Chapter 1 - Prologue

The Centre – Tower

Blue Cove, Delaware

Thursday, May 18, 2001

10:30 AM

The sweeper standing just outside the elevator doors watched impassively as the diminutive woman in a white lab coat emerged, her arm safely in the grasp of one of his fellow sweepers. He continued to watch impassively as the woman was escorted with about as much gentility and civility as most sweepers were capable of down the short hallway and up to the secretary's desk in front of the etched glass doors to the Chairman's office.

Dr. Marjory Bates gazed all around herself, curious and more than a little apprehensive.

She had never been to the Tower in all of her years of employment at the Centre; and from what she'd heard from cafeteria scuttlebutt, being called to the Tower wasn't necessarily considered a 'good thing.' When the call had come that morning, she had no idea why, after all this time, the top management of the Centre would be bothering to pay attention to her and her little experiments. She wasn't behind on her reports – hadn't committed any breach of protocol or regulations that she knew of – and if she had, she was certain she'd have long since heard about it from her direct superiors.

After all, the head of the Biogenics Department himself had hired her seven years earlier, immediately after Stanford Press had published her dissertation on the effect of varying potencies of psychotropic drugs on personality over time. He'd given her a laboratory, equipment, more than adequate funding, and the directive to continue her research into psychotropic drugs – to find ways to increase their potency and/or increase the amount of influence that could be asserted over a personality over time while under their influence – and then turned her loose with virtually no oversight whatsoever. The only thing he'd asked was that she submit quarterly reports on her research – which she had meticulously supplied over the years since without fail – and told her that provided that research continued to show steady progress in some sort of direction, she would be left to her own devices.

And she had been – until now.

Seated at the massive secretary's desk was a prim woman, her mousy hair meticulously coifed and her hands recently manicured. She looked up into the face of the small woman with long and curly dark hair held back by a single scrunchie with the same kind of bland impassivity as all the security men had exhibited and then picked up the telephone. "Your ten-thirty appointment is here," she announced to whoever was on the other end of the line, and then nodded and hung up. "You can go in," she directed, making a small gesture in the direction of the etched glass doors.

The chairman's office was much larger than Bates' laboratory, with a huge picture window overlooking the broad expanse of grass and the ocean beyond. In a very comfortable-looking leather chair behind the massive carved desk sat a bald, diminutive man connected to an unseen oxygen tank somewhere behind the desk by clear plastic tubing and a nasal cannula. "Doctor Bates," the man wheezed, rising and extending his hand across the desk, "I'm William Raines, Chairman of the Centre. Please take a seat," he gestured graciously after giving her a very firm and dry handshake.

"Mr. Raines," Bates replied, taking her seat in the indicated chair, "I have to admit that I'm not exactly sure why I've been summoned to your office. Have I done something wrong?"

"Not at all, Doctor," Raines shook his head. "On the contrary, I have been following your reports on your progress with a great deal of interest – especially your most recent report."

"Oh?" Bates cast her mind back to exactly what stage she'd been at when she'd written the latest report, and then frowned in confusion. In her eyes, she'd reported a set-back –the indications she'd received from her tests on highly-trained simian subjects had indicated that her latest formula for a psychotropic drug had been too strong. The test subjects had suffered seizures and then, once they recovered, seemed to have lost every last conditioned response they'd ever possessed with no visible sign of the drug-induced amnesia being anything but permanent.

"Yes," the Chairman nodded enthusiastically. "I was wondering if you had any way of measuring the amnesia that was the consequence of Formula 837A?"

Bates blinked. "Uh… No sir," she answered hesitantly. "Other than what I reported – that conditioned responses that had been refreshed just prior to being subjected to the drug were completely lost – I haven't followed through on…"

"We would like you to do more in-depth testing of precisely that element of 837A before you continue on with your main line of research," Raines interrupted her. "We are making arrangements for you to be provided with human test subjects – subjects that you can interview extensively both before administering 837A and afterwards."

"But…" Bates was appalled. "If my deductions are correct, I would be erasing personality elements – and to what degree or severity that erasure would go, not to mention whether that erasure is permanent or not, is still unknown. Any human test subjects stand a reasonable chance of not being able to come out of the testing process whole again."

"The human test subjects you would have placed at your disposal are… how shall I put this… already very damaged individuals," Raines informed her in a disquietingly matter-of-fact tone. He took a deep and audible breath. "In many cases, we're hoping that the amnesia would be an improvement in their condition, rather than a degradation."

"Sir, this kind of experimentation is unethical at best," Bates protested. "For one thing, I haven't submitted any paperwork to the FDA for authorization for human experimentation yet – if I were caught…"

"Your project is being reclassified as we speak," the Chairman told her firmly, "and your security clearance is being adjusted to compensate and continue to allow you access. The security level you and your project will be at will preclude any possibility of discovery or prosecution."

Bates was now past shocked. "I really must protest! When I was hired, I was told that the Centre had determined that my research into psychotropics had great remedial value. I don't see how erasing whole parts of a living person's consciousness…"

"Your job is to follow instructions, Doctor Bates." Raines' voice had taken on a darker, grimmer tone even as he wheezed and pulled hard for air.. "You have operated for the past seven years essentially without any sense of purpose or direction other than pure scientific inquiry. Well, now that phase of this particular project is finished for the time being while you spend your considerable budget and resources in following the line of inquire that The Centre asks of you."

"837A is dangerous," Bates stood her ground. "Even a minute amount, if administered steadily over time, could have a serious impact on any living organism. I hesitate to think what the consequences would be if the formula were administered in higher dosages – or over a longer period of time. I'm fearful that the results would be disastrous. Please, sir – reconsider…"

"Dr. Bates, this is not a discussion," Raines barked at her finally. He took another gasping breath of oxygen. "You are not being offered an opportunity to negotiate in this matter. The Centre has determined that it is in our best interests to have a full idea of the potentials and drawbacks to 837A – and if you won't spearhead the research, I'm sure we have another in the Biogenics Department who would be willing to take your place…"

"No…" Bates backpedaled very quickly – the last thing she wanted was for this volatile and dangerous development of hers to fall into the hands of one of her fellow researchers who had less of a sense of ethics than she did. "I'll shelve what I was doing and begin the study you wish."

"Thank you, Doctor. Your cooperation was all that was required. That will be all." Raines opened a file folder on his desk and began reading, obviously dismissing her from his presence and his attention.

Dr. Marjorie Bates rose to her feet feeling as if she'd just been mugged and walked slowly toward the etched glass doors. The sweeper that had accompanied her from her lab to the Tower was waiting for her patiently in a chair near the secretary's desk, and he rose the moment she reappeared and moved to escort her back into the elevator and to the underground laboratory that was her regular workspace. He gazed at her face – pale and shocked-looking – with the same passivity as he'd had the entire time; whatever had been discussed within the Chairman's office was none of his concern.

oOoOo

"You were listening, I hope," Raines asked as the dark-haired man came through the adjoining door behind which he'd stood and listened to the entire conversation with the biogenicist. When the newcomer nodded, he continued, "What do you think?"

"I think if we leave the project in her hands, we'll be asking for trouble," Lyle answered seriously, "and we don't need trouble with 837A. We've got potential buyers lining up for a chance to get their hands on it already."

"Why is it all the really good researchers can't just do as they're told and not think about the ethics of their actions?" Raines burst out, pounding his desk in frustration.

"We COULD tell Dr. Bates that she can return to her former line of research and farm out 837A to someone else without her knowing about it," Lyle suggested with a smile.

Raines shook his head. "She's a smart one," he countered. "She'd figure it out. No, I'm afraid that Dr. Bates is going to have to have an accident eventually." He raised watery blue eyes to his erstwhile 'son'. "I want you and Willy to see to it when the time comes. Make sure she ends up in Renewal – where she'll be more than available when the time for human testing of 837A comes along."

Lyle smiled coldly. "Gotcha. How soon are you going to want this… accident… to happen?"

Raines shrugged. "Willy brought me some of her research notes last night, and she's got them in some sort of code. We'll need her to decipher at least the formula itself before we can remove her from the project."

"Can't our cryptographers break the code?" Lyle was astonished at the need to wait.

"I've already taken a sample to them – but none of them have had any luck in breaking it at all yet." Raines gave a tired smile. "All we need is just enough translated to provide a Rosetta Stone to crack the rest – and that we'll have to get directly from her, I suspect. The moment we have that, however…"

"What about just analyzing the formula and beginning from there?"

Raines shook his head. "We need to know what she's already discovered about this substance above and beyond what she's put in her report. Indications are that she's run some of the preliminary work we've wanted her to already – but it's impossible from her notes to know which part of the work has been done and what the results were."

Lyle nodded and made his way toward the adjoining door. "Just give me the word," he told the man who now claimed to be his father, "and I'll make sure Dr. Bates doesn't stand in the way of Centre profits again."

"Good." Raines reopened the file folder and stared at the incomprehensible gibberish that was the copy of her latest research notes – notes that Willy had removed, copied and returned to the lab last night after the good Dr. Bates had left for the day. He gazed down at the sigils and squiggles and had to fight not to slam his fist into the paper. Damn her for being too smart for her own good!

oOoOo

Dr. Marjorie Bates nodded her thanks to the sweeper and stepped from the elevator door and into the hallway of SL-19, heading toward the doorway three-quarters of the way down and on the left that was her private domain. For the past seven years, this lab and the equipment in it had been a second home to her – but all of that feeling of comfort and security had been wiped away with the sound of emphysemic wheezing and a directive to explore the most destructive formula to have ever emerged from her research.

Her eyes cast about the lab she'd left only the night before, noting the way the stack of notebooks that contained her chronicle of her experimentation was no longer in pristine condition – the top book had been moved, and the symmetry of the entire stack damaged. She smiled grimly. A whole lot of good looking at her notebooks was going to do. The alphabet was one she had developed as a child and never shared with anyone – and the language itself was a dialect of Chumash Indian spoken by the people at the Red Wing Reservation in the Coastal Mountains of California near where she'd grown up. She'd taken the language she'd learned from the grandmother of her best friend – an obscure language that very few bothered to master anymore – and given it her private alphabet to make it virtually undecipherable without her direct input.

The idea that someone would have tried to go behind her back to get at her notes was even more bothersome. From now on, she would write nothing down in English at all – all her notes would be in transliterated Chumash.

In the meanwhile, however, she was faced with the fact that the next step in what was now the direction of her project would be to brew up enough of 837A to be able to make a study of the effects of graduated doses of the drug. If she'd read Mr. Raines properly, she had no doubt that she soon would have word that her human guinea pigs were ready for her – and once more, she'd be expected to write reports that demonstrate progress being made.

It would take work to forget the blankness in the eyes of the little rhesus monkey that had been one of her favorites – taught to put its hands together to ask for food and then wait until permission had been given to carefully pull the treat from her pocket. After six weeks, the monkey had neither regained its memory of the little game – nor even remembered her well enough not to scream and cower like the others when she walked into the animal testing lab.

She didn't even want to think of that kind of blankness in the eyes of a human being…