M.I.T. Can Be Murder
By Frank M. Weyer












Copyright © 2000-2007 by Frank M. Weyer

This is a work of fiction.  Any similarity to real people or events is coincidental.






To Katie for inspiring me to start the book, to Troy encouraging me to keep going, to Tracy for giving me motivation to finish, and to Mercy for teaching me to never leave well enough alone.










"The compulsion to work,
 often at the exclusion of all other activities, 
can warp the minds and bodies of students, 
sometimes with tragic results. . . .
M.I.T. should include a warning label
 with its offers of admission -- 
'WARNING:  
The Institute May Be Hazardous To Your Health'"

Quote from "The Tech," M.I.T. Student Newspaper, May 1988.

Chapter 1
CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
December 2, 1979
12:56 A.M.

	He stood in the shadow of the dumpster.  He shivered.  Wet snow had been falling all night.  He swore to himself.  He hated winter.  He looked at his watch impatiently.  One A.M.  Where the hell was she?  The M.I.T. student center store closed at midnight.  She was usually on her way home before twelve-thirty.  Shit!  His fingers were getting numb.   He hadn't expected this early December snow storm.  Maybe she'd gotten a ride home with someone.  If she didn't come out in fifteen minutes, he'd have to call it off for tonight.  But tomorrow would be too late.
	One-ten A.M.  A shaft of light broke the shadows at the back of the student center.  A girl, eighteen or nineteen, with long dark hair and olive skin, was briefly silhouetted against the light of the open door.  She waved a hand to someone inside.  The door closed.  Wearing only a light windbreaker over her jeans and sweater she walked quickly to Massachusetts Avenue.  She turned right.  Her steps made loud squishing sounds in the wet snow.
	As soon as he saw her come out of the door, he began to move.  He hurried to reach Massachusetts Avenue ahead of her.  He crossed the street to the other side.  He walked quickly down the snow-covered sidewalk towards Harvard Bridge.
	She noticed a figure crossing the road about thirty yards ahead of her.  The figure walked hurriedly along the other side of the street towards the river.  It looked like a guy with a backpack.  She wasn't worried.  It was probably just a student heading back to his apartment in Back Bay after a late night of studying.  Anyway, he was ahead of her.  He wasn't following her.  If anything, she was following him.
	She crossed Memorial Drive and began walking across the bridge.  It was slow going in the wet, ankle deep snow.  When she got to the midpoint of the bridge, she stopped and looked down at the cold black water of the Charles River.  It hadn't been cold enough long enough yet for the water to freeze.  The water looked uninviting, deadly.  She shivered.
	She walked on.  The figure on the opposite sidewalk had disappeared.  Odd, she thought.  He hadn’t been far enough ahead of her to already have crossed over the bridge.  She became a little uneasy.  She walked a little faster.
	She was almost at the end of the bridge.  She breathed a little easier.  It was now only a few blocks to her apartment.  In another ten minutes, she'd be safe and snug in bed.  She passed the stairway leading down from the bridge to the riverside park.  Sometimes, when it was warmer, she would go down those steps to jog along the banks of the Charles River.  On a nice day there would be dozens of joggers.  Now the stairway was dark and empty.  She hugged herself against the cold.
	Suddenly, without warning, arms grabbed her from behind.  The lights of the bridge vanished as she was dragged into the dark stairway.  She jerked violently, trying to break free.  The arms clamped around her wouldn't budge.  She opened her mouth to scream.  Before she could, there was a loud thud.  Something cold and hard smashed across the back of her head.  She collapsed, unconscious.
	When she came to, she was lying spread-eagled on the wet snow on the bank of the river.  Her arms and legs were stretched out, in four directions.  She struggled.  Her arms and legs wouldn't move.  She tried to scream.  Her mouth was taped shut.
	She looked up.  A man was standing next to her.  He must be the figure she had seen ahead of her.  He was of medium height, medium build.  It was too dark to see his face. 
	A rush of anger overcame her fear.  She glared at him.  Go ahead, jerk!  She thought.  Get it over with!  But, so help me God, you're going to damn well live to regret it!  She gave a defiant toss of her head and angrily jerked at the ropes pinning her arms and legs. 
	The dark figure stood motionless, watching her.  He bent down, picked something off the ground.  He held a long handle.  He started swinging it rhythmically back and forth in front of him, like a pendulum.  Sparkles of distant city lights reflected off its broad metal end.  She watched it, mesmerized.  Realization slowly hit her.  He wasn't going to rape her.  He was going to do even worse.   Sudden, total panic seized her.  She struggled convulsively against her bonds. 
	Slowly, deliberately, staring into her terror-filled eyes, he lifted the ax over his head.  He paused.  Then he brought it smashing down onto her neck in one powerful, horrible blow.  The sharpened ax blade sliced through her windpipe, jugular vein, and vertebrae like butter, completely severing her head.  For a few seconds, her body spasmed violently, spewing blood.  Then it lay still.
	He dragged her headless body to the edge of the Charles River, tied the ax to its feet, and it off the bank and into the swirling black water.  He watched it sink quickly, pulled underwater by the weight of the ax.  He walked back to where her head lay in a circle of blood that melted some of the white snow.  He took out a plastic bag out of his backpack, and carefully placed the head in the bag.  He took out a second plastic bag, and placed it around the first.  He put her double-bagged head in his backpack.  A minute later, he was walking back over the bridge to the Cambridge side.  The headlights of a passing car reflected eerily off his intense, feverish eyes.




Chapter 2
WOODS HOLE, MASSACHUSETTS
July 17, 2007
5:43 P.M.




	"Really? You were a high-tech patent attorney in L.A.?  That must have been a pretty good job.  So why did you decide to give that up and come here?"
	Mike hesitated before answering.  He had been a graduate student in the M.I.T./Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution ("WHOI") "Joint Program" for about a month now, and it seemed like every day someone would ask him that question.  The question was natural enough.  Most of the other graduate students were just out of college, willing to put five years or more of their lives on hold while pursuing graduate studies in the hope that they, too, in the end, would land "a pretty good job."  It didn't make sense that someone who already had a good job would go through the same rigmarole just to end up again where he started.  If he was lucky.  Or worse off, which was more likely.  Mike was getting a little tired of the question.  Maybe because he wasn't quite sure of the answer.
	"For the hamburgers, of course,” Mike said, taking a big bite from the hamburger he'd just gotten off the barbecue.  It was Friday, and during the summer, WHOI put on Friday evening barbecues for the “Joint Program” students.  The “Joint Program” was a graduate program in which students took classes at M.I.T. and did their research at WHOI.  If they were successful, they were awarded degrees from both institutions.
	Frank grabbed a plate of salad and walked over to an empty picnic table.  He sat down.  Poking at his salad with his fork, he wondered why the heck he had come here.  To get his PhD of course, just like everyone else.  But why did he want that PhD again?
	He raised the fork to his mouth, started chewing on the salad.  He looked up, and stopped short, startled.  Sitting across from him, sunlight sparkling from blazing hazel eyes and long dark hair, was a strikingly attractive young woman.  Just the sight of her was enough to make his whole day.  Better yet, she was smiling straight at him.
	"Hi!" Kristen said laughing.  "Just thought I'd come over and surprise you."
	"It didn't work,” Mike said.  "Better try again."
	They both grinned.
	"So what brings you to these parts?" Mike asked.
	"I forgot my antidote on the Westward,” Kristen replied.  "Sean got it off the boat for me, so I came down to pick it up.  Anyway, I just wanted to say ‘hi.’"  She got up.  “Hi,” she said.  "See you later."
	"See you,” Mike said.  He stared after Kristen as she walked across the lawn to a group of other graduate students.  He thought about the Westward cruise where they first met.
	The Westward was a 140 foot long, three-masted "tall ship."  It was owned by SEA, the "Sea Education Association."  SEA, like WHOI, was based in Woods Hole, a small picturesque fishing town on Cape Cod, Massachusetts, about an hour and a half drive from Boston.  SEA ran programs for high school students, taking them out on two-week cruises to teach them seamanship, oceanography, and teamwork.  A month ago, Mike and Kristen took part in a special ten-day cruise for new Joint Program students.  The twenty-odd students on the trip were assigned to three "watches."  Each watch was four hours long, and members of a watch were on duty for one watch, and then off-duty for two.  During a watch, duties included sailing duties such as working on the sails and rigging, science duties such as taking and examining various kinds of sea life, ocean water, and bottom sediment samples, and clean up duties such as washing dishes.  Kristen and Mike were assigned to the same watch.  As a result, they often spent time together working the sails on deck or doing experiments in the Westward's tiny laboratory.
	Mike was impressed with Kristen right off the bat.  She was smart, energetic, and feisty.  A real fireball.  She challenged everything anyone tried to tell her with sharp, insightful questions.  He wasn’t spared either.  She kept him on his toes.
	He finished his burger.  Kristen was waiting in line by the barbecue.  He walked over.
	"It was good seeing you again,” he said.  "I'm taking off.  Just wanted to say good-bye."  "Bye,” Kristen said.  Then she stuck out her hand.  He shook it, surprised by the formal gesture.  "See you up at M.I.T,” he said.  He looked briefly into her eyes, turned and left.

	Ten minutes later, Mike coasted to a stop and dismounted.  He propped his mountain bike against some rocks next to the bike path that wound its way from Woods Hole to the next town of Falmouth along the banks of Vineyard Sound, a broad channel of water separating Cape Cod from the island of Martha’s Vineyard.  He took off his shirt and shoes.  He walked across the narrow stretch of sand, and jumped into the clear blue ocean water.  Even though it was already mid-July, the clear blue Cape Cod water was still surprisingly cold.  Mike broke into a practiced crawl, swimming straight out about forty yards, then turning right, paralleling the shore.  One, two, three, breathe.  One, two, three, breathe.  Slowly, the cool water and steady rhythm erased the week's tensions.  His body relaxed, his mind wandered. 
	He thought about Kristen.  He remembered that she loved to swim, even though she was allergic to jellyfish, which were not uncommon in the summer Cape Cod waters.  A sting could cause her to go into convulsions, even die if she was not properly treated.  On their first day on the Westward, when everyone was introducing himself or herself, Kristen told the other students about her allergy.  She showed them the ugly needle containing the antidote that she brought along, and told them that if she ever got stung and went into convulsions, to jam the needle into her thigh.  The captain of the Westward took the antidote and placed it under the hinged top of the cockpit table, just in front of the steering wheel, and made sure everyone knew what and where it was, just in case.
	Mike swam on.  One, two, three, breathe.  One, two, three, breathe.
	Mike was surprised that he and Kristen shared common interests.  After all, Mike was more than a dozen years older than Kristen’s twenty-six.  Mike had three college degrees, Kristen one.  Mike had been a lawyer for a dozen years, Kristen was barely out of college.  Mike had lived in Europe and Africa, Kristen had never left the United States.  But they both wanted to save the world, liked camping and Golden Retrievers, preferred wide-open countryside to city congestion.  Too bad she was so young.  Mike was pretty sure she had a steady boyfriend, too.  She hadn’t said that she was dating anyone, but she mentioned “my friend Steve.”  Mike had learned from long experience that the women who said the least about their boyfriends to other guys were the ones who were most serious in their relationship.  Kristen said hardly a thing.  She must be completely serious.  Lucky stiff.
	One, two, three, breathe.  One, two, three, breathe.  Mike passed the rocky jetty that jutted out from the mouth of Oyster Creek. He turned around, started swimming back.
	The fact that Kristin had a serious boyfriend didn't mean he and Kristen couldn’t be friends, Mike thought.  There was no harm in that.  Mike would probably end up being friends with her boyfriend, too, if he ever met him.  That tended to happen to Mike a lot.  He'd meet a girl somewhere.  They'd hit it off.  Then the boyfriend suddenly materialized.  Mike tended to hit it off with the boyfriend, too.  He hated it when he hit it off with the boyfriend.
	Mike launched himself into a butterfly stroke.  After twenty-five yards he stopped, breathing hard.  He went back to an easy crawl.  One, two, three, breathe.  One, two, three, breathe.
	One day on the cruise, Mike remembered, he told Kristen he was thinking of  buying a house on Cape Cod, and getting a roommate or two.  He had some money saved up, and his earnings record for the last three years was good.  Mike thought he might still be able to qualify for a mortgage, based on his most recent tax returns.  But this would be his last chance.  Over the next five years, his tax returns would only show his graduate student stipend, and no one was going to qualify for a mortgage with that.  Kristen jokingly said that if Mike bought a house, she wanted first dibs on a room when she came down to Woods Hole in the Fall.  Mike hesitated.  Mike didn't make promises lightly, even in jest.  Then he agreed.
	One, two, three, breathe.  One, two, three, breathe.
	In the two weeks since the end of the Westward cruise, Mike reflected, he hadn't done a thing about buying a house.  His excuse was that he had been too busy getting used to being back in grad school and all that.  But he knew that was a cop out.  This weekend, he would start putting his money where mouth is, and look into buying a house in earnest.
	That decided, he turned and swam back to shore.   A vision of Kristen, wearing a tight, bright pink bathing suit, emerging like a mermaid from blue green water onto the deck of the Westward after a swimming stop, long wet hair, pert breasts, nipples, erect from the cold Atlantic water, straining against the thin cloth of the bathing suit, flashed into his mind. 
	He was glad the sea water was cold.  He doubled his pace the last twenty yards to shore.




Chapter 3
CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
August 21, 2007
2:57 P.M.




	"Five, four, three, two, one.  Go!"  
	Mike and Pete, kneeling on the edge of the dock, steadied what looked like a bright yellow, six foot long, teardrop-shaped torpedo and pointed it straight out from the M.I.T. boat dock towards the middle of the Charles River.  Vijay counted down the time.  With two seconds left, Mike grabbed a boat hook and pushed down on the top of the torpedo-shaped hull, plunging it two feet underwater.   The propeller started.  The torpedo moved smartly straight out from the dock, diving deeper under the surface.  A Styrofoam float with a bright red flag tagged merrily behind.  The red flag was supposed to help find the torpedo if for some reason it didn’t return to the surface after running a mission.  "Looking good so far!" Vijay observed.
	The torpedo was actually a small, experimental, unmanned, robot submarine called "Prometheus."  Specifically, Prometheus, was an "autonomous underwater vehicle" or "AUV."  It had originally been designed and built at M.I.T. and was now being tested and modified by WHOI.  Mike, Pete, who was also a new Joint Program grad student, and Vijay, a former Joint Program student who had just earned his PhD and was working at WHOI as a post-doctoral fellow, had driven the seventy miles from Woods Hole to Cambridge to do test runs with Prometheus in the relatively safe Charles River.  Later, once the river tests were successful, they planned to take Prometheus out for more rigorous trials at sea.  
	Mike, Pete and Vijay had been running tests for a couple of hours.  They programmed Prometheus' on-board computer to run a simple out-and-back “mission.”  Prometheus was supposed to go straight out from shore for ninety seconds, turn left for thirty seconds, come back for sixty seconds, and then stop, all at a constant depth of two meters.  Prometheus was slightly buoyant, so that it floated naturally to the surface when its propeller stopped turning,  They had run about half a dozen missions so far.  After each mission, they went out in the Whaler, a small motorboat, and retrieved Prometheus from where it surfaced.  They plugged in a computer cable and downloaded navigation data logged by Prometheus during the test.  So far, the tests had not gone very well.  Prometheus kept going in the wrong direction, and changed depth erratically.  Vijay kept tweaking Prometheus' software, trying to get it right.  After every mission, Vijay was convinced he had the problem figured out.  But every time he fixed one thing, something else seemed to go wrong.  This time, though, he assured Mike and Pete, he really had gotten it right.
	Vijay, Mike and Pete watched the red float marking Prometheus' progress move out from shore.  It went out for ninety seconds, just as it was supposed to.  Prometheus was now about 150 yards out, halfway across the Charles River.  They waited to see the float turn left.   It didn't.  The float kept right on going.  Straight towards the other river bank.  Suddenly, Prometheus popped nose-first out of the water, like a dolphin trying to jump.  Then it plunged back down, head-first.  Its propeller flipped up, driving Prometheus straight down.  A few seconds later, Prometheus' nose jumped out of the water again.  Prometheus flipped and dove again.  Prometheus was now dangerously close to the opposite river bank.
	"Abort, abort!” Vijay yelled.  "Prometheus is out of control!   It's going to hit the river bottom if we don't get to it first!"  
	Mike and Pete jumped into the Whaler, gunned the outboard motor, and raced across the Charles River.  Prometheus surfaced once more, right next to the opposite bank.  Then it dove again, nose first.  This time it didn't come up.  By the time Mike and Pete got to the far side of the Charles, the only thing visible was the Styrofoam float, now bobbing quietly five feet from shore.  The thin line tying the float to Prometheus stretched straight down into the river.
	As Mike cut the engine, Pete leaned over the side and scooped up the float.  Pete pulled the thin line tied to Prometheus until it was taut, then gave a further tentative tug.  Prometheus didn't move.  He looked up at Mike.  
	"Looks like Prometheus is stuck,” Pete observed.  
	"The mud at the river bottom is like a vacuum.”  Mike replied.  “The float line will probably break if we try to use it to pull Prometheus free.”
	  And then we'd have a hell of a time finding it again.”  Pete agreed.  “We can't risk it."
	"I'll go down,” Mike said.  "The water can't be more than twenty feet deep.  I'll follow the line down.  I should be able to pull Prometheus free."  He pulled off his shirt and sandals, and got ready to jump over the side.  "Don't go away."  He grinned at Pete, and dove into the grimy water.
	Mike kicked his legs and followed the float line down into the muddy depths.  As he descended, light faded quickly, and the water got cold.  By the time his hand finally touched Prometheus' propeller at the end of the float line, he was in darkness, the water around him a thick chocolate brown.  He tried not to think what chemicals and other pollutants were contaminating the water.
	Mike grabbed Prometheus by its rear fins and tugged.  But floating as he was above Prometheus, he didn’t have enough leverage.  To free Prometheus, he would have to swim down deeper and brace his feet in the river bottom.
	Mike reckoned he had been under water about thirty seconds now.  It was starting to get difficult holding his breath.  He pulled himself down along Prometheus hull, twisting around so that his feet pointed downwards.  He grabbed hold of the metal ring normally used to lift Prometheus out of the water, and pushed his feet into the river bottom.  His legs sank up to his knees into a gooey mess of mud, decomposing leaves, and what felt like broken twigs, before hitting more solid bottom.
	He pushed with his feet and pulled at Prometheus' lifting ring.  Prometheus moved a little, then stopped.  Mike was seriously low on breath.  He braced his feet against the bottom again, and heaved at Prometheus again.  Prometheus moved a bit more, then suddenly popped free.  As it did, Mike's left foot slipped.  Mike felt a sharp pain as the sole of his foot smashed into a hard, sharp object.  Fearing infection by some toxic chemical container, he bent down and stuck his arms into the muddy bottom ooze, searching for whatever it was that had cut him.  His hands found something flat, heavy, and hard.  Mike tugged it up through the ooze.  With his breath running out, he kicked quickly up towards the surface.  He surfaced right next to the Whaler.  He grabbed the gunwale with his left hand, and with his right dumped the thing that had cut his foot into the bottom of the boat.  It landed with a loud metallic thump.  For the first time, he got a look at the object.  It was a big, ugly, rusty ax head, sans handle, about ten inches long, five inches wide, with two sharp, curved, wicked-looking edges.
	"What the hell is that?” Pete asked, looking around from where he had been tying a towline to the mud-covered nose of the now re-surfaced Prometheus.
	"Damned if I know,” Mike replied.  "But it tried to take my foot off."
*	*	*
	Mike limped down the steps of the M.I.T. health center and walked slowly across campus.  The cut on his foot had needed a couple of stitches, but with luck there would be no infection.  He glanced at his watch.  Quarter to five.  Vijay and Pete probably had Prometheus packed up by now and were waiting impatiently for him so that they could beat the rush-hour traffic back to Woods Hole.  Mike hurried along as best he could.
	There were a surprising number of students around, considering it was still summer break.  The fall semester didn't start for another week.  Then Mike would be on campus, too, taking classes full-time.  Living back in a dorm of all places.  Maybe he should have tried to find an off-campus apartment, like a lot of the other grad students.  But he had taken the easy way out and had applied for on-campus student housing.  Ah well, too late now.  Anyway, sharing an M.I.T. dorm room should be an interesting experience.  And it would only be for a semester.  Next semester, he'd have the house.
	"The house" was a unique, contemporary Cape Cod-style house located on a small cul-de-sac called "Cranberry Lane."  It was located on the outskirts of the town of East Falmouth, about seven miles from Woods Hole.  That was a bit further than Mike had originally wanted.  Seven miles was a little too far to bicycle every day, especially in winter.  But Mike had liked the house immediately.  It had been owned for a dozen years by a seventy-five year old minister and his wife, who had kept it in immaculate shape.  The house had two stories plus a full basement, half an acre of property, woods on one side, and overlooked a cranberry bog.  But what Mike liked best, and what he had fallen in love with the moment he saw house, were the big front windows.  Almost the whole front side of the first floor, overlooking the cranberry bog, was taken up by eight seven-foot high, floor-to-ceiling windows.  In addition, because the house was built into a slope, the front of the basement, facing the bog, was completely above ground.  The basement had had a whole row of windows along the front wall, which made the basement seem like another whole story, rather than a basement.  
	The first floor had a kitchen, a small dining room, one medium sized and one small bedroom, a bathroom, and a living room.  A stairway from the living room led up to the second floor, under the traditional steeply pitched roof.  The second floor had a master bedroom on one side, a bath in the middle, and the rest of the floor was one big open room.  
	The second floor would make a great rental apartment, Mike had immediately thought.  Perfect for Kristen.  Now he shook his head.  Those thoughts were completely irrational.  He hadn't seen or spoken to Kristen since the picnic, over a month ago.  They were both kidding when he talked on the Westward about getting a house, and she said she wanted to rent from him.  Surely she would want something closer to Woods Hole, would want to get her own place or share with someone else.  Be real!  He told himself.   But he still was glad he had made an offer on the house, and glad that it looked like the mortgage would come through.  If Kristen didn't want the second floor, he could always rent it to someone else.
	"Hey, Mike!"  Vijay's shout rousted Mike from his reverie.  Mike looked up.  Vijay was leaning out the front passenger window of Pete’s Blazer.  "How long does it take to cut off a foot?  You've been gone for hours."
	"That's the problem,” Mike replied.  "I told the doctor my colleagues were in a hurry, so just cut it off, if you please.  But no, she wouldn't do it.  Kept saying something about not wanting to be sued for malpractice.  So she sewed me up instead.  Lousy waste of time."
	"Bloody lawyers!"  Vijay grinned.  "See what the country is coming to?  You can't even get a decent amputation these days.  Back home in India, that wouldn't be a problem."
	Mike climbed into the back seat of Pete's Blazer.  Pete gunned the engine, and headed down Massachusetts Avenue, direction Cape Cod.




Chapter 4
CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
December 2, 1979
2:08 A.M.




	It was past two AM when he got back to his graduate student dormitory.  He knew his arrival at this hour would raise no eyebrows.  Here at M.I.T. students were up at all hours of the day or night.  He stomped the snow off his wet shoes, opened the front door, and went up to the student working at the front desk.
	"Pretty miserable out there, eh?” She said with a Canadian accent.  "'Course this would count as a summer day back home in Calgary."  She smiled at him good-naturedly.
	High from the kill, he really didn't feel like chit chatting with her.  "I'd like to check out the exercise room key,” he said.  He concentrated on keeping his voice normal.
	"Got your ID?” She asked.  He handed it over.  She glanced at it and handed it back.  "Fill out your name and room number on the key check-out list."  She pointed to a clipboard that had a pen attached with a string and some masking tape.  He dutifully filled in his name, and his room number.  205B.  She handed him the key.  
	He turned and walked to stairway that led to the basement.  At the bottom of the stairs, he turned right, then left, then left again, into the long, sloping, underground passageway connecting the West and East wings of the Ashdown House dormitory building.  The passageway was not used much.  It was old and dusty.  Heating pipes hung down from the ceiling.  Electrical wires ran along the walls.  Dirty light bulbs cast intermittent pools of light in the shadows.  The passageway was littered with empty cardboard boxes and rusting refrigerators.
	He stopped in front of a door on the left side of the passageway, about a third of the way down its length.  He glanced up and down the passageway, making sure no one was around.  He placed the exercise room key in the door lock, and turned.  The door swung slowly backwards into a dark void.  A cold, musty odor escaped into the passageway.  He stepped quickly through the doorway, and shut the door behind him.  He groped for the light switch, flicked it on.  A dusty storage room emerged out of the darkness.  Old boxes were strewn haphazardly on the floor.  A thick brown layer of dust seemed to cover every surface.  A path of footprints showed on the dusty floor.  He locked the bolt on the door, and followed the footprints to an old table at the back of the room.  He took off his backpack and placed it on the table.  For a moment, he just stared at it.  As he did so, he felt himself growing unbearably hot.  His blood pounded fiercely in his veins.  He started to sweat.  He closed his eyes.  He replayed the giddy moments on the river bank in his mind, remembering the terrified look in her eyes as he brought the ax slicing down towards her neck.
	He took a deep breath, opened his eyes.  They focused on a large cardboard box sitting on the table behind his backpack.   He reached over and opened the box.  Inside was a large glass jar and two plastic containers filled with liquid.  He took out the glass jar.  He unscrewed its ten-inch diameter lid.  He opened one of the plastic containers and poured its contents into the jar, filling it about half way.  The thick smell of formaldehyde mixed with the musty air of the room.  He turned to the backpack.  With heady anticipation, he opened the backpack and pulled out the double bagged package.  He ripped open the tops of the plastic bags, and held them up to his nose.  He savored the sickly sweet smell of her blood.  He reached into the bags with his right hand.  He grabbed a handful of thick, blood-soaked hair.  Holding the bottom of the outer plastic bag with his left hand, he lifted up with his right.  Slowly, the girl's head emerged.  He paused, looking at her.  Her eyes, still open, looked back at him.  Staring into the dead, still terror-filled eyes, he turned on the faucet in the big porcelain sink next to the table.  Carefully, he held her head under the faucet, watching as the stream of water washed away blotches of already dried blood.  He turned off the faucet, lifted up the head, and dropped it slowly into the jar.  He grabbed the second bottle of formaldehyde.  He filled the remainder of the jar with the smelly liquid.  As he did, the plastic bags that had carried the head dropped unnoticed off the corner of the table onto the floor.  He screwed the lid back onto the jar.  He sat down on a wooden crate, his eyes locked with the girl's eyes that stared out at him from inside the jar.  He marveled at the wonder of it.  He stared at her possessively.  He felt powerful, omnipotent.  Hours passed.  He didn't move.
	Beep beep.  Beep beep. Pause.  Beep beep.  Beep beep.  He shook his head, annoyed at the intrusion.  Beep beep, beep beep.    His eyes sought out the source of the annoying sound.  It was his watch.  Beep beep, beep beep.  His eyes focused, he became alert.  His watch said 8:45 AM.
	He picked up the jar and placed it back into the cardboard box.  He placed the box on the floor, next to the table.  The box with her head looked like all the other boxes cluttering up the room.   He picked up his backpack, turned, walked back to the door.  He switched off the light, undid the door bolt, and cautiously opened the door.  Seeing no one, he stepped quickly into the hall.  He went back upstairs to the front desk.  A different desk clerk was on duty.  He returned the key.  He went out the front doors, turned right, and strode purposefully away.




Chapter 5
WOODS HOLE, MASSACHUSETTS
August 21, 2007
8:58 P.M.




	It was nearly nine PM when Pete, Mike and Vijay arrived back at Woods Hole.  They unloaded Prometheus and wheeled it on a cart into J-6, a laboratory room in the basement of the Bigelow building.
	"There's still a bunch of mud inside Prometheus,” Vijay said.  “We could clean it up now, or we can wait till tomorrow.  I've got meetings all morning, so it would have to be done by one of you two."
	"I've got Navy activities all day tomorrow,” Pete said.  "A tour by some admiral or other."
	"Guess that leaves me,” Mike said.  He grinned.  "I always liked playing with mud."
	They walked out of J-6.  Vijay locked the door.  They walked down the hallway to the exit.  Pete got back into his Blazer.  Mike walked over to where his bike was leaning against the wall.
	"How's your foot?” Vijay asked.  "You going to be able to ride home okay?  I could give you a lift."  Vijay had his car parked up at the Deep Submergence Laboratory, known as "DSL", a couple of blocks away.
	"Thanks, but I'll be okay,” Mike said.  "The cut is in the heel.  I'll pedal with my toes."  He got on his bike.  "See you guys tomorrow."
"See you,” Vijay said.  He started walking up the street towards DSL. 
	Pete started his engine.  "Oh, I almost forgot,” he called.  He bent down a minute, then sat up again, and opened the door.  "I saved your sunken treasure for you."  Mike got off his bike and walked over to Pete's car.  Pete handed Mike a plastic bag.  Inside was the ax head that had cut Mike's foot.  Pete gave a wave of his hand and drove away.
	Mike unlocked the door to the Bigelow building, and went back down to J-6.  He took the ax head out of the bag and placed it on one of the tables in the lab.  He threw the plastic bag into a trash can, walked back outside.  He locked J-6 and Bigelow behind him.  He got on his bike, turned on the headlight, and pedaled home.



	Mike got "home" to the Oyster Pond townhouse complex fifteen minutes later.  For the summer, he was sharing a three-bedroom townhouse owned by WHOI with three other grad students.  He parked his bike on the back porch and went in through the back door.  Mike said "hi" to two of his roommates who were watching TV and went upstairs to his room.  He turned on his laptop and waited for it to boot up.  He got a "You have 12 new messages" message.  He wasn't surprised.  Besides the inevitable spam, he was on the Joint Program student mailing list.  Every day he got a half dozen messages or so about upcoming speakers, people needing rides to M.I.T., student activities.
	Mike double-clicked on the Thunderbird email program icon.  After a few seconds, his inbox appeared.  He scanned the list of new messages quickly.  The third one caught his eye.  It was from "KCW@uri.edu".  From Kristen!  He double-clicked on the message header and the e-mail message from Kristen appeared on his screen:

Hi Mike,
	I was happy to hear from you!! I started to write a letter in response to your full moon evening ponderings, but once I had written two pages I realized that I would make more sense if I talked to you in person. Briefly, while I think we will continue to contemplate our usefulness indefinitely, I maintain my sanity at this stage by believing the following:
	An oceanography degree will open options for me in environmental fields, and teaching.  The importance of this is twofold. One, I feel that both of these fields hold a significant role in our future.  While I doubt the ability of any scientist to make an impact individually, cumulatively, I hope this field will be able to guide us in understanding how our actions control the quality of life around us.  Teaching can be a means of communicating the results we find in research and our temporary solutions to the problems we encounter. But, it is also an avenue into students’ lives on a personal level. This leads me to the second fold.  I think pursuing a career studying the ocean is not only interesting and inspiring, but also fun!! I have also taught, and while at times I find it discouraging, overall, I feel it is one of the best ways to touch someone's life with enthusiasm for the actual subject matter and for the things I cherish in life. A bit egocentric perhaps. Yet, I do feel that teaching is one of the areas that has suffered from "the world owes me something mentality."  If any passion can curb that attitude, I hope some of my dreams would aid others in finding theirs.  Above all, I think the person who finds a way to pursue a career that they enjoy and that makes them happy, will have the strength and peace of mind to add a little joy into other's lives.  Hopefully, the next couple of years will teach me discipline and patience, and then I can enjoy that peace of mind thing!!
	Well Mike, I've rambled on a bit, and while it's no longer the full moon, you may have trouble understanding what I am trying to say-We've got the next five years to figure it out.
	Off that note, I had a wonderful vacation!! I went to Acadia National Park, Fundy National Park, and Prince Edward Island.  There was some beautiful scenery, and I met some neat people.  I've got pictures, so if we get a chance I'll show you them someday.  How is the house hunt? Did you decide to take the plunge, or are you going to wait?  My parents sold their house last week, and they are moving to Conn., so they told me I have to go get my piano. Fun, fun, fun. I think I am going to put it in my grandparent's house until I move to Woods Hole. Have you found a place in Cambridge?  Alexandra and I found a nice two-bedroom on Beacon St., and we will move in on the first of Sept.
	I must be going, as I have taken up enough of your time for now,
			Take care,
				Kristen

	Mike smiled.  Kristen was great!  He had sent Kristen an e-mail message a week or so ago.  It was one of those nights where he had doubts about being in the Joint Program, what good he was doing anybody, how grad school fit in, if at all, with "saving the world."  It was also a full moon.  He wrote Kristen his doubts, asked her advice.  She responded like he knew she would - with sincerity, intelligence, and common sense.  He read her e-mail again.  He felt a lot better.  He turned off his computer, took a shower, and went to bed.




Chapter 6
WOODS HOLE, MASSACHUSETTS
August 22, 2007
7:46 A.M.




	On his bicycle ride into Woods Hole the next morning, Mike thought about Kristen's e-mail.  He wondered about her use of the pronoun "I:"  "I" had a great vacation, "I" had a great trip to Prince Edward Island, "I" met a lot of people, "I" took a lot of pictures.  What's with the "I" bit, he wondered.  On the Westward, when Kristen talked about the trip she was planning, she had used "we" instead of "I".  So she obviously went with someone, probably her boyfriend.  So why didn't she just write "George and I" or "Nick and I" or "Emilio and I" or whatever the guy's name was.  Mike shook his head.  "Women!" he thought.  He pedaled faster.
	Mike pulled up at the Bigelow building just after eight A.M.  He locked his bike to a fence pole, and went downstairs to J-6.  To his surprise, the door to J-6 was open.  He went inside.  Someone was standing with his back to Mike, bent over one of the tables, staring intently at the ax head Mike had retrieved from the bottom of the Charles.  Even from behind, there was no mistaking the distinctive, curly-haired figure.  It was Derek Cartwright, Mike's advisor.
	"Morning!" Mike said.
	At the sound of Mike's voice, Derek lifted his head.  He paused for a moment, then turned slowly around..  For the briefest of instances, there seemed to be even more intensity than usual in Derek's eyes.  Then he grinned.
	 "So I hear you risked life and limb to rescue Prometheus,” Derek said. "We like that kind of enthusiasm from our new graduate students."
	"You know me,” Mike said.  "Any excuse to go for a swim."
	"How's the foot?” Derek asked.
	"It throbbed a bit last night, but its okay."  Mike walked over to the counter.  "That's quite an ax head, isn't it?  I don't think I've ever seen one that size before.  I wonder what it was doing on the bottom of the Charles."
	"It's from an old Alaskan lumberjack ax,” Derek said.  "I remember seeing them one summer as a graduate student when I went on a research cruise in the Bering Strait."  He paused for a moment, seeming  to stare at something far away.  Then, abruptly, he switched topics.  "One of the scientists from the biology department is giving a tour to some visiting NSF officials around ten-thirty this morning.  They want to see Prometheus.  Will it be presentable by then?"
	"I’ll get started right away," Mike said.  "I should have it cleaned up by then.  And I'll have the hull open.  So they'll be able to get a good look at the inside workings."
	"Great,” Derek said.  "I'll tell them its okay to stop by.  Well, gotta run."
	"See you,” Mike said.  But Derek was already gone.
	Mike dropped his backpack onto an empty chair.  He went over to the counter where Derek had stood and looked down at the ax head.  "Alaskan lumberjack ax, huh?"  He wondered if Derek was serious.  With Derek, it was always hard to tell.  Mike shrugged.  He walked over to Prometheus, and started cleaning.
	Mike pushed the cart holding Prometheus outside and hosed off the exterior of Prometheus’ hull.  There was a surprising amount of now dried river-bed mud caked around Prometheus' nose, where Prometheus had buried itself in the river bottom.  Mike wheeled Prometheus back into J-6, and started removing the screws holding the yellow plastic outer hull in place.  Prometheus' outer hull was split along the middle into an upper half and a lower half.  Mike lifted off the top half, and removed the screws holding a second plastic inner hull liner in place.  He lifted up the top half of the yellow plastic inner hull, and set it on the floor next to Prometheus.  Prometheus’ insides were now exposed.
	Mike made a quick visual inspection of the two glass spheres and the myriad of wires that were the heart and guts of Prometheus.  They looked none the worse for wear.  There was a big dried chunk of mud lying next to the front sphere, and some more dried mud spread out on the bottom of the hull.  But for the most part the insides were clean.  Mike picked up the big chunk of mud and looked at it for a second.  It was shaped like a cylinder, about two and a half inches in diameter and about five inches long.  Prometheus’ hull had a round hole in its nose for a sonar transponder.  The transponder was not yet installed, so the hole was open.  When Prometheus buried its head in the bottom of the Charles River, the mud must have squeezed through the hole like pasta dough through a pasta machine.  Mike tossed the chunk of mud into the sink in the back of the room.  He grabbed a spray bottle with water and rags, and started cleaning the remaining mud from inside Prometheus.
	Mike finished about a hour and a half later. He was washing his hands in the sink when there was a knock on the door.  He wiped his hands on a paper towel, walked over and opened the door.
	A group of six people, three men, three women, were standing in the hall.  One of them, a man Mike didn't recognize, spoke up.
	"These people are from the National Science Foundation.  They'd like to take a look at Prometheus.  Derek said it was okay."
	"Sure,” Mike said.  "Please come in."
	The group filed in through the door and went over to the still open hull of Prometheus.  They looked with interest at the glass spheres, electronic circuit boards, metal boxes, the bewildering array of electrical wires.
	Mike noticed the sound of running water and remembered he left the water running in the sink.  While the NSF group inspected Prometheus’ interior, Mike went over to the sink to turn off the water.  When he looked in the sink, he noticed that the running water had started to break up and wash away the dried cylinder of mud Mike had removed from inside Prometheus.  Something that looked like a yellowish white round stick or rod, maybe three-eighths of an inch in diameter, was sticking out where the mud had washed away.  Mike leaned over to take a closer look.
	"Excuse me," a voice said.  Mike looked up.  The speaker was an intelligent looking woman maybe in her mid-forties.  "Could you tell us about the design of your vehicle?  For example, why does it use these glass spheres?  Wouldn't metal pressure chambers be less expensive to make?"
	Mike turned away from the sink and walked back over to Prometheus.
	"Well, you're half right,” Mike said.  "If the spheres had to be custom manufactured, they would probably be more expensive and difficult to make than metal chambers.  These spheres, though, are actually off-the-shelf items.  They're made by a company right here in Falmouth that mass produces the spheres for use as instrumented descent buoys commonly used on oceanographic research ships.  The spheres are really quite amazing.  They've been pressure tested to six thousand meters in depth, and are surprisingly inexpensive.  In fact, the use of the spheres is a big reason why cost of Prometheus is much lower than similar vehicles being developed at other institutions."
	The woman nodded.  One of the men from the group spoke up.
	"I notice that there seems to be a computer of some kind in one of the spheres," he said.  "What else do the spheres contain?"
	For the next half-hour or so, Mike engaged in a lively discussion with the NSF group concerning various details of Prometheus' design.  Mike was in the midst of discussing the difficulties of communicating over any appreciable distances underwater with anything other than sonar when the man who Mike assumed was their host spoke up.
	"Sorry to break up the party, but we've got about two minutes to get to lunch.  If you'll please follow me."  He walked over to the door and waited.  
	“Would it be okay to ask just a few more questions?” the intelligent-looking woman asked.  “It should only take a few minutes.”
	“No,” the host said.  “I’m afraid not.  We have a tight schedule.  We have to go.”
	The NSF group looked at each other in silence.  After a short pause they thanked Mike for showing them Prometheus, and filed out the door.  Mike shook his head, not impressed with the WHOI host's behavior.  Probably one of those egocentric prima donna scientists.  Unfortunately, Mike was learning, there were quite a few around.  All too often, along with brilliance, came bad behavior.
	The host’s mention of lunch, though, made Mike hungry.  He dug his lunch bag out from his backpack and walked into the hall.  He closed the door, but didn't lock it.  During the day, the doors in WHOI were usually left unlocked.  He went outside.
	It was a perfect Cape Cod late summer day.  The sun was shining, the sky was a clear blue, the air was warm, humidity was low.  Mike walked past the souvenir and book shops down to the Woods Hole-Martha's Vineyard ferry docks.  There were a few picnic tables next to a snack bar by the docks.  Mike liked to sit there and eat his lunch, surrounded by the hustle and bustle of the thousands of tourists on their way to the famed island of Martha's Vineyard, visible only a few miles away.  Despite having to wait in line for the ferries, sometimes for hours, everybody always seemed to be in good spirits.
	Mike sat down, took a sandwich out of his lunch bag, and started eating.  He let his mind wander as he looked over the rows of cars waiting for the ferry.  Quite a few were carrying bicycles.  Mike had heard that bicycling was great on Martha's Vineyard.  Maybe later in the fall, when the tourists were gone, Mike would come down from Boston one weekend and check it out.
	Mike's thoughts shifted to the upcoming semester at M.I.T.  He would be taking classes full time for the next two semesters, something he hadn't done since he finished law school at Berkeley nine years ago.  This summer had been a nice introduction to the Joint Program, but next semester grad school would begin for real.  Unlike other M.I.T. grad students, who typically split their time between research and taking classes, students in the Joint Program took classes full time the first year.  That way, instead of taking one or two classes a semester for three years, Joint Program students finished their required classes in one year, after which they did research full-time.  The good news was that he only had to take one year of classes.  The bad news, from all Mike had heard, was that first year would be hell.
	Mike had taken one course over the summer, an advanced math class taught by an M.I.T. professor who came down to Woods Hole for the summer.  It was a tough class: three hour lectures twice a week, plus homework problem sets that took ten to twelve hours, if you were lucky.  Mike didn't relish the thought of taking four classes like that at a time.  The coming semester was going to be murder.
	Mike finished his last sandwich.  He got up, threw his empty lunch bag into a trash can, and headed back to J-6.




Chapter 7
CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
May 14, 1980
1:24 A.M.




	He ran, naked, terrified, down the dark alley, weaving desperately from side to side.  He had been running for what seemed like hours through the ruins of the burned-out city.  Hot, acrid smoke filled the air, scorching his lungs.  Red, blazing fireballs screamed though the night air, following him, hitting the ground with thunderous explosions.  Flames leptout, searing his skin.  He stumbled, caught himself, ran on.
	He had no more energy left.  He stopped, looked up.  Up ahead, bent, broken shadows of rusted out dockside cranes stood out black against the orange glow of the smoke-filled sky.  Beyond the cranes, he could see the shiny expanse of liquid black.  "The sea!” he thought.  The sea would be his escape.  He knew the sea.  In the sea he would be safe.  With desperate hope, he ran on.
	Another fireball exploded, knocking him to the ground.  He struggled, unsteadily, back to his feet.  He was close.  He could smell the salt in the air.  He forced himself to go on.  Twenty yards more, and he would be at the dock's edge.  He could almost feel the comforting embrace of the sea.  One step, two steps, he lurched on.
	The edge of the dock was still ten feet away when he heard the approaching, high pitched scream.  Another fireball!  Summoning all his remaining strength, he took three desperate strides.  The scream of the approaching fireball was deafening.  But he had made it!  He was at the edge of the dock.  All he had to do was step over the edge, and he would be safe!
	He lifted his leg, moved it forward, stepping off the dock, hovering over the sea below.  He looked down with hopeful anticipation.  Then he froze, shocked.  Convulsively, he pulled his leg back, horrified.  The sea below was not the calm, black, comforting pool he had expected.  Instead it was a teaming, phosphorescent ooze of horrific creatures.  Thousands of neoceratias spinifer, melanocetus johnsoni and lasiognathus sacrostoma, hideous-looking but normally small, harmless inhabitants of the deep sea, had grown more than ten-fold in size, creating ten-foot long, eerily glowing monsters, with huge mouths, three foot long teeth, knife sharp spikes covering the outsides of their bodies, and ten foot, suction cup covered tentacles reaching out on all sides.  The monsters were in a rage, viciously attacking each other in a frenzied feeding spree, making the sea churn like a pot of boiling water.  If he fell in, he would be torn to shreds.  For a moment he teetered precariously on the dock's edge.  Then, with a supreme effort, he steadied, caught his balance, pulled his foot back.
	"Wham!"  The approaching fireball crashed into the dock five feet behind him.  Its explosive shock wave slammed into him, propelling him over the side.  For a moment he seemed to hang in the air, suspended.  Then he fell, screaming, into the hideous mass of sea creatures below.




Chapter 8
WOODS HOLE, MASSACHUSETTS
August 22, 2007
1:26 P.M.




	It was about one-thirty PM when Mike returned to J-6 from his lunch.  The door was partially open.  Pete or Vijay were probably inside, working on Prometheus.  Mike pushed open the door and walked in.  He looked around.  No one to be seen.  Everything looked like he had left it.  Prometheus was still apart in the middle of the room.  The ax head was still sitting on the counter.  Mike shrugged.
	Mike was heading to the computer to check his e-mail when he remembered the lump of mud in the sink.  He went over to the sink, and looked down.  The lump of dried mud had pretty much been washed away when he accidentally left the water running in the sink.  What was left was a small mound of gooey, mostly liquefied mud.  The end of a brownish-white cylindrical object was sticking out of the mound.  It looked like the end of a chicken bone, maybe a drumstick.
	Mike pulled the object out of the mud.  As he did so, something fell off the end that had been buried in the remaining mound of mud.  Mike caught a quick glimpse of a round metallic object before it rolled and disappeared down the drain.
	Mike held the chicken-bone like object between his right thumb and index finger and lifted it up towards the ceiling lights so he could get a better look.  It really did look like a chicken bone, he thought, except it was a bit short and stubby.  About three-eighths of an inch in diameter, and an inch and a half or so long.  He looked at it a while.  Maybe it was some other kind of bone, Mike thought.  He didn't know anything about bones.  He'd save it and ask Kristen.  She was a biologist.  He'd tell her about his underwater adventure.  She'd be enthralled and fall hopelessly in love with him.  He grinned.  Then something cold and hard smashed the back of his head and he dropped, unconscious, onto the cold laboratory floor.



	"Hey Mike! Wake up! Are you all right?"  Mike slowly opened his eyes.  He saw Vijay's worried face looking down at him.  Mike sat up groggily.  "Ow!" he said, touching a growing bump at the back of his head.  "What happened?"
	"Looks like one of the overhead lights came loose and hit you in the head."  Vijay pointed at one of the double-tube fluorescent lights that dangled by its wire next to Mike.  "You've got a nasty bump on the head.  How are you feeling?"
	"I'm okay,” Mike said.  He slowly got to his feet.  As he stood up, his head started pounding.  He stood for moment.  The pounding subsided to a dull throb.  He looked at the light dangling from the ceiling, it's lower end coming down to his shoulders.  Funny, he thought.  The thing that had hit him in the head had felt a lot more solid than a sheet metal lighting fixture.  He looked around for the piece of bone that he had been looking at when he had been hit.  He didn't see it around anywhere.  His mind was still foggy.  He shook his head trying to think clearly.  That was a mistake.  His head just started pounding more.  He closed his eyes.
	When he opened them, Vijay was looking at him with concern.  "Didn't you hear me?” Vijay said.  "I said maybe you should go lie down.  You look pretty groggy.  I can finish up here."
	"Yes,” Mike said vaguely.  "Maybe I should go home."  He looked around the room, spotting his backpack on the counter by the back window.  Mike paused for a moment.  He had a vague feeling that something in the room was out of place, but couldn't quite put his finger on it.  He frowned.  It was hard to concentrate with the pain in his head.  Mike went over and picked up his backpack.  "Thanks for finishing up with Prometheus," he told Vijay.
	"No problem,” Vijay said.  "Just take care of yourself.  Do you need a ride home?"
	"No, I'm okay,” Mike said.  He walked over to the door.  "See you."
	"See you,” Vijay said.
	Mike retrieved his bike from the back of the Bigelow building and rode slowly home to Oyster Pond Road.  By the time he got there, his head wasn't pounding too badly, but he was still dizzy.  He went up to his room and went to bed.  Even though it was still early in the afternoon, he dropped quickly off to sleep.




Chapter 9
NEEDHAM, MASSACHUSETTS
August 23, 2007
1:46 A.M.




	A cool breeze blew through the bedroom window, ruffling the curtains, causing bands of moonlight to dance across the bedroom walls.  Kristen smiled.  She turned to say something to the dark-haired, stocky form lying next to her on the mattress, but stopped.  Steve was already asleep.
	Kristen turned back.  She was tired, content, but not sleepy.  She glanced over to the window.  She could see a sliver of moon in a corner of the window.  She scooted down a bit in the bed, until the whole moon was visible.  Steve grunted, turned, his naked back leaning against hers.  She marveled again, how good it felt, naked skin against naked skin.
	It had been a good summer, Kristen thought.  She was glad that she had decided to take the summer off, instead of jumping straight into grad school after getting her bachelor's degree in May.  She had gone on the Westward cruise, but that didn't count, that had been fun.  She smiled to herself as she remembered how the Captain had designated her to be the emergency helmsman.  Everyone on the cruise had been assigned a specific job to do during any emergency.  Hers had been to take the wheel.  No emergencies had actually occurred, but she had been ready.
	Kristen and Steve had had a good trip to Nova Scotia.  They spent two weeks, driving around, staying at inexpensive motels.  When Kristen and Steve were planning the trip, Kristen hoped she would be able to talk Steve into doing a biking-and-camping trip, but Steve refused.
	"I work my butt off all year,” Steve had said.  "I'm not going to work my butt off during my vacation, too."
	Kristen and Steve had been together for almost four years, since Kristen's first year at the University of Rhode Island, when she was a freshman, and Steve was a senior.  Kristen had worked for a couple of years as a nurse’s aid after high school before going to college, so she and Steve were the same age.  They were both headstrong, and had massive fights.  But that was to be expected in any relationship.  Kristen really loved Steve.  She only wished he would learn to love the outdoors, and outdoor sports like biking, hiking, swimming, like she did.  Unconsciously, she sighed.
	Her thoughts shifted to M.I.T., where classes would be starting in a little over a week.  She had found a decent apartment in Cambridge, about a mile north of M.I.T.  She would be sharing it with Alexandra, another new Joint Program student.  She was moving in tomorrow.
	Classes.  Yuk.  She grimaced.  She loved her field, marine biology, but she had already taken enough classes.  Kristen wanted to do real research, not just book learning.  She got a taste of field work last summer, and had excelled.  She was excited about working with her advisor, Tim Cannery.  Tim was a leading figure in pelagic/benthic research, the study of the interaction of surface and bottom ocean species.  This relatively new field of study held promise of helping explain, and hopefully reverse, the severe depletion of ocean fisheries.  Kristen could hardly wait to get involved.
	First, though, she had to get through one semester of classes.  She shouldn't complain, Kristen thought.  She was lucky to have worked out a deal with Tim to let her do research down at Woods Hole after only one semester at M.I.T.  Almost all of the other Joint Program students had to take a full year of classes.
	Pretty soon, Kristen thought, she would have to start looking for a place to live down in Woods Hole.  Maybe she could find a place near the beach, close enough to bicycle down to her laboratory in Woods Hole.  Mike had said she could have a room in the house he was buying.  Kristen wasn't quite sure how she felt about sharing a house with Mike.  They got along great on the Westward trip, but that had been under special circumstances.  Mike seemed to be a nice guy.  They knocked heads a bit at first, but they worked together well.  Mike really came through at the end of the trip, helping her analyze data she had gathered during the trip for a presentation to the rest of the students.  Kristen wondered how old Mike was.  He'd done a bunch of things, she knew.  Peace Corps.  A masters degree.  A law degree.  He sure wasn't any slouch.  He had to be in his late thirties, like the Navy guys, Pete and John.  Mike was somehow more boyish, though.  He always had that smile in his eyes.  Kristen smiled as she remembered how she had surprised Mike at the barbecue.
	Still smiling, Kristen closed her eyes, and drifted off to sleep.




Chapter 10
FALMOUTH, MASSACHUSETTS
August 23, 2007
1:56 A.M.




	In his dream, Mike was back in the Charles, battling with Prometheus, trying  to pull it out of the mud while the air in his lungs was running out.  He strained futilely, pushing Prometheus one way and then the other.  Suddenly, Prometheus popped free, and went floating up to the river’s surface.  Mike tried to follow.  He couldn't.  Something was holding one of his feet!  Mike looked down.  A slim white hand was sticking out of the mud.  Its thin but strong fingers, one wearing what looked like a gold school ring, were locked around his ankle.  Mike flailed his arms and his free leg desperately, trying to break away. The hand wouldn't let go.  Mike's lungs felt like they would burst.  He couldn't hold his breath any longer.  He had to breathe! He had to breathe!  He opened his mouth, tried to scream.  But instead, water rushed in.  He choked.  He coughed.  His lungs convulsed, trying to expunge the invading water.  It did no good.  More water rushed in.  After a while, his convulsions stopped.  He became calm, peaceful.  He felt lighter, lighter, his life slowly ebbing away.  Then Kristen's concerned but smiling face appeared in front of him.  He jerked awake.
	Mike opened his eyes.  The room was bright with moonlight.  He looked at the clock radio.  2:17 A.M.  Mike sat up.  He felt the back of his head.  The bump was still there, but smaller.  His headache was gone, his mind clear.  He knew what had bothered him about J-6.  The piece of bone wasn't the only thing that had been missing.
	Mike got up, walked quietly down the stairs.  He let himself out the back door.  He walked over to his car, a white 1982 Mercedes Turbodiesel station wagon.  Mike opened the back hatch, rummaged around in the toolbox he kept in the back of the car, selected a tool.  He put the tool in his backpack, quietly closing the hatch.  Mike grabbed his bicycle, turned on the generator powered light, and pedaled back towards Woods Hole.



	Woods Hole was dark, quiet.  Mike rode down Woods Hole Road and into the Bigelow building parking lot.  He leaned his bike against the wall and went to the side door of the Bigelow building.  No one was around.  The windows were dark.  Mike unlocked the door, and stepped into the dark stairway.  He groped along the wall for the light switch, and flicked on the stairway light.  He walked down the half-flight of steps to the basement.  Light from the stairway spilled about a third of the way down the basement hallway.  The rest was in darkness.  Equipment stored in the hallway cast eerie shadows.  Mike felt the hairs curl on the back of his neck.
	J-6 was about a third of the way down the hall.  Mike walked quickly down to J-6.  He unlocked the door, stepped inside, and turned on the light.  He closed and locked the door behind him.
	Mike turned and looked about the room.  He was right!  The ax head was gone from the back counter.  That was why, in his daze, he had thought something was out of place.
	Mike went over to the sink.  He looked up at the light fixture that Vijay thought hit Mike in the head.  It was now firmly back in place.  Vijay must have reattached it.  Mike could see no reason why it should have come loose.  He stood for a moment, thinking.
	The bright flash of headlights through a back window roused Mike out of his reverie.  A car was turning into the Bigelow building driveway.  There was no reason for Mike to do so, but some instinct made him run over to the light switch and flick off the lights.  Out side, the car’s headlights went out.
	Mike heard the outside door to the Bigelow building creak open.  Footsteps came down the stairs.  Mike quickly moved to the back right corner of J-6.  Several crates of cables and electrical equipment, relics from a past research cruise, were piled up near the wall.  Mike heard footsteps coming down the hall as he climbed over a large wooden crate and ducked down behind it.  The footsteps stopped in front of J-6.  Mike heard the scratching of a key in the lock, then a squeak as the door swung open.  Someone stepped inside, and turned on the light.
	Now that Mike's conscious mind had caught up with his instinctive actions, he felt pretty foolish.  What was he doing hiding like a scared kid behind these dirty wooden boxes?  It wasn't as if he was doing anything wrong.  With the light on, Mike could see that his hiding place wasn't that good, either.  Anyone who walked over to the right side of J-6 would be bound to see him.  Mike tried to think of some plausible explanation to explain his hiding in a corner of the dark, locked laboratory room.  He couldn't think of anything, so he stayed down, quiet.  He crossed his fingers that whoever had come in would leave again quickly without coming over to Mike's side of the room.
	Mike heard three footsteps from the other side of the room, then silence.  Mike shifted his position quietly, trying to find a crack between the boxes through which he could glimpse the other side of the room.  Mike finally found a gap he could see through.
	"I should have known!” Mike thought with relief.  The person in the room was Derek.  At the same time he recognized his advisor, a good excuse for Mike's being in the dark laboratory flashed into Mike's mind.  He had been working late, got tired, and laid down in the back of the room to catch some shut eye.  Considering his knock on the head, that was perfectly reasonable.  Mike decided to get out from behind the boxes, feigning having just woken up.  He took one last peak through the crack to see what Derek was doing.  What Mike saw made him stop.  Derek was leaning over the sink, staring down, his hands deep in the basin.  Derek's arms were moving, like he was washing his hands, but the faucet wasn't running.  After about half a minute, Derek raised a hand out of the sink to turn on the faucet.  The hand was covered in mud.
	Mike watched as Derek washed his muddy hands.  Derek dried his hands with a paper towel, then stepped away from the sink.  Derek stood for a moment, staring up at the light fixture.  He had a frown on his usually grinning face.  Derek walked over to the door, turned out the light, and left.  Mike heard Derek's footsteps recede down the hall, up the stairs, and out the side door.  
	Mike waited till he saw headlights leaving the Bigelow lot.  Then he turned on the lights, walked over and looked down into the sink.  It was empty.  The lump of Charles River mud Mike had removed from Prometheus was gone.  Mike took the pipe wrench he had brought with him out of his backpack.  He knelt down under the sink.  He disconnected the U-shaped drain trap, and turned it upside down.  A round, yellowish metallic object dropped out onto the floor.  Mike picked it up with his thumb and forefinger and held it up to the light.  It was a gold woman's class ring.  "Cambridge High School" Mike read. "1979."  Mike noticed an inscription on the inside of the ring.  He looked closer.  The inscription was three letters:  "M.E.R."
	Mike put the ring in his pocket.  He reconnected the drain trap, placed the pipe wrench back into his backpack.  He turned out the lights, and left J-6.  He made sure the door locked behind him.  Mike retrieved his bike from behind Bigelow, got on, and rode home.  Along the way, the moonlight sparkled brightly on the waters of Vineyard Sound.




Chapter 11
CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
May 14, 1980
2:05 A.M.




	He woke, thrashing, screaming, into pitch black darkness.  He looked around wildly.  Where was he? Where were the giant, mutated deep sea angler fish?  He sweated.  His heart pounded.  His hands shook violently.  His breath came in short, sharp, gasps.
	"Hey, what the fuck?" said a voice out of the darkness.  A light switched on, and the familiar sight of his shared dormitory room emerged from the darkness.  His roommate's haggard face stared over at him from a rumpled bed on the other side of the room.  "Shit, not again,” his roommate said.  “You oughta get some therapy, man."
	"I don't need no fucking therapy," he said.  "It was just a fucking nightmare."  He tried to calm down, but his heart was still pounding, and he still gasped for breath. 
	"Nightmare my ass," his roommate said.  "You've been waking up screaming every night for the last week!  Every time I'm about to get a couple of hours of sleep, there you go, screaming like a madman."  His roommate looked over at the clock radio.  The time was 4:22 A.M.  "Shit, I've got a hydrodynamics final in three hours."  He turned out the light.  "Do me a favor, huh?  Just don't have another one tonight, okay?  I haven't slept all week, and if I don't get at least a couple of hours of sleep before tomorrow's final, I'm fucked!"  He heard his roommate huddle back under his blanket.  "And get some fucking therapy!"
	"Asshole!" he thought.  "I don't need no fucking therapy!  I've got my own fucking therapy!"  Angrily, he got up, threw on jeans and a T-shirt, and stomped out of the room.




Chapter 12
CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
August 28, 2007
10:14 A.M.




	Mike found a parking spot on Memorial Drive less than a hundred yards past Ashdown House, the graduate dormitory in which he had been assigned a room.  He pulled the Mercedes into the parking spot, and got out.  He started walking towards the dormitory, then remembered that this was Boston, not Cape Cod.  He went back to the Mercedes, and locked the doors.
	A banner over the front entrance proclaimed "Welcome to Ashdown House!" as Mike walked up the path to the red brick building.  Tables with donuts and orange juice were set up on the walkway leading up to the front doors.  Mike grabbed a Boston creme-filled donut and a paper cup of orange juice, and walked through the doors to the front desk.  A pretty red-headed grad student was manning the desk.  
	"Hi,” Mike began,  "I'm a new resident and-"
	"You're here to check-in," she finished for him, flashing a brilliant, intelligent-looking smile.
	"Exactly,” Mike said, smiling back.  He liked smart women.  "What's your name?"
	"Hey, that's my line!” she said.  But then she conceded.  "I'm Randy.  And you are?"
	"Michael Werner.  That's W E R N E R,” Mike spelled automatically.
	"Here you are.  Room 205B,” Randy said.  "Right down the hall from me."  She gave Mike a very direct look.  Then she grinned.  "With those beautiful green eyes of yours, I'd trust you with my life," she said,  "but I can't give you your key until I see your student ID."
	Mike smiled, a little embarrassed, and handed over his M.I.T. student ID card.  Mike considered himself average looking at best.  He was six feet tall, a trim but strong 150 lbs.  He had been prematurely bald for the last ten years, and kept the remaining hair temples and back of his head cropped short.  He had a friendly smile, he knew.  But he never knew what to make of the complements he often got about his eyes.  
	Randy made Mike sign a receipt for his keys.  There were two keys: one for the door to the hallway, which was shared with room 205A, and one for the room itself, 205B.  Randy gave him a booklet about Ashdown House, and pointed him to the stairway to his room.
	"Thanks,” Mike said.  "See you around."  Randy gave him a brief smile, then turned as another student approached the desk.  "Don't tell me," he heard her say, "you're a new incoming grad student and want to check in.  What's your name?"  Mike turned, smiling, and headed to the stairway leading up to his new dorm room.
	The door facing the hallway said "Rooms 205 A-B."  Mike tried one of the keys.  Wrong one.  He tried the other one.  The door opened into a short, dark foyer.  Mike found the light switch, turned on the single overhead light.  Three doors led to the foyer.  There was a brass "A" on the door to the right, a "B" on the door to the left.  So the one on the left was his.  The door straight ahead would be the bathroom Mike would be sharing with his roommate and the two occupants of 205A.  
	Mike unlocked the door to 205B and stepped inside.  The room was square, about twenty feet long on each side.  There were two big windows along the front wall that looked out over Massachusetts Avenue.  There were two beds, two desks, two bookshelves, a closet, and a free-standing wardrobe.  One of the beds was by the front window, the other along the back wall.
	Mike dropped his duffel bag on the bed by the window, sat down on the bed, and looked around.  The room was old, sparse.  Oh well.  It was only for one semester.  Then he would commute up from his house on the Cape.
	Mike went back downstairs.  Another student had taken Randy's place at the front desk.  Along the wall, on the other side of the front desk, was a wall full of pictures.  Mike went over to take a look.  The pictures were old group photographs of the residents of Ashdown House, with cards below each photo listing the names of students in the picture and the year the photo was taken.  The photos all seemed to be over ten years old.  The oldest one was from 1979.  Mike looked at the students in the 1979 picture.  There were about forty male students, only two women.  A lot of the students had long, shaggy hair, and many had beards or mustaches.  Sideburns, too.  
	Mike studied the quarter century old picture.  It had been taken on the front steps of Ashdown House, which looked pretty much the same as now.  The picture must have been taken in the Fall.  The two trees in the picture had lost their leaves, and almost everyone in the picture was wearing a jacket, a sweater, or a sweatshirt.  A few were even wearing hats.  One student was wearing one of those Canadian knitted caps with the flaps over the ears.  "Tuks", thought Mike.  That's what they were called.  Or something like that.  Mike paused.  The student wearing the "tuk" looked familiar.  Mike ran his eye down the list of names below the picture.  James Bartley, Thomas Burns, Tim Cannery, Derek Cartwright.  Derek.  Of course!  Mike should have recognized him right away, but the "tuk" hid Derek's trademark, long curly hair.  Derek said he took a research cruise up to Alaska while he was a graduate student.  Maybe that's where got the cap.
	Mike thought again about Derek's odd behavior in J-6 two nights ago.  Did he take the ax head?  Why?  Why did he examine the mud in the sink?  Was he looking for the ring?  Could he have known about it?  Of course not.  There was no way anyone, let alone Derek, could have known that the piece of mud Prometheus scooped up when it got stuck in the bottom of the Charles River had anything in it, let alone the old class ring.
	Mike shook his head.  It was more likely Derek came into J-6 to wash his hands, noticed the mud in the sink, and simply cleaned it up.  That was all he did with his hands in the sink.  Mike's knock on the head must have made him paranoid.  
	Mike looked back over at the desk.  Randy was still nowhere to be seen.  Her shift must have ended.  Mike looked at his watch.  It was just after eleven-thirty in the morning.  Still early.  If he started back now, he could get back to Cape Cod in time to catch a little beach time.  Mike left Ashdown House and headed for his car.




Chapter 13
CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
May 14, 1980
2:44 A.M.




	He stormed into the basement in a rage.  It was a good thing he had made himself a copy of the exercise room key and no longer needed to borrow it from the front desk.  He didn’t have the patience.  He marched straight to the storage room door, not caring whether anyone saw him or not.  No one did.  He unlocked the door with his copied key.  He went in.  He flicked on the light, slamming the door behind him.
	He walked to the desk at the back of the room.  He picked up the box from the floor, slammed it down on the desk.  Angrily he pulled out the jar.  Hatefully he stared at what had once been the head of a beautiful girl.  Four months in the formaldehyde had turned the head into a bloated, wrinkled, faded monstrosity.  Looking at her no longer gave him a rush of power, like the first few weeks.  Now it only made him angry.  She was ugly.  He hated her!  She gave him nothing.  And without the power, he was helpless.  He needed the power!  He had to find someone new to give it to him.
	His first final was Wednesday.  He had two days left.  Maybe that was enough.
	He put the jar back in the box.  Holding the box under one arm, he left the room.  He walked down the hall to a big metal trash dumpster.  He opened the heavy metal lid, and dumped the box inside.  He let the lid drop shut.  He went up the stairs, leaving Ashdown House by the front door.  Dawn was turning the eastern sky a deep red as he turned right.  He headed toward MIT’s “Building 1,” the beginning of the long hallway called the "infinite corridor."




Chapter 14
CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
September 4, 2007
10:43 P.M.




	Mike looked at the red digits clock radio.  "10:43 PM," they said.  Mike looked down at the legal pad in front of him.  It was filled with scribbled equations.  He looked down at the waste paper basket nearly filled with crumpled, discarded sheets of paper.  He sighed.  Only a week and a half into classes, and already he was buried in homework and hopelessly behind.  He looked back down at the legal pad.  He looked again at problem three of his "Linear Control Systems" class problem set.  "Identify the state variables of the following systems," it said.  "Determine whether the systems are linear or non-linear," it continued.  "For each linear system, derive the state equations using force state variables and/or energy state variables, as appropriate."  Then followed diagrams of ten different physical systems, including mechanical spring-mass systems, electrical circuits, hydraulic systems.  When he handed out the homework assignment, Mike's professor said that the first problem set was "review" and it shouldn't be too difficult.  Not too difficult!  Maybe if you had a clue about what "state variables" and "state equations" were.  Mike didn't.  Mike had spent four hours doing the first two problems in the problem set.  He had worked on problem three for another two hours, and had made barely any progress.  He should have known better than to take a course for which he knew he didn’t have the required prerequisites.  But he brazenly thought he would quickly pick up whatever it was he was supposed to know.  It looked like he was wrong.
	He looked over to his roommate's empty desk.  Patrick was probably in the computer room.
	They had only been roommates for a week, but it was already pretty clear that Mike and Patrick had little in common.  Mike was a day person, an early riser, who didn't often stay up past midnight.  Patrick was a night owl, staying up until three or four A.M., sleeping till noon.  Hopefully they wouldn't drive each other completely crazy.
	Mike had to get up, he couldn't think anymore.  He needed to get some exercise.  He had done nothing but study for the last week.  He needed something to rejuvenate his energy.  It was high time he checked out the gym that was supposed to be in the basement.
	Mike wearily pushed his chair away from the desk.  He got up, pulled off his Levi's, put on a pair of shorts, left the room, and headed to the front desk.
	To Mike's disappointment, Randy was there.  Mike hadn't seen her at all since that first day when he checked in, a week and a half ago.  Instead, a male graduate student was manning the desk.  The label "nerd" ungraciously flashed into Mike's mind.  Mike walked up to the desk.
	"Hi,” Mike said.  "How do I get into the exercise room?"
	"Show me your I.D., fill in your name and room number in the sign-out book, and you can check out the key."
	Mike filled in his name and room number.  The desk clerk handed him the key.  "And where is it?” Mike asked.
	"Take the elevator to the basement, turn right, then left, then your first right, and it'll be the first door on your right."
	"Great.  Thanks.”
	"Just make sure to return the key to the desk after you're done."
	"Will do.” Mike turned away from the desk.  Then he turned back.  "Oh, by the way, do you know when it's Randy's turn at the front desk?"
	"She has her generals next week, so she's off studying.  She probably won't be back at work for another two weeks.  Thursdays are her nights."
	"Well, see you in about an hour,” Mike said.
	Mike got out of the elevator.  It opened into a short hallway with cement walls, painted white.  A bare light bulb hung from the ceiling.  To the left, some old, dorm-sized refrigerators were piled up along the wall.
	Mike turned right, like the desk clerk had said.  After about ten feet, the hallway dead-ended into another hallway.  This one was fairly long. It seemed to run along the west side of the west wing of Ashdown House.  What had the desk clerk said again?  Turn left, and then take your first left.   Mike turned left down the hallway.  After about thirty feet, he hit a passage running left.  This one had a sloping floor, heading down.  It was more poorly lit than the first two hallways had been.  Exposed pipes and cables ran along the ceiling, held up, every ten feet or so, by angle-iron brackets.  Mike saw that after about a hundred feet, the floor of the hallway leveled out, then started climbing again.  Mike couldn't see the end.  This must be a passage leading from the west wing of Ashdown House to the east wing, he thought.  There must be some obstacle in the way, a pipe or something, that the passage had to go under.  That's why it sloped down, leveled, then sloped up again.
	An odd place for an exercise room.  Mike turned into the hallway, and started down the incline.  Every few feet, he had to duck under one of the metal brackets hanging from the ceiling.  Mike reached a door, on the left side of the hall, about halfway to the bottom of the incline.  That must be the exercise room.  The door was dusty.  Hmm, Mike thought, guess it doesn't get used much.
	Mike put the exercise room key in the lock.  It didn't move.  Mike jiggled the key, turned harder.  The lock turned a bit.  Mike applied more pressure.  The lock turned stiffly, but eventually opened.  The gym door lock could use a little lubricating oil, Mike thought.  He pushed open the door.  A strong, musty, mildewy odor wafted out at him.  The gym could use a little Lysol, too.  Mike took a step inside, groped for a light switch.  He found one, and flicked it on.  A dim overhead light went on.  It was not a gym.  Wooden shelves with cardboard boxes lined the walls.  More boxes littered the floor.  A thick layer of dust covered everything.  The room looked like it hadn't been touched in years.  An old, forgotten storage room, Mike thought.  He must have made a wrong turn somewhere.  But the gym key had unlocked the door.  That was odd.
	Mike stepped further inside.  He walked over to one of the shelves, his feet stirring up dust clouds as he walked across floor.  He looked inside one of the boxes.  Inside were some old cans of paint.  He took one out.  It was covered in rust, the label long since gone.  Mike wondered how old it was.  He looked in some of the other boxes.  More cans of paint, some scraps of wall paper, old bottles of cleaners.  The room must have been used as a storage room for building maintenance.  Obviously, though, it hadn't been used in years, maybe decades.  Mike wondered why.
	Mike walked to the back of the room.  A small, dormitory-sized, dust-covered refrigerator sat in a corner.  A broken heap of what had once been a desk lay piled on the floor, the old desktop leaning against the wall.  Several empty plastic bottles lay on the floor next to the remains of the desk.  They, too, were covered with a layer of dust.  On one of the bottles, Mike thought he could make out a label.  Mike bent down, picked it up.  He blew on the front of the bottle.  A cloud of dust erupted in Mike's face.  He coughed, closed his eyes.  He kept them closed for a few seconds, waiting for the dust to disperse.  When he opened his eyes, he saw that the bottle did in fact have a faded blue and white label.  "M.I.T. Microbiology Laboratory," the label said.  "Formaldehyde 1000ml."  At the bottom of the label was a date of manufacture.  Mike squinted at the faded date.  It looked like "May 1979."
	Formaldehyde.  Mike frowned.  Formaldehyde didn't fit in with the paints and cleaners in the other boxes.  Mike picked up another bottle.  This time, he used his hand to wipe off the label.  The label on the second bottle said "M.I.T. Microbiology Laboratory.  10 % Buffered Formalin."  The second bottle was dated "February 1980."  
	"What the heck is formalin?" Mike thought.  He picked up a third bottle.  This one was small and brown.  There was no label.  He shook the bottle.  There were a few drops of fluid still inside.  He unscrewed the top, held the bottle to his nose, took a cautious sniff.  A sweet, pungent smell filled his nostrils.  He quickly replaced the top.  He started feeling dizzy.  He leaned back against the broken desktop, searching for support.  With a crash, the desktop toppled over and collapsed onto the floor.  Mike too went crashing to the floor, landing hard on his rear end. 
	For a moment, Mike just sat there, head down.  After a minute, his wooziness began to clear.  He gave his head a few vigorous shakes.  He looked behind him at the now even more broken desk.  He noticed a plastic bag pinned under what might once have been one of the desk's legs.  Mike reached over to pull the bag out from under the desk leg.  There was a loud slam.  He stopped, turned around.  The door to the room, which he had left half open when he entered, had slammed shut.  An errant draft of air?
	Mike turned back to the plastic bag.  He reached for it again.  Before he could grab it, the overhead light bulb flickered, then died.  The room was plunged into total darkness.
	Mike waited for his eyes to adjust to the darkness.  Nothing happened.  The blackness stayed complete.  Mike shivered.  The air in the room, which had been comfortably warm, suddenly felt lifeless, cold.  That was impossible.  Mike thought.  The temperature couldn't change that quickly.  His mind was playing tricks on him.  Still, he felt goosebumps rise on his arms.
	From what he remembered before the room went dark, Mike estimated the door was only about twenty feet away.  Mike carefully got to his feet.  Holding his hands out in front of him, Mike walked slowly forward.  He took one step, then another.  This wasn't going to be so bad, he thought.  Then his leg hit one of the boxes.  "Ouch!" He nearly tripped.  He moved forward more slowly.  After what seemed like an incredibly long time, his hands touched a flat surface.  Mike groped around, found the doorknob.  He turned the knob, and pulled.  Nothing happened.  Mike pulled harder.  The door finally squeaked open.  Mike stepped gratefully into the hall.  To his surprise, he found that his heart was pounding, and there were beads of sweat on his forehead.
	Mike was no longer interested in the gym.  He just wanted to get out of the basement.  He found his way back to the elevator, and took it up to the main floor.  Mike thought about asking the desk clerk about the room, and why the gym room key fit the lock, but decided not to.  He returned the gym key, and went back to his room.




Chapter 15
CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
September 6, 2007
6:34 P.M.




	Kristen was fuming as she left her microbiology seminar.  It was only the first meeting of the class, but she hated it already.  It had sounded good in the catalog.  A student-run seminar in which the students, not the professor, chose the topic for discussion for the following week.  Students would do their own research on the topic, then discuss their views in class.  Just the kind of thing that Kristen liked.  At least that's what she had thought.  She hadn't expected to be stuck in class with a bunch of pretentious, prejudiced jerks.  So what if she was only a first year graduate student, she thought.  Her ideas were at least as good as anyone else's.  But the ten or so other students in the seminar wouldn't listen to her.  They were all second and third year students, knew each other, had their own cliques.  Well, she'd show them, Kristen thought.
	Kristen's seminar had been on the eighth floor of the "Green” building," a tall building in the center of the M.I.T. campus that housed most of the earth science departments.  She took the elevator to the ground floor, and walked out the revolving doors.  The Green building was taller and slimmer than most of the other buildings at M.I.T.  It had its own courtyard.
	It was just after six-thirty in the evening.  Kristen walked across the courtyard, and entered the "infinite corridor," the long, quarter-mile long hallway that led from the courtyard through M.I.T.'s main campus buildings (called Buildings 1, 2, 3 and 4) and out to Massachusetts Avenue.  It was the campus' main artery, and was almost always full of students.
	Kristen walked down the infinite corridor, heading towards Massachusetts Ave.  She was still brooding about her seminar, and nearly collided with a group of four students who burst out of a door right in front of her.  She stopped short, barely avoiding getting trampled.
	Kristen looked at the room the students had come out of.  It was one of the "Athena Clusters," one of the computer rooms with computers hooked up to M.I.T.'s computer network, called "Athena."  The computer rooms at M.I.T. were always crowded.  You could never find a free computer.  Kristen preferred using her own laptop, which she had left in her apartment.  Glancing though the glass door to the computer room, Kristen saw the unfamiliar sight of two unoccupied computers.  Taking advantage of this rare gift, Kristen quickly stepped inside and sat down in front of one of them.  Kristen typed in her login name, "Kristen" and password, "dreamer."  She checked her M.I.T. e-mail.  A couple of notices about her classes, nothing else.  That wasn't too surprising, since she hadn't told anyone her M.I.T. e-mail address yet.  Then she went to her e-mail account at U.R.I.  She had fifteen messages.  She scanned the list of senders.  Mostly spam.  The last name on the list said "mikew@mit.edu."  Her eyes lit up.  That must be Mike's new M.I.T. address.  She clicked on the message.

From: mikew@mit.edu 
Date:  Sep 6 16:14:17 2007
Subject: Re: its a full moon, sorry
To: kcw@uri.edu

Hi Kristen!
	Thanks for your e-mail!  It got to me just at the right time.  I was about to hang it all up and go back to L.A.  (only partly kidding).  Thanks for the pep talk.
	Sorry for taking so long to get back to you, but I was on a secret mission for the president trying to track down where all the socks disappear to when you put them in the dryer.  Turns out they don't disappear at all.  Instead, the sock manufacturers have deviously devised a way to weave subliminal messages into the socks themselves, making us think that socks are missing, when in fact they're not.  That way, they get us to keep buying socks, even though our closets are full of them.  The president has asked me to look at the disappearing pen problem next.
	I know what you're thinking.  And you're right.  I'm weird.
	Anyway, sounds like you had a good summer.  Hope your first week at M.I.T. hasn't been too bad.  Mine hasn't been bad, except that I can't figure out how after one week I can already be two weeks behind.  Must be one of those advanced calculus things I'll learn next semester.
	Hey, guess what?  I got the mortgage for the house!  The closing is in two weeks.  I won't be able to move in for good until next semester, but at least I'll have a place to escape to on weekends.  I'll be renting out the upstairs, which has a living room, a master bedroom, and a bath.  You've still got first dibs on it, if you want.  If you ever head down to the Cape, I'll give you the key, and you can check it out.
	Hope your apartment is working out okay.  How's Alexandra?  I haven't seen her since the Westward trip.
	I seem to remember you saying on the Westward that you worked in a forensics lab in New York one summer.  If that's the case, I need to ask you something.
	Well, I better get back to the books.  Give me a buzz sometime, and maybe we can get together for lunch and figure out how to get on with this changing the world thing.  My phone here in the dorm is 257-2334.
	Ciao.
	-Mike

	Dryers and socks?  Kristen thought.  Mike's right.  He is weird.  But Kristen was smiling as she signed off the computer.  She got up, grabbed her backpack, and left the room.  Her dark mood had vanished.  Her steps were light as she walked down the hall, left the building, turned right, and headed home.




Chapter 16
CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
May 14, 1980
4:47 A.M.




	He strode down the infinite corridor, out the door, and across the courtyard.  He followed a walkway leading to a four story, glass-walled, modern looking building.  He didn't notice the first of the sun's rays reflecting off the top floor windows as he walked up to the building's big glass double doors.  A sign next to the doors said "M.I.T. Medical Center."  He walked through the doors.  He ignored the reception desk, which was manned twenty-four hours a day, and instead walked up to a building directory hanging on the wall.  He scanned the directory for a moment, then abruptly turned and walked over to a stairway.  He climbed to the second floor, two steps at a time.  He walked down a hallway till he arrived at a door marked "Medical Center Library."  Like all libraries at M.I.T., this one was open around the clock.  He opened the library door and stepped inside.



	He walked down the dark aisle, scanning the shelves of dusty volumes.  He reached up, and pulled a slim, black-covered book from the library shelf.  "M.I.T. Medical Center," the cover said.  "Recommended Procedures for Preparing Cadavers for Study."
	He took the book over to one of the study cubicles, sat down, and opened the cover.

INTRODUCTION TO EMBALMING
	A cadaver must be properly embalmed to preserve the cadaver for anatomical study.  The preferred technique is arterial embalming using a gravity-tank apparatus fixed approximately three to four feet above the body. The embalming fluid used consists of a mixture of propylene glycol (to keep muscles moist); 10% buffered formalin; isopropyl alcohol (a preservative); and liquefied phenol (to prevent mold). 
	There are a number of embalming techniques used for different purposes.  Funeral homes emphasize appearance over long-lasting preservation.   The M.I.T. medical center, however, emphasizes long term preservation.  Using the procedures described below, M.I.T. has been able to preserve cadavers for over a year when stored at room temperature, and up to five years using refrigeration.

	Five years!  He thought excitedly.  He read on.  He skimmed hungrily through a chapter on embalming technique, finally finding what he was looking for:

EMBALMING FLUID
	The gravity-tank is filled with embalming fluid consisting of: 
		1 gal. isopropyl alcohol
		2 gal. propylene glycol
		1/4 gal. amphyl
		1/2 gal. 10% buffered formalin
		50 oz. liquefied phenol

He copied the formula carefully into his notebook.  He picked up his backpack, put the book back on the shelf, and left.




Chapter 17
CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
September 7, 2007
7:46 P.M.




	Mike finished the last bite of his turkey burger.  He sat for a moment, looking at his empty plate.  He sighed.  So much for his dinner break.  Time to get back to his "Signals and Systems" problem set.  He glanced at his watch.  7:48 pm  He could put in another three hours tonight, then another two hours tomorrow morning before his nine o'clock "Structural Mechanics" class.  That made a total of five hours.  So far, he had finished half of the problems.  With luck, he should be able to finish the rest of the problem set in time.
	Mike picked up his dishes and walked over to the sink.  He washed his plate, his frying pan, his knife and his fork.  He put them in the cardboard box he used to carry food and utensils from his dorm room to the kitchen, picked up the box, and started back to his room.  He walked down the red carpeted main hallway that led from the West wing, where the second floor's kitchen was located, to the East wing.  He passed the West wing lounge, and turned right, into the hallway leading to the East wing's dorm room.  As usual, at this time of night, there were four or five students in the lounge, studying.  Mike's room was about halfway down the hall.  He was still a couple of doors away when a door to Mike's left suddenly opened.  A figure rushed out, and slammed into Mike, knocking the box out of his arms.  Plates, condiments, cutlery went flying.  "Hey!” Mike exclaimed.  "Take it easy!"  He bent down to retrieve the box, and started gathering up the items strewn over the floor.
	"I, I'm sorry," a nervous sounding voice said.  Mike looked up.  His face showed surprise, then shock.  The speaker was Randy.  She looked awful.  Her hair was scraggly.  Her skin had a sallow, bluish tint.  She looked at Mike from dark, sunken eyes.  "I fell asleep.  I'm late for my geochemistry general!"  She raised her hands in a helpless gesture, turned and ran down the hall.
	Mike looked after her, startled.  He could hardly believe that the nervous, forlorn, insecure woman he had just seen was the perky, confident, smiling ball of energy who had greeted Mike when he had first checked into Ashdown House.  Could Randy be that stressed out about taking her "generals?"
	"Generals" were the doctoral qualifying exams that every graduate student pursuing a PhD had to take, and pass, before formally becoming a PhD candidate.  During the summer, Mike had met a few students who had just been through their generals.  They looked drained, but glad to have gotten through them.  At that time, Mike hadn't known anything about "generals," and so hadn't paid much attention.  Since then, Mike had found out a bit more.  In Mike's university department, Ocean Engineering, graduate students had to take their generals within two years of beginning graduate school.  The generals consisted of three written examinations, and three oral examinations, each on different engineering topics.  The generals were spread over a week, the orals usually taking place in the evening.  They were an all or nothing matter.  If you passed, you could continue working towards your PhD, and you'd have a three year reprieve before having to do your doctoral "defense," which was supposed to be even worse than the generals.  If you failed, you were out.  Luckily, Mike thought, he didn't have to worry about his own generals just yet.  His regular course work was tough enough.  Mike wondered whether he would be as stressed out as Randy was when his turn came to take his generals.
	Mike finished picking up the pieces from the floor.  He walked down the hall to the door to his dorm room.  Patrick was sitting at his desk as Mike walked in.
	"Hey,” Mike said.
	"There was a call for you,” Patrick said.  "The name and number are on your desk."
	Mike walked over to his desk, put down the box, and picked up a torn slip of notebook paper.  "Kristen," it said.  "385-9337."
	Mike's heart beat a little faster.  "When did she call?"
	"Oh, about fifteen to twenty minutes ago,” Patrick said.  "She said you could call her till about eleven-thirty."
	Mike picked up the phone and dialed Kristen's number.  For some reason, his palms were sweaty and he had butterflies in his stomach.  He must have eaten too fast, he thought, as the phone rang once, twice, three times.
	"Hello?" a female voice said.  It wasn't Kristen's voice.  It was Alexandra.  Next to Kristen, Alexandra was the person he liked best on the Westward trip.  Mike hadn't seen or been in touch with her in the three months since then.
	"Hi, Alexandra?” Mike said.
	"Yes?" Came the hesitant reply.
	"This is Mike.  From the Westward trip?"
	"Oh.  Hi!  How are you doing?  Are you up here in Cambridge now?"
	"Yeah.  Living in the dorms, pretending to be a graduate student and all that.  So far no one has seen through my disguise.  I figure I'll be able to keep it up till my first quiz.  How about you, how are you doing?”
	She laughed.  "Keeping busy.  I'm still finishing up a paper on the research I did in the summer, I've got four classes, and my advisor has me analyzing a ton of seismological data.  But its not as bad as it sounds.  I have nearly two hours left over each day to eat and sleep."
	"Ouch!” Mike said.  "I was going to complain about being so busy that I've had to cut my Monday through Friday golf routine down to Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, only.  But I think now I'll keep that to myself."
	"Yes, you certainly wouldn't want some poor slaving exhausted soul to be burdened with troubles like that as well,” Alexandra said.
	"Right.  That would be insensitive,” Mike said.  He paused.  "Is Kristen around?"
	"Yeah, hold on.  I think she's in the shower."
	"Hey Kristen!"  Mike heard Alexandra call.  "You've got a phone call!"  There was a pause, an indistinct sound.  Then,  "It's Mike!"  Another indistinct sound.  Then Alexandra's voice back in the phone.  "She'll be right there.  I've got some pasta about to boil over, so I've got to go.  But it was good talking to you."
	"You too,” Mike said.  He heard a clang as Alexandra put down the phone, followed by receding footsteps, a muffled "Damn!," the clink of pots and pans.  A little later, a door banged, running footsteps, Kristen's breathless "Hi!" in the receiver.
	"Hi yourself,” Mike said.
	"I got your e-mail.  You're a nut,” Kristen said.
	"Yes,” Mike said.  "But don't tell anyone.  It's my secret weapon for getting through my classes.  So how are you doing?  Suffering from any summer-withdrawal symptoms?"
	Kristen laughed.  "I think I have a terminal case.  I hate all my classes, and I think all my classmates are jerks.  All I want to do is get out of here and go down to Woods Hole as soon as I can to start doing some real research."
	"Yeah, I know how you feel,” Mike said.  "But didn't you say you've only got classes full-time for one semester?  Unlike the rest of us, who have to go through a whole year."
	"Well, I don't even know if that's going to happen now,” Kristen said.  "Tim, my advisor, is now dropping hints that maybe it would be a good idea for me to take a whole year of classes after all before working in the lab.  But no way I’m going to stay up here a whole year.  I only came to the Joint Program because Tim promised I'd be able to do full time research after the first semester.  I'm not going to let him renege now."
	"Damn right!” Mike said.  "And if he doesn't abide by what he promised, I'll sue the bastard!"
	Kristen giggled.  "I may just take you up on that."
	"So, do you want to do lunch sometime?"
	"How 'bout tomorrow?” Kristen asked.
	"You want to meet over by the lunch trucks, say about twelve-thirty?"
	"Can we make it one o’clock instead?  I've got a twelve o'clock class."
	"I've got a class at three, so one o’clock is good for me."
	"Great!  See you tomorrow at one."
	"One it is. Lunch wagons ho!” Mike said, hanging up with a grin.
	Kristen held the phone for a moment, then hung up.  She was smiling, too.




Chapter 18
CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
May 14, 1980
6:11 A.M.




	It was full daylight now but still early.  He left the Medical Center and walked to the Green Building.  He rode the elevator to the eighth floor.  He stood facing the door of the main microbiology laboratory.
	Through the frosted glass window, he could see that the room lights were still off.  Good.  No one was inside.  He took his keys out of his pocket.  He unlocked the door, and stepped inside.  He closed and locked the door.  He left the room lights off.
	He weaved around laboratory tables to a cabinet along the back wall.  His eyes searched the rows of glass and plastic bottles visible through the glass of the cabinet doors.  He opened one of the doors, and took out a brown glass bottle.  He took a smaller brown plastic bottle out of his backpack.  He held his breath as he opened both bottles, and poured a clear liquid from the larger brown glass bottle into the smaller brown plastic bottle.  He closed both bottles.  He put the brown glass bottle back into the cabinet.  He put the small plastic bottle back into his backpack.
	He picked up his backpack and walked to a door set into the back wall of the laboratory.  He took out a key and unlocked the door.  He opened the door, revealing a ten-foot deep storage room with dozens of white plastic bottles stacked on shelves along both walls.  He picked out three bottles and put them in his backpack.  He closed and locked the storage room door.  He listened for sounds from the other side of the laboratory door.  Hearing none, he unlocked the laboratory door, and stepped outside.  He locked the door behind him, and headed down the hall to the elevator.




Chapter 19
CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
September 8, 2007
5:45 A.M.




	"Barroom!"  Mike jerked awake as the blare of a semi-truck horn blasted through the open window next to his bed.  He looked over to his clock radio and groaned.  5:45.  To have any chance of finishing his “Circuits and Systems” problem set, he'd have to get up now.  To heck with the homework set!  He thought.  With his roommate’s rustling papers and having his desk light on until four o'clock in the morning, Mike had again gotten less than two hours of real sleep.  He buried his head in his pillow.
	A moment later, he reluctantly tossed his pillow onto the floor.  He got up, walked quietly across the dorm room, out the door, and into the shower.  Fifteen minutes later he grabbed his textbooks and iPod, and walked down the hall to the second floor study room.  As usual, at this time of the day, the study room was empty.  Mike sat down at one of the two tables, spread out his textbook, notes, and problem set, plugged his headphones into his iPod, cranked up the sound, and hunkered down to work.
	An hour and a half later, Mike looked at his watch.  He looked down at the mathematical equation-covered page he was working on.  He sighed.  Only half an hour to go before his first class.  He looked down again at the problem he was working on.  He shook his head, exasperated.  He had worked at a good pace, cranking out equations at a fast clip to the sounds of U2, Green Day, Killers, Linkin Park and the other alternative rock bands playing on his iPod.  He finished the first three of the four remaining problems in barely an hour, giving him hope that he might get done early enough for a leisurely breakfast before class.  He might even get to chance to read the newspaper and find out what had been going on in the world during the past week.  But the last problem was a killer.  He had worked on it for half and hour and had gotten nowhere.  Unless he figured out what he was doing wrong, and fast, he wouldn't have time for any breakfast at all, let alone a leisurely one.
	Mike looked back through his three pages of scribbled equations.  He frowned.  Why wasn't he getting the right solution?  He got the first three problems to work out, so he must be on the right track.  The homework problems all involved using Laplace transforms to obtain transfer functions for various electronic circuits.  The circuits for each of the problems was different, but the basic methodology was the same.  He went back to the beginning of problem four, and for the fourth time reviewed his equations.  In the middle of the second of three pages of equations, he suddenly stopped.  He grabbed his textbook, flipped through some pages, found what he was looking for.  Damn! He forgot a minus sign in one of his transforms!  So the last page and a half of his attempted solution were garbage.  He would have to redo everything after the middle of the second page.
	Linkin Park was singing "Let Mercy come and wash away all I’ve done" on the iPod.  "Tell me about it!" Mike thought, smiling grimly.  Determinedly, he set his pen to paper, feverishly jotting down line after line of equations.  Fifteen minutes later, he triumphantly threw down his pen, pumping his arm in a "Yes!" gesture.
	Mike gathered up his books, and walked quickly back to his room.  He opened the door quietly.  Patrick was still asleep.  Quickly, but as quietly as he could, Mike poured himself a bowl of cereal and a glass of O.J.  He shoveled the Spoon-Sized Shredded Wheat into his mouth as fast as he could, gulped down the orange juice, grabbed his backpack, and hurried out the door.  He walked into his Structures class just as the Professor was beginning the lecture.




Chapter 20
CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
May 15, 1980
12:51 A.M.




	Vicki Navarro, as usual, was dressed to kill.  Her high-heeled black leather boots showed off her long, lean, dancer's legs to perfection.  Her skimpy black bikini top, displaying what she knew was a scandalous amount of skin and cleavage, barely contained her firm, shapely, generous breasts.  Her short, more than skin tight, Levi's hot pants left no doubt that on the other side of the blue cotton denim was nothing other than smooth, sensuous skin and warm, moist hollows.  As usual, dozens of pairs of intense, hungry eyes followed her around all evening.  
	Vicki was a cocktail waitress at the Cambridge Brew House, a pub-style bar located at the corner of Central Avenue and Massachusetts Avenue, about a half mile north of the M.I.T. campus.  The Brew House catered to a variety of customers: young professionals who worked in Boston but preferred living in the quieter small town atmosphere of Cambridge; local teenagers just over the legal drinking age of eighteen; construction workers and other trades people engaged in the massive amount of building and rebuilding that was going on in Cambridge, occasional Harvard students journeying the three miles down from Harvard Square.  But the biggest group of customers were stressed out students from M.I.T.  The other waitresses thought the M.I.T. guys were weird.  So while they flirted with the other customers, they served the M.I.T. students, but nothing more.  Vicky, however, paid them extra attention.
	Truth be told, Vicki thought, the M.I.T. students were a little strange.  But they couldn't help it.  Cooped up in their classrooms and laboratories all day, studying all hours of the day and night, no women around, it was no wonder they were always intense, hyped-up, stressed out, and didn't have a clue how to talk to women.  Vicki had a cousin who had gone to M.I.T.  Before M.I.T., he had been a chunky, bright-eyed kid with a sharp wit and an easy smile.  He emerged from M.I.T. four years later underweight, with sallow skin, intense and sunken eyes, a sharp temper, a sour expression, and a bachelor's degree in applied physics.  She hadn't seen him laugh since.  So Vicki had sympathy for the M.I.T. students.  She dressed up for them, flirted with them, tried to brighten their miserable lives.  What the heck.  It didn't cost her anything.  Quite the opposite.  The M.I.T. students were very appreciative.  Once again, she would be going home with more than twice as many tips as any of the other waitresses.
	The Brew House closed that night at one A.M.  Vicki stayed around for a few minutes after closing, chatting with the waitresses and bartenders.  Then she put on her short leather jacket, said her goodnights, and left.  
	The Brew House didn't have its own parking lot.  Vicki’s old VW Beetle was parked on a side street a block and a half away.  It took her less than five minutes to get there.  She unlocked the car door, got inside.  She put the key in the ignition, turned the key.  The engine roared instantly to life.  She smiled and padded the dashboard.  "Way to go, baby," she murmured.  She sat back in the driver’s seat and let the engine warm up.  An old boyfriend told her that the two most important ways to save wear and tear on an engine were to change oil regularly and to let the engine warm up before putting it in gear.  She long ago dumped the boyfriend.  But she changed her oil religiously every three thousand miles, and always let her engine warm up a minute or so before driving.
	She shifted the gear lever into first and was about to ease off on the clutch when there was a tapping on her side window.  Startled, she looked up.  A face with thick, black, horn-rimmed glassed was peering into the window.  She recognized one of the M.I.T. students who had been in the bar.  He was not a regular, but he had given her a good tip.  He knocked against the window with one hand.  Vicki couldn't see the other one.  He had a pleading look on his face.  His lips moved, but the engine drowned out what he was saying.  "What now!" she thought, exasperated.  She really wanted to get home.  With a sigh, she rolled down the window to hear better.  She still couldn't make out what he was saying.  She stuck her head out of the window.  As she did so, the student's hands shot out.  One hand grabbed the back of her neck.  The other clamped a white cloth over her mouth and nose.  The cloth was damp.  A sickly sweet smell infiltrated her nostrils, making her dizzy.  "Don't breathe!" she told herself.  "Don't breathe!"  She tried to jerk her head out of his grip, but with her head sticking awkwardly out of the window, she couldn't get any leverage.  She tried to stick her arms out the window to hit him, but couldn't do that either.  Her lungs were starting to ache.  "Don't breathe!" she thought.  "Don't breathe!"
	It was too late.  She just couldn't hold her breath any longer.  She coughed, gasped, struggled, tried desperately not to breathe in.  But though her mind fought on, her body, deprived of oxygen, gave in.  As she slipped into unconsciousness, the last thing she saw was two dark eyes, strangely intense through the lenses of the horn-rimmed glasses, fading into a sea of blackness.




Chapter 21
CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
September 8, 2007
11:51 A.M.




	Sitting in his usual spot in the auditorium, about one-third of the way back from the front, Mike let his mind zone out after another intense forty-five minute lecture.  He watched idly as the “Circuits and Systems” professor and a lab assistant set up equipment for some kind of demonstration.  "Circuits and Systems," also known by its course number “6.003,” was a hard-core undergraduate electrical engineering class that graduate students in other disciplines, like Mike in ocean engineering, could take for graduate credit.  Mike had always liked electronics, and was pretty good at fixing radios, tape recorders, and other electronic gadgets.  But he didn’t have any formal electronics training.  He thought he would enjoy 6.003.  And maybe he would have.  If he had more time.  But, like in his other courses, the homework took so much time and effort that he couldn’t enjoy what he was learning.
	Mike took advantage of the break in the action to look around at his classmates.  Being a part of the undergraduate electrical engineering core curriculum, the 6.003 class was far larger than any of Mike's other classes, which were strictly for graduates.  Mike guessed there were about 250 students in the class, most of them undergraduates.  Somewhat surprisingly, at least compared to Mike's undergraduate engineering experience fifteen years earlier, nearly half the students in the class were women.  And some very attractive ones at that.  Mike's eyes wandered over to the front row, where the graduate student teaching assistants, usually referred to as "TA's," sat during lectures.  His glance came to rest on Barb Epstein, a smart, spunky, and incredibly sexy TA.
	The typical graduate course at M.I.T., Mike discovered, included two different kinds of class sessions per week.  The main sessions were called "lectures."  The “lectures” were supplemented by one or more "recitations."  “Lectures” were generally taught by the actual course professors.  “Recitations” were typically taught by graduate student TA's.  At other universities, professors were typically more interested in doing research than teaching.  As a result, those professors were often bad teachers who left most teaching to their graduate student teaching assistants.  Mike had been surprised, and impressed, that at M.I.T. the professors seemed to sincerely enjoy teaching, and most were good teachers.
	In 6.003, there were two lectures each week, on Mondays, and Wednesdays, from eleven to twelve o’clock.  In addition, there were two recitations, on Tuesdays and Thursdays.  Finally, there was a “tutorial” class each week.  For the recitations, the students were divided into six groups of about forty.  In 6.003, unlike his graduate classes, the recitations weren’t taught by TA's, but by assistant professors.  The TA’s taught the “tutorials.” The tutorials had the smallest groups, typically about ten students.  The 6.003 class was extremely well managed and organized.  The only thing Mike didn't like about it was that he wasn’t assigned to Barb Epstein’s tutorial.
	The demonstration was ready to go.  The topic of the lecture had been feedback control and stability.  To demonstrate a feedback system, the professor had set up a mechanism that consisted of a small metal car on a three foot track of rails.  The bottom end of a two-foot long rod was attached to the car with a pivot.  The professor tried to balance the rod with its free end in the air, but it kept falling over, rotating about the pivot.
	"As you can see," he said, "this rod, which acts as an inverted pendulum, is an inherently unstable system.  But what Jim here has done, he has connected a potentiometer to the pivot shaft.  The potentiometer provides a means to measure the angle of the pendulum.  The potentiometer provides feedback to the cart by sensing which way the pendulum is falling.  Jim has wired up a proportional controller that generates a voltage that is proportional to the angle of the pendulum.  The voltage is applied to the motor on the cart to move the cart in the direction in which the pendulum is leaning.  If any of you have ever balanced a broomstick in the palm of your hand, you'll know what I'm talking about."  The professor pointed to a dial mounted on a circuit board next to the cart.  "This is a gain control.  It controls the level of the voltage applied to the motor.  Lets start with a low setting, and see what happens."
	He tilted up the pendulum until it was more or less straight up, and nodded to his assistant.  The assistant flipped a power switch, and the professor let go.  The pendulum started tilting to the right.  The cart moved to the right, too, trying to correct the pendulum's tilt.  But the cart went too slow, the pendulum kept falling.  The cart reached the end of the track, stopped abruptly, and the pendulum hit the table with a bang.  The class, including, Mike, laughed.  "That's me trying to catch up with my homework!" Mike thought.
	"Now lets see what happens at a high gain setting."  The professor twisted the gain control knob.  He pushed the cart back to the center of the track, lifted up the pendulum, and let go.  This time the cart weaved wildly from side to side, keeping the pendulum from falling down, but causing it to swing wildly first one way, then the other.  "As you can see, at too high a gain setting, the control system keeps the pendulum from falling down, but at a cost of excessive control action."  While the cart kept racing side to side, the professor slowly turned down the gain control.  The back and forth oscillations gradually decreased.  Finally, the cart appeared to almost stand still, the pendulum standing perfectly straight.  The professor looked up triumphantly.  "The trick with a proportional controller," he said, "is to have just the right amount of gain, to get the right amount of balance."
	With that, the lecture ended.  As Mike filed out of the auditorium, he reflected on the demonstration.  "That's what I'm missing," he thought.  "Balance."  He looked at his watch.  It was just after twelve noon.  He wasn't meeting Kristen till one o’clock.  He decided to return to his dorm room.  Maybe he would be able to squeeze in a half-hour of work on his Hydrodynamics problem set, which was due the day after tomorrow.  He sighed.  "No rest for the damned," he thought.
	Forty minutes later, Mike looked up from his Marine Hydrodynamics text book, and glanced at his watch.  12:43.  Damn!  He'd been so caught up trying to figure out the "La Lagrangian" component of Bernoulli"s equation for fluid dynamics that he lost track of time.  If he didn't hurry, he'd be late for his lunch date with Kristen.
	Mike jumped up from his bed and quickly tossed his Hydrodynamics textbook and a notebook into his backpack.  He was about to leave the room, when he stopped.  He turned around and went back to his desk.  He opened a drawer, and dug around till he found what he wanted:  the realtor’s specification sheet for his house.  He pulled it out.  As he was shutting the drawer, he noticed a glint of gold showing through under some papers.  The ring!  He had been so caught up in his class work that he had completely forgotten it.  He put the ring into his pocket.  Then he turned and hurried out of the room.




Chapter 22
CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
September 8, 2007
12:52 P.M.




	Her mind wouldn't rest.  She was emotionally spent, physically exhausted.  But her mind raced on.  Wild, unconnected, incomplete thoughts.  Weird, black, unclear images.  She could feel her brain working at an uncontrolled, feverish pace, but she was aware of no conscious thoughts.  It was as if all her thoughts were being sucked away, into a vast black hole.  She couldn’t think.  But she could feel.  And what she felt was cold, dark unending despair.
	She struggled up from the bed, lurched unsteadily to her dresser mirror.  She looked up.  A ghoulish figure with straggly hair, swollen red eyes, sallow skin stared morosely back at her.  What a loser!
	She stumbled over to the open bedroom window.  Sunlight was streaming in.  The window sill was low, coming up to just above her knees.  She walked over, stood in front of the window.  She closed her eyes.  The sun felt warm, inviting.  She stood there for a long time.  Gradually, bit by bit, her racing mind slowed, soothed by the warmth of the sun.  She leaned forward a little, to catch the heat of the sun on the back of her head and neck.  A serene calmness slowly filled her.  Her eyes were still closed.  She was barely breathing.  Slowly, almost imperceptibly, she leaned further forward, into the sun.  A wonderful feeling of lightness filled her.  She leaned forward further.  She opened her eyes.  She smiled.  Free at last.



	Six stories below, a group of students were throwing a Frisbee on the lawn, burning up energy between classes.  An overly enthusiastic throw sent the Frisbee over the head of its intended recipient and into a bush next to the building.  The student ran over to retrieve the errant Frisbee from the bush.  As he reached for it, a shadow suddenly blocked out the sun.  Startled, the student looked up.  He jumped back, horrified.  He watched, unbelieving, as the nude figure of a young woman, body straight, unmoving, toppled slowly out of one of the top floor windows.  Soundlessly, gracefully, she did a slow half somersault before crashing headfirst into the ground with a terrible, sickening thud.




Chapter 23
CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
September 8, 2007
1:15 P.M.




	Mike watched Kristen take a big bite out of her slice of pepperoni pizza and chew it with obvious relish.  Nothing held back with this girl, he thought with amusement.  Look out world!
	"And St. John's was great!  Of course it was cold and windy, even in mid-summer.  The water was freezing, but a beautiful dark blue, and the waves were fantastic!  The water was so exhilarating!  The locals thought I was crazy, but I think they're crazy, not going in just because it’s a little cold.  We met the greatest people.  I've got to show you my photographs."  Kristen paused for a second to take another big bite out of her pizza.
	"So who is the other part of 'we'?” Mike asked.
	"Steve, of course,” Kristen said, still chewing.  "My boyfriend.  I told you about him on the Westward."
	Damn!  I knew it!  Mike thought.  So the guy's name is Steve.
	"Well, I knew there was someone, but this is the first time I've actually heard his name."  Mike was proud that he managed to keep his voice light and natural.  Though he had suspected that Kristen was in a relationship, her words still hit him like a punch to his stomach.  For camouflage, Mike took a sip of his iced tea.
	"So you got your house!” Kristen said, oblivious.  "That's great! Tell me about it."
	"Well, the closing isn't for another two weeks.  But its great!  Its on this little cul-de-sac called "Cranberry Lane," half an acre of property, overlooking a cranberry bog."  He picked up his backpack from under his seat, and pulled out the realtor's spec sheet.  "Here's a picture."  He handed the sheet to Kristen.  "Its got two stories, a full basement, and the whole front is floor-to-ceiling windows.  The upstairs is like a whole separate apartment.  The house isn't huge, but not tiny either.  I feel like I really lucked out getting it."
	"Where is it?  Is it close to Woods Hole?” Kristen asked, looking at the spec sheet.
	"Its a little further than I originally wanted, about seven miles from Woods Hole proper,” Mike said.  "A little too far for a daily bike ride.  But it's less than a mile from a beautiful lake that's great for swimming.  And here,” Mike pointed to the lot drawing on the spec sheet,  "it borders on conservation land."
	"Looks like it would be a great place for a dog,” Kristen said.
	"Yeah, it is!  In fact, last time I was there, this big, beautiful, golden lab was running around.  I think he came from the neighbors, up behind the house.  There's no traffic on Cranberry Lane, and its all pretty open land.  It's perfect for a dog."
	Kristen's eyes sparkled.  "I love golden labs!" she said.
	"Me too,” Mike said.
	Their eyes locked for a moment.  Then Kristen looked down, took another bite of her pizza.
	"You know,” Mike said, "I wasn't kidding about you having first dibs on sharing the house,  If you want."  Kristen looked up.  "It's probably a bit further from Woods Hole than what you were thinking, but its a really neat place."
	"How much are you thinking of charging for rent?” Kristen asked, practical as always.
	"Something like $350 a month, plus half the utilities, for the whole upstairs,” Mike said.
	"I'm going down to the Cape next month some time to start looking around for a place.  Maybe if you haven't rented it out by then, I'll stop by and take a look."
	They each took a bite of their respective pizza slices, and chewed for a moment.
	"So how come you hate your classes?” Mike asked.
	"It’s not my classes,” Kristen said.  "Just one class.  And its not the class itself, but the students.  It's a marine biology seminar class.  Most of the other students are second and third year grad students, and they just ignore everything I say.  Anyway, I've had enough classes.  I just want to get out of the classroom and start doing research."
	"What's the deal about you not going down to Woods Hole next semester?  I thought that was all set."
	"So did I!  But yesterday I talked to, Tim, my advisor down in Woods Hole.  Suddenly he thinks it would be better for me to take some more classes up here before working in his lab.  But the classes I'm supposed to take won't help me do his research.  They're just general biology classes.  The lab work involves trace nutrient analysis, for which there aren't any classes.  Plus the only reason I came here instead of going to Washington State was because here I'd get to do real research more quickly!  And I'm even bringing my own NSF grant money!”  Kristen took an indignant breath.  “I don't know, I worked with Tim last summer as an undergraduate intern, and he was great.  Now he's a jerk.  Like Jekyll and Hyde, or something.  I don't get it."  She glared at Mike with suddenly blazing eyes.  "But there's no way I'm staying up here for two semesters, no matter what Tim thinks!"
	Wow! Mike thought.  What great eyes!  "Hey, don't get angry with me!" he said.  "Remember, I'm just another poor slob grad student."  He paused.  "But you're right, hot shot scientist or not, Tim can't promise you one thing to entice you to come here and then after you've relied on his promise go back on his word and renege the whole thing.  That's not only unprofessional, it's an illegal breach of promise, and just downright dishonest.  It’s hard enough to deal with just the normal stress around here without having to play politics, too."
	"So will you be my lawyer when I take Tim to court and sue him for millions?"
	"Absolutely!  You can count on me,” Mike said.  He paused for a beat, then added, "for a fifty percent contingency fee."
	"Fifty percent!” Kristen replied.  "That's outrageous!  I can get hundreds of other lawyers to do it for twenty-five!  I'll give you thirty, but no more."
	"Sure, you could get some random attorney to do it for that.  But no other attorney will hav