Roswell Fanatics

The girl choked and bucked but eventually Drevins got the whole bottle in her. She calmed down pretty quickly after that.

A lot of people don’t think about alcohol as a drug, but it is one – and an interesting one at that. Unlike most drugs that are absorbed in the small intestine, the bulk of the alcohol is absorbed in the stomach – although the absorption starts as soon as the alcohol touches the mucosal lining of the mouth. It’s something called the law of Mass Action. Briefly this means that the solution of alcohol – in this case 100 proof tequila that was 50% ethanol – tries to seek an equilibrium by diffusing through the semipermeable membranes that make up the mouth and other parts of the digestive tract. It tends to suck water out of the tissues and put alcohol in the tissues until the concentration of alcohol is equal on both sides of the membranes. Fortunately, there are a lot of membranes and this takes a little bit of time – although far less than the time needed for most drugs.

The problem that causes alcohol poisoning is generally a simple one. Somebody consumes alcohol too quickly – takes in a huge amount relative to their body weight – and as this alcohol is absorbed, the depressant effect of the alcohol shuts off their central nervous system. People drinking more slowly will usually become too intoxicated to continue drinking – the coordination centers of the cerebellum are affected first – and most will fall asleep before they actually ingest a toxic amount. Teenagers are a little different.

With teenagers it’s usually binge drinking or contests. Guys do the macho thing – O can chug more than you can quicker than you can. It’s stupid, but teenagers often do stupid things as much out of rebellion as out of ignorance. The girls typically binge drink. They don’t normally drink at all, but they try to get lit up on the weekend or at the party during the relatively little time they do have access to alcohol. The problem is usually just the volume.

A lethal amount is consumed before the body really has a chance to react to it and to get so uncoordinated that further consumption is impossible. The higher centers go first and ultimately – as even the midbrain is paralyzed – respiration ceases. The body fight this, of course. There are at least five different alcohol dehydrogenases that do their best to metabolize this stuff and the body does what it can to physically slow down the absorbed alcohol from getting to the brain with something called the blood-brain barrier. But once the overdose of alcohol is ingested, all that the blood-brain barrier can do is fight a delaying action. If the alcohol dehydrogenase can metabolize the alcohol quickly enough – before the midbrain gets to toxic levels – the person won’t stop breathing. If it can’t – the person will stop breathing and without immediate ventilatory support, they’ll be dead within minutes. Of course that’s sort of academic for Liz. All of her alcohol dehydrogenase is tied up by the GHBA. With a fifth of 100-proof tequila in her gut, it’s only a matter of time.


As she lapsed off into unconsciousness he peeled the duct tape off of her wrists. He wiped the tequila bottle clean of his prints and – carefully handling it with one finger in the opening at the neck of the bottle – placed it in her hand and closed her fingers around it. Already her respirations were slowing. Jimmy took several deep breaths and tried to calm down – this was going to work. He peeked out the door – waiting for the crowd near the exit to dissipate. It was 20 degrees out and snowing and everybody knew this had to be another false alarm. Nobody was going to leave until the firetrucks and the safety people actually showed up, but that wouldn’t be long now. He could hear the sirens less than a block away.

BRRAAAAA!

It was one of the most poorly executed fire alarm evacuations in the history of the University of Colorado. To begin with, it was late at night and less than half the normal advisers were there. Both of those happened to be in the adviser's room on floor two – now distracted by scrambling in to their own clothes much like Doug and Lexie two floors above them. Then there was the fact that the music from the dance was drowning out the alarm horn in the dining hall while the strobe lights blended right in with the light show the DJ had as accompaniment to the music. It was only after the music stopped that anyone in the dining hall even realized the alarm was sounding. It was – after all – a Saturday night in an undergraduate dorm and between the grass and the alcohol a number of students were moving sort of slowly. But mostly it was just because they had false alarms all the time and because of that even those who were aware of everything going on just moved to the exits and hovered inside – reluctant to face the 20 degree temperatures and flurries of cold snow outside.

The five minutes seemed like an eternity to Max – he'd been on every floor at least once – looked at everyone moving toward the exits – looked in every open door he could. As he heard the sirens in the distance he gravitated toward the dining hall again – the last place he'd seen her – but she wasn't there.

At the end of the hall he saw the gaggle of students move as the firetrucks drew near – knowing that they could wait no longer to exit the building without incurring the wrath of both the fire department and the security personnel. That's when he saw the door open.

Drevins had waited until he heard the crowd move away from the door to the room – peeked out and saw them disappearing out the exit to the parking lot. Only when the last was going out and looking away from the room – only then did Drevins squeeze out the door to conceal any view of the girl lying unconscious and immobile on the bed from any passer-by. His caution proved unnecessary – there were only a few people visible ahead of him and they were all looking outside. In seconds he would be only another face in the crowd.

Max took off in a run down the long hall trying to catch Drevins – but long before he got to the end he'd thought better of it. Liz wasn't with him – but that had not been Drevins room – maybe she could be in there.

As he opened the door he saw Liz lying on the bed. Other guys might have been distracted by her wearing nothing but panties from the waist down. Hell, under other circumstances Max would have been distracted too. Even if he didn't believe it could ever be real, he did dream about such things. He was an alien-human hybrid - not a eunuck. But not tonight he didn't let his mind be cluttered by dreams – tonight the fear was too real – the sense of failing her was burning too deeply in his soul. Tonight he just wanted to make sure she was alright. Except, she wasn't alright. She gave one sort of agonal breath and then stopped breathing altogether.

Max's mind went back instantly to the summer before last – when Liz had been sitting at his side as the Paleontology people gave them the CPR lecture. He reached out and felt the pulse at her carotid – she had a pulse – but she still wasn't breathing.

He positioned her head as they'd been instructed to open the airway, then put his lips against hers and breathed in forcefully – pleased to see her chest rise – then fall as he let her lungs empty themselves whle he took his next breath. The rescue breathing seemed to be working and with luck the fire engines with their trained personnel would be here shortly. He could do this.

One hazard of rescue breathing is that the epiglottis is open and a portion of the air goes down the esophagus and fills the stomach with air. It can't be helped – even with the best of technique. As the minutes passed her stomach became distended with air. Liz was too far gone to actively vomit – but as Max let the air come out of Liz while he took his own next breath the air came back out – pushing a flood of vodka before it. Max was ready as he'd been instructed – he opened her mouth to look for and clear any food or other obstructions – but there was only liquid. He had been told that a little vomitus was no reason to let anyone die and that was certainly the case when the person was Liz. He went right back to the mouth-to-mouth breathing.

The tequila had been 100 proof going down but the law of mass action had done its thing. What had come up was only about 60 proof. That was enough.


Many people believe that life is rare and found only on Earth. They are wrong on both counts. Oh, you could argue that life was rare in a cosmic sense – because the cosmos is large and life is confined – for the most part- to the near vicinity of planets. But in the Milky Way Galaxy alone are well over 300 billion stars and most of these have planets – and within these solar systems it is not at all unusual for at least one of these planets to have life.

Intelligent life, however, is a very different thing. Uncountable billions of species follow the immutable missions of any life-form – to survive and to reproduce – without the necessity of any intelligence. Life forms similar to terrestrial bacteria live in the deep darkness of the Marianas Trench and survive and reproduce based upon the energy in the sulfates liberated by volcanic vents as they have for millions of years without the need for intelligence. Sea urchins discharge millions of eggs into the ocean to be fertilized and – the few survivors – carry on the species without need of intelligence. And this pattern is followed on most of those billions of life containing worlds in the galaxy.

What form life takes – and the attributes that form possesses is driven by the immutable process of evolution. Traits such as intelligence evolves where there is need – and the improvement and refinement of those traits. Most of life is not even self aware – let alone intelligent – and that's because the evolutionary niche where the trait of intelligence will contribute to survival and reproduction is a small one and the development of the trait a difficult thing indeed. Far easier is it for life to survive and reproduce by other means. Only in a narrow window does intelligence make sense at all when a lifeform that is too weak to fight, too slow to run, too conspicuous to hide - too vulnerable in some way to their environment to survive without that strange feature known as intelligence. Only then can a lifeform find evolutionary advantage in becoming intelligent – when with intelligence they can die and without it they would perish - and those situations are rare indeed.

In the Milky Way Galaxy there were known to exist less than two hundred such species of lifeforms – of which 132 were Class I intelligent civilizations, 29 were class II Intelligent civilizations, 4 were candidate civilizations and two were candidate species – not yet really civilized at all. One of these candidate species were the inhabitants of the third planet of a type G2 star in one of the spiral arms roughly 26,000 light years from the galactic center.

These 168 species had – with only one exception -followed a common pathway. Each had occupied that rare evolutionary niche – and each had used their intelligence – over many tens of thousands of years - to rise to the top of the lifeforms on their planet. Gradually – over many additional tens of thousands of years - they would evolve even more advanced aspects of intelligence such as telepathy (and outgrowth of empathy) and telekinesis. Eventually with these advanced skills and their advanced intelligence – and the curiosity that was inherent in intelligent beings – they would move off the worlds of their birth – explore – find other intelligences and share knowledge and experience and perhaps even wisdom in a common fellowship of intelligent civilizations. It took millions of years for this to happen – but in a cosmic sense that was hardly that long. Heck, for 180 million years, dinosaurs had ruled the Earth. You couldn't expect intelligence to evolve quickly because – after the intelligence had achieved ascendancy over other lifeforms on its planet, where was the evolutionary pressure to continue to evolve? The exception had been that one species on SolIII.

The 161 Class I and Class II species had many differences but they shared the curiosity that is a common part of intelligent life. As a result of that curiosity the organization they had developed – it would have translated something close to 'Fellowship of self-aware civilizations,' in English, had long had – and we use the word LONG advisedly, it had been nearly two million years – an active exploration for new civilizations that they might bring in to this fellowship. Originally composed of a mere thirty species, an additional 131 species had been added since the formation of the Fellowship. But space is vast – even if you only look at the 100,000 or so light years within the halo of the Milky Way, and with 300 billion stars in the immediate celestial neighborhood, you couldn't send a scoutship by to look just real often.

The initial scoutship that had identified SolIII as having a provisional candidate lifeform had been a mere eighty-thousand years back. The provisional candidate criteria was use of tools and there was some question as to whether or not the bipedal lifeforms even met that criteria. The fire itself was actually started by a lightning strike and the primitive hominids used it primarily to ward off predators – but in the opinion of the scoutship crew setting grassfires to stampede mammoths off cliffs was evidence of intelligence and ultimately the Fellowship accepted the provisional status of the newly discovered species and routinely scheduled them for a followup visit a hundred thousand years later to see if they showed any evidence of evolving a somewhat higher level of intelligence./

In point of fact, the next visit came much sooner than scheduled – it was one of those serendipitous things where a scoutship returning from further out on the spiral arm which contained Sol needed to do some servicing better done in an oxygen atmosphere under one – g. They popped out of the wormhole and landed on SolII and noticed a Bronze Age was going on.

The exceptional speed with which this species was developing triggered enormous interest this time – and it was decided to sample it much sooner – only 2600 years later. That visit – in 1588 – triggered great interest in the Fellowship. This species – they called themselves humans – had not slowed its evolution of intelligence after becoming the preeminent species on their planet. Finding a miniscule niche within a niche, they were actually continuing to evolve by competing among themselves most brutally and pushing their technology level higher and higher– as the defeat of the Spanish Armada indicated. A discussion was held in the Fellowship about what – if anything – should be done about this. The concern was that – if this level of technological advancement persisted – these barbarians might within only a few dozen millenia have the technology to go off world – their savagery untamed by the development of their higher powers such as connecting to one another to communicate through telepathy.

The debate was lively but finally a plan evolved. Scoutships collected genetic material from a number of these 'humans' and four human embryos were created – their DNA modified artificially to provide them with limited telepathy and very limited telekinesis -things that they might one day evolve in any event but that they could certainly use now.

These embryos – along with two totally artificial lifeforms to care for them and educate them – adaptable lifeforms with their own limited powers including the ability to change their shapes and appearances – were sent via scoutship through a wormhole to jump-start the evolution of these higher faculties in this race of humans. It was decided to check on the descendants of this group in only three hundred fifty years.

Unfortunately – this first group of embryos that landed in Salem Massachusetts disappeared completely along with their tutors (the local magistrate called them 'familiars') in 1692, a fact that wasn't known until the next scoutship visited SolII in 1942.

Although the Fellowship never did establish what exactly had happened to this first attempt at genetic engineering of these desirable qualities into humans, the 1942 scoutship brought back rather alarming news. They had detected fast and slow neutron fluxes compatible with a greater than critical mass fission pile. The implication was undeniable. These humans were within only a few hundred years of having access to nuclear energy.

Debate in the Fellowship was lively for almost three years before consensus was reached. A sizable plurality of voting members believed that these savages must not be allowed to achieve the capability for interstellar flight without the civilizing influence of telepathy and – at their current rate of development – that would happen in only a few tens of thousands of years – practically no time at all in a cosmic sense. A small minority actually suggested that technological means be employed to reduce the technological base of these 'humans' to a one planet pastoral existence – a method that had in fact been discovered only on SolIII – something called a 'war.'

Fortunately cooler heads (just an expression – over two-thirds of the voting species had nothing vaguely resembling a head) prevailed, and it was decided to institute a crash program (an unfortunate terminology as later events would prove) to get four more embryos ready for enhancement. That's where the first mistake was made.

In great part it was the rush of the program – and in all fairness the identical mistake was made on the embryos who wound up drowning as adults on the ducking stoolsat Salem, but had the geneticist in 1945 actually had the normal amount of time to create the hybrid embryos she would have almost certainly caught the error – but the program was rushed and the geneticist was only human... well, that's not quite correct, in fact she was actually a fluorosilicon based life form whose own genetic material was composed of silanes, but the point is she was as fallible as any human when given too little time to do the job.

But to be totally fair, it was only one mistake of several. The biggest mistake was sending the hybrids and their tutors squirting through the wormhole not in a scoutship – but rather in a drone with only an intrastellar ion drive. That decision was a corporate one – no one wanted to take the chance of giving these barbarians access to a working interstellar drive. It had seemed reasonable enough no doubt – no one in the Fellowship actually expected the humans to develop atomic energy in only a few short years and even the most fanciful never expected them to make anything as uncivilized as an atomic bomb.

So none of these civilized people would have possibly predicted that when the second test was done at Bikini Atoll – the so-called Crossroads Baker explosion it would produce an electromagnetic pulse that would fry the intrastellar ion drive of that vessel – that would leave it marooned in space for over a year while the two tutors gradually went mad or that the vessel itself would be destroyed a year later as it was fought to a deadstick landing on Earth when it finally did reach the atmosphere – a deadstick landing in a place called Roswell New Mexico.

Yes, the geneticist's mistake had only been one of many – and not even the most serious for this operation that showed that Murphy's Law applied on a galactic scale. Even so, the mistake had been a minor one – at least up until today. It was only one nucleotide changed in the DNA where the new DNA had been spliced in - but that DNA coded for a [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulator_gene]regulator gene – the regulator gene that controlled the manufacture of a group of enzymes called alcohol dehydrogenase.

Liz's alcohol dehydrogenase worked poorly because it had been affected by the GHBA. Max's alcohol dehydrogenase was nearly absent because the regulator gene didn't work.

As the alcohol in her mouth gradually sloshed in to his and started to be absorbed it looked like it was going to be a VERY interesting night.


Crusher, Texas

Even the locals said that if Crusher Texas wasn't the end of the Earth you could sure as Hell see it from there. The place was little more than an incorporated filling station off I-10 with a couple houses and three trailers. The population was only nine people – but as the tropical low crossed in the the US frm Mexico and headed northeast at nine miles per hour, none of the inhabitants were in town. It was a Saturday night and they were all off in Van Horn, Texas, population 2028, enjoying the big city. No one noticed the tropical low going through.

With alcohol it’s the so-called ‘higher facilities’ that are affected first and in Max’s case that would be about as far as it went. While it was true that he had no more alcohol dehydrogenase function than Liz, he was absorbing only a small fraction of the tequila she was absorbing – and his body mass was twenty percent greater. Max’s midbrain – the part that controlled his breathing – was in no danger of serious impairment. Not so those so-called ‘higher faculties’ though.

The cerebrum started acting up pretty quickly. His subconscious mind had long had aspirations of doing something very much like this – even if the conscious mind was too intellectually tied up in its identity crisis to let it happen.

Within a couple of minutes anxiety over the completeness of the seal for the mouth-to-mouth breathing and just how effectively the respirations were pushing up Liz’s chest somehow morphed into an awareness of how wonderful those lips felt pressed against his. Oh, the respirations were kept up – Max’s midbrain normally ran his own breathing and seeing that the breathing inflated Liz’s lungs as well was no great task, but the only help that the midbrain was now getting from the cerebrum was the close contact of those lips – intermittently broken during those intervals when Max himself was taking a breath by a noise somewhat approaching a whimper as her lips hovered just out of the cerebrum’s reach.

The midbrain wasn’t really resentful of carrying most of the load – if anything it was amused in its own midbrain sort of way that the cerebrum was finally showing signs of actually understanding what was important in life. The midbrain generally approved of foreplay – assuming it was not unreasonably prolonged – and it was gratifying to see that it’s cerebrum wasn’t totally without such feelings too. Of course it couldn’t go too far. In order to survive and reproduce Liz would need to survive – they were after all mated – even if it that hadn’t yet been consummated – but the mouth-to-mouth breathing was going surprisingly well, and the midbrain was quite willing to breathe for Liz until she could breathe on her own. Then it had something else it needed to do.

People say that all midbrains are interested in is to survive and reproduce and maybe that’s right – but protecting your children and your mate is part of that survival. Those feelings are hard-wired in the brain and the area they are hard-wired in is the midbrain. They can be repressed by cerebral action – well not today, Max’s cerebral cortex is fast going ga-ga – but normally they can. It has been said somewhat poetically that humans have a thin veneer of civilization that hides the raging animal that exists underneath. Like many things that’s an oversimplification, but still – if it were true that thin veneer of civilization would be the cerebrum and that raging animal self would be the midbrain.

Right now Max’s midbrain was held immobile by the need to support its mate. Once she was safe it would be mobile again – and shortly thereafter it figured - Jimmy Blevins would die.

Jim Blair was 32 years old and had worked with the University of Colorado Police Department for eight years and this was easily the most fouled up fire alarm evacuation of a dormitory that he had ever seen - and that was saying a lot. It was an undergraduate dorm - mostly freshmen - and there were a lot of false alarms. That and the icy wind blowing out in the parking lot made it somewhat understandable that people had delayed leaving the building until the fire trucks had actually started arriving. But one of these days, Jim Blair knew, it wouldn't be a false alarm as this one almost certainly was. That's why he was going from room to room checking to make sure that everyone had gotten out. Finally though, he was coming to the end of the hall. If he hurried he might actually be through checking the rooms before the fire department gave the all-clear.

As he opened the door his eyes narrowed. He'd seen a lot of unpleasant things in the last eight years and some of the worst of them had been young ladies that had gotten inebriated and been taken advantage of by some guy they trusted. Oftentimes the guy had gone to considerable effort to get the girl drunk - just to have the opportunity to do that. As the father of a daughter - Julie was almost eight now - he had little sympathy for such bastards. But never - ever - had he dreamed it would happen with kids this young.

Neither one of them could be more than fourteen - why they were even in a college dorm he wasn't sure about. What the boy was doing, however, seemed obvious and from the empty bottle of tequila - the unmoving girl with no pants on - and the boy sucking her face vigorously - it was obvious a sexual assault was going on - the young lady was certainly in no fit state to consent. In fact, Jim hoped he'd arrived before anything more than a class 4 felony had occurred.

Maybe it was because he was thinking about little Julie being that old in not too many years - maybe he had lost his objectivity - maybe it was the times he'd seen this happen and some sleazy lawyer had practically put the girl on trial - or some soft-hearted and headed judge believed the guy when he said he'd been drunk and not in control of his actions - whatever the case, the thought of the whole thing really made him pissed.

"OK asshole - the fun is over - get up!"

Midbrains aren't much for speech. Cerebrums taunt them about that sometimes - say things like 'midbrains couldn't say the word "I" if you let them buy a vowel'. Kind of a cruel taunt, but unfortunately not too far from the mark. I guess it's understandable. Midbrains evolved in a time when a few grunts, growls, physical gestures, and pheromones took care of the communication nicely. Things were more complex now.

The midbrain prodded the cerebrums to respond to the words of the guy in the blue uniform - they had the Wernicke's areas after all - they were supposed to handle this stuff. The left cerebrum - the dominant one - was able to blurt out a quick response before the alcohol put it out altogether..... "mouth-to-mouth resuscitation..." - the midbrain hoped it was enough to make the blue-suited guy understand.

"Very funny, asshole," said Blair, grabbing the boy by the belt and pulling him off the girl.

He was twice the kids weight and really didn't think he'd be much trouble. Most of these perverted pricks backed down from anyone who confronted them - that's why they went after drunk girls - and even if they didn't, Blair thought he was ready if this kid started something - in fact he was rather hoping the boy would. It wouldn't be 'police brutality' then - it would just be at the upper edge of the range the policy manual described as appropriate for subduing a resisting subject. Yes, Blair thought, he was ready for this kid to cause trouble.

He was wrong.

What we have here, as the man said, was a failure to communicate. At some level even Max's midbrain knew the guy wasn't a bad guy - he was just protecting Liz. Under other circumstances the midbrain might have been more understanding, but the guy was between him and Liz and looking at him - not even looking at Liz - who had resumed not breathing.

Max's midbrain had nothing against the guy - it was just that the shortest distance between two fixed points was a straight line. Liz was too drunk to breathe - let alone move - and the guy was just in the way. The midbrain was just trying to see to the safety of its mate - it didn't even have Max bite the guy as he pushed him aside to get back to lock his lips again on to Liz's mouth.

'Son of a bitch!,' thought Blair as he rebounded heavily from the wall. The kid had almost been a blur as he'd knocked him aside - and he was already back on the girl. Maybe the kid knew karate or kung-fu or something - but that didn't matter to Blair. Nobody was going to take advantage of some little girl on his watch and nobody was going to manhandle him and get away with it.

He pulled the stun gun out of its holster and applied it to the base of the kids skull and pushed the trigger. When the kid's uncontrolled spasms of all his extremities stopped, Blair put the stun gun back in it's holster and again pulled the kid off the girl, dropping him by the wall.

That - thought Max's midbrain - had been decidedly unpleasant. Actually, it still was - every muscle in his body was registering its complaints about the rough treatment - and the midbrain simply didn't care. A midbrain is just a midbrain - the response to the threat of death to a mate or offspring was hardwired in it. It was a primordial beast that just wasn't capable of being physically intimidated when it's mate or offspring was in jeopardy. Max's midbrain was simply incapable of not going back to try to keep Liz breathing.

It ignored the pain - ignored the fatigue - ignored the muscles that were only seconds away from total spasm. To the midbrain, none of that mattered. It pumped out megadoses of cortisone and epinephrine from the sympathetic system and ordered those muscles to - well, at the endocrine level it would have translated as something like 'cowboy up.'

It really didn't want to hurt this guy but the guy wasn't going to stop him from getting to Liz.

The second attack caught Blair totally by surprise. Hell, the kid didn't weigh 120# and Blair had seen a stun gun to the base of the skull incapacitate a rampaging drunk college fullback for over 20 minutes - in fact justification for the purchase of the stun guns had been controlling the drunk football players on the Saturday nights after a big game. No way did he expect this kid to get up on his own for a half hour or so minimum. By that time he expected to already have him handcuffed. But that wasn't what happened.

Blair grabbed one arm with his hand and bent it behind Max's back while with the other hand he reached for his handcuffs - but something didn't go right. The kid spun like a dervish and the kids two feet two feet hit him in the gut - lifting him off his feet and depositing him against the wall in pretty much the same place as he had landed before.

Blair was stunned and he knew with certainty that if the kid came over he could take his stun gun - take his REAL gun - do pretty much anything to him. He was fighting to keep from losing consciousness.

But the boy turned back toward the girl and Blair's own epinephrine kicked in - not much, but enough to get his stun gun back out and hit the kid with it again - this time in the side of the neck. The kid convulsed again and went down.

Blair staggered to his knees and looked at him. That was one damn tough kid. Maybe he was on speed or something but even so - that was one damn tough kid. He crawled on his knees to his fallen handcuffs and picked them up - his back to Liz Parker - and then started toward the boy to handcuff him before anything else could happen.

Max's midbrain tried its best but the spasms had depleted almost all of the ATP in the muscles of the extremities. It would be long minutes before they were capable of locomotion - minutes that Liz didn't have.

Max's midbrain raged with all the helpless fury of its primal predecessors. Somewhere in that rage it remembered. The new powers. The ones that the cerebral hemispheres guarded so carefully. It couldn't use most of them - it wasn't wired in to them - still, the ability to connect with someone - it was an extension of the power that flocks of birds used in flight to wheel and dart as a group - that pack animals used to hunt. That power was based in the midbrain.

Max's midbrain knew it wasn't eloquent like the cerebrums - but maybe it could get its point across if it connected.

The eyes stopped Jim Blair cold, and the hair stood up on his entire body when he felt the feeling that seemed to emanate from those eyes.

It was like a caveman must have felt in the dark as he felt the warm breath of a saber-toothed tiger against the back of his neck - that sort of reaction. The thing on the ground was ancient and powerful and it was really really pissed and Jim drew back against the wall in reaction. The eyes shifted then to the girl - and softened - then returned to him with a determined look of warning.

Jim Blair knew somehow what those eyes were telling him. The boy cared for that girl - and if Jim Blair let her come to harm there was nothing - NOTHING - that boy wouldn't do. He would track Jim Blair to Hell itself to have his revenge.

The feeling stunned Blair and his eyes went quickly to the girl. She didn't look hurt - but she was still - too still.

"Cripes, she's not breathing," Blair said out loud. He forgot the boy and took three steps quickly to the door and opened it, shouting at a fireman halfway down the hall. "We need medical help here - get the EMTs....," before going back and starting mouth-to-mouth breathing on the girl.

He felt the pulse at her neck and felt her chest rise and fall - just like Resusci-Annie had done in the training.

It was a couple of minutes before the EMTs got there and took over - a couple minutes that Jim Blair stayed there doing the rescue breathing - and in those minutes his eyes drifted back to the fearsome eyes of the boy. But they weren't fearsome now. Jim Blair didn't understand it but somehow what came from them had changed. They radiated only a quiet approval .... and thanks.

The EMTs came in to the room and one paramedic intubated the girl and they carried her out in a litter.

"We'll need another ambulance crew," said Blair. "I hammered this kid pretty hard with the stun gun and he isn't all that big a guy. The book says he needs to be checked out at the hospital before we bring him in."

"I'll get another ambulance," said the remaining fireman, and walked down the hall talking on his walkie-talkie. Briefly there was just the two of them in the room - Max in handcuffs and Blair looking first at the glassine papers and the glasses and the bottle, before looking down at Max. Blair didn't feel quite as good about this bust as he thought he should. All of the evidence pointed to the kid being guilty of something unspeakably vile - but those once fearsome eyes were looking at him with nothing but approval now.

"Look kid .... this looks bad for you - I'd like to believe something different but - that's just not the way the crime scene looks. But I'm gonna write my report and leave it to the detectives and the CSI people to build the case against you. It sure looks like you did this - I doubt you meant to overdose the girl though and for what it's worth I believe you really were trying to do mouth to mouth when I came in. I have to report that I used my stun gun twice - and why I did it - but I'll do this much. If the prosecutor tries to make this resisting arrest, I'm gonna tell him not to - tell him that I'll testify for you on that charge when this comes to trial. You weren't resisting arrest - it was a misunderstanding. Men have misunderstandings sometimes and they apologize and move on. I'm sorry I didn't understand. However this comes out - that part of it I'm not going to let you take the fall for. I'm just real glad it came out like it did.
Now I guess we need to get down to the formalities. You are under arrest on suspicion of sexual assault. You have a right to remain silent. If you give up the right to remain silent, anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. ....."

The last, Jim Blair knew, was barely worth saying. This kid had been hammered by those two stun gun blasts. He'd be surprised if the kid could say anything for a couple of hours.

Max's midbrain looked up at the guy wondering what he was saying. The cerebrums were still in la-la land. Without the cerebrums it would have been necessary to make another connection, and there was really not much more to say to the guy. He hadn't been malicious - merely mistaken, and now that Liz was safe the midbrain couldn't hold a grudge against him. There was a limit to even a midbrain's ability to hold a grudge, and right now it was almost totally occupied holding a far more important grudge.

A cerebrum would have wondered when the alcohol was going to wear off of those so-called 'higher functions.' A midbrain wasn't like that. Dinosaurs ruled the Earth for longer than mammals had been around - using little more that their midbrains. Max's midbrain figured it would do fine for awhile without the inhibitory effects of the cerebral hemispheres. It had unsettled business with one Jimmy Drevins - and the last thing it wanted was any inhibition when it finally caught up with him.

It had been almost two hours since he'd handcuffed the boy and taken him off to the hospital for evaluation. They had decided to keep the kid in the hospital for observation. At first they'd thought he too might be drunk - until they'd gotten him to blow in a balloon and tested it. The kid had a trace of alcohol - but certainly nothing that would explain his current state. The boy - the picture on the student activities card in his wallet identified him as Max Evans - was sitting huddled on the floor of the hospital detention room when Jim Blair had last seen him. He still hadn't spoken a word - not since he'd told Jim about doing mouth-to-mouth resuscitation of the girl. Jim still felt bad that he hadn't listened to the kid. The use of the stun gun most likely wouldn't have been necessary and Jim Blair was still agonizing over whether or not he'd have treated the kid that way if he hadn't already assumed the boy was guilty. Of course, the boy most likely WAS guilty - at least of drugging the young girl, although Jim no longer even questioned that he'd been trying his best to save her life once she'd stopped breathing. He put that assumption in his report and had clearly indicated that he didn't believe the altercation with him had been anything other than an attempt to make sure the girl was kept breathing.

At least the news about the girl was good. Her medical care had taken priority but there was one of the CSI techs that specialized in this sort of thing and she'd been right there to ensure that the legal integrity of the case had been maintained. As soon as the girl was stable on a ventilator and getting her stomach pumped, they'd started the rape exam. The preliminary report was no evidence of any actual penetration which was good for the girl - and certainly better than it could have been for Max Evans, who appeared to be in trouble enough. The preliminary report on the girls urine was GHBA and the slight residue on the glassine envelopes looked to be the same. They might know more in a few hours - the biological half-life of GHBA was only about 40 minutes and with her stomach emptied of tequila and the remaining drug, Liz Parker might be awake in just a few more hours and maybe she'd be able to say what happened but - most likely not. She had the same student ID as Max Parker did - she almost certainly knew him. Roswell wasn't that big a town and their both being here apparently had something to do with the science fair at the Fieldhouse.

Jim Blair shook his head. He'd somehow gone from worrying about the girl to worrying about the boy - who almost certainly was the bad guy in this scene. Perhaps just as his initial anger had led him to be too harsh with the boy, the fact that he could have easily let the girl die while he was dealing with the boy had the boy not done what he did was worrying his conscience a little. It shouldn't - he'd done it by the book - even the stunnings had been totally righteous - by the book. But Blair also knew that he wasn't really being attacked - not that the kid seemed incapable of violence - he'd remember those threatening eyses for a long time its just - well, Jim couldn't get past the feeling that the boy genuinely cared for the girl - despite what he'd apparently done to her. 'Sometimes,' he thought, 'police work just sucks...'

And now came one of the suckier parts of it as he reached for the phone - the notification.

Jim reached for the phone and the law enforcement code book - there were unlisted numbers that all of the law enforcement departments in the state had that were given out only to other departments - with a code of the day to make sure the person you were talking to knew that you were a bonafide police department and looked in the book for the number to make the call to Roswell - but the phone rang before he had a chance to do that. It was the front desk - another police agency was already calling him.

"Officer Blair, I'm Detective Hofstra, with the interagency task force on drugs. I understand your department just made a collar where there was GHBA involved - and according to our cumputer the perp's name is a teenager Max Evans? "

"Well, the boy is being detained now -we are still looking in to the case. The CSI guys and our own detectives really haven't had time to sort it out, but the kid was stunned - twice - and is apparently taking that kind of hard. Right now we have him in the hospital under guard."

"The boy fits the age profile for a distributor that we have found out has been putting a lot of GHBA out to pushers over a five state area. I know that sounds ridiculous but - I guess they just keep getting younger all the time. Anyway, we have one pusher who may get a deal to testify to the grand jury against the kid - if this is the right kid. He's already in Boulder and we'd like to come pick up a picture of your Max Evans and do a picture line-up - see if our perp can ID him."

"OK," said Jim Blair. "Evans certainly isn't going anywhere - not anytime soon anyway."

It was 11:30PM as the intern watched the third year medical student suture the man’s arm. The man was one of the Friday night regulars – the knife and gun club crowd that made any big city hospital so interesting on a Friday night. The guy was probably legally drunk – but they’d let him sign the permission for treatment anyway. Chances are he’d be in DT’s if they let him dry out completely. The lacerations to the arm were relatively minor and hardly life threatening.

Not so the knife to the chest. The stab wound in the chest had collapsed a lung – although that was relatively minor too, the thoracostomy tube already had reinflated it. The intern had put that in – although he’d had the med student watch him so he could do the next one – it wasn’t really hard. A simple incision through the skin between two ribs – entering the thoracic cavity by blunt dissection with a Kelly clamp through the intercostals space and then one suture to close the skin and secure the tube. Then you hooked it all up to a pleurovac and wall suction – it wasn’t like anyone could foul that up – not even the third year med student once he’d seen one.

“Ouch” said the drunk as the med student got near the end of the laceration.

“You may need a little more lidocaine,” the intern suggested. He grabbed a bottle out of the cabinet and reached in to his pocket for the old hemostat that all interns – and most third year medical students – carried. He used it to pry off the sheet metal tamper seal over the rubber top of the vial so the needle could pierce the rubber diaphragm and draw out more anesthetic. In theory you could lift the tamper seal off with your fingernail – in practice once you had inadvertently shoved the edge of the sheet metal under your fingernail trying to do that you used an old hemostat – they were disposable anyway and came in the suture removal kits. The sheet metal would do a pretty good imitation of bamboo splinters, and you’d be in agony for a week as you scrubbed for surgery.

With the additional lidocaine the arm wounds – defensive wounds, although in fact the knife fight had been started by this guy – were quickly closed. This guy would be spending the night in the jail ward and the intern and third year med student and one of the ER guards would take him there on the gurney. That was fine with the intern. He had a patient down there he wanted to recheck.

No building is more often modified than a hospital. The reason is economic. Hospitals are enormously costly to build because of the fire code. Not only do they house people who aren’t all that mobile – like Mr. knife and gun club guy here – but the walls have oxygen lines and nitrous oxide lines and vacuum lines and circuits that hook to monitors that hook to leads that hook to electrodes that are pasted to bare skin by conductive jelly. Hospitals are disasters waiting for a place to happen – and their construction is tightly regulated through the fire and electrical codes. As a consequence, it is almost always more economical to rehab areas than to destroy them and build new areas – and that was certainly the case with the jail ward.

The place consisted of three secure rooms and a hallway – with a guard on duty at the entrance to the hallway whenever any of the rooms were occupied. The rooms themselves predated most of the Boulder Medical Center – in fact they were part of what had once been Boulder General Hospital. They had been built back in the 1940s as isolation rooms for infectious TB patients – they didn’t have much to treat them with back then. They’d hold the patients here until they could be transferred to a sanitarium where it was hoped that good nutrition and plenty of sunlight and some curiously improbable surgery – like filling half the chest with ping pong balls – could be tried.

These three rooms had been quite modern then – fans pulling air in along the walls to send it through a bank of ultraviolet lights to try to sterilize the TB organisms before recirculating it from vents along the ceiling. Of course, that had all changed in the early 1950s when streptomycin came along. Now HEPA filters in all the hospital rooms handled that much more efficiently, but the solid construction and isolated position of this one small ward had proved ideal for a jail ward. The central ventilation system had been extended to tie these rooms in to the hospital air handler system – air conditioning was a luxury not available in the 1940s – and the area where the UV equipment had been converted into a small locker area for the custodians. Space was always at a premium in hospitals – nothing was ever let go to waste.

The guard at the entrance had been called by the ER and the door was open to room number two. The intern and the third year medical student got the new patient plugged in to oxygen and vacuum and got the orders written for the LPN on duty. Technically, the jail ward was part of a larger ward run by a registered nurse, but in practice it was pretty autonomous with just the guard and the one LPN taking care of the few patients. The ER guard quickly went back to the ER while the intern and the third year medical student went next door to room number one.

“I still don’t know about this guy,” said the intern, “… maybe when the other drug tests come back it’ll show us something. He hasn’t said a word since he got here. I know they gave him his Miranda rights, but this is ridiculous…”

“Could it be a psychotic break of some sort – caused by the stun gun?”

“That’s what I’m starting to worry about. Physically, he’s stable enough,” said the intern, peering in to the patient’s eyes with an ophthalmoscope. “I just don’t want to miss the possibility that he took a hit to the head in all the commotion of his arrest. That’s why we are going to be back here checking him every hour or so. If he shows any neurological changes – or any papilledema – we’ll get an MRI on his brain. If he doesn’t, we’ll get a psych consult in the morning. He isn't quite catatonic - but he sure isn't communicating. Maybe the stun gun zapped something important in his head ….. I've really never treated a stun gun injury before.”

Five minutes later the intern and the medical student left the ward – and the guard went back to his desk while the LPN went through the admitting orders on the patient with the chest tube and started his own charting. But things were no longer completely quiet in room one.

Max's midbrain knew it was running out of time. Oh, it wasn't under any threat of physical harm, it was just that cerebrums are inhibitory to the midbrain and with each passing moment the lungs were breathing out more of that volatile two-carbon hydroxyl stuff – the stuff that was inhibiting the inhibition of those cerebrums. It had a job to do – and it couldn't do it if the cerebrums woke up.

The hemostat tips fit perfectly into the head of the tamper-proof screws and in a few short minutes all six of the screws holding cover to the old air exchange vent leading to the now missing ultraviolet array were out and laying on the floor beside the cover itself– so much for those uppity damn cerebral hemispheres taunting about midbrains not being able to use tools.

Within seconds Max had shed his clothes and fit himself into the old airduct – and while it certainly wouldn't have held an adult and was decidedly uncomfortable making the two ninety-degree turns – in less than five minutes he was in the utility area on the other side of the wall separating the jail ward from the hospital proper. A quick check of the locker area found shoes and a coverall that seemed to fit reasonably well – and very shortly Max was outside the hospital and on his way back to the campus

Yes, speed was important. The midbrain needed to get Max there before the cerebral hemispheres were back on line. The cerebral hemispheres believed what they did to be 'higher functions,' but all too often the midbrain saw them as namby-pamby soft- hearted fools.

Drevins had tried to kill Liz and Max's cerebral hemispheres would have likely been satisfied with a twenty year sentence. Even if Drevins didn't plea bargain it down to ten, he'd likely get half the time off for good behavior. That meant he'd be back on the street when he was only twenty-five or twenty-six. Midbrains really thought things had been going to hell in a handbasket since – well, since before anyone had made a handbasket actually- way back before the stone age – and it was all the fault of these bleeding heart cerebrums who over-intellectualized stuff.

Max's midbrain didn't care that Drevins came from a broken home – that he was born into a world he never made (like who wasn't?) or that the bastard didn't have an appropriate male role model. He'd tried to kill Liz, for crying out loud, and if he lived he'd just be a future threat – if not to Liz again than possibly to their progeny.

No, that wasn't going to happen – not if Max's midbrain had anything to say about it. Jimmy Drevins was going down – just like in the old days before there were cerebrums.

'Yep,' thought Max's midbrain, '...cerebrums don't know how to handle this.' Say what you like, not one of them would have survived even the late Cretaceous Period. Some creatures were just rogues – they were evil – they just needed to be put down.

Max's midbrain was going to make sure that happened – not because he was vindictive although he was honest enough to admit he was probably going to enjoy it – but simply because Jimmy Drevins needed to die. That's just how midbrains think. You want cerebral thinking you better find yourself a sober cerebrum.

It had taken a little time but the telephone call that Jim Blair made was eventually forwarded to the guy in charge. Not the Sheriff – he was off in El Paso tonight on a date with is wife of forty years – but to the acting Sheriff.

“This is Deputy Valenti, Officer Blair.... can I help you?”

“Yes sir. I'm on the force up here in Boulder Colorado and I regret to say a resident of Roswell – an Elizabeth Parker, age thirteen, was the victim of an assault. She was apparently given a date-rape drug and a substantial quantity of alcohol. She was found partially dressed – but I'm happy to say the forensics right now appear to indicate that there was no sexual penetration. The perpetrator was apparently interrupted by a fire alarm – but the quantity of alcohol and drugs together was life-threatening and it was necessary to hospitalize the girl to pump her stomach and for supportive treatment. She appears to be stable right now, but rather than just giving her parents a phone call out of the blue, we'd prefer that someone from your office go knock on their door and inform them personally – then give them this telephone number to call. I can also give them the number of the physician treating her – and we also have a policewoman from the sexual crimes unit at her bedside to provide her with emotional support and to take her story – if she remembers what did happen. Anyway, I can give you the number for the policewoman at the girl's bedside and the parents can call her for updates as well. Would it be possible for your department to make that notification?”

“I'll do it personally – I know Liz as well as her parents. She's in the same year in school as my own son – I know her fairly well. This is just terrible....”

“Yes it is – we do have a suspect...”

“What you need to do immediately is to pick up Max Evans – he should be up there at the Science Fair.”

“I take it she and this Max Evans have some sort of history?” asked Blair, feeling that just as he was starting to have serious doubts about arresting the kid his initial suspicions were now starting to prove true.

“Yes, you might say that. You might say that indeed.”

“Well fortunately, I know just where we can find Max Evans...”

“Good. First of all get him to her bedside. She's probably going to be disoriented when she wakes up and a friendly face ought to help. Secondly it'll be easier breaking the news to her folks if I can reassure them that Max is there with her...”

The world all at once seemed a topsy-turvy place to Jim Blair. “It will reassure them....?”

“Yeah, but the other thing is – it'll also keep Max out of trouble. Liz – hell, Liz Parker has always been sort of a trouble magnet and Max... I know Max comes across as a shy kid, and in most ways he is, but.... well, I was there when the two of them met – just before third grade. Liz had picked up this lost puppy and this eighty pound pit bull that belonged to some drug dealer wanted to take her on and shy little Max just got between them and – well, you couldn't believe how intense that boy can be when her safety is on the line. He backed that dog off – just looked it in the eye and it was like the dog knew it was worth its life to mess with that girl...”
“Yeah,” said Jim Blair, “... I may have had a somewhat similar experience. So your opinion is that it's not real likely that Max himself could have done this to Liz?”

“Max?? Hell no, I mean that's just crazy. It's not just that the two of them are friends but – well, we kept their names out of the paper because they are both minors, but Max killed the last guy who tried to abduct Liz. The guy kidnapped Liz and Max rode a bike down the side of a hill I wouldn't have wanted to come down without rappelling gear and took the guy right over the side of a cliff. Like I said, he's a shy kid but any threats to her just sort of transform him into something …. well something frightening. But Max hurt Liz? Try to force her to do something? No. That's not even possible - that's just crazy. Heck, she's even sent him some signals – in an adolescent sort of way - that she might like to take it a little further. Unfortunately Max isn't the most mature kid – he was a foundling and really has trouble dealing with people socially – Liz being the one exception. I'm not sure if Max just doesn't see – or if he's just too shy to do anything about it – but I can tell you that I don't believe Max is capable of harming Liz. I'd never believe that...”

“So she was the girl that got kidnapped – and Max was the kid on the bicycle? I'd heard about that case – a lot of law enforcement people have I guess. Well, I certainly screwed up. I saw the kid with a lip-lock on this drugged and half-dressed girl … and I assumed he was the attacker. I pulled him off her and when he went back - apparently just to make sure she kept breathing – I used a stun gun on him – twice.”

There was a moments hesitation and Blair supposed that Valenti was wincing – or getting angry – but the voice that came over the phone was more understanding than Blair was expecting.

“Max is a hard kid to read – even if you know him. Even Liz – and she's probably closer to him than anyone I know – somehow got crosswise with him last Spring. Hell, I caught him windsurfing on the edge of a quarry once and thought he was contemplating suicide or something. That got him a psych evaluation which turned out OK. But the point is that whatever sort of life he had before he was adopted by the Evanses – it sure didn't prepare him for the real world. On the spur of the moment – well I can understand how he would have had a hard time communicating what was going on to anyone who wasn't familiar with him.”

“Yeah, well hopefully his parents are as understanding as you are...”

“Well, the bad news is that they are both lawyers. The good news is that they are pretty reasonable people. As long as Max isn't hurt I think they'll be pretty understanding. But I also think it's important to keep Max under control. He goes from real shy to real …. intense … when Liz is threatened.”

“Yeah, I think I experienced that – the kids eyes just sort of looked like they were trying to tell me that if I let anything happen to that girl he was going to take me apart. Even after he was stunned and not going anywhere there was no quitting in that boys eyes …. although when he saw the girl getting medical care I thought I saw some actual approval there.
But yeah, I get your point. I don't think I'd want an angry Max Evans coming after me – thirteen year old kid or not. But you don't have to worry – we have him safely under lock and key right now.”

“That's good. I'd keep him locked up – at least until you know that he's cooled down. But I meant what I said about the Parkers feeling better if he's there with her – and no doubt Liz could use a friendly supportive face she recognizes when she wakes up as well.”

“OK. I'll get over to the hospital and see if we can get the two of them together. Maybe she can help him calm down and communicate with us. In the meantime, if you can make the notifications to their folks – I'll have the duty desk sergeant give you all the numbers they'll need, and my personal cellphone number as well....”

Five minutes later Blair was talking to the CSI people telling them that Max Evans probably was NOT the actual perpetrator, and to leave no stone unturned. A message to that effect was left with the detectives on the case who were interviewing the Raffs, Doug and Alexis, and others who had been at the dance.

Ten minutes later, Jim Blair was on his way to the hospital to see Max Evans and Liz Parker.

The police cruiser drove through the darkened streets both men in front silently hoping that the guy in front could ID this 'Max Evans' as THE Max Evans. It was difficult to believe just how big a breakthrough this was going to be if they caught this guy. Had Bugs Quigley been honest with them he could have told them both they were doomed to disappointment. There was no way he was going to identify the kid as Max Evans.

It wasn't even that the kid wasn't most likely Max Evans – in fact Bugs was pretty certain that he was. He'd started thinking that as soon as he'd heard that this guy had given some girl a double dose. He'd told the FBI agent and the nark sergeant that the boy had given him the samples but he'd neglected to mention that the kid had said he was holding back two envelopes from his usual sample to use himself. As soon as he'd heard about the double dose he'd been pretty sure the Boulder PD had the right guy.

Bugs wished he'd never met the kid – wished he'd never gotten involved in it at all. This wasn't his kind of game. Oh, he sold drugs alright – if you considered weed to be a drug. He'd told everyone he wasn't interested in being a heavy – that if he was a criminal it was still a pretty victimless crime – I mean, the 'victims' were paying him to sell it to them for Pete's sake.

Even the GHBA – Bugs had really expected people to just buy it for raves - he really hadn't considered guys using it like this guy had. They'd said the girl was only thirteen – Bugs thought he was going to be sick – he had a daughter that was almost eleven – at least he was pretty sure she was his daughter. His ex-girlfriend claimed she was, and Bugs had to admit for all the troubles the two of them had that particular part of their relationship had been good. Britney probably was his daughter – fortunately her looks favored her mother – and if someone did that to her in a few years Quigley would break the guys friggin' neck – at least if he wasn't in jail at the time – which seemed likely.

In a perfect world someone would break this Max Evans guys neck – and Bugs would cheer him on. But the world was far from perfect and – even though it would cost him his deal with the task force – Bugs fully intended to look Max Evans in the face and say, 'Nope – that's not the guy.'

It wasn't any love of this Max Evans that was going to get the little scumbag off the hook – no it was just facing reality. Bugs knew pretty much how this was going to go down from the moment he heard all the task force people talking about the scale of this.

When he'd offered the deal Bugs had believed the kid was some science geek who was doing this out of his Mr. Wizard Chemistry set in the closet of his bedroom – but that wasn't what the task force had found out. The process that they had used had been called neutron activation analysis. Bugs didn't understand for sure how it worked – apparently it tracked trace elements in various batches of drugs and could tell if they came from a common source as reliably as fingerprints - but he understood from what they said what it told them.

This Max Evans apparently supplied a four state area with GHBA. According to the guys on the task force, he supplied somewhere between a hundred and two hundred individual pushers like Bugs and grossed millions of dollars annually. On his best year, Bugs had never cleared fifty grand.

It wasn't the money that scared Bugs – it was the power that that much money and that many clients implied. This wasn't just some kid. This was a lot of people and the implications of that to Bugs Quigley were clear. That was why he was going to tank this identification – even if it kept him in prison a lot longer. It wasn't that he liked the kid – in fact he hated him – but Bugs was a realist and he understood where this was going. He wanted no part of it.


Agent Frank Anderson and Detective Hofstra drove the cruiser down into the garage of the Boulder Jail and unloaded their prisoner. They took him up in the elevator and came out in the lobby. The desk sergeant looked at them.

“The kid was admitted to the hospital and didn't go through booking so we don't have a picture of him. Blair's on his way over there now and he's going to take the kid's picture. He said to tell you though – he's starting to have real doubts that we have the right perp.”

“Hey, if the kid's name is Max Evans and he had anything to do with GHBA, we still need to check him out,” said Detective Hofstra. The FBI agent nodded in agreement.

“Well,” said the desk sergeant, “... if you'd like we can put your prisoner in a holding cell so you two can relax.”

Both men looked at Quigley. He shrugged his shoulders. “Sure, why not. One cell is as good as another...” Besides, he figured, he was likely to be locked up for a long long time. 'Might as well get used to it...'

Long term memory and short term memory have different mechanisms Short term memory is formed when electrical activity caused by outside events recorded in the central nervous system facilitates electrical conduction through those same pathways that were originally stimulated. Over time, these pathways revert to normal and these memories are lost. If the memories are deemed important, long term memories are created during these hours by the formation of chemicals - proteins - that may persist for a lifetime and allow these memories to be retrieved even years later.

A mixture of alcohol and GHBA pretty much distorts the short-term memory. It doesn't necessarily eliminate it completely, but between the drug and the alcohol what actually happened can be very different from what was perceived. It can be more exhilarating and more frightening or anything in between. Long term memory it just blocks. The synthesis of the memory proteins just plain doesn't occur.

Officer Debbie McCandless, Boulder Colorado police department, understood this because she had been trained in it. As for practical experience, there it was a bit more limited. As an officer on the sexual victims unit she'd had this sort of duty - taking history from a traumatized sexual assault victim - many times. She was appropriately empathetic and supportive - all the things these victims needed as they put their shattered lives back together after an attack. But as far as GHBA - well this was her first case. Academically she knew what she was doing - but as for any real experience - nope.

Oh, she understood the basics. The victim's view of what had occurred - if she recalled it at all - was likely to be distorted. The officer must resist any temptation to lead the witness - for that would destroy any possibility at all of getting untainted data. The officer must be supportive if the victim is having difficulty coping with the fact of her attack - but at the same time listening carefully for any clues that the victim might give as to the identity of her attacker and the circumstances of the attack because - well chances are the victim wouldn't remember much if any of this conversation tomorrow.

By now the GHBA would be having only a little effect. With two hours gone by since Liz Parker had her stomach pumped that was three biological half-lives - the GHBA level would now be only an eighth what it was at the time her stomach was pumped. The alcohol level would not have gone down nearly as much in that time and the girl would still have a BAT of over.13 - one and a half times the legal intoxication limit - and this in a young girl with no experience with alcohol. Altogether the odds were poor of the officer getting meaningful information, and Debbie McCandless knew that. Still, and opportunity to get additional information was worth doing - and if her being there to support some poor victim was of any help to her at all, that was good enough for Debbie. It's safe to say that this talk was not going to go precisely the way the good officer anticipated.

By now Liz's midbrain was actually in pretty good shape. She'd been breathing on her own for over two hours now and breathing was - after all - a function of the midbrain. Nonetheless, the remaining small quantity of GHBA and the 0.13 BAT were having their effects on the cerebrums. Actually, the last things the cerebrums remembered were imagining that Jimmy Drevins was Max.

"Max... Max...." mumbled Liz, her eyes fluttering open in the darkened room.

"Don't worry about Max," said Debbie in her most reassuring voice. "Max can't get near you. We'll never let him get near you again."

"But.... how are we going to have Jessie, then?" asked Liz, echoing the confusion of her cerebrums, drawing on the long term memory of that distant dream.

"Jessie?" asked Debbie, now totally confused, "...Who is Jessie?"

"Jessie - our first child - our daughter."

"Your daughter? You and Max Evans?"

"Yeah, a daughter - so he can go change her poopy pants and then come back to bed and cuddle with me..." mumbled Liz in a tone that implied Debbie ought to know that.

"So he can come back and cuddle with you?'' Debbie asked doubtfully, "... you mean Max Evans?"

"....and why not ? My obstetrician said I could go back to cuddling with Max six weeks after Jessie was born. If a woman can't cuddle with her own husband, who could she cuddle with?" asked Liz, somewhat indignantly.

"Who indeed?" asked Debbie, somewhat rhetorically. "Liz, do you know what happened a few hours ago - after you were dancing?"

"I danced with Max..." Liz said happily, "....even though Doug and Lexie sort of tricked him into it. But then we didn't dance anymore and I didn't see him again until..... until I was in some room," Liz said, remembering her hallucination from the GHBA.

"An officer found you in that room, Liz, with Max. Your levis had been pulled off you and Max had his lips against yours. Do you remember any of that?"

"Oh no...," said the girl, sounding perfectly devastated. Debbie's heart went out to her - empathizing with her pain - until Liz continued, "How could I miss something like that? I lose a whole summer with him just for asking him to start dating and then when we actually start to get somewhere.... I can't even remember it? You mean I paid $85 for fingernails and bought a new t-shirt and it actually worked and ..... and I can't remember a damn thing?"

"Miss Parker, are you telling me that Max did nothing to you against your will?"

"Max?? Against my will? Are you crazy?"

"But you have bruises on your abdomen - someone assaulted you."

"Maybe someone assaulted me.... but it wasn't Max. Why would Max ever assault me?"

"Well if he intended to take advantage of you..."

Liz's eyes rolled skyward as she passed out again, her last giggling words ringing in Officer McCandless's ears.

"Max taking advantage of me...? Like THAT would be a problem......"

Of course, that was partly her midbrain speaking there. Her cerebral hemispheres were still sort of in la-la land.