by Bob Blink
"We can complete phase one testing in your lab," she said, "but eventually we'll need to test against human subjects. At that time, you'll have to have the support of one of the accredited research labs."
"I know, I know," the Professor agreed. "But I want to get through the phase one before we approach them. Are you interested?"
Natalie had agreed.
"I'll have to give notice and it'll be a couple of weeks until I'm free," she said. "Until then, we can begin setting up on weekends."
She had submitted her resignation at her firm, and spent evenings in the somewhat uncertain limbo of the dramatic step she was taking. She believed the Professor had found a miracle, and imagined the professional esteem they both would earn when they released the find. It was too bad the Professor was set on giving away the secret. The financial rewards that could be associated with the new product would be astronomical.
The first Saturday they had cleared out a section of the basement lab, moving benches into place, stripping out some of the extraneous gas lines and electrical cables that had supported Bunsen burners and other test equipment that was no longer needed. When she returned the following morning, no one answered her ring, so she used the key the Professor had given her to let herself in, assuming he was already at work in the lower level. Instead, she found him pale and weakened, resting in a large chair in the large great room.
"Professor!" she had yelled, as she hurried over to him.
"Heart attack," he told her. "A moderate one. The pills my doctor gave me probably saved my life."
"Have you had problems before?" she asked. He had told her nothing about any health conditions.
"Minor attacks, once or twice. I usually take the pills when I sense even a little discomfort. This was by far the worst."
"We need to get you to the Emergency Room so they can check you out," she insisted.
"Okay, if you would take me. But first, I think another of the pills is called for. Would you get them for me?"
He told her where to find the medicine, and she headed back into his private quarters for the first time ever, finally locating the bottle on the bathroom sink counter where he'd told her they would be. She checked the label, recognizing the compound, and opened to see how many were left. There were only three, yet the label indicated he'd had twenty when he'd picked up the prescription. Obviously, he'd been taking them a little more often than he'd indicated.
She replaced the cap, twisting it so it was secure, then hurried back to where the Professor waited. She handed him the bottle, and he quickly unsealed the bottle, popping on of the small tablets into his mouth.
"Give me a few minutes and we can go," he said.
It was while she waited for the tests by the medical technicians at ER that she'd begun to think. She liked the Professor a great deal, but it was clear that his health was much poorer than she had realized. In fact, the doctor who they'd seen had recognized the Professor, and indicated this wasn't the first time he'd been to the ER after a problem. What if the Professor were to die? She'd submitted her resignation and had great hopes of what her involvement in the Professor's discovery could do for her professional reputation, but if something happened to him, his discovery would be revealed, and she could very easily be cut out of any future development. She was, after all, a relative newcomer, and something this important would be turned over to a large lab and its experienced staff. The more she thought about it, the more she became certain that she could easily be pushed completely aside.
They elected to keep the Professor overnight, and she promised him she would check the house and lock everything up, setting his alarms. He told her the codes, and she returned as to his estate as promised. Once there, she lingered, checking through the house more thoroughly than she'd ever done before, going down to the lab and making a careful assessment of what they had done. That night at home, she lay awake most of the night wondering if she dare act, assuming it was even possible.
What she was considering was cold-hearted and cruel, but it could serve her well if it worked out. After this latest attack, there was no telling how long the Professor might last. The doctor had told them both that moderate damage had occurred to the lower chamber of the Professor's heart, and further tests would be required to understand just how serious that might be. Almost certainly, the Professor would be restricted in how much he could do, and she didn't know how that would affect their secret test program. If he was unable to guide the testing, the Professor might well decide it was more important to have other professionals see to his discovery rather than leave it in the hands of a relatively young researcher, no matter how smart he thought she was.
If, however, the Professor were to die, and none of the critical documentation on his research were found, then she might be able to take his work as her own. No one knew she had been working with the Professor. He had told her as much, and the somewhat secluded nature of the estate would have helped mask her arrivals and departures. She wondered if it were possible. Could she use the strange ability that had saved her twice before to do something like this? She'd experimented with the possibility before, and had discovered a weird ability to 'sense' herself in the past, going back a number of days. The farther back she reached, the weaker the feeling became. Once before she'd made an attempt to shift her memories back to herself, and much to her surprise, it worked!
If she were to go back, knowing about the Professor's heart attack, then she could use that to steal the Professor's research for her own. If she tried, and she couldn't initiate what she'd started thinking of as a Backslide of her memories, then she was no worse off, but if it were successful, then it might be worth a try. If she failed, and she was caught, she could hopefully Backslide again and undo the attempt. She was a little uncertain about this part, having done so little with the ability in the past for fear of what her attempts might do to her. This situation, however, was worth some risk.
She knew all of the codes and had keys to the mansion. She also knew where the Professor kept his pills. She knew he hadn't checked his file cabinet in days, aware she was overseeing the storage at the moment. She could doctor his drink Friday night, putting him to sleep, and then come in and take all the material that related to his research. It wouldn't be hard, and wiping what little might be on the computers themselves could also be easily accomplished. Then the next day, Saturday could be allowed to proceed as it had, except she would make a point of taking the last of the pills from his bottle of medicine when she left that night. She would also leave one of the gas lines slightly open in the basement when she left. Sooner or later that would trigger an explosion and fire. When the Professor had his heart attack, he'd find no medicines. The doctor had made it very clear that was all that had saved him. With the Professor dead, the fire would be triggered, and would seriously damage the lab under the house. Whether the Fire Department was able to save the house and find the Professor wouldn't matter. Either way, she wouldn't be there, and no one should know of her presence here at the estate the last month or so. She'd have the critical research, and would have to decide how to use it.
Most would have been shocked that someone like her could even have such thoughts. She came by them honestly, however. Despite her looks and brains, she'd grown up in a family with ties to Organized Crime. Her father had almost certainly been responsible for her mother's death some years before. Natalie had always known that. Jeff didn't carry his gun because he was concerned about street crime. A hard streak and immorality ran through her veins just as it did in her brother. Both had gotten it from their father, and this might be the first time she'd actually considered such a heinous act, she didn't flinch away from her thoughts. Here was opportunity, and she intended to take it.
Chapter 8
In the beginning everything had worked out better than Natalie could have hoped. The Professor had suffered his heart attack, and without the medicine had died as a result. She felt a little bad about that, but it had only been a matter o
f time according to the doctors she had talked with when she'd taken him to the ER. The basement lab was ravaged by the fire that started as a result of the small gas leak she had arranged, and the news reports suggested that no one was aware of what the Professor had been working on down there. Any records he might have made had been destroyed in the intense fire, and only luck had prevented the whole house from burning down. There was some speculation that the fire had triggered the Professor's heart attack, and he'd been negligent about maintaining his supply of medicine. Natalie was aware he was a little absentminded about such matters, so the speculation was consistent with his character. None of the reports suggested he'd had an assistant, and the police never came looking for her with any questions, which meant her recent involvement with the Professor had gone unnoticed.
She faded away with the materials she had taken from the estate. For more than a year she kept them entirely to herself, carefully working her way through every entry until she knew them so well it was as if she had really performed the experiments herself. She had ended up remaining at her job. In part, she felt that making a change so soon after the death of the Professor wasn't wise. She hadn't been linked to him, but the timing might be important later. Also, when certain people within the company learned she was thinking of leaving, they had made her an improved offer, and agreed to change her assignment to something more to her liking if she would remain. It seemed her talent had been noted after all.
She needed the time to plan carefully. What she held hidden away represented potential fame and fortune beyond anything she might have imagined. However, for her to obtain the maximum benefit from it, she needed the right environment, and a place where she could demand her own position and potential reward. So she began a search for where she would reveal her 'discovery' and work to develop it into a viable product.
The other thing she decided she needed to understand better was this strange ability she had been gifted with. Despite her discomfort with it, clearly it offered something that could prove very beneficial to her in the future, if it was safe to use. Already it had made her current situation possible, and she could envision situations where it might be prudent to understand just what she could do with it if pressed.
Clearly it worked. She could somehow send her current thoughts and memories back to herself, and then act on that awareness of what was about to happen. The knowledge of what was about to happen, allowed her to adjust her actions to obtain the maximum benefit for herself.
Initially she toyed with her ability to sense her former self. She found that difficult at first, but gradually she became better at it, although it was never easy, especially if she tried to reach back more than a few days. Under the right circumstances, such as when she was quiet and resting, she could sometimes sense herself as far back as seven days. That appeared to be the limit of how far she could reach. An entire week!
The act of sending the memories back was startling to her former self at first, but soon she began to accept what was happening. That didn't help with the physical reaction, which grew disproportionally bad as she increased the length of the time backward she attempted. The two times she attempted seven days she thought she was going to die.
The first attempt of the maximum time was merely to see if she could do it. She was physically ill, and it took nearly four days for the dull throbbing in the back of her brain to finally disappear. She only attempted it a second time because she wanted some medical test to be run to see if the ill effects of the ability were detectable as some physical manifestation. She went to her doctor, claiming she had fallen while running a couple of days earlier, thumped her head, and had been having bad headaches ever since. It wasn't true, but the doctor took a series of scans of her head, and declared that nothing was physically wrong.
Natalie then waited six days, performed a Backslide a full seven days, and returned to the same appointment a second time. Once again the doctor performed the same tests, although he had no memory of this having happened before. She did however, and was gratified when he told her that nothing was physically wrong. Whatever caused the headaches, it had gone undetected by the doctor. She had received the same evaluation results both before and after the Backslide. That gave her a little more confidence that it was safe to continue using the ability, although she decided she would do so sparingly. Even if it wasn't dangerous, it was very unpleasant.
It never occurred to her that it might be possible to link more than one Backslide event, and extend how far she could go. After jumping back four or more days, the throbbing was such that she couldn't sense herself for another attempt, even if she had been brave enough to make such an attempt. Had she been very careful, she might have learned that with enough aspirin to dull the pain, she could still detect herself even farther back.
It had also never occurred to her that there might be a range limitation to her ability. She had spent virtually all of her time in the same general area, in an around Boston and Harvard University. Even several years later when she relocated to the Washington, DC area, she was so focused on the move and getting settled in, she didn't notice that the faint sense of her earlier herself was lost when she had traveled most of the way to the Capital city. Even then, she'd have had to be paying close attention, because that earlier self that was only a short time back was still in range, but that earlier self back in Boston couldn't be reached. Had she not been thinking about the matter, or attempting to reach herself a day or so earlier, she might not have noticed the distinction. By the time she considered checking, she had been in Washington for more than ten days, and so she missed the restriction.
Just over a year and a half after the death of her former Professor, Natalie decided she had waited long enough. She had studied potential companies where she might be able to write her own ticket, and narrowed the list to three. All were smaller companies, and all were doing well with a series of new products developed under the guidance of a small team led by the founder of the company, who was a qualified biochemist like herself, who had managed to acquire funding for an idea, and had successfully developed a viable product. A large company would be too restrictive. She'd already experienced that kind of environment, and she wanted control and rewards for the secret she was about to reveal. She also wanted a company whose CEO might be somewhat less inclined to wonder how she'd managed to develop such a find on her own. If her new boss believed she had covertly used her previous employers resources to develop her idea, it only mattered that he didn't care. Since her current firm didn't have any products aimed at curing diabetes, there would be no concern of theft of proprietary information. That was important, as no one would be willing to invest in something a former employer might claim was stolen.
Quietly, she went to interview with each of the companies she had chosen. Afterwards, she decided that East Coast Pharmaceuticals offered her the best opportunity. Located in an older part of Washington, DC, it was far enough away from Boston to suit her, with the facilities and finances able to support what she needed. Like a number of technical firms, East Coast Pharmaceuticals was taking advantage of a city program that offered huge incentives for companies that were willing to set up business in some of the more beat down and ragged areas of the city. The area was rough, and somewhat dangerous, but the savings were immense. One company that had elected to accept the city's offer, had donated the basement of their business to the city police for a substation, as a means of protecting their large monetary investment on the upper levels of the large building they built.
Natalie had bonded well with Karl Harrimon, the firm's CEO, and he had made an offer that was better than what she was receiving at the Boston firm where she had spent the last three plus years. It was during their final negotiations, that Natalie had decided to reveal what she had been holding back. Her deal was simple. She would show Karl enough of her test data to allow him to evaluate whether she had something that was real. If he elected to take her on board under her terms, she would start as a se
nior researcher at the pay he had offered, but with a series of specific milestones she identified, she would advance in position, up to Director of Research, and would gradually be given a percentage of the company. Once the serum reached a certain level of validation, she would possess a one-third ownership of the small firm, and would share in the profits at that same percentage.
At that time, Karl had owned all but a sixth of the company. That one-sixth part had been given to Anne Barker to entice her to join when Karl had realized he needed to focus on product development and needed someone to serve to seek an input of capital to fund their growth potential. The one-third ownership that Natalie was requesting would have to come out of his pocket, but he also realized that fifty percent of a company that could produce the cure Natalie was offering was worth far more than nearly total ownership of the firm he was now in control of. The deal was made, and Natalie submitted her resignation to her Boston firm, and relocated south.
There were those at the new firm who liked her, and those who didn't. Chief among those who didn't was Anne Barker, who believed that Natalie had used her looks to gain her position within the company. She would have disliked Natalie even more if she knew the details of her agreement with Karl, which they had agreed to keep secret until the test results showed that Natalie had earned her new position.
It had taken time, and it hadn't all been easy. Even with the Professor's notes and keen insight to provide direction, there was a lot of work to be done, much constrained by government regulations how such work must be pursued. The first year was remarkably busy, but as they entered the second year, even Anne had come to realize they were onto something that would potentially make East Coast Pharmaceuticals one of the big names in the country. She began to accept Natalie, and even accepted her new title when Karl gave her the promotion.
Funding the level of testing and development became an issue, and to help solicit funding, Anne had a series of news releases prepared that described the nature of their potential product, what it would offer diabetics, and who the people behind the development were. It was Natalie's first formal recognition and taste of fame. Unfortunately, it wasn't all a good thing.