Chapter 9
On Monday morning the highway was almost empty and the drive felt good. The building in which Foodtech labs were encased sparkled in the morning sun, the blue of the glass bright against the cloudless summer sky.
We scanned our passes at the entrance and signed in. We scanned our passes to use the elevator and then again, before entering the labs.
“I want to test something else. I’ve come up with few thoughts yesterday night, but I am not sure how to put them in practice”, I said. “What about we try them together?”, I proposed.
“Sure, I have some ideas too and I have the same problem”, said Brad. We were a good team.
Alice showed up early too that morning. “What are you guys doing here at 7 am”, she teased, leaning on Brad shoulders and mine.
“We couldn’t wait to see you and we got up before sunrise”, Brad replied, winking.
“Oh yeah, you bet!”, Alice laughed.
“Are you up for lunch?”, I asked her.
“I thought the boss would order pizza for everyone today, no?”, Alice wondered.
“True true…I almost forgot”, I said remembering the boss had decided to organize a “pizza social”, as she called it.
“See you guys then”, said Alice, squeezing our shoulders, “I don’t feel like working but I suppose I should. My cell cultures are waiting for me”.
“So, what’s next?”, asked Brad after Alice had left.
“Let’s go get the precursors and then I’ll tell you”, I said, walking to the fridge.
Something had leaked out. “What is this?”, I said, opening the door and turning speechless.
“Holy smokes!”, Brad almost yelled, “Are these your samples from Friday?”.
The volume of the puddings in which I had added the polymer had swollen by at least ten times, popping the caps open and melting in a multi-coloured foam, which now slowly poured from the bottom shelf.
“It worked!”, I yelled in reply, incredulous. “What do you think the pudding will taste like now?”, I asked.
“No clue…”, he replied.
We looked at each other for a moment. “Ok, it’s against the rules, but…”, I said, taking my gloves off. Brad took his gloves off too. There were cameras everywhere, but not in this room. I dipped my finger in the vanilla pudding, while Brad went for the chocolate pudding. The pudding had a vague acidic back taste, but that was no matter – in this industry adding more sugar is never a big deal if you can save on all the rest.
“Why don’t we use the confocal microscope to look at the 3D structure”, Brad suggested.
“That’s what I was thinking too”, I said, taking the vanilla pudding and wiping off the jar the foam around it.
I spread a thin layer of vanilla pudding in the microscope cell and waited for the computer to start. When the software finally opened and we could get an image what we saw was stunning. There were spherical shapes all over, which had not been there earlier. And there were holes, arranged to form identical patterns at different scales.
“Fractal structures. I never saw anything like this”, said Brad, eyes fixed on the screen. Then he looked at the image more closely. “But look, even where there are no voids the material seems changed”, he told me.
I approached my face to the screen. “Yeah…you are right”, I whispered.
“Let’s increase the magnification”, Brad said, as he operated the microscope.
There were tiny dots, we couldn’t really tell what we were looking at but we knew for sure that those dots weren’t there before.
“Something is telling me that these polymers are doing something more than repelling the pudding around them”, said Brad. “You think they have changed the bonds between the pudding molecules?”, I asked.
“I can’t tell yet, we have to do some infrared spectroscopy to know”, Brad replied, “But hey Iris, you are a genius!”.
“I am! But I am a genius with no idea of what is happening”, I laughed.