“We have some cheddar in the back, sir.”
“That’ll do.”
Amil passes us to get to the refrigerator in the back of the cabin.
I suggest to Xavier and Charlene that we review what we know, make a game plan for the rest of the night, and they swivel their chairs toward me.
Charlene flips open her computer, positions it on her tray table. I ready my iPad. Xavier produces his pen and journal.
“So,” I begin, “here’s what we know. Fact: RixoTray Pharmaceuticals funded a research program that focused on the quantum entanglement of people’s consciousness and its effect on the physiology of partners who have a deep emotional relationship.”
Xavier summarizes the research of Tanbyrn in one simple, succinct phrase: “The entanglement of love.” He looks at me slyly. Then at Charlene.
Uh-uh. We are not even going to go there.
“Fact,” I go on, “a pair of men, twins known only to us as ‘L’ and ‘N’ who are special in some way, would fly in, meet with Tanbyrn, and fly out. We still don’t know what the tests consisted of, only that they had to do with the negative effects of something.”
“And with alpha waves,” Xavier adds, then graciously accepts an elegant platter of sliced cheddar from Amil. “Directing them. Focusing them.”
“Yes.”
“Fact”—he takes a bite of his cheese—“Glenn Banner killed the young woman at the center and started the place on fire. Motive still unclear.”
Charlene is typing as she tracks along.
“Fact,” he continues, “Banner’s cell phone was used to contact Cyrus Arlington, the CEO of RixoTray Pharmaceuticals. Also, Banner had a passcode with him that led Fionna to get past the firewall and into Arlington’s personal computer.”
At that, Charlene pauses, lets her fingers hover over the keyboard. “Which brings us to the video. One of the people from a terrorist cell was recording and transmitting footage of another cell member putting on a suicide vest. The vest — by the way, Xavier, you knew what language they were speaking. Do you know Arabic?”
“I can identify it, can’t speak it. I once worked for a Middle Eastern singer in Las Vegas.”
“Well, the vest detonates… where does that leave us?”
I sigh. “Square one.”
She glances at me. “Square one?”
“We have a collection of facts and interrelationships but no why behind them. No motive. Why was RixoTray funding Tanbyrn’s research? Why have Banner burn down the Lawson research building? Why was one of the terrorists filming and transmitting the video? Why was Banner in touch with Arlington? Why was Arlington watching the video? Why is the Pentagon interested in any of this?”
Xavier adds, “And how does Dr. Riah Colette fit into the mix?”
“And who is Akinsanya?” Charlene chimes in.
“Right. A pile of whys, one big how, and one big who.”
A moment passes. Xavier takes another bite of cheese. Chews. Swallows. “By the way,” he asks me, “did you ever review the footage you got when you were taking the test at the center?”
“No. Do you think that still matters?”
“Probably wouldn’t hurt to have a look at it. Stick it on a jump drive and I’ll glance it over.”
I’m reminded of Banner’s watch and I retrieve it from my carry-on bag, explain to Xavier how I got it.
“I don’t think we need prints anymore. Looks like you got yourself a new watch, bro.”
“Looks like I do.” I slip it on. It looks good.
“So…” I type in a few notes myself. “I know we all need some sleep, but let’s see if we can make a little progress before we reach Chicago. Xavier, could you follow up with your friends about Project Alpha and Star Gate?”
“Sure.”
“Banner warned me about someone named Akinsanya, that he would find me. Let’s see if anything about Akinsanya or this video has been leaked to the internet or to any of the conspiracy theorist circles.”
“Gotcha.”
I glance at Charlene. “You still have the notes that Fionna dug up earlier, right?”
“Sure.”
“Why don’t you go through them and see if you can find out more about the telomerase research or the EEG research. If you have time, go online and pull up what you can on Drs. Riah Colette and Cyrus Arlington.”
“Check.”
“I’m going to study Tanbyrn’s books and look for anything related to the negative effects of mind-to-mind communication.”
Then we turn our chairs from each other and get started with our work as we head east, toward a new day.
The Needs of the Many
Dr. Cyrus Arlington had never killed anyone.
Per se.
Yes, people had died because of his actions, or, more accurately, because of his lack of action, but that’s the way the system was set up, the only real means of scientific advancement when you’re doing medical research on human subjects.
After all, you need a control group, a baseline. So if you’re testing a new drug, you give your experimental medication to one set of patients, a placebo to another, and you need a third group, a control group, that receives no treatment at all. It’s the only way to measure the true efficacy of a drug.
Of course, as the test progresses, even if the drug appears to be working, you don’t stop the trials in the middle to administer it to the dying people in your control group. It’s not just a matter of protocol, it’s a matter of science. Even with a double-blind study, there are too many factors that can affect the research, so you need a large enough sample to really verify your findings. If you assume too much too early, it could be detrimental to the lives of millions of people in the long term.
So, yes, some people will inevitably die during the process, but it’s the only way to collect the data that you need to determine whether or not a drug is effective.
The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.
And of course, the more people you have in your control group, and the more time they go without getting their potentially life-saving drugs, the more of them that will die.
But they would, of course, die anyway. Eventually.
Ultimately, health care is a numbers game, and there are only two rules, two guiding principles that are taught at every school of medicine in the country:
Rule #1: Everyone dies.
Rule #2: There’s nothing you can do to change Rule #1.
“We prolong life; we do not save it,” one of Cyrus’s professors at Harvard Medical School had told him. “Don’t try to be the savior of the world. Just do your best to help ease the greatest number of people’s pain as much as you can, for as long as you can. At its heart, that’s what medicine is all about.”
The Hippocratic Oath: Primum non nocere.
First, do no harm.
Not quite as in vogue today as it used to be, not with physician-assisted suicide and third-trimester abortions, but the point was well-taken.
And so, during his twenty years of overseeing research before taking over as RixoTray’s CEO, Cyrus had been part of hundreds of studies and seen thousands of people die. It wasn’t his fault that cancer or AIDS or congestive heart failure took those people from the world. But paradoxically, even though he had not killed them, if you wanted to be technical about it, he could have stopped the tests. It was, in one sense, his fault that the people didn’t live.
They might’ve been saved if compassion for them trumped the scientific advancement that their deaths advanced.
But it had not.
It could not.
The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.