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Post by Christine MacTaggart on Oct 28, 2003 0:15:42 GMT -4
Christine sat down at a desk in the library, going over her biology notes. She sighed softly and massaged her temples as the unfamiliar vocabulary washes over her, confusing her.
Her eyes glanced down at a section of her text book that caught her interest and she smiled slightly.
"I wonder... does that make the quote unquote norms us?" she asked herself quietly. Silently she wondered if a professor would come and explain it to her. She was still having a difficult time trying to understand what the paragraph was saying.
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Post by Hank McCoy on Oct 29, 2003 14:01:23 GMT -4
Dr. McCoy found himself once again trying to navigate silently through the library. It was no easy task, not for him, and he would have avoided it altogether if he hadn't promised to have the study notes and the case study results in today to the Reference desk for the Chemistry exam he'd been warning his students about.
The tables and chairs, the bookshelves were arranged closely and because of his size and the size of his feet it was difficult for him to move through it like a typical person would without bumping into a table or knocking over a chair. Oh, he could have easily made it through the room - and silently - by executing a series of bounces, flips and leaps but he knew that was no less disruptive to the studious atmosphere than if he was standing on one of the tables in a hula skirt and playing a song by making intestinal noises with his armpits.
So he rolled his eyes, drew in his breath somehow hoping that it made him thinner - which it didn't - and navigated gingerly through the obstacle course that blocked his way back to his classroom.
He felt like a furry blue Cowardly Lion trying not to draw attention to himself at High Noon on the first day of Lion season in Munchkinland - and he was pretty sure the Lollipop Guild had already spotted him and were sneaking up from behind some nearby bushes to kick his...
Suddenly he noticed someone he knew. It was Christine MacTaggart and she was sitting at one of the tables looking lost in thought. He smiled proudly as he saw that she was puzzling over a Genetics text. As he looked he relaxed just a little, which was enough to cause the chair he was trying to slide by to first teeter sideways, then totter back the other way. Startled, he turned quickly to catch and straighten the chair. He was a little too close, and a little too tense and though normally agile and able to move with astonishing grace he wasn't able to get his hand where he thought it should be and he clumsily pushed the chair instead of catching it and it fell to the floor with a BANG.
He sighed as the gasps and the giggles subsided.
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Post by Christine MacTaggart on Oct 29, 2003 14:09:25 GMT -4
"Hello Dr McCoy," Christine said instinctively, having neither gasped nor giggled at his approach. Her eyes had been fixed on the page in front of her. She looked up from the page, turned and smiled at the elder mutant.
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Post by Hank McCoy on Oct 30, 2003 0:24:21 GMT -4
"Hello, Christine", said Henry quietly as he returned the fallen chair to where it had been before he overturned it and tried his best not to look too embarrassed by what had happened.
He glanced around the room. Most of the students had returned to their studies and the few remaining chitters of conversation at surrounding tables were quickly dying down.
"My apologies for disrupting your reverie," he said.
He could have sworn that she spoke to him before she looked up. He wondered if his reputation of clumsiness in the library had become more well-known than he had imagined....or if perhaps she had instinctively read his mind or the minds of those around her to reconstruct what had happened without actually having seen it herself. He was horrified by one answer, intrigued by the other.
There was a third possibility, of course.... one that his embarrassment at the situation and his fragile self image would not allow him to fully explore ...and that was that she had simply sensed him somehow - without trying and without really noticing it herself. He quickly pushed the notion aside.
He quietly added, "I hope that I did not frighten you."
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Post by Christine MacTaggart on Oct 30, 2003 0:27:58 GMT -4
Christine looked vaguely amused. "No more frightening then Kurt on a caffiene and sugar high," she murmured softly. Her cheeks took on a soft rose hue as she mentioned the blue furred teen.
She shook her head. "It was already disrupted by the neighboring giggles before you entered the room. That and genetics and I are not friends at all."
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Post by Hank McCoy on Oct 30, 2003 0:40:59 GMT -4
"Coincidentally", Henry said, "genetics and I are not really on speaking terms either." He smiled, making a broad waving gesture at himself with his hands that made him look quite a bit like Vanna White solving the puzzle on Wheel of Fortune. At the end of his sweeping movement, he clipped another chair with his hand and then caught it nervously before it could hit the ground.
"....but it is something I know a little about. Perhaps I could provide some insight.", he sighed.
"May I?", he asked, gesturing toward one of the chairs at her table.
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Post by Christine MacTaggart on Oct 30, 2003 0:42:59 GMT -4
Christine nodded. "It's the section on genetic mutation that has me baffled," she said quietly, indicating the section in her text book. "I'm not sure I understand what they are talking about." OOC: guess who has a test with some of that nonsense on it in real life  |
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Post by Hank McCoy on Oct 30, 2003 1:42:01 GMT -4
Henry sat down in the chair and pulled himself closer to the table. He was grateful to be out of the mine field, even if it only delayed his daunting task.
He read the section Christine referred to.
"Yes," he said. "Well, I think I can comprehend your dilemma."
"I think part of what makes that passage confusing", he began, "is that the author of your textbook isn't speaking of mutation in precisely the same terms that you and I are accustomed to thinking of it. Within the context of a single organism, mutation must be looked at as a lack of homogeneity between cells."
"In other words", he continued as he looked in her pale blue eyes. Her gaze made him feel...different...like he wasn't some massive blue gorilla but someone very...normal. "...if you were to isolate the genome present in the nucleotide sequence of one cell, it may not be precisely the same as the isolated genome present in another cell from the same organism."
He tried to make his explanation not sound like a lecture. He tried to find the balance in her expression - not talking down to her, just talking to her. He hoped....he felt...like he was doing okay.
"The reason this happens is in the nature of cell division - a percentage of the time - a relatively small percentage - the chromosomes of one cell are not perfectly copied to a new cell when the parent cell divides. Those cells that do not match the predominant traits of the population are referred to as mutations. Just as we - who do not match the predominant traits of the homo sapiens population are also referred to as mutations."
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Post by Christine MacTaggart on Oct 30, 2003 7:09:47 GMT -4
Christine nodded slowly. "But, if that's the case, wouldn't that make the normal humans mutants in a sense? And given that, why would they hate us if they are like us in a sense?"
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Post by Hank McCoy on Oct 30, 2003 23:06:55 GMT -4
"My dear girl!", Henry said just a little too loudly and with a surprised tone as his eyes went wide. "Whatever makes you think that you are not a normal human?"
His voice resumed its formerly quiet tone, and he leaned closer to her from across the table - his manner becoming only slightly more intense.
"In one sense, you are absolutely right", he said holding up one finger, "the activity that takes place at a cellular level makes them no different than we are."
He smiled.
"The point that I'm trying to make is that mutation - change - is a normal part of all life. It's what organisms do. Sometimes, a mutation is an evolutionary dead end. Whatever changes occur may not be beneficial to the organisms that they are a part of and they, or the organisms, eventually die out. Sometimes a mutation provides some kind of advantage, and that change is passed from the organism or its successful cells onto their offspring. We do not know what controls this process, but we do know that it occurs. Life adapts to its environment."
Henry looked at her - trying to see if Christine understood what he was saying. She is remarkably bright, he thought as he could clearly see that she did understand. She has a magnificent mind.
"Part of the problem", he continued, "is that human society operates under several very serious misconceptions. There is a popular assumption that Evolution does not make jumps - that there must always be a 'missing link' as life adapts smoothly from one form to another. But the paleontologists are discovering from the fossil record that indeed life does make leaps. They have observed in the preserved history of our planet that species sometimes spontaneously appear - and disappear - across the millenia."
"My contention", here he looked down at the table momentarily - slightly embarrassed, "is that since life adapts to suit its environment - and humanity has begun through its progression to open up frontiers beyond our world - that our gifts and abilities are merely a manifestation of life learning to adapt...to prepare our descendents for the challenges they will face."
"Even Magneto, in a moment astonishing in both ego and clarity coined the term for what we are -- homo sapiens superior - 'better humans' and although some of us might argue the 'better' notion the important thing to notice is that at our core even he - before tragedies and the politics made him someone who would set himself above - understood that we are all too human. We have been gifted or cursed as humanity continues to adapt, but we are - nonetheless - a part of humanity no matter who wants to try take that away from us."
"Don't allow yourself to believe that you are not normal, Christine. What makes us normal is not what we are...it is who we are. And though we are all the same we are also each unique. There will never be another like us. Celebrate who you are, Christine. You're the best you there will ever be."
He placed his elbows on the table and his head into his hands - smiling across at her.
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Post by Christine MacTaggart on Oct 30, 2003 23:12:45 GMT -4
Christine was quiet as she sat there, soaking up what he said. A ghost of a smile crossed her lips for a moment. "Now only if my teacher at the high school would explain it like that, then I might understand what he's trying to teach," she said quietly. Her gaze fell on a well read textbook of hers - one that wasn't - well - wasn't exactly normal high school science material. One of the few original prints of a medical book written by Essex sat on top of her pile.
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Post by Hank McCoy on Oct 31, 2003 0:41:07 GMT -4
Henry nearly recoiled as he took notice of the book Christine had glanced at.
"Wherever did you get that?", he asked her - his features a mixture of shock and concern. He looked as if she had just pulled a gun on him.
"Christine, Nathaniel Essex was a Victorian Josef Mengele. He was brilliant but utterly without compassion or morality.", his eyes looked intensely at her, his expression dark.
"Be careful what lessons you learn from him.", he cautioned.
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Post by Christine MacTaggart on Oct 31, 2003 0:45:27 GMT -4
"One must learn from the past as to avoid the same mistakes," she said quietly. "And for the record," she paused a moment. "I don't plan on doing anything like what he did. It's immoral and horrible. I was sick for the week after I read some of it."
She bit her lower lip and looked back at the professor in front of her. "I found it in an old bookshop. It wasn't until after I started to get halfway into the first chapter before I realized who he was. In fact," she paused again. "I was planning on getting rid of the book this weekend. I just need to know if it'd be legal for me to burn it."
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Post by Hank McCoy on Oct 31, 2003 1:28:07 GMT -4
Henry smiled. "Yes, of course you can burn it if you choose to. It might just be simpler to ask Wolverine to shred it for you."
"After Hitler's regime was put to an end", Henry told her, "many people believed that no matter what they might learn from Josef Mengele's research the price in human lives that was paid to obtain that knowledge was just too high. Many chose to reject it altogether on that basis alone - that to accept what was learned was to accept the method used to obtain it."
"I applaud your thirst for knowledge, my dear", he told her seriously, "but some lines should never be crossed, and some mistakes should never have been made in the first place. Nataniel Essex should have known that. The fact that he did not means to me that he has little to teach us."
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Post by Christine MacTaggart on Oct 31, 2003 7:28:19 GMT -4
"To tell you the truth, I was barely able to get anything out of it - mainly since he spent at least twenty pages ranting and raving about how he was going to create the perfect mutant," Christine said quietly, looking ill at ease with the book.
"And somehow... I don't think Essex is going to be on my exam so I best get back to my legit textbooks," Christine said, trying to change the subject.
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