The Science Prophet (Complete)

Chapter 1: Discovery

How did a useless fool like Rob trick the world into making him the most powerful man on the planet?

Dr. Darwin Goldstein pulled off her wide-brimmed hat and dark sunglasses with a scarred hand even as she used the other to key angrily at the lab computer.

Of course, she knew the answer to her own question.

Because he’s a damn psychopath. And because I let him.

She looked around the orderly laboratory, filled with scanning equipment and computers laid out neatly on long tables built into the walls. It faced south, towards the Charles River, so on days with good weather it was bathed in sunlight. The design of the window shade was poor. During sunny days, rays of light penetrated into the lab and made her squint.

But in the last two years, Darwin had come to prefer night to day. Sunlight made her shiver with disgust. But now it was close to midnight, and the sun was nowhere to be seen.

It was in this very room that she’d first met Rob, three years ago. He was a young graduate student in the Neuroscience Ph.D. program at MIT. She’d interviewed him for a position in her lab one overcast fall afternoon. Rob, a tall and strikingly handsome young man with raven black hair and watery blue eyes, had been effortless charming.

A little too charming.

His smoothness gave her the chills. She hadn’t wanted to accept him into her research program. But Dr. Lester Zhang, the department head, had intervened. Rob’s father had made a fortune in an internet startup, and there was a large donation in discussion if only Rob was accepted to the program.

Freaking internet entrepreneurs, she had thought at the time. Call themselves technology geniuses for writing html code or shipping shoes. Then have to bribe their way into real technology labs.

Nevertheless, Lester had his way and Darwin found herself hosting Rob as a graduate assistant the next September.  Rob distinguished himself quickly, not with his intellect or his hard work but with his social life.

He drove a Ferrari around campus, pumping loud hip hop music into the cold Massachusetts air, usually with at least one female undergraduate in the passenger seat. Darwin quickly stopped trying to learn the names of the girls on Rob’s arm. They changed every few days. 

Rob’s constant lateness, endless distractions, and nonexistent technical knowledge made him pretty useless as a lab assistant. But Lester had made it clear that she was stuck with him no matter what. So she relegated him to the closet-like console room, his duties confined to hitting the “Scan” button on the computer console at her command.

Darwin’s research consisted of using imaging technology to see how the different parts of the brain communicate to create the conscious sensation of emotion. She would pay subjects – usually undergraduates – a few dollars to sit in the room while she asked them to think of something that made them feel happy, or nostalgic. The concept was nothing new. In terms of experiment design, she was really just repeating work of many earlier researchers.

However, Darwin was armed with a BrainCleaver, a prototype neural scanner that was far more sensitive to a wider range of factors than its predecessors. Only three BrainCleavers existed in the world and the device was still in late stage testing.  Thus, Darwin’s experiments were largely meant to establish an observational baseline. The BrainCleaver’s inventors – led by a Dr. P. Advani, Darwin’s colleague across campus – would use her data to calibrate it for more advanced work. But Darwin was also hoping to make some new discoveries along the way.

Her hopes were fulfilled.

One frigid February afternoon, Rob had staggered into the lab an hour late. He was unshaven and he had big bags under his eyes. He recoiled as if in pain at the sunlight that streamed directly through the windows. He carried a giant cardboard cup of coffee, which he usually did when experiencing one of his frequent hangovers.