Sarah had put in.
Now that had scattered him. She was his baby sister, for crying out loud, she wasn’t supposed to be thinking things like that, let alone saying them.
Of course, she was twenty-eight now. He supposed she wasn’t quite the innocent he’d held in the dark the night their world had fallen apart. But still, it was hard not to think of her as that frightened ten-year-old sometimes. He—
“Ethan? Are you ready to start?”
He, Ethan thought as he snapped back to the present, was losing it. Definitely.
He glanced at his head of Research and Development, Mark Ayala, whose report on the progress on the Collins project was the reason for this meeting. He knew what he would hear, which was no change in the status quo, but he would take that happily over any setbacks. He’d only begun the project ten months ago, expected it to take years, and considered it worth the time and expense.
“Sorry, Mark,” he said as he took his seat at the head of the long table. “Let’s get to it.”
Mark began, in that report-making drone that always reminded Ethan of Professor Kosell’s economic theory classes. He’d always sat in the back of the theater-style lecture hall, high up and close to the door, so he could escape quickly and make it to work in the scant fifteen minutes he’d had to get across town. Unfortunately, the back part of the room was also the highest part of the room, where the heat of a hundred or so bodies rose, and that, coupled with his usual lack of sleep and the professor’s monotone, had frequently been enough to have him nodding off.
Ethan didn’t care for these types of meetings. He’d found most people too intimidated by the formal setting to really cut loose with any original thinking. He much preferred to keep current on projects by visiting his people in their own environment, where the actual work was being done. And for original thinking, he was much more likely to take a group out for pizza and beer, and let the ideas flow.
He liked the fact that West Coast Technologies was still small enough to do that, and he planned on keeping it that way. Pete had been a firm believer in “If it ain’t broke…” and Ethan was content to hold that line for now. He knew they couldn’t compete with all the large companies around, so he focused on specializing, working on things that had the potential to be multifunctional, or highly useful to a smaller group of people.
And then there were his pet projects, such as this one. Ethan made himself tune back in, as he sensed from Mark’s tone that he was finally winding down.
“—can see, overall, things look very promising. The difference between the control group and the ones with the implant are marked.”
“How much longer are your tests scheduled to run?” Ethan asked.
Mark leaned back in his chair, scratched a bit at his beard, then said, “Another two months before we move on to the next phase.” He looked down at his notes, then back at Ethan. “Speaking of that, it would be so much more helpful if we could—”
Ethan held up his hand, knowing what was coming. “Sorry. There’s got to be a better way to test this than to perform a dozen mouse lobotomies. That should be our last resort. I don’t like the idea of intentionally and permanently destroying their memory just to see if we can fix it.”
“They’re mice,” Mark said. “And pampered ones at that. The best food, comfy cages with fresh shavings every day…my dog doesn’t live as well as these guys do.”
“Maybe you should take better care of your dog,” Ethan said, but jokingly. “Think of another way, Mark. I know you can. Maybe…something temporary?”
The R and D head looked at him, then sighed. “I’ll try. I’m checking on a chemical that supposedly temporarily affects that part of the brain, but I’m not sure how it might affect results for our purposes.” He shrugged. “Maybe I should just get ’em drunk.”
Ethan grinned. “Ouch. Crabby, hungover mice. But better than psychotic ones.” He glanced down the table at Moira O’Donnell, the production manager. “You’re current, Moira?”
The redhead nodded. She tapped at her notepad with a long, flame-red nail. “I’ve tracked the necessary changes as we go. We can go into production within seven days and have enough on the market to give us a nice head start on any deconstruction copy-catters.”
Ethan understood her concern. With any such product, no matter how complex, you had to expect that as soon as a competitor could get his or her hands on it—legitimately or otherwise—they would be taking it apart to study its construction, then building their own. Every amount of inventory you could get on the market before that happened solidified your hold on the market. Even if it was years away, they needed to be ready.
But in Ethan’s mind, that didn’t apply here. “Thanks, Moira. But on this one, put your focus on speed, not foiling industrial espionage. If we succeed, I’m not looking to make a fortune, I just want it available to as many people as possible as soon as possible.”
Moira nodded, although she didn’t look happy. It was her competitive nature, Ethan guessed. But that nature was part of what made her so good at her job, and on most other projects it paid off.
He shifted his gaze to the representative from the W.C.T. legal department. “So, how goes the war on your end, David?”
“The FDA,” David Grayfox said with a grimace, “is the biggest pain in the—”
Again Ethan held up a hand. “Yeah, I know. So we can expect approval for voluntary human testing in about two zillion twenty-five?”
“About,” David mumbled.
“Keep pushing. We have to determine if what works on our pampered, well-fed and wonderfully housed lab mice will work as well on the human brain.”
He knew he was stating the obvious; this was, after all, the entire point of the Collins project.
“Yeah,” Mark added offhandedly as he gathered his papers, “we may all need it someday.”
Ethan knew Mark hadn’t meant it that way, but nevertheless, the joking rejoinder dug deep into a sore spot that had never healed.
“Pray that you don’t,” he said, unable to stop the edge that came into his voice.
Mark looked at him, startled, then sheepish, as if he only now realized what he’d said. “Right, boss,” he muttered, and Ethan knew that, from the generally anarchistic Mark, the title “boss” was tantamount to an apology.
Ethan nodded and stood, indicating the meeting was over. The others exited the room, and he started back toward his office. Karen caught his eye; she already had the receiver to her ear, but gestured at the phone on her desk, and he saw that two lines were lit. She mouthed a name at him.
Layla.
To his amazement, since he had a perfectly reasonable question to ask her, he hesitated. He stood there, staring down at the lit phone line as if it had the power to shock him if he touched it.
Only when he realized Karen was looking at him rather oddly did he nod and stride past her into his office. He stood behind his desk, looking down at his own phone, where the second line blinked tauntingly. He set down his notepad. Then his pen. Then
