Chapter 1

Idea.

Perspective: Elizabeth Diamond.

Area/Time:NYC. July 1st, 2013

Act I: Calm.

That idiot doesn’t understand.

Jordan J, the head of Energis Labs, doesn’t understand my research at all. He threatened to pull my funding on the INVERSE project if I didn’t “Yield significant Progress”.

The nerve.

My name is Elizabeth Diamond, Director of Diamond Lab on the 14th floor of the Energis Building. Right now I am currently in my lab, reviewing my proposal to receive more time for my project. Normally I would have Sarah, my intern, do this for me, but she is at her 23rd Birthday party right now and I had already ruined her last three. All my lab techs had either been fired by me, or quit due to my funding issue, so it was really just me and her. I let my eyes wander across the laptop on my desk, looking for any obvious grammar errors within paragraphs. Not finding any, I sighed and took off my glasses, setting them down next to my black coffee mug. I smiled a bit at the cup. Sarah had bought me that for Christmas last year. I laughed to myself, remembering that her brother had been so excited over that basketball that his father had gotten him.

I spun around on my chair to face the large, wall sized window that overlooked Manhattan as I recalled her exact words on that day,

“Here’s to the world NOT ending today,”

I had always liked her sense of humor. And she actually did what she was supposed to do in my lab, contrary to past employees.

I sighed once more as I spun back to face my laptop, “I really should give her a raise.” I murmured as I scrolled through a couple more paragraphs. After a couple more hours of this I decided to screw it all and just submit it.

Click. Submitted.

I leaned back in my chair, feeling quite good about myself.

Just then, the front door was unlocked with an audible Click.

I slowly shut my laptop and focused on the door several feet away from me.

The door that was being opened led to the actual experimental part of my lab and required an access key to open, and since Sarah wasn’t coming today, there was only one other person who would come and annoy me.

The idiot himself,

Jordan J.

He walked in with that “cool” dumb walk that guys did in Highschool, looking around my office space like it was his first time here,

“I like what you’ve done with the place!” He yelled from the door as he walked towards my desk. He yelled because my office is basically just a long..wide hallway.

I did that because I wanted people to be intimidated when they came to see me. But apparently that didn’t work on fools.

I raised my eyebrow, “ I didn’t do anything.”

He ignored me and broke into a small jog to quickly come up to my desk,

“This room is excessively bi-”

“Did you need something?” I asked pointedly.

He frowned, “I assume Sarah told you about the funding issue.”

I nodded.

He smiled again, “Phew! That makes this conversation much easier.”

I nodded again.

“Elizabeth,” He started, taking a seat on the chair opposite from the desk,

“You first came to Energis Labs five years ago with an idea, do you remember what that was?”

I rolled my eyes, “Renewable energy.” I said flatly.

He smiled, “Yes- and I didn’t believe you could do it until you presented me with Project Conversion.”

Jordan began to laugh, “ I mean, you figured out how to draw electricity from a human brain..safely..and then store it for distribution!”

I glanced at the floor, “Yes, I know this.”

He continued, “It’s one of the reasons we are so popular now!”

I rolled my eyes, waiting for his speech to end.

“We were a small company, nothing major at all, until you came along. Then we won the ISAC award and now everyone’s hoping we’ll do it again!”

He went on, but I was only half paying attention, as I was still trying to figure out why he was still yelling.

“Then you presented a new project..what was it again?”

I resisted the urge to strangle him since it was the project that he wanted to cancel.

But I found the calm somewhere and cleared my throat, “Project Inver-

“Project Inversion! That’s right!” He said happily. I narrowed my eyes.

“You came to me and said it was a kind of gas that made electricity right?”

I don’t know how, but I again kept my cool, “No,” I said, “The project inverses the effect stress has on the brain. Instead of losing neurons, the brain would gain them.”

He slowly nodded.

“How is this idiot in charge of a Science Institute?” I thought as his smile came back.

“Riight right, now I remember,”

He totally didn’t, but I listened anyway.

“But I fail to see how that relates to your previous project. Can you explain the connection to me?”

So apparently he did not read any of my papers I had submitted to him.

Can’t say that i’m surprised.

I tried to speak in a way that he could understand, which, is no easy task,

“In our brains, there are these things called neurons. These neurons can generate electricity.”

He nodded,

“ In project Conversion, I figured out how to extract that electricity through the production of the C-Unit.”

Another nod,

“ But since the average adult brain can only generate enough electricity to power a low wattage bulb, I decided to start a project to acquire more neurons.”

Jordan tilted his head, “Which is Project Inversion..?”

This time I nodded, “Yea. If subjects under stress were exposed to the gas, Their brains would produce more neurons at an extremely fast rate, and then we would use the C-unit to extract more electricity.”

His eyes began to narrow, “But you don’t have this gas yet, do you?”

I gulped, “Not yet.”

He sighed, “I feel like this is a waste of time and money. Could you figure out something else?”

My eyes widened, “You can’t pull my funding..not yet!”

He faked a frown, “Actually I can, and I’m doing it right now.”

All sense of cool was out the window, “Three months! Give me three months and I’ll get you a working gas with a successful test run to go with it.”

He pondered this for a minute. Fiddling with a pen he had in his hand.

“Fine,” he said, “You have three months, then I’m pulling your funding.”

And with that, he got up, and complained as he jogged back to the door.