Welcome To The Umbrella Corporation

Chapter Five

The laboratory complex built under the mansion could well have been any scientific lab anywhere across the country. Sterile white hallways and simple, undecorated labs were the norm there, in complete contrast to the lavish, artistic nature of the mansion above. The lab had one purpose, one function, and that was intense, dedicated scientific study. Marcus made that very clear from the first day. The other scientists down in the labs reflected that ideal, in their behavior, in the way they dressed, in every facet of their personality or lack thereof. The researchers were like clones in white lab coats. Even Wesker and Birkin slipped easily into the mold after a few days, enfolded in the peaceful tranquility of advanced biological research. But they could not help but hold onto a glimmer of their personal identity; Wesker still wore his reflective sunglasses everywhere, and Birkin wore a pair of blue hightops in favor of the brown dress shoes the rest of the scientists wore.

There were about twenty other scientists in the lab, but neither Wesker nor Birkin made any effort to befriend them or get to know them better. Half the time, they didn’t even know their names. From the first, Wesker and Birkin were in charge, although it took several days to familiarize themselves with the equipment and proper lab procedures. After that, the other men there were nothing more than the hired help. Marcus must have prepared them for it, because none of them showed the slightest resentment at being told what to do by a teenager.

Wesker had a group of lab assistants assigned to him, but only a limited amount of freedom. He could not engage in whatever research he liked, much to his annoyance. Instead, he had to work on some aspect of the research already being done. But the work there was far beyond his expectations. More than once, he found himself awed by the advancements Umbrella was making there.

“I didn’t even know that was possible,” he muttered occasionally.

Birkin explained it to him one afternoon. “There are two kinds of scientists in the world,” he said over a cup of coffee. “Those employed by private companies, and those employed by colleges and universities. Private companies are always on the cutting edge of science because they have a financial interest in what their science creates.”

“So do universities,” Wesker said.

“Not to the same extent. Universities don’t make new products, they don’t create new uses for science. They merely make discoveries and study things. That’s because they aren’t in it to make money, they’re in it to learn more about the world. Universities encourage science for academic reasons, but companies encourage it for financial reasons.”

“I understand that. But it doesn’t explain why the work done here is so far ahead of what I learned at college. I mean, this place is light years ahead of what they’re doing at MIT.”

“That’s because Umbrella, and other companies like it, have a vested interest in keeping their discoveries to themselves. They don’t publish academic journals to announce their findings, they keep everything internal.”

“But wouldn’t that inhibit scientific growth?” Wesker asked. “The more people working on a problem, the greater the chance that one of them will find the answer. Ten research facilities working independently could never make as much progress as ten facilities working together.”

“Exactly,” Birkin replied. “That’s common sense. If Umbrella shared all their research with everyone else, then it would level the playing field. More discoveries would result as a whole, but Umbrella would lose their intellectual property, they would lose the edge. If they were only interested in the science, they might do it, but this is a company, remember. They’re out to make a profit.”

“I don’t see what that has to do with it,” Wesker admitted, getting annoyed.

Birkin had an annoying habit of circling around a point without ever actually making it. Wesker sometimes had trouble following Birkin’s arguments, and that frustrated him. However, Birkin never tried to dumb it down for him. One thing Wesker could not tolerate was being treated like an idiot, and Birkin, for all his other faults, would never dare do that.

“Universities and colleges only care about scientific progress,” Birkin said. “So they share all their information, because of what you just said. With more minds on the problem, the greater chance of success. Each group can build on the work of the groups before it. But a company like Umbrella? They don’t care about knowledge, they care about property and profit. If they make some discovery that no one else has made, they have a competitive edge. So they hold onto their secrets. Why do you think they made us sign all those non-disclosure agreements when they hired us? Why do you think this lab is hidden under a mansion in the middle of nowhere?”

“I know all that,” Wesker repeated. “I’m not talking about the difference between a college and a corporation. I’m asking how Umbrella can be this far ahead of everyone else in the first place. Umbrella is one company working on its own, and it can somehow stay ahead of all the other scientists in the rest of the world? All the other scientific research teams in all the universities in the world can’t match the technological and theoretical discoveries of this one company?”

Birkin smiled and shook his head. “I don’t know, man. It’s all about that competitive edge. Umbrella made some discovery that no one else has made, and they keep advancing on it while everyone else is left in the dust.”

“What discovery?” Wesker asked, throwing his hands into the air.

That silenced Birkin, at least momentarily. The two of them sat across from each other at the break room table and pondered it silently. What discovery indeed? Umbrella had some kind of advantage, some kind of secret breakthrough, that led them to further discoveries and advances that other scientific laboratories could only dream of. It stunned Wesker to think that the technology at MIT was supposed to be state-of-the-art, and it was dwarfed by the technology in this laboratory. And this was only the training facility on top of that. Presumably, other Umbrella facilities had access to even greater advancements in science.

For a second, he felt sorry for the poor suckers who chose to enter grad school. It would kill them to know what they were missing. He only felt it for a second though. He was too caught up in the excitement of his own research to worry too much about how far behind his contemporaries were. Sympathy was never his strong suit anyway.

His own work at the lab consisted of studying the effects of certain synthesized enzymes on different multicelled bacteria. To a layman, it probably sounded boring, but Wesker was fascinated with it because the enzymes were of a type he had never heard of. The enzyme could initiate the rebuilding of the cellular wall in certain strains of bacteria after they’d been damaged. Simply put, it could heal the bacteria, reforming the wall before the interior cellular fluid leaked out. Wesker was stunned by the ramifications. If they could figure out the method the enzyme used, they could quite possibly create an altered enzyme designed to repair different kinds of bacteria. They could tailor the enzymes to work with different cell types, possibly even human cell types. The thought amazed him; the end of cellular damage!

When he asked where the original enzyme came from, none of his assistants knew. Another lab sent it to them about a year before, but they didn’t know which lab. All of his inquiries came back empty. It was a miracle enzyme from nowhere.

Birkin worked on a similar project. His subject was the same enzyme, but instead of seeing how it affected strains of bacteria, Birkin was studying how environmental changes affected it. The work was not as important, theoretically, as Wesker’s work, but Birkin found satisfaction in it just the same. Learning heat and cold thresholds, acidic and basic reaction properties, and related effects were equally fascinating because of the mysterious origin of the enzyme.

“Where do you think it came from?” Birkin asked one evening. He was nursing another large cup of coffee, which he often did in the evenings. He drank several cups throughout the day, keeping him effectively buzzed with caffeine and capable of working late into the night. He rarely went to bed before two in the morning, and was always up at seven, even on weekends.

Wesker leaned back in his cushioned leather chair and set his feet up on his desk. Casually, he lit a cigarette and shook out the match. Birkin had caffeine and Wesker had nicotine, it was all the same in the end.

“Don’t know,” he answered. “But it has to have a biological source.”

“You think so?”

“Has to be. There’s no way they created this on its own, it’s far too effective. They got it from somewhere, some kind of biological side project. Something either excretes the enzyme or creates it internally.”

“But what could excrete an enzyme like this? It’s like nothing I’ve studied before.”

Wesker chuckled. “Tell me about it. That stuff is like magic in a test tube. The potential for medical research is astounding.”

“You think maybe it’s a mutation? Something out of left field?”

“Possible, but I still think it’s too effective to be accidental. I think they found it somewhere, or saw evidence of its effects, and were able to synthesize it. But where do you find an effect like this in nature?”

“You don’t,” Birkin said bluntly. “Instantaneous self-healing? I don’t think so.”

Wesker took a few long drags on the cigarette. Spontaneous self-healing. It worked on bacteria, but would it work on something significantly larger, like an animal? Would the enzyme heal a complicated organism?

“It can repair the cell walls of damaged bacteria cells,” Birkin said, as if to himself. “But what if the bacteria is dead?”

“No effect,” Wesker said, blowing out smoke. “We’ve tried it. Once the cell is dead, the enzyme can’t do anything. The cell has to be alive to be healed.”

“Have you narrowed the time frame?”

“It’s hard to do when you’re working with bacteria, but no we haven’t. If the enzyme is already in the environment when the bacteria is damaged, it will repair it. We’re trying to see if rapid introduction of the enzyme right after the bacteria is damaged will have the same effect, but it’s tough to time it just right.”

“Any theories about the long-term?”

Wesker smiled at that. “I always have long-term theories,” he said, pointing at Birkin with his cigarette. “Honestly though, I think this thing is fascinating, but unless we can magnify the effects and duplicate it in different kinds of cells, it’s pretty useless. As far as humans are concerned, I mean.”

“It could lead to a breakthrough, though.”

“No doubt. But we aren’t the only lab working on this, you know. Whoever sent it to us has probably been studying it much longer than we have.”

“Sure,” Birkin said. “But we’re smarter than they are.”

Wesker nodded, taking another drag. “We are, that’s true. But if I have to be honest, I don’t think this enzyme can really help us. It only heals individual bacteria damaged at the cellular level. As far as we can determine, it won’t work on large masses of cells, like an organ. And it only appears to repair certain kinds of damage. So medically speaking, it serves no purpose.”

Birkin clenched his fists and pounded them excitedly on the tabletop. “It has such potential, though. It could revolutionize medical science.”

“More than that,” Wesker said. “It could change the world, if ...”

“... if we could figure out how it works,” Birkin finished. “That’s what drives me crazy. We have a treasure chest filled with the meaning of life, but we don’t have the key to open it.”

“Something like that,” Wesker said, blowing out a stream of smoke. He dropped his cigarette, now down to almost nothing, into an glass on the desk beside him. It fizzled in the small amount of liquid still in the bottom. “But I have a feeling that it’s only the tip of the iceberg.”

“What do you mean?” Birkin asked.

Wesker tapped his pack of cigarettes against the arm of the chair, as if pondering whether or not to light another one. He rarely smoked two in a row and didn’t like to. He felt it betrayed nervousness. “I mean that we still haven’t been told where it came from.”

“I know. Even Marcus won’t tell me.”

“Well, it came from somewhere in Umbrella. One of their labs gave it to us.”

Birkin shrugged. “So? We knew that already.”

“Well,” Wesker continued, “if they have some top-secret lab working on this sort of thing, and they came up with this enzyme for us to study, who knows what else they’re working on. Who knows what else they’ve created?”

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