Testimony of Mr. J. Stanley

The hand holding the cigarette gestured, and the tiny flame danced in the darkness, "By the way, my name is Jason."

"Stanley."

"Never liked this kind of party," Jason said, puffing on his cigarette. "It's all the same, too much alcohol, too little real conversation, and I tell myself every year not to come again."

"Speak like you've been to a lot of graduation parties."

"Three times. When you're running a little-known laboratory, this kind of party is the best place to find cheap labor," Jason pulled off the boutonniere and looked at it, as if he didn't understand why it appeared in his hand Li, "Assuming you're lucky enough to pick up some funding scraps from the drunk dean. That's why they call me 'The Crow,' ever heard that nickname?"

Stanley shook his head and brushed off the cigarette ash, "What's your luck then?"

"Good times and bad."

"Life."

"Life." Jason agreed, taking another deep puff of cigarette, "New graduate?"

"Is it the 'cheap labor' you're looking for?"

"Depends on if you can help out in the lab," Jason put out his cigarette against the brick wall and looked at him, hands in his pockets, "Can you?"

"I don't know, I'm just a graduate of the School of Life Sciences, maybe I can do some work like sweeping the floor."

Jason laughed, "I'm sure you can," he fished out a pen and a small calendar from his pocket, tore off a page, and scribbled a number, "Call me, okay? ?My lab—me and Sinclair's, to be precise, but I'm the real source of intelligence—is called IntelGenes, and it's certainly not much better than a kid's chemistry set in Dean Wellock's eyes, but We're doing really exciting stuff."

Stanley took the paper, "Thanks."

He pushed open the door, and the light from the vestibule poured out, onto the steps and trimmed shrubs.Jason stopped him, and Stanley turned around, holding the door with one hand, raising his eyebrows.

The other party didn't answer right away, but looked at him through the light, no matter what he was looking for in Stanley's face, he seemed to have found it. "That might sound like an odd question," Jason paused, "but your name doesn't happen to be Gasper, does it?"

-

They eventually find a quiet bar, so small it's almost a nail hole in the wall.The bartender was so engrossed in watching the replay of the pool tournament that he barely noticed them.The image of the TV fixed at the end of the bar was fuzzy, flickering from time to time, and slowly turned into a weird blue, and it slowly returned to normal after being hit by the bartender's fist a few times.

Jason ordered a martini, Stanley ordered a glass of screwdriver, and neither of them really cared what they were drinking as long as it had alcohol in it.Stanley could see why they didn't recognize each other at all. The Jason Coleman in front of him was not much of the boy who was keen to talk about woodworking and the South American rainforest. neutralized by a well-drilled, salesman-like smile.That stubborn gravitational force is still there, quietly pulling people around, trying to change their trajectory.Stanley wondered how much he had changed. Two years ago, anxious to get rid of the "boring" evaluation, Stanley dyed his hair blue at one point. When he came home from the Easter break, his father looked at him in shock and said nothing. What.He cut off the dyed hair a month later and hasn't touched it since.Sasha liked Stanley's silence, "liked" in the sense that she never complained.No, Stanley told himself, Sasha was gone, he no longer needed to live up to her standards.

"You haven't changed much, you've just, you know, grown up." Jason folded and unfolded the napkin, his hands never resting. "Nine years, huh? I guess your parents are finally getting tired of it." St. Malo."

The waiter brought their drinks and went back to the television to watch Stephen Hendry pocket the reds one by one.Stan wiped the water off the glass with his index finger, "They separated at the end of 85, I lived with my father, and I spent the rest of the summer helping out at 'The Dog' - sorry, it was an Irish pub The name, the boss is a friend of my dad who has a Great Dane."

Jason fiddled with the olive at the bottom of the cup with a toothpick, "I'm sorry."

"The parent's part, or the dog's part?"

"Half of each?"

"Thirty to seven is more suitable." Stanley took a sip of the wine, adding too much orange juice, "You guys still stayed in the same hotel afterward?"

"Yes, we were vacationing there until the year before last. Nina asks about you occasionally."

"Nina?"

"Sister of the twins, I thought you'd remember her, the day we went to the lighthouse—"

"No," Stanley blurted out, surprised that the long-forgotten dross still warmed his ears, "probably the most embarrassing experience of my life."

Jason grinned into his glass, poked at the marinated olives, and chewed, "Probably one of the best experiences I've ever had."

"I think it's because some of us are luckier than others."

"Never believe in luck," Jason tapped his temple, "There's some agnostic cement stuck here."

"Sounds like it's not very helpful for your research."

"Help us stay humble."

"very fair."

They clinked glasses and changed the subject.Jason began to talk about the lab, his partner Sinclair, and their virology research, with the same enthusiasm as he talked about the old shed that had been converted into a studio.Ryan Sinclair was Jason's college roommate and the main investor in IntelGenes, and honestly, the only one.They rented a basement and bought the equipment they needed bit by bit. "Technically, I never came out of bankruptcy, everything is expensive, no matter how well you talk, how many people you know. We blew up a holding cabinet once, and I'll ask Sinclair to tell you the story, he To put it more humorously, and less like an outright tragedy, we were all quarantined for two weeks." Jason drank the last of his martini, "You'll come and see, right, tomorrow?"

"why not?"

It was a wrong choice, a path in the jungle, with a vaguely curved silhouette, but in the summer of 1994 Stanley still couldn't see the cliffs obscured by foliage.He raised his hand to call the waiter and ordered a second glass of wine.

4.

Ryan Sinclair was only five feet six inches tall, with a round, flattering face.When Stanley shook hands with him on the rain-soaked steps of the lab door, his first impression of Sinclair was that of some kind of rodent, small and gentle, whose only claim to the world was a walnut.The metal door in the basement had an ordinary padlock, more like a utility room for mops and old tires.Sinclair spent an embarrassing 10 minutes looking for the key before finally having to fish for a spare key from under the old flowerpot.Jason and he shared a 6x6 cubicle that served as an office, and it was like an explosion site, the two rickety desks were the heart of the explosion, piled with manuscript paper, pencils, aluminum soda cans, plastic toys, moldy marks Cups and dog-eared journals, and for reasons beyond comprehension, a small jar of chrysalis.Against the wall sits a huge incubator, with fluorescent lights illuminating a section of stout perch.

"Corn flakes," Sinclair said.

Stanley turned around, "Sorry, what?"

"The name of the lizard." The other party pointed to the incubator, and then Stanley noticed the small cold-blooded animal lying lazily on the wood. "He can eat half a bag of cornflakes at a time."

"He can't, stop feeding him." Jason interrupted, Cornflake rolled his eyes indifferently, moved a bit, and let the fluorescent light shine directly on its head with many small protrusions, "Here, Gus Pa."

-

"I left the cubicle and followed him to the decontamination room. I thought he was going to show me the samples - by then the 'Red Arrow I' research was nearly complete - but no, we were just separated by glass Glancing at the device, like watching a whale shark in a zoo, 'do not touch the glass, do not use the flash'. Jason says he and Sinclair are co-writing a 'paper on vaccines', vaguely, no Willing to divulge more details. You see, Miss Gibson, Jason doesn't trust people easily, more precisely, I don't think he really trusts anyone, not me, not Sinclair. He behaves in front of the media Like a movie star, people say it's charisma, I call it acting talent." Stanley coughed and fumbled on the bedside table, and the lawyer handed him the glass of water, "Thank you. They were going to do it again It was submitted in a few months, but in fact the paper was not published until three years later, our first stone, and it hit a beautiful splash. 97 was a good year, Miss Gibson, Jason got his Ph.D. degree, IntelGenes registered the first patent, moved out of the basement, and rented a site slightly closer to the city, a bungalow, to borrow Sinclair's words, a 'concrete shoe box'. Originally a clinic, a Dentist in private practice filled cavities here for over 30 years, moved to Cadiz with savings, I heard. All in all, for the first time, IG is getting attention and more importantly, investment.”

"You mean Jim Follett has had financial dealings with you since 1997?"

"