MELTDOWN: An April Fools' Joke
I just want to say that in this terrible weather, I was sitting in my lab, in the AC, when my bejha was not getting fried, when I thought of a story which I can relate to myself, like many others who can relate to it as well (hopefully), during their own daily ramblings. This story is about a fella, Mike (some fictitious character). Hope you enjoy!
It was one afternoon when the Sun was shining so hard, that it would melt any fat lying anywhere, even if it were in the myelin sheath of our neurons. So, it so happened that on that particular afternoon, Mike was walking down the road from his lab to the hostel. He was unaware of the fact that the Sun was beating down upon him like a million joules of heat from a coal furnace. He was thinking very deeply, on a scientific problem and he was determined to find out a means to solve it before the end of the day. The Sun was laughing all the while, jeering at Mike’s foolish ideas and even sillier propositions to be thinking about it while walking under its Solar weight.
Sweat poured from his brows, and there were little drops of sweaty dew forming at the ends of his hair. The surface of his head was getting baked like the crust of a pizza in an oven. His hair seems like the most horrible toppings. A waft of air blew into his face. His face was all covered with sand. Not only had the sand stuck itself on the magic glue of his sticky forehead, but also his neck, the edges of his nostrils and the deep dark cave of his mouth.
So while his myelin sheath was melting away, he bumped into someone. By some voodoo magic, one of the cells that he was growing in the culture room shook and vibrated. He didn’t look up to see who it was he bumped into. He walked ahead. The cells in the culture plate walked with him, it seemed to him. Was he hallucinating? He entered his room when he felt a surrounding red glow and a very humid ambiance greet him. He felt sick and nausea was building. He dropped onto his bed. Soon he was fast asleep, and dreaming. He dreamt he was swimming in culture media, red, like strawberry juice. The thought of strawberry juice got him all confused, but he soon opened his mouth to find out the bovine serum albumin that he had added.
“What am I doing here?” He thought. Swimming in this vast endless ocean of phenol red, he was all alone.
“Wait, this can’t be!” He thought, “If I am here, then I must be multiplying, but that doesn’t make sense does it? Where are my other copies?” He swam hard in the viscous media, till he became all exhausted, and dozed off (imagine, in his sleep!). Opening his eyes, he found that he was in a SDS-PAGE gel machine competing with what it seemed to him with other proteins to see who can reach the finish line first.
He pulled hard at the interlocking gel matrix and pushed himself along, but he couldn’t move very far. He was too bulky. One of the proteins in the next lane shouted at him jeeringly, “Good bye, fatso!” He was filled with guilt and anger, and the two things seemed to mix together to produce a unique effect, not that it helped him to move any further. He felt suicidal.
Just then his roomie entered the room, and he noticed that Mike was sweating profusely, wetting his bed, and no puns intended.
Mike blooped out of his gel cast, and dropped into a freezing vial in a liquid nitrogen container. Funny that he was dreaming, so he couldn’t freeze into storage. He felt mighty uncomfortable though. His hands, feet and his little face were burning with cold, yet they were not really burning. He could feel the sensation, yet there was nothing wrong with the skin of his hands. He wasn’t shivering either. He was just burning. He was suffering, then he was bleeding in his mind, he was suffocating and dying. He tried to throw his hands to free himself with whatever little was left in him. He was frantic, and he cried out loud, like a crazy ghost out of a crazy ghost movie. His roomie got real scared. He almost fell off his bed. Mike cried out, “I am burning, I am burning!”
“You surely are burning. Man, you have pissed all over your bed,” said his roomie in jest, “You are showing symptoms of the ultimate meltdown. Maybe some cold beer’ll help to congeal those myelins back in.”
DWAIPAYAN ADHYA
It was one afternoon when the Sun was shining so hard, that it would melt any fat lying anywhere, even if it were in the myelin sheath of our neurons. So, it so happened that on that particular afternoon, Mike was walking down the road from his lab to the hostel. He was unaware of the fact that the Sun was beating down upon him like a million joules of heat from a coal furnace. He was thinking very deeply, on a scientific problem and he was determined to find out a means to solve it before the end of the day. The Sun was laughing all the while, jeering at Mike’s foolish ideas and even sillier propositions to be thinking about it while walking under its Solar weight.
Sweat poured from his brows, and there were little drops of sweaty dew forming at the ends of his hair. The surface of his head was getting baked like the crust of a pizza in an oven. His hair seems like the most horrible toppings. A waft of air blew into his face. His face was all covered with sand. Not only had the sand stuck itself on the magic glue of his sticky forehead, but also his neck, the edges of his nostrils and the deep dark cave of his mouth.
So while his myelin sheath was melting away, he bumped into someone. By some voodoo magic, one of the cells that he was growing in the culture room shook and vibrated. He didn’t look up to see who it was he bumped into. He walked ahead. The cells in the culture plate walked with him, it seemed to him. Was he hallucinating? He entered his room when he felt a surrounding red glow and a very humid ambiance greet him. He felt sick and nausea was building. He dropped onto his bed. Soon he was fast asleep, and dreaming. He dreamt he was swimming in culture media, red, like strawberry juice. The thought of strawberry juice got him all confused, but he soon opened his mouth to find out the bovine serum albumin that he had added.
“What am I doing here?” He thought. Swimming in this vast endless ocean of phenol red, he was all alone.
“Wait, this can’t be!” He thought, “If I am here, then I must be multiplying, but that doesn’t make sense does it? Where are my other copies?” He swam hard in the viscous media, till he became all exhausted, and dozed off (imagine, in his sleep!). Opening his eyes, he found that he was in a SDS-PAGE gel machine competing with what it seemed to him with other proteins to see who can reach the finish line first.
He pulled hard at the interlocking gel matrix and pushed himself along, but he couldn’t move very far. He was too bulky. One of the proteins in the next lane shouted at him jeeringly, “Good bye, fatso!” He was filled with guilt and anger, and the two things seemed to mix together to produce a unique effect, not that it helped him to move any further. He felt suicidal.
Just then his roomie entered the room, and he noticed that Mike was sweating profusely, wetting his bed, and no puns intended.
Mike blooped out of his gel cast, and dropped into a freezing vial in a liquid nitrogen container. Funny that he was dreaming, so he couldn’t freeze into storage. He felt mighty uncomfortable though. His hands, feet and his little face were burning with cold, yet they were not really burning. He could feel the sensation, yet there was nothing wrong with the skin of his hands. He wasn’t shivering either. He was just burning. He was suffering, then he was bleeding in his mind, he was suffocating and dying. He tried to throw his hands to free himself with whatever little was left in him. He was frantic, and he cried out loud, like a crazy ghost out of a crazy ghost movie. His roomie got real scared. He almost fell off his bed. Mike cried out, “I am burning, I am burning!”
“You surely are burning. Man, you have pissed all over your bed,” said his roomie in jest, “You are showing symptoms of the ultimate meltdown. Maybe some cold beer’ll help to congeal those myelins back in.”
DWAIPAYAN ADHYA
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