He mentioned the several things we still needed to do: get red trash-bins and trashbags for our newly proclaimed biohazardous waste, figure out a Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) for the animal colony staff, figure out where 'Midget' was (see Cast List) so we could get our mone-..er..her research started.

I was also supposed to find a Plastic Brain-Infusion Gizmo (PBIG). We needed quite a few PBIG's now. Our huge grant was rejected a few weeks ago since there wasn't enough evidence to back up our good ideas. So, we'd need to find money somehow and do some PBIG experiments. We would sing into the early afternoons, spanish guitars and a sad accordian filtering to the outdoors, old men parting cards, sitting and laughing, long forgetting the moonlight in the dim glow of gas-lighting and wood benches. We would dump chemicals onto the part of the brain we think is the key to depression. Hopefully, one day soon, we would show that immune system and metabolism chemicals affected that brain area.

So I spent the next hour searching for this strange PBIG through the colorful variety of drug and hardware catalogs located on the first shelf, in the corner office. Attila was re-re-working his presentation on a classic psych. experiment. He ran it by me a few times, just like last week. I admired his tenacity. He was happy I'd helped him. If anything I like Attila because he's decent like that.

During that time I thought I'd tracked down the PBIG we needed. I wanted to ask Dr. Ziv. I figured it could wait until after lunch. After lunch, Dr. Ziv was gone. It wasn't even 1:00pm. I couldn't believe he'd left so early. I was pissed off. I was really incredibly pissed off. It felt like I was still in the trenches with all of these messes, all of this bureaucracy.

At first I thought I was being unreasonable.

As I was closing out the day, though, I thought I'd drop over by the animal-colony HQ to see Wrangler. He was working on something but didn't seem to mind me intruding. I showed him the fax I'd gotten from CASE. He approved. He went on to tell me I needed a SOP, a guide to let everyone know how the biohazardous waste was being handled. He then told me that the back holding room had to be inspected by the supreme area veterinarian. The room would have to be painted, cleaned, spotless. All the animals in there had to be killed immediately. It had to look as if nothing had ever existed in that space. I wondered why when Wrangler said it: Dr. Zivago had never gotten that room approved for anything. As far as the powers that be were concerned, that room didn't exist.

So for six months I had been doing illegal research, with highly illegal drugs, under illegal drug clearance, using an illegal room to house animals, all while following illegal procedures. The Knock-U-The-Fuk-Out drug was a controlled substance. Using it was the equivalent of cutting crack for line drags. I had been committing a Class-A felony every time I used it, lower rung felonies and misdemeanors in the other cases.

I stopped thinking I had been unreasonable.

I knew Dr. Zivago was sometimes irresponsible, but this latest incident did it for me. No volunteer should have to build a lab from the ground up like this. I can't see why all the staff let him get by like this. I can't believe Grettle never realized or mentioned most of this. I can't understand how anyone could let their entire lab sink into a quagmire where it had no approved procedures, no money and no idea where half of the things were in the lab itself.

I can't believe I didn't realize this sooner. What in the fuck have I gotten myself into...

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