THE ULTIMATE TRIAL - PART 1
 

A Fiction Short-Story By the Sandoval Brothers

“Doctor, Mr. Ellsworth will be ready momentarily for your requested meeting. I thank you for your patience and for allowing us to make use of your discrete debriefing station for Mr. Ellsworth’s urgent business. After just now overhearing details related to Mr. Ellsworth’s ongoing opioid rebranding campaign on behalf of his Euro-Confederation associates, we are sure you will be able to uphold the same level of professional discretion that has been afforded to you.”

Dr. Rowling was a practical man of science. He was also quite practical when it came to how the world operated outside the controls of his laboratories. He understood what it would mean if Mr. Ellsworth could succeed in lobbying the E.C. to forgo their longstanding policies and allow the company’s most prized medication to be peddled once more to an ailing market dissatisfied with non-opium derived alternatives. Anything was possible after Mr. Ellsworth already toppled the E.C.’s zero tolerance for pharmaceutical consumer advertising and their methods to keep primary care physicians out of the pain reliever distribution process. If the business model could just be replicated in the E.C. to match what has long been run in the U.S., Mr. Ellsworth would finally add to the wealth he inherited.

Noticing the detachment in Dr. Rowling’s attention, Mr. Peters verbally nudged, “I am confident that you understand what it would mean to dissatisfy Mr. Ellsworth. Now, before you are given your admittance today, it is my place to pre-screen your intended topics of conversation so that I may brief our benefactor properly before your exchange with him. I noticed that your lab provided minimal information to our receptionists during the arrangements of this sudden conference. To be frank, you really are just fortunate that the electrical surge grounded all flights out of Mumbai. In any matter, I will need a moment of your time before we take up any of Mr. Ellsworth’s time.”

The senior Abbot-Baxter Pharmaceutical biomedical researcher sighed before groaning, “A doctor left to languish in his own waiting room is some kind of hell, especially with waiting chairs so dreadful on the lower-lumbar.”

The day was already full of oddity for the doctor, but sitting on the inverse side of the evacuated receptionist’s desk forced a novel, unaccustomed perspective.

“We apologize for the wait, again. But, as you must understand, as the new sole stakeholder of ABF, Mr. Ellsworth has many commitments and demands on his time. It is for this very reason that we need to streamline your conference with Mr. Ellsworth. I understand that you have requested this meeting today regarding some results from your follow-up clinical trials with our patented Supersonic Jet Lag Symptom Rapid Relief drug application. Is that correct?”

“In a way,” one of the last researchers born to the 20th century of science grunted.

“Your people at the main office should have informed you that I have submitted the full results of our two-year study assessing SJL Rapid Relief. Given that it was a fairly simple compound, even after we made our adjustments to the original formula, the results came back as expected. As we clearly specified in the report that we provided last week, the particular medication produced moderate and somewhat consistent benefits improving performance on cognitive tasks after frequent or prolonged alterations to the body’s circadian rhythms resulting from rapid long-distance trans-meridian travel.” Sensing the very next question to be cast, Dr. Rowling preemptively elaborated, “When we were testing drug efficacy, we utilized virtual flight-simulators and sensory manipulators to reproduce to effects of jet lag. But now we have since moved on to trials of drug safety.”

Indifferent and with his fingers flickering over his tablet of digitally-projected notes, the medically untrained, yet superiorly compensated personal assistant replied in a singular tone of voice, “Good. Those are efficacy results we like to hear about. Given the exponential increase in supersonic passenger flight and the ever-increasing demands of international business, billions will be made each quarter if we can just manage to ease some of the less stomachable symptoms of supersonic commuting.”

It took Dr. Rowling a couple of attempts and several moments, but he eventually managed to rise from his unsupportive, yet clingy, seat. “Mr. Peters,” the doctor’s chapped lips mouthed, “I took an oath, long ago, to do no harm to a patient’s health. Later, I made another pledge to do no harm to our shared corporation’s health. It is for these reasons I must give my say. I will make it as quick as possible, though. You know I have better uses of my time as well. But until I at least address this matter with our dignified and well-positioned sponsor, discreetly, of course, I do not suspect that my lab will be able to move on with their work. And I can’t afford to wait around while my message slowly trickles up the administrative chain of protocol.”

Finally, the hunched doctor was granted full eye contact from the assistant, who inquired with careful attention, “What is this matter, specifically?”
The doctor leaned in closer to his auditor but kept his voice at the same volume. “Well, thanks to the sloppy recruiting of this clinical research team you got me working with this time, we now have a test subject exhibiting signs of what would we would probably have to disclose are serious side effects.”

It was a prudent provision on Mr. Peters’ part to send the rest of the lab (those who dutifully remained after the rolling blackout) home early. With the doors and walls to the debriefing room sealed and insulated to protect subject anonymity, the assistant did not have much of a worry about his proprietor overhearing the gruff but brilliant data cooker.

“What kind of side effects are we talking about?”

After a scratch of his silver beard, which matched the hue of his Zhongshan suit just so, he replied, “I would perhaps describe the unexpected symptoms as a bit of blurred vision, a smidge of drowsiness, a tad of sleepwalking, maybe a little confusion, and possibly some instances of minor hallucinations.”

“Not ideal for the over-the-counter status we are aiming for. But not all bad for a prescription medication. All things considering.”

“However,” the good doctor blurted with no regard to the assistant’s place in his sentence or place within Mr. Ellsworth’s esteem, “my research assistants are ardent in their observations of what has been described to me as something like spatial- and temporal-disorientation, frequent bouts of unresponsiveness, and delusions of grandeur demonstrated by case number M11.14.”

“Those symptoms sound a little disconcerting, admittedly. But you seem to be saying that such unintended effects are exceedingly aberrational – they have been limited to a singular case. Is that accurate, doctor?”

Under heavy weight, his feet were ready for their own rapid relief from standing. But the cheap waiting room chair was out of the question. Shifting his weight from heel to toe, the senior medical researcher answered, “He had the most extreme reaction, certainly. The only semi-adverse reactions we saw on a large-scale were dry mouth and general fatigue. I mean, we had one other subject who raised some red flags by exhibiting initial signs of increased compulsive behavior and suicidal ideation, but this subject was censored from the study – she dropped out of the study before we had time to make a string of consecutive waves of measure. Anyway, we had a feeling that those mental maladies were simply the result of her natural predispositions for depressive symptoms. I tell you, the real subject of today’s conference should be the poor screening of research subjects that are going on within this research organization you hired this go around. I think we will be able to avoid a big mess with the FDA, in this case, because our subject M11.14, also known as case G6.7, actually can be considered.”

“Wait a moment, doctor,” demanded Mr. Peters now taking his own liberty interjecting. “What is this ‘also known as’ business with two identifier codes? Is it not general practice to assign each participant one identifying label alone?”
“That is correct,” nodded Dr. Rowling as he struggled, pulling his belt and trousers from below to over his distended gut. “But the thing is, Elijah Baptiste –”
“Elijah Baptiste?”

“Yes, given the complexity of some these folks more traditional names, they adopt new monikers or are just given new ones by their foreign employers or even the church. I do not know which in the case here. But, anyways, Elijah was entered into our system by mistake twice. It may have been a data entry error, or it could have been an attempted element of his scam. Regardless, we have got the whole coding issue cleared up at this point. It is just habit keeping track of this strange case with both identifiers out of precaution.”

After fiddling at his face with the outward excuse of readjusting his glasses, Ellsworth’s assistant probed, “Now, what is this about a scam? It sounds like you have really lost your handle on this subject…if not on the project itself!”

“Listen!” The doctor found some energy to channel into an emphatic retort. “None of this was my fault. As I was trying to say, Abbot-Baxter has hired a less-than-stellar research team here in Mumbai. If it were not for my placement here, all your data here would either be useless or inconclusive.”

“Dr. Rowling, it is not my job to assign blame or assess your standing within the company. We have other agents for that kind of matter. I don’t want to hear individual sides to the story. I just want the general, objective, account so that I may brief and prepare Mr. Ellsworth accordingly. Now, please get back to the incident of M11.14/ G6.7.”

“That is fine by me, Peters. But how much about the trials and recruitment processes are you familiar with? I know many of your boardroom fellows know as much about scientific research methodology as you know about supersonic jetliner engines.”

With a blank stare imperious to the barb, Mr. Peters instructed, “Assume that my expertise is not in a singular field alone.”

“Well, then. As you may or may not know, Abbott-Baxter has hired Vanguard LabCorp out of India too, in turn, hire human subjects to participate in our clinical trials. We hire several dozen at a time and pay each half a dozen grand to participate in three weeks of monitored assessment. During this span, we administer proportioned doses of our product, and then we simply take measures of their vitals (body temperature, pulse rate, respiration rate, blood pressure – the usual). They stay in our labs – eat when assigned, sleep where assigned. Then they eventually go back home. Then we start the process over with a new batch of subjects. Over two years of safety trials, we have cycled through hundreds of participants.”

With a face twisted in confusion, the personal assistant stepped in to question, “It seems that a lot of money is going to incentivize research participation. Have you had our fund’s managers run a cost-analysis?”

“Let me assure you, every penny is necessary for decent recruiting. It is not like the olden times of Holmesburg Prison or even of Dr. Gottlieb and the MKUltra project. No! We have to be appealing, monetarily. Now some clinical research organizations are more profitable for participation than others, so we must be competitive with our pay in order to get a workable sample size of professional lab rats who have not already been used up.”

“Used up?” repeated Mr. Peters in question.

“Yeah!” snapped the doctor as he wrapped his folded arms only partially around his well-hidden rib cage, which was per usual when Dr. Rowling began to grow thin on patience. “You know, ideally, we want subjects whose veins aren’t buried under layers of scar tissue from thousands of blood draws, subjects whose immune systems are not compromised by fending off dozens of live-virus vaccines, subjects whose bodies are not scared from millions of pox and hives from allergenic outbreaks. Do I need to go on or get more descriptive?”

After an involuntary scratch to the back of his neck, then scalp, Mr. Peters assured, “No, that will suffice. But please get to your main topic of business soon.”

“Well, our issue seems to stem from the fact that M11.14/ G6.7 was never a prime candidate for our trials. Though we discovered that he had been involved in over forty separate clinical trials this year so far, we made the discovery after it was already too late. Out of negligence or sheer unintelligence, M11.14/ G6.7 was recruited to our study while currently being on an overlapping dosage schedule for several other pharmaceuticals.”

With a confidence that was quickly sapped, it was pointed out by Mr. Peters, “But we have mandates which require all subjects to submit to blood and urine tests to ensure that they are healthy and not on any other substances, street drugs or pharmaceuticals alike. We have protocols.”

“We have protocols, yes. And we also have some holes in those protocols that are usually not minded so much in the name of efficiency.”

“What other drugs was he taking?”

“Well,” Dr. Rowling paused as he searched his mental notes, which took a little longer now than it used to, “after we did a little digging we found that he has recently been involved in trials involving a new anti-anxiety cocktail laced with dimethyltryptamine, a mind and memory supplement, a chronic insomnia treatment, a lifetime influenza inoculation, an Alzheimer’s preventative, and a post-traumatic stress pill.”

“What was this man thinking he was doing?” asked Mr. Peters sincerely as his head shook more than too long.

“He was thinking he could make a full-time living off being, what is termed in this line of work, a human lab rat. There are many desperate people out there just like him. Not everyone lives as comfortably as a personal assistant to a tycoon soon to become the world’s first Trillionaire – even if that is after the last bout of inflation.”

“If he was currently engaged in other studies,” Mr. Peters challenged without retaliation, “why didn’t the other research teams or pharma companies keep him under monitored observation? He just took their drugs and went on to the next payers?”

“Believe it or not” smirked the doctor before shifting his gaze and decision on the waiting room chair. Taking a second to catch his breath after falling back into his earlier seat, the practitioner’s attention was unexpectedly captivated by what was apparently the only object of aesthetic or monetary value within the confines of the neglected waiting room. Centered upon the coffee table was a glass vase adorned with pellucid yellow moissanite about its edges. The reflected light rays bounced off the mirrored gems creating innumerable identical beams of illumination, which were again refracted in the sparkle of the doctor’s transfixed stare. Just before breaking his peek, he restarted, “Believe it or not, there are some drug peddlers out there who are not as ethical or thorough as we are. But the good news for us is that we can – in good conscious – disregard case M11.14/ G6.7 from our trials since it is most likely that his reaction was the result of dosage overlapping.”
“What do you mean?” asked the assistant as he struggled to roll up his shirt sleeves without losing grip on his trusty and comforting note-taker.

“I mean, it is somewhat likely that the unique combination of substances (in just the right dosages and at just the right application schedules) caused the unique event. Furthermore, it is even harder to tell what exactly the man had in his system since the U.S. drug companies subsidizing his trials with the anti-anxiety meds were shut down just a week ago by the FDA. On top of that, the formula for the mind and memory supplement has been changed so many times; I cannot even tell you if Dhanteras Wellness Inc. will end up pushing their creation as an organic or synthetic product at the end of it all. Then, the boys working on the PTS medication are so in deep with their U.S. government sponsors, there is no way we will ever get to know for sure what it is they are mixing into their concoctions. There are too many confounding variables, too many unknowns. M11.14/ G6.7 is certainly not our fault.”

“Well, I certainly hope that is the case,” an uncertain Mr. Peters mumbled. “But before I allow you to walk through those lab doors to the debriefing room and see Mr. Ellsworth in person, I need more precise information on what exactly M11.14’s reaction looked like.”

“Again,” groaned the long-time skeptic and empirical investigator, “you have to take the reports with a grain of salt. I mean of the kids working the labs, most are still thumbing their way through their introductory anatomy or psychology textbooks.”

“Proceed,” it was ordered before a matched exhale of reluctance.

“Alright. Well, where can I start that would make most sense to describe the insane? Well, plainly, Elijah – test subject M11.14 – believes he has inadvertently transcended reality to reach a new level of unworldly awareness. He tells of astral projections to chapters of all ages and realms of all possibilities. In just his short participation at our lab, he has claimed to have been enlightened to the one question which has forever pricked mankind.”

“What question?”

After a slow comb of his hand through his repeatedly receding hair, it was elaborated in an initially low voice, “He claims to have solved the mystery behind the purpose of human existence – the reason for life’s trials, the explanation for the injustices of life, the need for the variance in the human experience.”

“That’s what he claims?” the assistant more humored than astounded verified after an almost natural chuckle.

“Not in those exact words, but more or less.”

“What’s the gimmick? What’s the story?”

Clearly revealing more awareness of the condition than first let on, Dr. Rowling answered, “He describes uncontrollable wanderings through past and future lives, and odysseys through paralleling realities – some maddeningly dissimilar only in the most minute details, others so drastically foreign to what we have come to the ability to comprehend, as the stories go.

“He certainly has such a unique imagination, to say the least. I have been told he has seen – or temporarily swapped – lives with vessels he has or will borrow through his fated path of reincarnation. With impressive detail, it was told how he saw with the same clarity alike through the eyes of a distinguished tobacco farmer from colonial Virginia; an ailing young girl from the lowest caste of ancient India; a hunter-gathering beast, almost more ape than man; and a profuse Second Great Awakening scholar, which time has yet come to birth.”

“How entertaining,” Mr. Peters shrugged off with his shoulder and tone of voice. “Now, what theses from this Second Great Awakening has he foreseen and can share with us here and now?”

“The messages and convictions he found in that strain of life has already begun to fade from memory, like an uneventful dream upon sudden awakening –”
“Convenient isn’t it?” disparaged the born cynic.

Part 2 next month in STRIPLV Issue 0920

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