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concentrations of medium for the different Petri dishes, so it was very strange that all of the cells should suddenly die at once. Since it couldn’t have been bacterial contamination, we considered incubator malfunction or a defective gas cylinder but found nothing wrong with them either.”
    The batch of frozen cells was defrosted once again and in a hurry to be cultured, but all of the cells floated up and failed to regenerate.
    “Ordinarily, mouse cells multiply with extreme rapidity and become immortal through replanting. With chicken, we see more dead cells as the generations go by, but not until the fiftieth or so, after about six months of replanting half the culture each time” (Mr. Miura).
    The conclusion that he and Drs. Sakakibara and Akedera finally came to: “They are either similar to highly segmented liver cells, which do not yield successive generations, or else are extremely‘finicky’ cells that require extraordinarily specific conditions for culturing.”
    Dr. Akedera also inscribed in his log a personal hypothesis: “The cells meet death within a brief time span.”
    The next day, an attempt was made to isolate genetic material, but the men realized that they could not confirm the results due to phoresis. This was believed to be caused by the breakdown of the genetic material by DNAse, but there was uncertainty as to why the enzyme had activated in conditions where it normally would not (the MAD method may have been tricky for some reason).
    Professor Yoji Ogawa of the Asahikawa College of Science was quickly called in for a consultation, but “Why an enzyme strong enough to break down an organism’s own genetic material should be necessary is beyond me” (Prof. Ogawa).
    As we can see from that statement, the mystery only deepened, and they were back to square one.
    At the same time, they had shown that at least one generation of cells could be cultured from material frozen in liquid nitrogen, and if he so wished Dr. Akedera could claim that the sample within the liquid nitrogen met the objective of preservation. In other words, he now had the option of excusing himself and entrusting future researchers with the modicum of materials and data that had been obtained.
    Retreat, however, was not part of Dr. Akedera’s vocabulary as is clear from the following passage in his journal.
    “If an individual organism’s struggles have the preservation of the species as their purpose, then upon species extinction, that individual’s death loses meaning. If this is natural selection, then what is the energy called evolution trying to smother and what is it deeming fit to let live? Might not the principle of natural selection close the circle by selecting against all living things in the end? […] Will the truth guide us to preordained harmony or to chaos? Two winged mice await extinction in their separate cages. I needto figure out what, at this moment, I am able to do about that.”
    Faced with failure on both the cellular and genetic fronts, Dr. Akedera also wrote, “Something steadfast akin to a will inherent in the winged mouse may be preventing the preservation of individual specimens.”
    Although what he really meant by that is unclear, those who worked with him recall that he also gave voice to similar thoughts. “Dr. Akedera was inordinately fascinated by the fact that everything about the winged mouse, on the genetic level, the cellular level, the specimen level, was headed toward extinction. Perhaps, by that time, the contours of an organism vectored toward death had already emerged as a hypothesis” (Mr. Miura).
    Dr. Akedera pressed for the culturing and analysis of other tissue fragments preserved in the liquid nitrogen, but after a heated argument, Dr. Sakakibara and Mr. Tamura rejected his proposal. It appears that Dr. Akedera desired to perform a tissue antibody staining to clarify the light-emittingmechanism, but the failures in culturing to date had made everyone else overcautious.