My thesis was supposed to be on using genetically modified fungus to treat disease; to take it beyond its use as an antibiotic. That day, I was sorting through Petri dishes of rat blood, in which I had placed various strains of altered penicillin. The goal was to make it copy the DNA of the rat, and start making new blood cells. All I needed to test it was a blood testing kit – it was meant to identify anemia, but it would work just fine to tell if there were more blood cells than expected. 

These tests were really just a formality to me. I didn’t believe I would make any breakthroughs, I just hoped that my thesis would serve the professional mycologists doing well-funded research. The information I hoped to provide them with was to save them time, not really to give them new ideas or lead them to a breakthrough. 

But I got lucky. In the fourteenth dish out of twenty, the blood cell count had doubled since last week. I tested it three more times before I really processed what I had done. In a few months, someone would inevitably figure out how to use it to make a clean sample of rat blood, and, not much later, it would be used in a successful transfusion. 

But it wouldn’t just be revolutionary for that specific field of medical care. It would antiquate stem cell research. It wouldn’t be limited to blood cells, at least not for long. It might not cure cancer, but in a few decades at most, it could replace a cancer patient’s organs. 

My stomach dropped. It could cure death, and in doing so, cause an unspeakable amount of it. It could spark global, all-out war. In a foolish frenzy, I closed the Petri dish, sealed it with tape, and shoved it back into the freezer. Nobody else was there, I didn’t have to hurry. 

I heard a knock on the lab door. The public university lab door.  I walked around the corner from the freezers and pulled it open. “This door doesn’t even have a lock, you know.” Standing in the doorway was a tall, dark-skinned woman. She walked past me a few paces before turning around and indicating for me to follow. I think, given the circumstances, I was in a very suggestible state, but I also think I would have followed her anyway. 

She led me to an empty table, and she slammed her hands onto it. When she lifted her arms, her hands did not follow. They lay on the table, not bleeding or spasming, as if someone had taken them from a cadaver and laid them out for dissection. 

She spoke in a thick accent; I think it was something African, but I’m not sure. “You do not want to cut off my hands, Annie.” Her accent was not the only thing that struck me about her voice. Her voice was, in my view, indisputably nonhuman. It was too perfect, no abnormalities in pitch, in volume, or in pace. It was smooth, not like silk, but like the sky. It was not a sound a mere mortal could make. 

“What if I do?” She stared into my eyes, and I felt that she was pondering my life, weighing my value. 

“What would you do if someone told you they wanted to cut off your hands?” She didn’t give me time to answer. “The good news, Annie, is that you do not have to face my wrath, and you do not have to throw away your research.” This time, despite not having ended on a question, she left room for me to respond. 

“So, what’s the catch?” 

She smiled, not a creepy or dangerous smile, but a smile of real kindness, and genuine compassion. “We do it together. We let that war start, over us and our product, and we make sure it doesn't go… ” She reached for her hands, and they slid, silently, right back onto her wrists. Her fingers began to tremble. “To crap.” She finished. “When the dust settles, humanity will not have conquered death, but you will have gained an incredible tool for fighting scarcity and disease.”