The tarnished old locket had the look of a family heirloom handed down from generations past. According to family legend, his grandmother had hidden it carefully among her meager belongings while attempting to escape the Nazi occupation of her native Poland in the fall of 1939. The locket had been one of the few things to make its way with her to her new home in the United States after a harrowing trek through southern Europe, and a sea voyage aboard a Greek trading ship. It now sat in the palm of her grandson's hand who rubbed his thumb across the surface like it was a single worry bead in a long chain.
The locket had a small catch on one side, and he flicked it open carefully, letting it separate into two halves with a cleverly hidden hinge in the middle joining them. The tiny photos inside made the man smile an expression that seemed to convey as much pain as joy. The picture on the left was of his wife now deceased some ten years. He could still clearly recall the sound of her laughter even after the passage of so much time. The image on the opposite side was a more contemporary picture depicting a woman who could have been a young clone of her mother. His daughter Elise had still been a teen when the photo had been taken three years earlier. Those had been happier days, and her smile showed it. Things were much different now, and that smiling face was more often than not frozen in a grimace of pain.
"Hang on, Elise. We are so close. So close..." he muttered.
"Professor? It's time. They're ready to see you."
The locket snapped shut. The professor let a grimace of his own crease his middle-aged features. This wasn't his strong suit, speaking in front of others trying to convince them to finance his ideas. He was a scientist first and foremost not a public relations expert.
"What if they don't go for it? The University has pulled their funding, and we will be finished. I don't think I could take that, John."
John Henderson, the professors longtime assistant, and only real friend laid a hand on one of the professors slender shoulders.
"Don't think that way, Corwyn. We will make them see the merits of it. I know this isn't what we planned, but the military applications are obvious."
Dr. Corwyn Razinski finally stood from the bench where he had been sitting for some two hours waiting to pitch his ideas to a room full of military brass. He was a small man barely five-foot-four-inches tall and his assistant towered over him.
"I hope they see things that way. Lead on, John."
The conference room could have been in an office building anywhere in the world it was so generic and nondescript. The thing that distinguished it was the cluster of men around the outside all in military uniforms and sitting stiffly at attention as Professor Razinski and his assistant were led inside. The Professor cleared his throat stepping to the head of the table while noting the somber and skeptical faces that stared back at him.
"Gentlemen. Thank you for taking the time to see us."
"You're our last proposal of the day, Doctor. It's been a long one so if you could keep this short and concise with a minimum of fancy scientific mumbo-jumbo we would appreciate it."
The Professor glanced nervously at his visitant before continuing.
"Of course, General Rafferty. I will do my best. Perhaps the best way to start is to ask you, gentlemen, a question. What is the greatest failing of a soldier on the field of battle?"
The collected officers looked at one another perplexed by the question before one of them offered , "There are any number of things. Failure to follow their orders or to seize the initiative when it presents itself for instance."
"True, but I was thinking of something more fundamental. Isn't it often the case that fatigue plays a huge role in how much can be accomplished? How often in a battle are your soldiers simply too mentally tired to understand those orders, or see that moment were initiative is needed?"
"There are limits to human endurance. That is why logistical planning is so important to make sure that you have fresh assets to commit during the key point of a campaign," said General Rafferty.
"Again, that is a very true statement, but how more effective would your strategies be if those soldiers at the point of attack never tired?"
There were a number of incredulous looks around the table and a few soft chuckles.
"What are you talking about? If this is another scheme to drug soldiers into staying awake longer, we have seen this tried many times in the past. It always ends with a bunch of drug addicted men who are only marginally better off than they would have been if we just rotated in fresh troops."
"What if I told you I could keep a soldier awake and fully functioning for a week at a time with no cognitive or physical degradation in performance what so ever?"
This statement brought silence to the room. General Rafferty sat up taller in his chair taking a long pull at the cigar in his mouth that glowed brightly at the end before he expelled a cloud of smoke into the air.
"What drug could do that without serious harm to the men?"
"It's not a drug, General. What we have done is create a specialized viral agent that essentially attaches itself to the brain cells of a healthy individual and protects them while regenerating the tissue allowing for constant function without the need for sleep. I grant you that prolonged usage could eventually cause damage to the cells, but in the short term, it would be harmless. When we want the soldiers to rest an antidote is administered to neutralize the agent."
Professor Razinski gestured to his assistant who began to pass out folders to the assembled men in the room.
"According to this, you have advanced as far as chemical trials on chimpanzees?"
"That's correct. What we are looking for is a lab and volunteers which would allow us to move on to the next stage."
"Human trials?" clarified General Rafferty with a raised eyebrow.
"Yes."
"I see. This is a very interesting proposal, Professor. If you gentlemen would wait in the hallway while my colleagues and I discuss it."
The Professor smiled politely and exited the room with John Henderson close behind.
"Are we seriously entertaining this idea? We have plenty of conventional projects in front of us that offer more promise," said a hawk-nosed colonel at the end of the long table.
"We do indeed. There is something about this though I find intriguing. We have that old hot lab in Utah we were going to decommission. I think that might be the perfect place for this and we could do it fairly cheaply," suggested Rafferty.
The colonel shrugged at the suggestion.
"If there are no serious objections? Good. I say we give the Professor a bit of funding and see what comes outs of it. We might get a bigger return on this then we imagine."
ONE YEAR LATER -
The sound of the helicopter's blades reverberated inside his head even with the noise canceling headphones he wore. Adam Chase reached up to adjust the fit tighter when a voice sounded in his ears.
"I'm going to wish I had turned down this assignment aren't I?"
Adam glanced up and smiled at his partner who sat across the helicopter bay going over a folder that lay in her lap. Harriet Duffy had joined him three years ago after his old colleague, George Foster, had retired. She had received high marks during her time at the academy and was considered a top F.B.I. field agent even at her young age.
