Abigail and the Rats of NIMH - Chapter 13

“Click F5 again, Dale,” Gadget said, straddling the computer mouse with Zipper on her shoulder, as Dale and the furlings stood by the keyboard, poised to type out another response should the doctor from NIMH respond again. But it had been a good twenty minutes since her last reply.

“I think whoever that was left,” said Dale, pressing the F5 key down with both hands.

The screen refreshed, but still nothing.

“It’s okay, we learned most of what we wanted to know,” said Gadget, “NIMH was behind both Dapplewood and Nimnul’s raid of HQ.”

“Man, Chip and Monty are in for it now,” Dale said, worried for the fate of his friends, “That’s gotta be the worst possible lab that could-”

“Dale,” Gadget interrupted, motioning back to the furlings, “Come on.”

“Oh eh, I mean, yeah we’ll get ‘em out. Piece of cake. Heh…”

“So we just go down to this NIMH place and bust in, and rescue everyone, right?” Willy asked.

“It’s not going to be nearly that easy,” Gadget replied.

“Well then what are we gonna do?” asked Michelle, sitting next to the Shift key and licking the lollypop given to her at the hospital earlier in the day, “I want my Uncle Cornelius back.”

“I want to do a little more research. We know whoever we talked to was someone named Dr. Stacy, and their name probably begins with a ‘P‘. That’s something I guess.”

“How are we gonna dig up something on this person?” Dale asked.

“The World Wide Web is a wonderful source of information on things like that,” Gadget said, “I’ll just try to find the NIMH website, and search for her there.”

She turned to the Mosaic web browser, moving the computer mouse with her arms and clicking the URL display.

“Alright, type in ‘www-dot-NIMH-dot-NIH-dot-gov’ and see what comes up you guys,” she instructed, spelling it out for them.

Russell quickly pushed the ‘w’ key three times.

“Okay, the dot is this key right?” Willy asked Abigail.

“Mm hmm, you’ve been doing great Willy. There’s the ‘N’ over there.”

“The uh…en?”

“Oh, I mean this one,” Abigail said, pointing to the correct letter, “I forgot you don’t know the names of the letters yet…sorry.”

“Maybe I better stick to the dots.”

“Oh come on, you can do it,” Abigail said, patting his shoulder, “We’ll teach you to read one of these days.”

“You don’t think I’m too dumb to learn it, do you?” Willy asked, feeling like the task would be overwhelming. It was disheartening to see even Michelle having a firm grasp of these strange symbols.

“Oh of course not,” Abigail gave him a quick peck on the cheek, “You just need a good teacher.”

Willy chuckled and blushed. After Gadget checked it for any spelling mistakes, Michelle hit enter when they were done, and slowly the NIMH website booted up. Gadget used the computer mouse to scroll and click.

“If you kids wanna rest or go do something else you can,” Gadget said, “I’m probably not going to need to type anything too long again. Dale can help me with anything else.”

The furlings got off the keyboard, and walked toward the edge of the desk, sitting down, and waiting for any other breakthrough. Their wait would be a long one, as Gadget tried to dig for information on employees. Each new web page took time to load. Edgar picked up a book he’d found in the mouse library earlier, one on dinosaurs, which fascinated him after seeing Jurassic Park. Zipper, being too small to be much help at the keyboard, read over Edgar‘s shoulder. Russell scrounged through their snacks, picked up from a nearby grocery after they’d fled to the library. Willy sat up against the beige computer tower, while Abigail folded her arms behind her head and laid back on Willy’s lap with a sigh. Michelle cuddled with Abigail, soon finishing her lollypop.

“So I guess we’re getting a little closer to success, huh?” Willy asked.

“Yeah, we are,” she said wearily, “We’re lucky they didn’t take Gadget, or else I don’t know what we’d do. I just hope we’re not too late when we get to NIMH.”

Willy gently stroked Abigail’s hair and cheeks, hoping to comfort her. It did, she closed her eyes and relaxed, Michelle sleepily hugging and nuzzling against Abigail. Earlier in the day, before the library had closed, Gadget had gone to the hospital with Michelle while the rest of them stayed behind in the library, and they had come back with a funny-looking little device called an inhaler. Based on a human invention, it was supposed to be just as good as herbs for asthma. Gadget demonstrated to Abigail how the device worked, and agreed to entrust it to her. Abigail kept it in her pocket for safe-keeping.

Abigail wasn’t sure why, but she felt like she had to be responsible for Michelle. Michelle had no one else, after all. Russell and Edgar were better at taking care of themselves, but she felt a similar responsibility for their safety too. She was the glue that held everything together. But with the burden of leadership on her shoulders and no parental figure to lean on, it was nice to have someone to comfort and support her, or at least do his best to, through their hardship. But, though Willy had insisted on coming with, Abigail couldn’t help but feel she’d acted somewhat selfishly bringing him along, putting him so far out of his element.

“What are we gonna do after this, Abigail?” Willy asked.

“Hm?”

“I mean, after we rescue everyone?”

Abigail thought for a moment, “I don’t know…I guess I can’t know, yet. I’m not sure it’s safe to ever go back to Dapplewood. We’d have to find a new home.”

“Maybe you could go to the meadow,” Willy suggested.

“I think we need someplace with more trees.”

“Ah…well wherever you go, I think I’ll come too.”

“Really?”

Willy nodded and smiled, “I’m never letting you fly off without me again.”

Abigail giggled, “Well then, you better just be able to keep up with me this time.”

At the computer, Gadget finally made it to the list of employees at the institute.

“Okay, here’s her profile,” Gadget said at the computer, as Dale looked on, a picture of a light-haired young woman with glasses and a lab coat appearing on the screen, “Dr. Penny Stacy, born in 1969. Looks like she got a PhD in Behavioral Neuroscience. Pretty impressive for someone who‘s only 24.”

“Wonder how many animals she had to slice up to get that,” Dale muttered.

“Best not to think about it. But now that we’ve got a name for this person we know who we were talking to before was legit. So that settles it.”

“Do we know everything we need to know now?”

“I suppose, but now we need to figure out what we’re gonna do,” Gadget replied, hoping the situation wasn’t entirely hopeless, “We’re gonna need help from somewhere.”

“Hmm…”

“I’ll keep browsing the web for stuff. You can rest too if you want, Dale. I‘m probably gonna be up late…I can‘t sleep knowing Chip‘s in danger…”

“I’m probably not gonna be sleeping much either,” Dale said, walking toward the furlings and sulking.

“I understand, but I do hope you can cheer up a little bit,” Gadget said as he walked off, “The kids need someone like you right now.”

“I’ll try I guess,” he said with a sigh, “Hm, wonder if they’ve got comics at this library.”

Dale climbed down the desk and walked back toward a small mousehole in the wall, to find something worth reading as they waited. Abigail and Michelle were starting to doze off, leaving Willy to try and make himself comfortable without disturbing them since Abigail was still laying on his lap. Russell was dozing off not too far away, and Edgar continued to read sleepily. But, while all this was happening, Gadget was getting deeper into NIMH’s website, eventually coming to a page that was password protected.

“Okay, this looks like pay dirt. Hmm…if I could hack into their computer system somehow, I could come out with a lot of useful information.”

She set to work. Gadget first typed her name in as Penny Stacy. Underneath was a space where she needed to enter a seven digit password. Her calculating brain looked at the keyboard, thinking of all the possible combinations. Ten million with numbers alone…exponentially more with letters, even worse if it was case sensitive. She had all night, but she was sure it wouldn’t take that long, as daunting as the task may have seemed to a layman. She just had to think like a scientist, which she was, after all. This wasn’t the first time she’d hacked a computer system, though she only did it with good cause of course. She typed the letters and numbers in herself, seeing that the furlings were getting sleepy and not wanting to disturb them.

It was after two in the morning when, finally, the answer came to her. She typed in 4141949.

“Darn, wrong again…wait, let me try this…”

She typed instead 1441949, and walked to the other side of the keyboard to press ‘enter’.

“Bingo,” she said with a grin, “They really should be more careful when picking these.”

The password stood for April 14, 1949, the day NIMH was founded. But the day was put before the month, probably to help throw off hackers. The Internet was still rather new, and NIMH seemed to be a little behind when it came to website security. She wished it hadn’t taken her four hours to finally come up with a password so deceptively easy, but, she was logged in. She had access to all of their records and digital archives, which were supposed to only be accessible by employees and other scientists with permission. She pulled up records from the past month, recorded by Dr. Stacy herself and posted for other scientists with access to review. Here was all the information she needed.

Their rodent captives were all assigned serial numbers, and the tests they’d undergone had all been documented. Their above-average intelligence was noted, but it seemed like the concept was so startlingly new to them that they hadn’t settled on what exactly to do with the specimens, other than measuring their mental capacity, examining their brains and other internal organs. A few unfortunate specimens had been lobotomized. Some were having drugs tested on them as well. It was noted that their humanlike mental capacity made it possible to perform experiments which would be considered unethical on a human, and still get accurate results on how a human might react. Perhaps for that reason, at least a few specimens might be kept alive and bred with one another. Gadget noticed though, that none of the species were listed as ‘badger‘ or ‘hedgehog‘. Probably a way to skirt around animal testing regulations, she thought grimly. Upon reading into the specific tests that were being done, Gadget was glad the kids were asleep. She became more and more concerned for Chip and Monty. There was no one listed as a chipmunk, but she knew he was there.

Just before being unable to take much more of reading about the gruesome things happening at NIMH, something in the long blocks of text caught her eye. Upon each specimen’s incarceration, blood samples were being taken and tested for the presence of some kind of hormone she’d never heard of before. She clicked on a link for explanation. The hormone had been developed for the purpose of aiding victims of brain trauma to regenerate damaged brain tissue and regain usage of areas of the brain damaged by either trauma or birth defects. In 1978 the hormone was injected into ordinary laboratory mice and rats. It instead activated dormant areas of the brain not normally used by rodents (or at least, weren’t known to be). Their brains enlarged, they became physically stronger and their intelligence rose to a humanlike level. But, one night, they escaped from their cages and through the ventilation system. Scientists hadn’t been prepared; the animals escaping into the ecosystem resulted in hefty fines from the EPA and other government bodies, and NIMH was and has been since pressured to retrieve these rodents.

Gadget read on, entranced. NIMH made connections with every extermination company in the state, requesting that any abnormal behavior from rats or mice be reported. In 1982 they received a lead, a farm located in the wilderness of western Maryland owned by a man by the name of Fitzgibbons. The rats there had shown intelligent tendencies; escaping and foiling traps, not eating poison set out for them. But, no rats were found on the property; scientists suspected the rats knew the scientists were coming and escaped. Nothing more was reported until the EPA contacted NIMH about the findings in Dapplewood, an area several miles from the Fitzgibbons farm. Tests so far have shown no link between the intelligent animals found there and the rats from NIMH, and many are in fact neither rats nor mice. No traces of the hormone were found in their bloodstream.

“So it all makes sense,” Gadget said to herself, “The scientists thought intelligent rodents were something they created…but found some that weren’t.”

NIMH might not have been able to find those intelligent rats, but maybe she and Dale would have better luck. The animals living there now might know something. And maybe, the rats from NIMH would be willing to help. Now she just needed to find the farm. Maybe the kids had seen it. It wasn’t far from where they lived. She’d find out in the morning.