Gotham University's plant biochemistry laboratory occupied the lowest floor of Laboratory Building Three.
It received little natural light year-round. Dense ivy climbed the exterior walls, completely covering the narrow, pointed windows in the Victorian Era style.
Pamela Lillian Isley stood at the temperature-controlled workstation. Wearing sterile latex gloves, she held a micropipette and dispensed an extract of poison arrow tree collected from the South American rainforest into a culture dish containing mouse neurons.
Under the microscope, the process of alkaloid molecules binding to neuronal synaptic receptors was magnified. Pamela stared into the eyepiece, her breathing slow and measured. She was fascinated by this microscopic interplay of predation and submission.
Plants had no vocal cords. They could not cry for help or express anger through complex groups of facial muscles as humans did, but they had evolved the most precise, efficient chemical defense mechanisms on Earth.
By comparison, human language and social interaction seemed long-winded and inefficient.
The laboratory's electronic door sounded a mechanical chime.
Sarah, a senior student, entered carrying two Starbucks Americanos. Her heels clicked against the antistatic flooring, disrupting the room's existing balance of white noise.
"Pamela, your culture dishes are about to start growing mushrooms." Sarah set the paper cups down at a safe distance, removed her goggles, and rubbed the bridge of her nose.
Pamela did not look up. "Poison arrow tree extract has an extremely short half-life. It loses its biological activity after more than two minutes outside a temperature-controlled environment. The heat radiating from your coffee is interfering with my experimental data."
Sarah pulled over a swivel chair and sat down, ignoring her junior's professional warning. "Forget the plants. There's a major academic symposium in the auditorium at two this afternoon. Dr. Elias Thorne is back on campus. You're coming with me."
"Not interested."