Chapter 16
“Do we ever test the safety of the new compounds we come up with in our lab?”, I asked Brad as we were driving to FoodTech labs the next day.
He shrugged. “Someone probably does, but I don’t know how this part works”.
“But who do you think would know?”, I insisted.
“The boss, I suppose. Why does this worry you all of a sudden?”.
I told him a friend had brought up the question and it made me wonder. The conversation stalled, and we drove in silence for a while.
Then Brad said, “I am curious to know what happened to our other samples. If the polymer worked with the sauce we’ll have to try and heat it up. If you win lunch is on me. And if you don’t…”.
“It’s on me”, I interrupted, and we both laughed.
We got to Foodtech labs. We scanned the passes at the entrance of the building, we scanned them in the elevator to make it start, and we scanned them to open the door to the labs. Safety first, as always. We donned out lab coats and went straight to our samples. The sauce was just as it had been the night before.
“I suppose lunch is on me”, I said shrugging, “but wow, look at the yoghurt!”.
The ice-cream had doubled in volume, but what happened to the yoghurt was the most stunning part. It looked like a mousse now, and its volume was at least ten times greater than it had been the day before.
“It’s soon to draw conclusions, but it seems like the polymer works only on products that contain milk”, Brad said, almost talking to himself.
“I think we should do a systematic study. Why don’t we try the polymer on pure milk?”, I proposed.
We always had some basic types of foods in our fridge for our lab tests, and milk was one of them. “If we add the polymer now perhaps we’ll see something before the end of the day”, Brad said.
We were about to take the milk bottle from the fridge when we heard Mike on our back.
“So, what did Sandeep tell you?”.
“We’ll meet him this afternoon. Come see what happened to some other samples”, I said, getting the milk bottle from the fridge.
Mike scratched his chin, thoughtfully. He took the jar of yoghurt and rolled it in his hands, as if seeing it from different angles would give him some new inspiration.
“Just by looking at this with the naked eye I would like to say that it has fermented”, he said. “but there weren’t any odd looking bacteria when you looked at this under the microscope, right?”.
Brad and I looked at each other.
“I am not sure about what odd bacteria are like…”, Brad replied doubtfully.
“Perhaps we can go get Alice and see what she thinks about this”, I suggested
I found her preparing bacterial cultures next door. She was wearing an eccentric red and orange sweater under the lab coat and when she saw me she greeted me with a broad smile, bouncing on her chair as she said hello. It was good to be around Alice’s halo of cheerfulness. We didn’t get the chance to work together very often and I was happy I had finally found a reason to get her involved in what I was doing. When she saw the swollen ice-cream and yoghurt she raised her brows.
“Impressive”, she said, and then began rolling the jars in her hands the same way Mike had. “Can I have a look at these under the microscope?”.
She spread the yoghurt on a glass slide and looked into the eyepieces.
“Wow”, she said, “what happened here?”.
We took turns looking at the sample.
“The texture changed a whole lot, same as last time”, Brad said.
“It’s not only that”, Alice told us. “There’s bacteria in there. Loads of them. Do you see those spherical shapes all over your sample, arranged around the void spaces?”, she said, gesturing to take another look.
“I see”, I told her, my head bent on the eyepieces, “But they don’t move at all. Aren’t bacteria supposed to move around?”.
“That’s right”, Alice said, “and this is what amazes me. These bacteria have multiplied like crazy, and based on their appearance they are very much alive, but they are not moving around as I would expect them to”.
“This business is more and more puzzling, I wonder what Sandeep found…but now these bacteria seem to be the key here”, Mike commented, rubbing on his chin as he had been doing since I showed him the samples.
“Let me keep the sample and have a better look at it”, Alice offered.
“We thought of adding the polymer to a milk sample…do you think you can have a look at it?”, I asked
“I have an idea”, she exclaimed, brightening up. “Why don’t you add the polymer and let me check on your sample in time. I am curious to know what these funky bacteria do before there’s so many of them around”.
I prepared the milk sample and handed it to Alice.
“I’ll be here till late, come back whenever you want this afternoon and I’ll let you know what I find”, she told me.
I thanked her, and said Brad and I would go find her after seeing Sandeep at the Cross cancer institute.