Dominion Of The Adversary

Chapter-2

The air condition was switched off. And the window pane was open. From the window, one could see the vast expanse of greenery spread out endlessly. It was raining lightly. And combined with the breeze, the rain drops invaded the room more often than not. There was a puddle of water on the floor beneath the window. Beside the window, at almost an arm's length was an immaculately polished mahogany semi-circular desk. Right in front of the desk was a Cashmere knitted plush couch on which was lying the sole occupant of the room, Dr. Esha. Esha lay staring at the ceiling, with an arm under her head and legs over each other. She had formed a fist from the palm of her other hand unconsciously, which she was using to perform the important task of stroking her forehead continuously. She had a habit of doing this whenever she was lost in deep thoughts. As if the sole act of her fist striking against her forehead could form a solution to her current problem.

Finally, with an exhalation of disappointment, she sat upright. She gave the couch two straight punches of frustration, got up, and walked towards her desk. She perched near her desk and started looking at the pile of papers spread across her desk. She didn't know what exactly she was looking for. Maybe she was looking for a ray of hope. Maybe a solution, maybe an alibi. She wanted something, anything, that could validate the results of her experiments or something that could at least tell her where she was going wrong.

"This doesn't make any sense.", she mumbled as her gaze drifted from one paper to the other.

Her wrist watch made a beeping noise and alerted of her upcoming meeting with her reviewing panel. Flustered, she made a dash towards the conference hall.

She entered the conference hall by greeting the panel. The panel was formed of five senior most members, who were also world renowned scientists in the fields of AI, Neuroscience, Neuro-biology, drug synthesis and Neuro-medicine. This panel member had one of the most diverse skill sets that Esha ever came across with. But it was a strategically taken decision made by Megalife, because the problem they were trying to solve involved the inclusion of many different ideas from many different fields.

Esha proceeded to the dais and waited for the panel to initiate the discussion. Dr. Jagan spearheaded the committee and had over thirty years of world-class research experience and breakthroughs in Neuroscience.

"So, Esha. What are your thoughts on the results that you shared with us this morning?", said Dr. Jagan in his customary serious tone. And just like that, one more gruelling meeting started for Esha.

"I'm perplexed by these results. I haven't been able to get a breakthrough with this. But I'm trying my best to get this done as soon as possible."

"Well. Thank you for your efforts Esha. Aren't we all trying our best? To just come up here and listen to the same lines that you have been saying since the past two years.", Jagan replied mockingly. A few members of the panel smirked.

Esha was stunned on hearing this. She would come mentally prepared for some very gruesome replies by Dr. Jagan. However, he always found new ways of breaking her mental barriers. If words had edges, the last few of them would have gone right through her chest.

She gathered herself and with a mild tone replied, "But we had seen promising results during the animal trials."

"Yeah. But human trial is an entirely different thing.We don't see any improvement. And do you even remember when the animal trial phase got over? That was almost two years ago.", replied Dr. Jagan who was clearly getting more and more agitated with every word he spoke.

"For human trials, we did get some improvement in the condition of the subjects".

"Ah, Well! Here we are again! Haven't we discussed this exact same thing previously. Let me get this straight. You do not have substantial evidence to call them improvements. It might be a fluke. It might be a temporary improvement before the condition of the subjects starts deteriorating again. "