once indicated, winged mice also have a variety of singular organs, and in light of the unique circulatory system it is possible that their makeup adapted appropriately. In humans too, even with adequate blood flow, it is believed that prolonged use of a roller pump-like heart-lung machine, in the course of heart surgery for instance, damages our
other organs, which have long adapted to pulsing streams. In addition, the blood flow’s effect on body temperature and contribution to cell metabolism is a deeply interesting issue in the context of lifespans. A constant hibernation-like state where the cells’ clock hands advance slowly would of course yield a long lifespan. Yet proving this now, in the absence of specimens, is impossible.

Despite these pages, some readers may think that nothing has been solved in the scientific sense. Indeed, nearly all of the events, not to mention the above excursus, lack incontrovertible material evidence and by and large do not rise above the level of subjective interpretation. In fact, some readers may utilize the content of this document to form their own hypotheses and to assemble a completely different narrative.

What I came to realize after sifting through the massive amount of log entries is that this is not science as we understand it. Both of the defendants are now deceased and their actions will remain un-indicted. Whether or not what Dr.
Sakakibara felt compelled to get across in the face of death has gotten across awaits the judgment of the reader who has followed us thus far.

The cover of this year’s January 14th edition of
Nature
¹²
featured a close-up photo of the face of a mouse without eyes. It was from a paper on mole rats.

In that paper, the authors draw a unique conclusion. It was long believed that the eyeballs of mole rats had regressed, but as detailed observation and pathological considerations indicated that the eyes exist, hidden, along with a developed signal transmission route from the oculi to the brain, it may in fact be the result of evolution.

The mainstream of modern biology is microcellular research, which proceeds by using the simplest of cells and genetic material, and which ascribes maximal value to universal axioms. The pages of top journals like
Nature
and
Cell
are filled with the genetic control mechanisms and intra-cellular
signal transmissions common to all organisms from intestinal bacteria to
Homo sapiens
. Compared to traditional natural history, interest in the source material has clearly waned, and research such as that on the mole rat has become exceedingly rare.

Given that winged mouse research held an even greater impact than that on mole rats, it is truly a shame, but I have been informed that the original personnel, Mitsuo Miura, Yoji Ogawa, et al., are currently considering a submission based on data compiled from the logs of Drs. Akedera and Sakakibara. This past summer, the novel
Jurassic Park
was widely discussed in both the United States and Japan. The story is about reconstituting living dinosaurs in today’s world via blood cell DNA extracted from ancient blood-sucking insects trapped in amber. Immediately prior to the release of the movie based on the novel, the June 10th edition of
Nature
¹³
included a paper reporting a DNA sequence extracted from paramecium found in Lebanese amber dating back 120 million years (when dinosaurs walked the planet). It is not certain whether the fiction preceded the fact (I personally
find it more interesting if it did), but likewise, one day we might reconstitute the winged mouse from its DNA. Or rather, I pray that we do.