Telomeres and Time Travel

We used to have cattle in this barn before Dad sold the farm. Every morning and every evening, I was in this barn, with Cara, my sister, and my Dad, feeding cows, milking cows, and cleaning equipment. Cara and I both hated the farm work.

Now the barn is quiet except for the pigeons, scurrying mice, and a couple of old farm cats. The herd and the equipment were sold off, long ago. What couldn’t be sold sits around the barn and the farmyard, rusting in place. The barn door hangs partially open on broken hinges.

I swivel my head to follow the sound of a mouse running across the open floor towards the far edge. But, I ate last night, as evidenced by the fur and the feet that lie nearby, so I let the mouse go and close my eyes to the daylight creeping into the open space.

This farm is one place that I never wanted or expected to see again. After Mom died, and my sister and I left for college, we saw no need to return. Dad moved to town, and he died of a heart attack, at home, before Cara finished at the University of Minnesota. Cara and I helped each other through those first years of young adulthood. When Cara moved to Texas to take a new job, I lost my last relative in the state.

Working as a research assistant for a lab in Madison, Wisconsin, gave me enough financial security and job satisfaction to keep me in the area. Always the loner, I felt especially unprepared for and inept at the social and political aspects of my job in a big organization. Most of my days and nights were spent alone, both at work and in my free time. My colleagues moved on to better jobs, new relationships, and new addresses, as I remained in the same position professionally and called the same apartment home, year after year.

Shortly after my ten-year work anniversary, Dr. Sheila Paine was brought in to lead our project. I was impressed by her-a single woman who was driven, brilliant, respected, and bold. She wasn’t afraid to make controversial decisions, hold her ground in a dispute or promote her own agenda. Dr. Sheila noticed my work and made an obvious effort to get to know me. She invited me to take on a bigger role in the research we were doing. I thought that I had found a mentor. She thought she had found an accomplice.

Dr. Sheila’s research involved working with genetically modified organisms. Our lab worked primarily with small mammals. Our research goal, on paper, was to genetically modify the enzymes produced in animal cells, to produce medications for humans. Dr. Sheila’s doctoral thesis on telomeres was groundbreaking and internationally recognized research. Her work demonstrated that opening up the ends of a DNA strand, the telomeres, would allow the base pairs that code for protein synthesis to be altered. Her published works were also the reason that she was chosen to lead our lab.

Privately, Dr. Sheila shared with me, her desire to modify the genetic makeup of an animal and change the animal’s characteristics. This was outside the scope of our current lab research. She saw the research that she was paid to do, as just a paving stone to the research she wanted to do.

Our lab was under intense scrutiny for utilizing animals in our research. Dr. Sheila wanted to expand her research, on telomeres, to include primates but was hindered by the regulatory restrictions. She was increasingly frustrated, year after year, with the limitations placed on her research. She told me, over dinner at a local natural foods co-op, that science was captive to the whims of politics and economics. And, of course, she could do life-changing work, if only the research community would let her do what she did best.

As I sit here, on the barn rafter, I realize that I should have seen the danger in my friendship with Dr. Sheila. Every conversation that I can recall, was about her work and her ideas.

Dr. Sheila told me to call her that, instead of Dr. Paine, within the first month of taking over the lab. I am sure that she saw that I didn’t socialize with the other researchers. I thought that she had gravitated towards me, in recognition of my quiet nature and solid research methodology. I, obviously, had space for her, in my life. Within three months, we had a standing dinner get-together, each Friday evening, at a local restaurant. She vented about her challenges, complained about her colleagues, and shared gossip. I felt like an insider. I was flattered by the attention.

When my apartment building went up for sale, the next year and the new owner turned it into condominiums, I shared with Dr. Sheila, my dismay, at having to look for a new place to live after all these years. She asked me about the building and where it was. At our next dinner, she told me that she had spoken with the new management company and was in negotiation to buy one of the condos. It had two bedrooms, two bathrooms, a small office, a new kitchen, and a balcony that overlooked the river. I felt sick. She was buying into the building that I just gotten kicked out of, and was openly gloating about it. I tried not to show my pain and said little until the meal ended and we went our separate ways. This was the first time that I began to doubt if our friendship was in my best interest.

Two weeks later, at dinner, she told me that her purchase of the condo had gone through. I wondered why she was buying into a building, in Madison, when she was so unhappy with her job, here. But, I reasoned, there were lots of research jobs in the city, and she could just change jobs. She never mentioned anything about going back to Boston, where she had come from. She never discussed old friends or family members from the other cities she had lived in.

When Dr. Sheila asked me if I wanted to rent the extra bedroom from her, I was floored. It seemed like such a generous offer, but I had my misgivings. We did work together. However, other researchers did and had, in the past, shared apartments. I hadn’t shared living space, since college. Would this work? The rent she was asking for was less than I was paying now and less than I was finding elsewhere. We’d chip in to get a cleaning service, with the money we each save by sharing the costs of internet access and utilities. I could start saving more, I thought. Maybe I could use the extra money to buy a place of my own in a few years. We got along well, but I knew, then, that I did most of the listening. Sheila seemed adamant, once I mentioned that I would consider it, that it would be best for both of us.

Sheila was working the day I moved in. Even though it was a Saturday, and I had a moving company, she said, “just put your things wherever you would like to and we’ll work out the details later.” After Sheila moved in the following weekend, we made furniture adjustments and settled in. Sheila kept most of her stuff, and I had to relocate quite a few of my items.

Our Friday night dinners fizzled out. Our new building owners established a Friday night social hour, that I decided to attend. I met a few of the other people in the building. Sheila said she didn’t have the time to waste socializing with neighbors. I went alone and met Bethany, who lived one floor down. We agreed to go shopping at Trader Joe’s, on Sunday afternoon.

When Bethany and I got together, the next Saturday, to go to an art exhibit and lunch, Sheila asked me why I was wasting my time with her. I felt awkward having to defend a reason for a new friendship. I thought the conversation, with Sheila, was odd and slightly alarming.

On Thursday, of that week, Sheila mentioned that she wanted to restart our Friday night dinners. During the dinner, she asked me if I wanted to be part of a new project she was working on. I asked for more details, and she assured me that it was, “the biggest thing she’s ever done” and that we’d discuss more, about it, later. She mentioned that she was going to Trader Joe’s on Sunday and asked me if I wanted to go along.

That week I got a phone call from my sister Cara. She announced that she had gotten married. I felt hurt and left out, and struggled to sound congratulatory. I hadn’t been invited to the wedding. She said it was a last-minute kind of thing and that she and Ron were going to have a baby. She just wanted to share her big news. She extended no invitation for me to come and visit and made no mention of plans to see me anytime soon. It felt like a physical blow to realize that I was no longer a person of importance, to her. At one time she and I had been each other’s lifelines, and now we were virtually strangers. I was, finally, completely and irrevocably left behind.

I stayed in my room, after work, for a week. I sat on our balcony, in the evenings, for the rest of the next few weeks. I watched the eagles soar over the river and marveled as they landed and walked along the edge of the melting ice shelf. I just wanted to jump off of the balcony and fly away with them. Sheila didn’t ask me what was wrong, nor did she seem surprised when I canceled our Friday dinners out.

I thought I should see a therapist and started a cursory search on our employee benefits website. But, I just couldn’t pull the trigger on scheduling an appointment. What was I going to say? I had always been alone and I still was. But now, at my age, it bothered me? I thought about planning a trip, but I couldn’t think of anything I wanted to do, or anywhere I wanted to go.

Sheila brought home Chinese food on a Friday evening and persuaded me to come into the dining room to eat. She told me, cheerfully, about her project and how she had discovered a way to exchange genes from one animal with the genes of another. She could do it as a slow process, as the cells of an animal aged out and replaced themselves. Some cells replace themselves very quickly and some take much longer. She could target the genes in an animal, and the tissues, system by system. I sat half-listening and said nothing.

After a few minutes of silence, I heard her ask me: “What animal would you like to be if you could change into something else?” I thought about the eagles that I had been watching, recently, and said, “an eagle.”

“Why an eagle? “she asked.

“I like that they live their adult lives in pairs and that they fly along the riverway. They can travel to where it’s warmer in the winter. They’re beautiful and strong and are at the top of the food chain. Nothing else really bothers them,” I said.

“Interesting,” Sheila said and changed the subject.

Two weeks later, Sheila asked me to meet her in the lab on a Saturday morning. I was reluctant, as I had been sleeping until noon on my days off. I rarely did much else, now, other than work and sleep. But, as Sheila was very insistent that it was important, I met her there.

When I got to the lab, she showed me the barn owl she had just gotten delivered, from a supplier. She began to tell me how marvelous barn owls are. She cooed over its beauty, strength, and hunting prowess.

“They have incredible hearing and acute vision, they are mostly nocturnal and are near the top of the food chain. Besides, a live eagle is nearly impossible to get, as it is a protected species,” she said.

I didn’t know what to say to that. I just looked at her and said, “OK.” Then she said, “I’m going to have to bring the owl home, as I am not allowed to have animals that are not related to our research in the lab. As you may have noticed, I have started to convert our home office into a small lab and I have space for her, in there”.

I was shocked. Sheila, I knew, did not like pets. She considered them to be a waste of time, and dirty. I had noticed that she’d replaced the flooring in the office area and made other changes, but I hadn’t looked in there in months.

“I never would have expected you to want a pet owl," I said. When she replied, “it’s not a pet, she’s our project,” you could have pushed me over with one of the owl feathers.

Sheila asked me to find out all I could about this barn owl. She gave me several stacks of printouts that she had already collected and asked me to find any more information available, on the animal’s biology. She had an excel spreadsheet, already made, with what she knew. Then she confessed that this project was not part of our official work and that this project was “off the books,” so that I could not log hours to it. She told me about the importance of this work, and that she was funding it from her own savings. She asked me to help her with the lab work, and that she would pay for the materials. She and I would share the credit when the research was published. We would have to work in the university lab when no one else was there, if the work applied to this project. I was to tell no one about this research. Sheila stressed this several times.

“Won’t we get fired,” I asked, or “kicked out of the research community?”

Her response was “that the results would keep us employed for the rest of our lives, and maybe get us nominated for a Nobel prize.” She promised that it would make us famous in our field. She was so enthusiastic, ecstatic and effervescent, that it was hard to say no. My career could certainly use a boost, and the project sounded like a good opportunity to be noticed for my work.

What Sheila didn’t tell me, then, was that I and the owl were the secret project. I was more than a helper, I was also the subject.

We brought the owl home and began to learn its needs and habits, as we cared for it and took samples from it. We worked out the systematic exchange process of breaking the endcaps (or telomeres) of my human DNA strands and rewriting part of the genetic sequence with owl DNA codes. It was both exhilarating and frightening work, even at the theoretical level.

As I became the donor for human cells, both external and internal, I had to submit to variously invasive sampling. The bone marrow sampling was especially painful and dangerous. I was afraid that if I got sick or injured, during the extractions, I would have a hard time explaining my need for medical care. Sheila was especially attentive to me at home. She asked how I was feeling and took care of me when I had small injuries and setbacks. She took me out to an expensive dinner for my birthday and bought me a designer handbag as a birthday gift.

The testing went well and Dr. Sheila’s process was fast and according to her, foolproof. She was finalizing the replacement timetable and procedures. While we were still in the planning and exploration stage, I had no fear about the process, as I didn’t really believe that we’d be able to go through with it. Sheila spent all of her time, away from her daytime job, working on this project. She lived for it.

Two years slipped by and nothing had changed for me. I had a nephew and brother in law, in Texas that I had never met. I stopped doing anything with anyone except Sheila as she said it was important to limit my exposure to others. I still spent a few evenings a week on the balcony, watching the eagles, when they were there and fantasizing about flying off, with them. Sheila’s project was the only distraction, I had, from work and my loneliness. As our friendship was now, consumed, by the secret project, I couldn’t stop working with her now.

While we were eating our Friday evening delivered meal, Sheila smiled and said, “I hope you’re ready, as we’re finally ready to start! But, we need to have a conversation about how this process is going to go.”

“Start?”, I said.

“With you", she said.

“Oh,” I said and just waited.

“Here’s what I see as the process,” she said, as she proceeded to outline the steps.

She told me that she had perfected the process that would change the telomeres on my DNA. The ends of my genetic code strands would be opened for accepting a rewrite of my DNA to owl DNA. She said that she expected the entire process to take two months and that if at any point, I was uncomfortable with the process, she could stop and reverse it. If we got to the end of the process, and I completely converted, she would start the reversal process as soon as her documentation was complete. She expected me to miss some work, and that I should file for a family medical leave and take an unpaid absence. Sheila said that she would cover all of my expenses so that I had an income during my leave. She said that she had budgeted for it.

I didn’t know what to say. I wasn’t sure, at that point, if I was excited about the prospect of becoming a barn owl or terrified. Honestly, I was both.

“When do you want to start?’, I asked.

The first thing I noticed was that what I wanted to eat changed, dramatically. I couldn’t even look at processed foods and lived mostly on eggs, fish, and meat. Then, I struggled to stay awake during the day and spent my nights sitting on our balcony, looking into the distance. I saw things, far away, amazingly clearly. I could see fish jumping on the river in the moonlight, and birds in the trees. My hearing was too good. I heard shuffling and creaking in the buildings at home and at work. Traffic noises were nearly unbearable. I spoke even more softly, hoping that people would return the favor and lower their volume. Sheila and I met every day and ran tests and journaled the changes.

Frighteningly, I lost my ability to see colors. I lost the blue range of colors first. My vision changed, eventually, to seeing mostly in grayscale. My distance vision was exceptional, but I was having trouble with close-range vision. I couldn’t go get a new eyeglass prescription, of course. I could swear that I could both see and sense heat. At this point, I had to start my medical leave.

With me at home, now, all of the time, Sheila started on the external changes, that would include my feature changes. First, my fingers elongated, and then my skin began to sprout tiny feather points along my arms. As my skeleton rearranged itself, the bones in my legs, and my knees (which began to face the opposite direction), became so painful that I begged Sheila for pain medication. Neither Sheila nor I had anticipated this level of pain. The skin on my feet became scaly and my toes lengthened and the nails began to look more like talons. I could no longer stand on them.

I was trapped in my room, and eventually, I was trapped in my bed. Every day I became smaller and weaker and I was begging Sheila, daily, for more pain medication. How she got the meds, I don’t know, and I didn’t ask. I spent a lot of my time sleeping now, as a result of the medication. Every time I woke up, I found new and terrifying changes. I was afraid to look in a mirror, as my teeth had fallen out.

Sheila had to take her vacation time to tend to me. She was there every day. Even though I would have pleaded with her to stop the process, I was no longer able to speak and I no longer had hands to write with. My hair fell out. What I could see of myself looked like an oversized, horribly ugly, baby bird.

Sheila was feeding me strips of raw beef and raw eggs, now. I watched her carefully with my big round eyes and sometimes startled and pivoted my feathered head, as she approached. She continued to take samples, draw blood and take pictures. She spoke to me nonstop, while we were together telling me how impressed she was with my progress and how important this work was. I understood what she was saying, but I cared less about her words, with every passing day. At some point, I quit trying to understand at all.

One night, while Sheila was sleeping, I felt the urge to get up. As I hopped up onto my clawed feet and looked down, I saw an owl’s feet and lower body. I turned my head to look at each arm and saw the wings and lovely feathers. I held up one hand and saw the splay of feathers and stretched out my wing. Then I tried the other wing and tried an up and down motion. It felt wonderful to lengthen and move them. I had an uncanny urge to jump and flap my wings. After a short burst, I wound up on the floor near the wall. I was dying to get out of the room.

Sheila found me perched on the headboard of the bed, the next morning. I fixed her with a stare that begged her to let me out of this room, but of course, she had no idea what I was thinking. Sheila was delighted with my condition and began a round of measurement, sampling, and recording. As she was doing this I could hear the spring sounds of the nearby river, trees, and birds calling to me. I was restless and Sheila was having a difficult time getting me to hold still for her exams. She finally gave up and left the room to get my meal.

The urge to leave got stronger and stronger. Two days later, when Sheila opened the door to feed me, I smelled my chance to get out. I knew that the door to the balcony was open, except for the screen door. The fresh outdoor air was in the apartment. As hungry as I was, I was determined to fly farther. As the door to my room opened, Sheila’s phone rang in the kitchen. As she turned her head to look at it, I rushed the door and flew at her, hitting the side of her head with my talons. Startled, she fell backward, dropping the plate and hitting the floor. I rushed at the screen to the patio door. I hit the screen door as hard as I could and was knocked to the floor. As I scrambled to right myself, I noticed that one corner of the screen had come loose. I hurried to squeeze my big head through the opening and then the rest of my bird body came through. Once on the patio, I jumped up to the railing and looked out over the river. I turned back to the apartment in time to see Sheila searching for me inside. She looked around the rooms, as she called my name. I sat on the railing for a moment, watching her. I knew that if I left, the work we had done was gone. I knew that there would be no going back to the person that I was. I hesitated, for a moment. Then Sheila saw me, perched on the patio railing, and headed for the screen door. I leaped into the open air. I didn’t look back.

I didn’t fly well or very far. My wings were still new to me, and the effort to fly, more taxing than I had expected. I did manage to land in a tree near the river. Not a pretty landing, but at least off of the ground. I hopped around the branches until I found a small hole and crawled into it, to rest. I found a squirrel in the hole and killed and ate it. I went to sleep.

I knew that Sheila had been out looking for me, during the day, as I had heard her calling my name. I slept through most of her search. I looked up at our apartment building, that night, with the windows lit up, as I could see it from my position. I considered going back. Then I decided that I needed to eat something, and spotted something small and moving, nearby. I took off, silently.

My nights and days continued like this for weeks. I flew a bit more each night. I missed more meals than I made, but I managed to eat enough to keep going. As I moved north, roughly following the river, I saw more farmland and fields and had less traffic and people noise to put up with.

As I got farther north, I realized that I was being pulled in a determined direction. When I left the riverway for the coulee hills and valleys, I saw land and buildings that looked familiar to me. I knew before I got there, where the road was, and the buildings were. I even knew that there was a stream running through an alfalfa field, a sloping farm field of planted corn, and an old barn. I found the barn, with the door ajar, flew into it, and settled in for the day.

I have stayed here for many days. I cannot leave this place, even though it both comforts and haunts me. I remember working in this barn, with Cara and Dad. The people who now live in the house on the hill are rarely about. These are people that I do not know. As I hunt the nearby fields at night, I eat well. I sleep in the quiet of the day.

In my more human moments, I know that I should go back. I can picture both Sheila's and my sister’s faces, in my mind and wonder if they are looking for me. But, these moments are rare and fleeting. As I watch another pigeon settle on a rafter near the door, I realize that I have it all here. Plenty to eat, and a safe place to sleep. I don’t miss the cows in the barn. It is mine now.