Summer was nearly over and college was looming on the horizon. The events of the summer break had severely tested the long standing friendships Oliver held with Minnie, Jamie and Mary. Especially Mary. His relationship with Jenny had been through the mill, under the microscope and to hell and back. Yet they were stronger and closer though still without intimacy. Jenny had been on the trial of IM regression inhibitor for nearly a month with positive results. She had more colour in her skin and she reported feeling stronger. Bizarrely the closest they came to intimacy was when Oliver administered the IM ‘vaccine’ to her left buttock. He had commented on her wonderful bottom and stroked her low back for a few minutes. Both had felt intensely aroused but moving to second base still did not suit them for reasons neither understood nor questioned.
Jenny had returned to Brighton to get up to speed with her business at ‘Other World’, which was kindly still being run by her close friend. Without Jenny around Oliver had remembered he had three close and dear friends. He knew he had to reinvest in his closest friendships.
Oliver was alone with Mary for the first time in what seemed a very long time.
“So what are you going to do with all your research?” Mary asked Oliver.
“I don’t know, it’s a technology, you should exploit technology,” Oliver answered.
They ate in a small Italian restaurant opposite Portman Hospital on Portman Road. Oliver had spinach tagliettelle in a four cheese sauce, Mary a chicken arrabiata, they shared a salad and garlic bread. They drank Chianti. Oliver had ordered a thirty five pound bottle wanting to treat Mary and make some kind of offering of repair in their friendship.
“I don’t like the beard look Oliver.”
“I’ll shave it off once you concede my discovery is in fact ground breaking and remarkable,” Oliver said.
“Good luck with your very long beard then. I think it’s dangerous, unstable and unethical, what benefit and I quote Blooms here,” Mary prepared herself to quote the eminent Professor.
“Don’t mention that mans name,” Oliver interrupted.
“Professor Blooms states,” Mary mocked Blooms dry lecture style, “Remember fundamental discoveries or to transform our ability to help others.”
“Do quote Blooms actually, because this is a fundamental discovery and imagine the possibilities, the ability to document history accurately, answer unsolved questions, open up travel to historians and a curious public.”
“A curious public? So develop it as an entertainment industry.”
“Cynical Mary. In part yes, why shouldn’t I benefit from this?” Oliver challenged Mary.
Mary reached across the table and held Oliver’s hand, “Oliver, look I accept you are onto something and I accept it is big, way big, gargantuan discovery time. But you’re going too fast, breaking too many rules, you could harm yourself. Badly.”
She squeezed his hand.
“I am being careful, look if I get one warning signal beeping on the safety radar I’ll step on the caution brake,” Oliver held her hand back and this time he gently squeezed. He didn’t even bother to reflect on the fundamental flaws in the statement he was making, nor how vacuous his nod to safety was.
They ate a little more together and Oliver ordered a second bottle of wine more expensive than the last.
“Nigel Bell-Smith wants to meet me,” he said casually.
“Excuse me? Sir Nigel Bell-Smith, Mega Company owning Bell-Smith? You expect me to believe that?”
“Long story but you remember the Emap guy?”
“Who dropped you like a brick?”
“That’s the one. But I’ve re-engaged him, taken him to the lab, with Jenny stabilising I feel ready to take this to another level,” Oliver took a mouthful of his pasta.
“Oliver, that is exactly my point you are moving too fast, no proper trial, no ethical approval, come on Bell-Smith wouldn’t touch it with a barge pole,” Mary leant back in her chair to emphasise her point and took a large sip of wine.
“This is big business, these commercial guys will push every boundary possible if something has true potential. Including ethics. Jack, my Emap guy, has been to the lab several times, I’ve got him to sign a non-disclosure note, got him bought in to the project. He thinks Emap is too narrow, so he has a friend who knows a guy, blah blah. I burnt a DVD of the trials, Bell-Smiths seen it and is curious enough to want to meet me. Discreetly. He is taken by the whole notion and agrees that the broadcast potential could be staggeringly massive.”
Mary screwed up her face, “Did you just say broadcast potential?”
“I haven’t mentioned that have I? I’ve looped the brain scanner through the laptop, developed some software that interprets what I can see when I am regressing and it basically transmits the regression vision on to the TV.”
“What? How?” Mary asked.
Oliver’s mobile phone buzzed four times. He took it from his pocket and saw an alert on his facebook page. It was from Jamie.
You need to get over here.
“Where are Jamie and Minnie tonight?” Oliver asked Mary whilst reading from his phone.
“Drinking, some bar somewhere, I don’t know,” Mary replied.
Oliver typed his response.
Where are you? Phone me?
Jamie replied.
No signal. In your lab on laptop! Minnie stuck.
Oliver.
Eh?
Jamie.
Got pissed. Got talking. Went to your lab. Minnie went first, hooked up, shot some regression juice and he is stuck. Just nothing from him. Not dead but unresponsive. Stasis. HELP.
Oliver looked up from his phone and said to Mary, “Shit, get the bill we’ve got to go.”
Oliver refused to take the tube and despite Minnie’s reported problem, spent time frustrating Mary whilst he stubbornly hailed a taxi. On the way to St Thomas’ Hospital he had further facebook exchanges with Jamie, ‘prescribing’ diazepam unethically to a drunken doctor to administer to a drunken clinical psychologist.