** Chapter Two: Looking Back, Moving Forward **
The renegade researchers left the room with surprisingly minimal celebration; during the whole circuitous walk back to their secure laboratory, each had far more in their thoughts than they showed to the others. Power might corrupt, but they'd all just gotten a lesson in the reverse reality: corruption creates power. It hit them differently, but they all felt it; this was the real frontier. They were holding the keys to awesome power, enough to change society forever. For a group of people who'd all spent much of their lives as social pariah, the brains instead of the brawn at every turn, it was the true turning point. Despite their varied responses and lingering concerns, they'd finally hit the real point of no return.
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For his part, the team's lone executive was alive in a way he'd never imagined; months and months of playing nurse-maid to Dr. Frankenstein's little family of researchers had gotten him in good with both the Board and the Dream Team. He was the only person with real access to both sides of the fence, the only person with all the key information. Cromwell'd been a mediocre chemist, but he was a great archivist in possession of world-class manipulation skills; he'd documented practically every minute of the team's activities, realizing from the outset that aging executives would never make sense of raw data and projected figures. They had to be intrigued, but devoid of real understanding; he had to turn on a bunch of tight-assed WASPs without making them acknowledge it, no small task. So, he'd carefully selected the most telling moments from the animal trials and run them on multiple screens while he spoke to the directors.
It was an award-worthy performance, his solemn admiration for the team's dedication and careful attention to protocols, his cheerful surprise at their progress, his focus on the shareholders and public. Master showman or not, William Cromwell's smiles were legitimate. He, of course, knew damned good and well that there was more, much more, footage that could never be shown to the suits--and now it appeared that he and the Dream Team were going to get away with their...lapses in experimental ethics. Everybody owed him a little something, and he hadn't even pulled the real rabbit out of his hat yet.
Once Stimulex got final FDA approval, it really wouldn't matter what they had done to get it there, unless the media got hold of it. They'd never understand it, so they'd explain it in the only way they could understand; after all, the media was nothing but a bunch of perverts with one track minds, so they'd do anything in their power to make everyone else look the same way. Scientists screwing like crazed rabbits in heat made for sensational headlines, something researchers of the past had less reason to fear. But it was science and progress, not slavery and pornography, no matter how the press would portray things if given the chance. Denise's team, after all, was working in the long tradition of medical innovators before them; why was it okay to risk contracting smallpox by experimenting on oneself, but not okay to test Stimulex? Silly double-standard, if you asked William.
Yep, he was ready for anything. He'd prepared his little "great tradition" sound-bite to explain the team's "revised protocols" many weeks earlier, just in case. Besides, done is done, and nobody could go back and make different decisions. Whatever his faults, William Cromwell was decisive, not to mention relentlessly goal-oriented. Single-mindedness has its compensations; he grinned anew at his own wit. He didn't have a one track mind--he was just single-minded. Funny.
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Denise felt detached, like she'd had a nasty accident and gone into shock. Truly a weird thing to feel at the moment of her greatest victory to date, but there it was: the ease with which they'd gotten approval and covered their tracks stunned her, left her with the anticlimactic knowledge that her gut-wrenching anxieties meant nothing. She hadn't really believed it was possible, Moore realized. Part of her had been waiting for the whole team to be caught, stopped, questioned, something; despite William's continual cockiness, the Girl Scout in her had been expecting some kind of punishment.
Thanks to the Holy Roman Church, guilt came naturally to Denise. Between parish school, mandatory confession, and her family's deeply held and highly visible Catholic traditions, she'd been steeped in faith and provided with a rigidly defined moral code. As a woman of science, she'd fallen away from the church as she reached adulthood, but part of her was forever counting and cataloguing her sins, eager to make good on them. Usually, it stayed in the background, but right now, she felt bathed in sin and shame. But whether her guilt was over her questionable research ethics or her newly-minted sexual promiscuity, she couldn't have said for sure.
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Victor was overjoyed, eager to celebrate, and utterly unsurprised by the afternoon's events. This was going to be one hell of a year, but more importantly, he was going to really do something. Despite his training and abilities, Navarre had always felt like he was wasting himself somehow, as though his life lacked some essential core of meaning that others' had. Before this project, that was. Now, he had the chance to be great, to make himself part of history. His father would have been proud, and Navarre could almost feel his approval in the air.
The neurologist knew in his heart that he and his team (he'd thought of them as his team almost instantly, but never said it out loud) were going to change the world, literally. He could make people happy, keep them healthy, and get rich in the process? Great. He could fix so much that was wrong in the world, and nobody was even going to fight the changes. Victor knew that at heart, many people must know that sex and romance were to blame for most of the world's tensions. The "battle of the sexes" was over, though. Women would feel beautiful and complimented by all the attention they'd receive, men wouldn't need to fear rejection or deny their sexual desires.
He flashed on a glimpse of Neda's black hair shining under fluorescent lights as she knelt at his feet and eagerly tongued his throbbing prick, a dozen doses in her system. How far they'd come in such a short time. Tonight, he thought he'd hyper-dose Neda again, let the little lesbo beg him for his cock, and fuck her senseless. He might even take her in the ass, and then move on with his life afterward. No explanations, no bullshit, no hostilities.
