Creating Ashton » Muke & Lashton

F I V E

MICHAEL

We pull into Hemmings Biopharm. It's located on the backside of Darling Harbour across the Sydney Harbour Bridge and down some windy roads. As you drive up it's not mind-boggling or anything, because the road at that point is maybe two hundred feet above the ocean, and the Hemmings complex is more vertical than horizontal. It spreads down that steep slope from the road above to the water below. And it is big. From the water, it looks like the City of Oz had a giant baby with one of those flagship Apple stores.

The place is built around three massive spikes, with each of the spikes being an elevator array. Connecting them is a sort of ziggurat construction with terraces, open spaces, entire floors given over to gardens, sandy volleyball courts, a pool.

It is, without question, a great place to work. If you can get past some of the people.

And number one among the people you have to get past is the psycho-bitch boss herself, Liz Hemmings. Known throughout the campus as Bitch Hemmings.

The bottom floor, Level One, is the largest space, the Orphan Disease Research Division. They focus on the many less-than-popular diseases that no one is ever going to get rich curing.

Whatever else you can say about Liz, she's done some very major work down there on Level One. As in cures. As in people who were being eaten alive by some parasite or some germ are walking around alive today because of Level One. Because Liz Hemmings said, “Screw profits, we're throwing a billion dollars into beating this disease.”

The reason no one gets serious about investigating Hemmings Biopharm? Because of what happens down there on Level One, that's why.

The reason so many people think about investigating Hemmings? Because of what happens on Levels Seven and Eight.

Me, I live on Level Four. My parents, Karen and Jeff Clifford, were Liz's business partners back in the day, when all they had was a broken-down IBM, some petri dishes and a dream.

I don't remember them. It's like that.

I could say Liz raised me, but that would be wrong. She's no mother to me. She gives me a place to live, an education, a job at the lab.

She tolerates me.

She wouldn't even do that if she knew.