Placebo

by Steven James

  Thankfully, however, for RixoTray and other pharmaceutical firms, their biopharmaceutical products also have patents that run not for five years but for twenty. However, considering that the only way to protect intellectual property on a research-based project like this is to file for the patents early, and research and development of the drug might take eight or ten years, the twenty-year protection shrinks to ten or perhaps twelve at the most.

  Since the five-year data protection and twenty-year patent protection time frames run concurrently and generic drug companies will often sue to have patents overturned, the actual length of time between the release of the name-brand drug and its generic equivalent can drop to five or six years. Not a lot of time at all to recoup your R&D investment.

  And that was about to change.

  Cyrus’s man had told him that if the president got his way, the time frames were going to be cut in half.

  The helicopter took off.

  He sent a text to the vice president’s people that he was on his way, then reviewed what he was going to say to Vice President Pinder about the legislation initiative that the leader of the free world was going to propose in just under four hours.

  We step into the Franklin Grand Hotel down the street from Independence Park.

  Xavier was right. The kids went crazy over the limo ride.

  I figure that neither Dr. Colette nor Dr. Arlington will be at work yet and we have some things to get together before meeting with either of them anyway, so after stopping by the front desk to check in, I suggest that we get settled and then the grown-ups meet in Xavier’s and my suite to figure out our plan for the morning.

  In the elevator, Mandie gets the honor of pressing the button to the twenty-second floor.

  One wall is glass, and as we ascend we see the Comcast building nearby. Fionna mentions that it was built to look like a giant flash drive, and everyone agrees that it really does. For a homeschooling mom, school is always in session, and she explains to the kids that Philadelphia is sometimes known as the “City of the Nation’s Birth” and that it has the largest number per capita of Victorian-style homes in the US. “The city hall is also the largest city hall building in the world. No steel reinforcement; it’s all concrete, brick, and marble. It was built in 1901 and has more than two hundred statues surrounding it. The statue of William Penn on the top of the tower is thirty-seven feet high, and the circumference of his hat is more than twenty feet.”

  The elevator pauses at our floor and the doors open.

  “Who can give me a definition of circumference?” she asks her kids.

  As Maddie does so, we all troop off to our respective rooms, and Xavier mentions quietly to me, “She’s quite a woman, isn’t she?”

  “She sure is.”

  The Question Behind

  All Questions

  7:55 a.m.

  3 hours left

  After dropping off my bags in the room, I decide that before our meeting begins I’ll grab some coffee and bagels for our crew from the coffee shop across the street.

  As I pass through the crosswalk, a young mother pushing a stroller ferrying a warmly bundled-up baby boy joins me. She greets me and I wish her good morning back. “That’s a cute baby you have,” I tell her honestly.

  She beams. “Thank you. His name is Frankie.”

  A moment later she and Frankie walk out of my life, but they send my thoughts cycling back to the days when my sons were that age.

  And I think of Rachel too—the young mother who loved them and then took their lives.

  In the months following their deaths, lots of people gave me advice, and almost none of it helped. Especially not the line about the ones who’ve passed away “living on in our hearts.”

  My family lives on in my heart as much as the memory of the night I got drunk in college and totaled my car, as much as the recollections of food poisoning sending me to the hospital for a whole weekend last year.

  A memory is a memory is a memory. And that’s all it is, so if that’s all we can claim for our loved ones when they die—that they live on in our hearts—then that’s a pretty puerile and insulting thing to say to a grieving person.

  Memories. The fictions we tell ourselves are true.

  But perhaps wishful thinking is less painful than the brutal truth: “Don’t worry, you’ll remember Rachel and the boys for a while, then life will go on and they’ll slowly get crowded out of your heart by other, more trivial things. And then, of course, before too long you’ll die too, and eventually all of you will be forgotten in the sands of time.”

  Unless eternity is real, unless heaven is more than a fairy tale, death always wins in the end.

  The air inside the coffee shop is interlaced with the sweet smell of freshly baked cinnamon rolls and aromatic coffee. I load up on half a dozen giant cinnamon rolls drenched in icing, some bagels and breakfast sandwiches, as well as coffee and lattes for the adults, and head back to my room.

  One piece of advice that did seem to help, though, at least a little bit, was something one of my ultramarathoner friends told me: “Hang in there. It’ll never always get worse.” It’s a saying ultrarunners have to remind themselves at eighty or ninety miles into their hundred-mile races that eventually the trail will get easier. At least for a little while.

  Obviously, life for everyone has its ups and downs, and I’ve had lots of good times over the last year, but a pervasive heaviness has settled into my heart, as if the default setting of my life has changed from joy to disappointment. Grief might actually be a better term.

  Life might get worse, but it’ll never always get worse.

  According to my friend.

  But maybe it should. Maybe if you’re the guy who fails to notice the warning signs in the actions of the woman who would eventually become your sons’ murderer, maybe then it should get worse for you until you die and are forgotten in those sands of time too, along with them.

  All these thoughts are stirred up simply from seeing that ebullient young mother’s joy over her child. Charlene’s words from last month come back to me, when she told me that joy is evidence of God.

  Well then, if that’s true, what is grief evidence of?

  On my way through the lobby, I contact the hospital again and find out that Dr. Tanbyrn is still in a coma. I ask the nurse in charge to text me or call me if his condition changes. Since I’m not family, it takes me awhile to convince her, but in the end she agrees.

  As I approach my room, Charlene meets up with me in the hallway. “So how are your ribs this morning?”

  “Still tender. Your arm?”

  “The stitches are tugging a little, but not too bad. Your head?”

  “Manageable. Burns from the fire?”

  She shrugs. “Nothing serious. You?”

  “I’m good.”

  “Good.”

  Remarkably, I do feel better. Not 100 percent recovered, but at least on the way, and that’s one thing to be thankful for. I’m glad she’s doing alright too.

  Inside the room, we find Xavier has showered and changed. His eyes widen when he sees the food, especially the box of cinnamon rolls. “I’ll take some of those to the kids.”

  I hand him the bag and he leaves to deliver breakfast to the McClury children.

  “He really likes those kids,” Charlene observes.

  “I’m thinking it might be more than just the kids.”

  “I’m thinking you might be right.”

  We pull out our notes and for a few moments we’re quiet, and I realize I’m slipping back into my retrospection about the loss of my family.

  At last when Charlene speaks, I hear gentle caution in her words. “Jevin, you need to be careful.”

  “About?”

  “The times you disappear.”

  “The times I disappear?”

  “Into the past.” A pause. “Into your pain.”

  Her words hit me hard and ring as true as Xavier’s did on Monday, when he talked about my past bei
ng a part of my story but not what defines it. “Stop feeding your pain and it’ll dissipate,” he’d told me. “Be where you are; let where you’ve been alone. Do that and the universe will lean in your direction.”

  But how? How do you get to that place?

  I take a long time before responding. “What are we supposed to do when life makes no sense, Charlene? And don’t just say we need to make the best of it. There’s no best to make of it when your sons are murdered by your spouse.”

  “I know.”

  “So?”

  A moment passes. “I don’t know, Jev.”

  I let my thoughts crawl over everything again. “I guess it all comes back to the question behind all questions.”

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “The question ‘Why?’ Why do bad things happen? There are never enough ‘becauses’ to answer that final ‘why.’”

  “I have to believe that there is, that there’s a reason why God would—”

  “Would what?” The words come out before I can stop them, taut and cutting and fueled by my brokenness: “Would allow two little boys who’re strapped in their car seats to drown? Would allow their mother to sit by and let it happen?”

  “It makes no sense to me either. I don’t know why we hurt so badly and hope so much for something better. But I do believe that somewhere there’s a reason behind it all.”

  “God works in mysterious ways? Is that it?” Even as I’m saying the words, I feel bad about the tone I’m using with her, but it’s as if these feelings have been churning around inside of me and now they’re geysering out all on their own.

  Charlene seems to be at a loss for words. Finally she stands and walks to the window. Gazes at the day. “Jevin, when Jesus was dying he cried out to God, asked him why he’d abandoned him.”

  “And what did God say?”

  Her eyes are on the skyline. “Nothing.”

  I’m quiet. So not even Jesus could unriddle the mystery of suffering, the feeling of being abandoned by God. I’m not sure if that’s supposed to reassure me or not. Honestly, it only serves to make the answers I’m seeking seem more elusive than ever.

  Charlene faces me, says softly, “There’s a teaching in the Bible that all things work together for the good of those who love God.”

  “And how did being tortured to death work out for Jesus’s good?”

  Oh, that was just great, Jev. Just great. Keep attacking what she’s saying when she’s just trying to help.

  “Charlene, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have—”

  “It wasn’t the end when he died.”

  “He rose.”

  “That’s what Christians believe. Yes, St. Paul said death has been swallowed up in victory.”

  The idea that death could be conquered, that life would win in the end, strikes me as too good to be true, but also as the most necessary truth of all.

  “Do you believe that?” I ask her.

  “If I didn’t, I’m not sure how I’d find enough hope to make it through the day.”

  I have no idea how to respond to that. I haven’t felt hopeful in a very long time. And I haven’t felt very prepared to make it through my days either.

  She approaches me. Her voice is tender. “Jevin, who are you angry at, yourself or God?”

  “I’m not angry.”

  “No, don’t do that. Not with me.”

  “Do what?”

  “Brush me off. Hide. I know it’s there. I can see it. How you’ve changed.”

  I find I can’t look her in the eye, but then she puts her hand gently on my chin, turns my head so I’m facing her again. “Rachel had problems, Jevin. She was ill—”

  “Okay, let’s just—”

  “Something broke inside of her and she didn’t have the chance to get it fixed.”

  “Charlene, stop.”

  “There’s no way you could have known, no way you could have—”

  I pull away. “That’s enough!” I’ve never spoken to her like this before, and I’m sorry, so sorry, for snapping at her. “Charlene, I’m—”

  “It’s okay.” She pauses and I can tell there’s more she wants to say. “I loved her too, Jevin. We all did. But her choice wasn’t your fault. She’s the one who did that terrible thing, not you.”

  “Ever since it happened, ever since that day, I’ve been trying to hate her for what she did to my boys.”

  “I know.”

  “I can’t seem to.”

  “I know.”

  All the questions and anger and desperation that has been piling up for the last thirteen months overwhelms me. It’s like a weight too heavy to bear, one that’s smothering me and isn’t ever going to let me go. “I don’t forgive her, Charlene. I’ll never forgive her. And don’t tell me I need to forgive myself, because I don’t even know what that means.”

  “No, I wasn’t going to, Jev. You don’t need to forgive yourself. You need to stop hating yourself.”

  I’m standing there, reeling from the impact of her words, when the hallway door opens and Xavier and Fionna step into the room for our meeting.

  Dilemma

  8:10 a.m.

  2 hours 45 minutes left

  “Hey, kids,” Xavier calls. “You two behaving yourselves?” He’s halfway through one of the mammoth cinnamon rolls. Fionna has Dr. Tanbyrn’s iPad in hand.

  I turn to the side so no one can see my face. I’m afraid a tear will escape, but I make sure it doesn’t.

  The question behind all questions.

  The one not even Jesus knew the answer to: Why?

  And Charlene’s words: “You don’t need to forgive yourself. You need to stop hating yourself.”

  Yes, yes, I do.

  But how?

  She assures Xavier that, yes, we were behaving. It takes me a few seconds to collect myself, then we all gather around the suite’s executive conference table beside the window that overlooks Independence Park.

  I try to refocus my thoughts, dial us back to the task at hand. It’s not easy. Shutting away your pain never is. “Okay, I know we were all working on different things on the plane. Let’s take a sec, summarize what we have, then move forward, see if we can figure out what Arlington’s connection with Glenn Banner might be.” From the looks on Xavier’s and Fionna’s faces, it doesn’t appear that they can tell I was so close to losing it.

  Charlene offers to go first. “I found Colette’s and Arlington’s vitas online, as well as some references to the research and patents they’ve been involved in, mainly in the area of recording brain waves and electrically stimulating parts of the temporal lobe. Also, the further you delve into Arlington’s background, the more you find the telomerase studies coming up again and again. There’s proposed legislation that could affect its release date. RixoTray has started clinical trials. I’ll email everyone what I have.”

  “I think we should contact Dr. Colette first,” Fionna suggests, “before we do anything else, see if she can help us.”

  It seems reasonable. Fionna goes online, locates Colette’s home phone number, and I try it. No answer. I’m about to leave a message when Xavier stops me. Taps my phone’s screen to end the call for me.

  “What?”

  “Really, what are you going to tell her, Jev? That you’re a magician who thinks her boss might be connected to a homicide and arson in Oregon, a top-secret military thought-borne virus psychic research program, and a conspiracy to stop suicide bombers in the Middle East?”

  “Hmm. Yeah. Maybe better to talk in person.”

  “And what if she’s involved? Did you think about that?”

  I set down the phone. “Okay. Let’s table that for the time being.”

  My emotions are still wrenched from my conversation with Charlene. They feel raw and exposed. Concentrating on this meeting isn’t going to be easy.

  How do you stop hating yourself? Where do you even begin?

  I have no idea.

  Xavier takes a final bite of his cinnamo
n roll and out of habit begins his explanation with his mouth full. “I didn’t find out—”

  But the mom in Fionna immediately kicks in: “Let’s not talk with food in our mouth, Mr. Wray.”

  “Oh. Right.” Some people might have taken offense, but the way she said it was friendly enough, and Xavier swallows, apologizes. “Sorry. I was saying I heard from one of my buddies who’s . . . well . . . connected. He said he did a little checking, and Project Alpha was started just over a year ago.”

  Fionna is typing on her virtual keyboard. “Which would correspond to when Dr. Tanbyrn’s studies were first published.”

  “Exactly. It was named Project Alpha after the first published article detailing a researcher’s ability to translate brain waves of linguistic information. Back in 1967.”

  “1967? This line of research has been around that long?”

  “Yup. That was the year Edmond M. Dewan taught himself to turn on and off the alpha rhythms in his brain—they’re brain waves that are associated with mental states and relaxation. So, by relaxing himself at conscious intervals while recording those alpha wave changes with EEG, he was able to communicate Morse code messages. Through his thoughts.”

  Charlene leans back. “Whoa.”

  “Of course, scientists have come a long way since then in recording brain waves through functional magnetic resonance imaging, diffusion tensor imaging, and magnetoencephalography. Lots of people think the government is already monitoring their thoughts.” He pauses and looks at us ominously. “I know people who know people who’ve already had it happen to them, and pretty soon it’s going to be as widespread as—”

  “And the military connection?” I direct him back to the topic at hand before he can launch into a tirade on how the government is controlling and policing our thoughts.

  “Yeah. Project Alpha goes high up in the Pentagon; in fact, the second in command in the DoD, Undersecretary of Defense Oriana Williamson, is on the oversight committee. There’s no sign of the Kabul video on YouTube or WikiLeaks, so whoever received it has kept it under tight wraps. Nothing on Akinsanya either, except that the name is Nigerian. It means ‘the hero avenges.’”