Drabbles 2#- Dante

“Justin, why did you create me?”

The question took the scientist off guard. He turned around, to meet eyes with his friend that sat at the table of chemicals. Justin gave a questioning look, Dante has never asked that question before,why now?

“Wait..what?”

“Why. Did you create me?” Dante asked again, irritation evident in his voice. Justin paused for a moment, pressing his lips together and thinking of a response. He chose his words carefully, averting his eyes from Dante’s gaze. Justin took a deep breath.

“Well..”Justin started,turning back around to his laptop,focusing on the task ahead. “A year ago, I found I could revive cells and make new ones..” Justin explained,his eyes still glue to the screen. He could hear Dante shift around in his chair, as if getting ready for the long story.

“When I did, I started to play around with the idea of new life. So I thought to myself, maybe I can make artificial life. However, I was extremely impatient and I already knew it was going to take years to even get all the ingredients to make a human body. Not to mention the side effects and the risk of premature de-”

“Get to it, Dr.Frankenstein.” Dante groaned, getting a quick glare from Justin. Justin turned his sights on his laptop as he tried to finish the programming for Computer’s security.

“Ben and I had recently saw the news. Apparently an african american teenager-our age- had met an unfortunate fate. The news had just let out the details just minutes of the death of that young boy.” Dante let the words sink in for a second.

“Wait..so are you saying…” Dante uttered, before he trailed off, his eyes widen.

“Yes that’s exactly what I’m saying. It hit me then that you was what we needed. There was areas I didn’t know,one of them being making a body, but attempting resurrection-still a hit or miss. You had died of asphyxiation,so there was no real fixing of organs. So we decided- no I decided- you were the one.” Justin paused again,looking over at Dante who listened intently. Justin sighed, he knew the teen wasn’t going to lose interest.  Dante had never liked Justin’s rambles. One of Dante’s more..”noticeable” attributes was his attention span, which curtailed when it came to his friend’s lectures.

“We took you from the morgue and snuck you up the lab. Unlike “Dr.Frankenstein” which you  we didn’t use lighting, it wasn't required. I had a theory, that if I put in live cells, they would reproduce and eventually push out the dead ones. I’d like to call it ‘out with the old, in with the new’ However, the only way for this to really work was to revive the brain cells- or get real ones-because my hypothesis would go to waste if we didn’t. Even if we got the cells working again,you wouldn't even be alive. Like a chicken with no head.” Justin chuckled humorlessly, seeing Dante not share the same humor (in fact giving Justin a-”Hurry up and tell the story” face) he gulped, and continued.

“Anyway, it was long process of trying to revive you, but we did it. Shortly after, your body began to function without the life support and you woke up.” Justin finished with a sigh, closing up his laptop and turning around to look at Dante, who was trying to grasp all the information given to him.

“Why don’t I remember?”

“..Well, when you were revived, it is possible your mind basically rebooted,” Justin explained, “So your memories were most likely erased. However, when I asked for your name, you remembered. So it seems that you might be able to regain some overtime.

That explained the dreams.

Dante shook his head, “Wait...so..I had a life outside of the lab..?”

Justin nodded. As if reading his mind, Justin said; “Your full name is Dante Edward Millers, you had two working parents and two siblings. Like now, you loved video games, and you were rather disconnected. One day,you  and your family went camping. You had gone out too far swimming in the lake and gotten pull by a riptide. Your father jumped in to save you-but by the time he could get you- you had drowned. You were pronounced dead at the scene.”

There was a tense silence between both boys.

Justin didn’t feel too terrible about what he had done. He had felt guilt taking Dante from the morgue that night, about how much commotion and heartache it caused. But sacrifices had to be made for science right? The teen had yet to see the hazy line that separated “for science” and just plain craziness. To Justin,it was worth it, it had lead to one of the biggest scientific breakthrough of centuries.

Bringing back the dead? Only scientists could dream of. Until now, when two sixteen years had successfully brought back the dead.

Justin waited anxiously for the african american teen to respond, who right now was lost in the midst of his thoughts. Finally, Dante looked up, meeting eyes with Justin.