Placebo

by Steven James

  But regardless of the circumstances regarding her mother’s death, Riah knew that her father was a guilty man, guilty for what he had done to his daughter.

  Or daughters.

  She had her suspicions, but never could get Katie to tell her if their father had done the same things to her.

  Riah knew that someday she would visit him and discuss the fact that he had not treated his children in an honorable manner, discuss it in a way that he would understand.

  She was confident she could come up with something unforgettable.

  But now, tonight, she went to bed thinking about Malik’s daughter, about watching that fourteen-year-old girl’s father explode.

  Tomorrow morning she would be meeting with the twins to find out what role her research had played in that man’s death, in that fourteen-year-old girl’s loss.

  And, presumably, based on what Darren had said to her in the conference room, what her role might be in killing even more fathers just like him.

  Heading East

  The drive to Portland goes surprisingly quickly, and Xavier, Charlene, and I find the Gulfstream 550 waiting for us on the tarmac.

  The pilot, a fortyish woman with golden retriever eyes and an enigmatic pair of pigtails, introduces herself as Captain Amy Fontaine. The copilot is a quiet, slightly overweight man named Jason Sherill.

  Our flight attendant, a young Indian gentleman who speaks with only a faint Indian accent, tells us he is Amil and is at our service.

  We shake hands, give them our names, and take our seats in the jet’s cabin.

  Though the price tag for this flight isn’t cheap, I’ve used this company before, and as I look around the jet, I’m reminded that I’m getting my money’s worth. The cabin is ultra high-end, elegant—swiveling, reclining captain’s chair seats, four flat-screen televisions, not to mention the individual monitors for each seat. A couch sits at the back of the plane near the galley and restroom.

  Xavier stows a duffle bag full of his toys. He winks at me. “You never know what tricks you’re going to need up your sleeve.”

  “No, you don’t.”

  “I have a few things here I’ve been working on.”

  “What are those?”

  “Oh, well, you see, that’s a surprise, Petunia.”

  I stare at him.

  “Charlene filled me in.”

  “Great.”

  As Captain Fontaine pulls the plane onto the runway, Amil informally gives us the required preflight information—apart from the senseless instructions about powering down your phones and electronic devices. “If it were even remotely possible that your electronic devices could affect the navigation of an airplane during takeoff or landing, do you really think the FAA would allow you to bring the items on board?” He almost slips into a stand-up routine. “Can you imagine a jet crashing and they find out that the cause was someone forgetting to turn off his noise-canceling headphones? My friends, you could run a cell phone kiosk next to the cockpit and have an MRI machine stationed in the back of this cabin, and it wouldn’t affect the navigation of a plane one bit.”

  I liked Amil already.

  We take off, and as we break through the clouds, I see the final glimpse of sunlight fading along the edge of the sky. I can’t help but think of all that has happened since the sun went down yesterday evening: the fight in the chamber, the test this morning, escaping the fire, seeing Abina’s body, watching Glenn Banner die at my feet.

  It feels like a lifetime has passed since the last sunset.

  Like a dream.

  But it’s real.

  The pain and death and questions, all real.

  My thoughts float back to my nightmare last night about seeing my wife and sons drown. How I felt. How helpless. How terrified.

  Needless to say, I’m not too excited about going to sleep now, on the plane.

  In the waking world, when you’re haunted by the past or troubled by the present or nervous about the future, you can distract yourself—go for a run, watch a movie, check your email—but when you’re asleep and you’re facing something terrifying, you can’t turn away, can’t even close your eyes and pretend it’s not happening.

  In a sense, I guess, we’re powerless to escape our dreams. We’re forced to live them out, forced to watch whatever our haunted past wants to throw in front of us. Even though we may know it’s not real.

  Cyrus made his decision.

  He slipped quietly to the garage, careful not to wake his faithful, innocent, and rather oblivious wife.

  The more he’d thought about it, the more he’d realized it would be best not to wait until morning to deal with the situation with Tanbyrn.

  He backed the Jag out of the driveway, pulled onto the silent, deserted street.

  Over the last nine months, Cyrus had explored every avenue available to him for clearing the way for his research concerning the release of the new telomere cap. During that time he’d considered the broad-reaching implications of Dr. Tanbyrn’s research on quantum entanglement and its connection to human relationships, its connection both in positive ways and in negative ones.

  Cyrus was a man of science, but if there was one thing quantum physics was teaching us, it was this: there is not always a scientific explanation for what happens in the world. Logic evaporates when you reach the subatomic level. Reality is much more malleable than it seems.

  He wasn’t sure he believed in Mambo Atabei’s practices, but he had seen some things in her ceremonies that he couldn’t reasonably explain. Based on Tanbyrn’s research, there were scientific reasons, matters of quantum entanglement, that might have been able to explain some of the effects, but that seemed to Cyrus to be a bit of a stretch.

  Admittedly, he was somewhat embarrassed by his forays into this field, but when tens of billions of dollars were at stake, it was worth a little unorthodox dabbling.

  He had a relatively good relationship with the Haitian woman, and he speculated that she might just be able to help if he gave her a big enough donation.

  Guiding the Jag down the street, he aimed it toward South Philly. Toward the high priestess’s house.

  After we level off, Amil offers us caviar hors d’oeuvres and wine in tall, fluted glasses.

  Xavier takes out his button camera and puts it on. When he sees me looking at him curiously, he explains, “We were supposed to be filming a documentary. You never know what kind of footage we’re going to need. We may end up with a film yet. Don’t worry, I’ll be unobtrusive.” Then he asks Amil if he has any cheese, crescenza if possible, and Amil looks at him blankly.

  “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.

  For a while, watching others die, even though he knew he could stop the process, had been like a thorn in his thoughts, an uncomfortable irritation that made his daily work less enjoyable, but you have to move on, have to come to terms with your role in life. And Dr. Cyrus Arlington had done just that.

  He’d begun to look at the big picture and had initiated the most expensive research program in the history of his company to find the cure for aging, which would, in many ways, be the cure for everything.

  Telomeres, protective caps on the ends of chromosomes, erode as cells reproduce, and so the cells eventually degrade and enter a state referred to as “senescence” when they no longer reproduce. This causes the effects we associate with aging—dementia, increased risk of stroke, muscle atrophy, and decreased organ function, sight, hearing, and so on. Put simply, the enzyme telomerase protects the telomeres from degrading and thus slows aging.

  If it were possible to use telomerase on humans to stop telomeres from shortening when cells reproduce, there would be no reason for those cells to begin breaking down. Would it add years to your life? Yes. And undoubtably, it would also dramatically increase your quality of life during the decades up until then.

  Stopping senescence halts the negative effects of aging and, at least in the 2010 Harvard studies on rats, reverses those effects by increasing neural function, regenerating nerves, and rebuilding muscle tissue.

  But there was a problem. Cancer cells initiate telomerase, which is one reason cancer cells don’t degrade with time, so increasing telomerase in the body of a person who has no cancer would cause him to become more immune to it, but someone with cancer would become more riddled with it.

  All of this means that if you co
uld create a drug that releases telomerase, you would either need to administer the drug to people who don’t have any cancer cells growing in them, or give the enzyme to people in short doses so that it decreases the risk that the cancer cells they already have would spread.

  Unless the drug increased the level of telomerase only in cells that were not cancerous.

  And that’s exactly what RixoTray was on the verge of producing.

  It would be the one drug that everyone on the planet would want to take, and it would make thousands of other drugs obsolete.

  The pharmaceutical company that could create the first-generation telomeres protector would be positioned to become one of the most financially lucrative firms on the planet. Perhaps one of the most profitable companies of all time.

  And that company was going to be RixoTray Pharmaceuticals.

  They needed a little more funding, yes, and a little more time. The funding would come from the Pentagon, and the time would come from—well, it certainly wouldn’t come from the added restrictions the president was going to propose in his speech tomorrow at eleven at Independence Park just outside of the Liberty Bell building.

  ———

  Cyrus threaded his Jaguar down the narrow streets of South Philly. Groups of gangbangers huddled on the street corners; abandoned buildings littered the block. The row houses in this primarily African American neighborhood were all in disrepair. And it was not the kind of place someone of Cyrus’s stature would normally venture.

  He was heading to the house with the dumpster in the cramped alley behind it. The dumpster that accepted the remains of what happened in the basement of that building during the night.

  Despite the low-income demographic of the neighborhood, Cyrus wasn’t afraid to leave the Jag on the street. He was known as a friend of Mambo Atabei, and no one around here would dare cause any trouble for one of her friends.

  He parked in one of the four spots in front of her house left vacant for her visitors. Walked to the porch, knocked on the door.

  Waited for her to answer.