CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Jericho packed everything he owned and switch hotels, this time treating himself to something a little nicer than the motel they’d been staying at. In fact, he felt so confident about being on his own, he treated himself to a massive seafood dinner, a couple of cocktails and a new suit.
He wasn’t sure why he bought the new suit. It wasn’t like he was a public figure, although he’d be giving presentations soon enough about their experiments.
With Judy nowhere to be found, he never thought for a moment that anything was wrong. In his head, he’d already worked out that she and Madsen were off to some island together and arguing over who was going to fuck whom.
He needed the child that she was supposed to have met earlier. Finding his way into the chat room, he found the old communication from the man she’d met and reached out to.
“I’m Dr. Jericho. My colleague is not feeling well and I’ll be meeting you tomorrow afternoon if you’re still available.”
He sent the message and stared out the window at the neon lights of New Orleans and Bourbon Street below. Bourbon Street wasn’t worth the hype in his opinion. It was strip clubs and streets that smelled like piss and stale beer.
He preferred Royal and the antique shops. More refined, more attuned to his tastes.
He casually took a few sips of his wine, smiling at his good fortune and genius and how it had all developed as planned.
As a young student he’d read about the experiments of Colonel Weston Moore and his sycophants.
The idea of creating super soldiers was intriguing but it all had a horrible end in Jericho’s mind.
If one country could create them, others would as well and where would that leave everyone? Dead most likely. No. What was more fascinating was the idea of manipulating the brain to make something that would provide riches. Those somethings just happened to be deaf children.
But first he needed Moore’s formulations. He’d spent years searching for them, asking about his diaries and notebooks, as well as those scientists that worked for him. Everything led to a dead end.
Until one day he’d heard that Moore had several illegitimate children. It was a long shot but if he’d kept in touch with one or two, perhaps they had the volumes of data and experiments he needed to improve upon the formulation.
Most of Moore’s children were dead or missing. All except Judy, who proudly talked of her father’s accomplishments and that his genius had been underappreciated.
Their meeting was planned on his part, after an argument she had with Benjamin. It was perfect. He comforted her, made love sweet love to her, and then talked of his own ideas of creating genius.
She bought it all. Every last line. Within four years they were working day and night to perfect the formula. In the beginning, it had been a disaster. The formula never seemed reliable in powder form, which gave him the idea of recreating it in liquid form.
More research, more experiments, more children given the liquid and it seemed nothing was working as he hoped. Until he made one small tweak and discovered that the irony of it all was only giving it to children already born imperfect.
Yes, the formula worked and they’d created inexplicable deaf savants but what was truly fascinating was what was happening in their brains. Neither Benjamin nor Judy appreciated the beauty of watching a live brain perform under a microscope. Poke it, cut it, make it work for you.
There were men like himself who wanted to see the same thing. Men in Russia, China, North Korea, Africa, and almost every other country in the world. They were prepared to pay billions of dollars for just one small sample of the formulation. And he was prepared to give it to them.
But first, he needed one more child to demonstrate, live, what he was planning to do. He would show them how together, they would change the world.
After a long hot shower, he crawled into bed and checked his phone one more time.
Tell me where and I will be there tomorrow.
He smiled to himself and thought, I’ll make him wait and suffer.
“I’m now busy tomorrow. It will have to be the following morning. I’ll text you later tomorrow for a good location.” He set the phone down and laughed, turning off the bedside lamp.
“It’s not easy being a genius.”