Morining all. I’m actually running a little early today. Which is kind of nice for a change. Still it is going to be a busy one so I suppose an early start won’t go amiss. Everyone ready to jump into the day? Fabulous. Let’s go.
I think I need to adjust a few things, but I like the idea of the sabotage, experimental correction and revenge. I think I’d probably make it a short story rather than a full length novel. Buit it could be a fun short.
Thursday, March 24th: Research was slow.
Research was slow. Every time they thought they made a break through and finally had a handle on things, there was a mutation. James took a deep breath. He had been staring at the panels from the last test for far too long. The data was starting to twist across the page into meaningless drivel.
‘Not that it means much when I look at it clear headed anyway.’ He thought. He tossed the papers down on the table and rubbed his eyes with the balls of his hands until he saw red spots.
Funding was down. Had been going down steadily ever since Jeffries made his break through a month ago. His results were nearly miraculous. And had been on the last three projects he worked on, if James was being fair. Jeffries seemed to have the magic touch.
‘It’s unbelievable luck,’ James thought. In fact he really had a hard time believing it. Jeffries three breakthroughs came quickly and seemed to be the man’s innate intelligence slicing through a problem and into the heart of the matter with ease. Except that James had known Jeffries since their school days. Not just at university but from kindergarten on.
Jeffries was not a natural academic. ‘He had to steal the test answers to pass biology,’ James recalled. It had been a bit of a scandal and well covered up by Jeffries Senior. It had surprised James greatly when he found out Jeffries even went into the sciences.
‘There were rumors of cheating at University,’ James recalled.
He shook the thought away. Worrying about how Jeffries managed such fabulous results wouldn’t help him now. ‘The only way it mattered was if he was sabotaging my experiments now. ‘
James blinked and he looked back down at his data. It had seemed almost cursed. What if it wasn’t cursed, just …sabotaged. James rolled his chair over to the computer and pulled up his files. He went back to the very beginning of his experiments. He pulled up the first results and began going through the details. After scanning the data he went through the second set. His heart rate sped up. He thought he saw a trend. James pulled up the third set of data. The trend held. There was always a problem with the third week of the trials.
“Surveillance,’ James recalled.
A while ago there had been a series of break ins. Everyone suspected someone looking for drugs as those were the targets. James installed secret cameras just in case someone broke in looking for something. It was more to record information in case his experiment was compromised than to catch a potential thief. However after he installed them, outside security tightened and there had been no more break ins. So James hadn’t bothered to look at the footage.
‘No compromise, no reason,’ James thought. ‘But the footage is still there.’
The recorders were digital and he had the information simply transferred to a data storage site. James closed down his data and typed in the address for his data storage. He had a few dates he wanted to check.
Ten til Midnight 