How big a deal? Alicia once told  
me that a genetically modified mouse   
cost anywhere from a hundred dollars to
thousands of dollars apiece.           
     Thousands of dollars for a mouse! 
Wow! And some of our customers bought  
hundreds at a time, sometimes thou-    
sands, and that just wowed me again. If
mice were going for thousands of dol-  
lars a pop, I could just imagine what  
was going on in that Secret Room,      
especially since the military was in-  
volved.                                
     Volunteering to clean the Oh Oh   
Room seemed like the perfect plan,     
until it didn’t work.                  
     For a year it didn’t work, and the
only thing I learned was that every    
other month, the eighth picture        
switched back and forth from that One- 
* Star General to a younger woman wearing  
Captain’s bars.                        
     Out of all of them, she was the   
only one smiling.                      
     Anyway, all I had to do every     
morning was empty two garbage cans, re-
place the bags, and make sure there was
enough toilet paper in the bathroom.   
That was pretty much it, except for the
freezer. That was in the bathroom, and 
it’s where the frozen mice were stored.
     Once mice were euthanized, they   
were put into one of seven freezers.   
Those were located in different places 
around the Vivarium, including the Oh  
Oh Room and the other room I cleaned.  
     Every Thursday, everyone had to   
bring them down to Shipping and Re-    
ceiving. Someone would unlock a door   
for us, and then we’d put them in two  
big freezers that were located way in  
the back, in another smaller room.     



CHAPTER 3: WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 22nd
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