Rat’s Heart Swims Away

July 24, 2012 by joachim

You get a sense of living in the wrong century when people around you decide to graft rat heart muscles into silicon to make an artificial jellyfish. When it gets zapped with electricity, it contracts rhythmically and swims like the real thing.

I lack the imagination to come up with something comparable. I’m used to a situation where I can practice one-upmanship — if someone tells me something outrageous I will surely beat him into submission by coming up with a taller tale. But here I must capitulate. I know about rats’ asses, but a rat’s heart, all spread out to get zapped in silicon jelly? (Pardon me; I couldn’t resist the alliteration).

If everything goes, then what will fiction writers do? Most (I bet) do not play golf since hardly anyone in that profession is able to cough up the necessary dough. Paint? That requires extra dexterity.

The century that was about right is the 18th, provided you were on the right side of fortune — in one of the palaces, married to the right princess.  They had rats in the cellar, but you would never see them.  There was no electricity at the time, except the natural one,  in thunderstorms and electric organs of eels.

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