Normally Dr. Martin would force the general to meet in his office; he preferred keeping things on his terms as much as possible, and the general was a little too territorial inside his own space. With the discoveries they had just made, though, he didn’t want to push any of his buttons at the moment. His concessions ended there, though, and he simply walked into General Alexander’s office, not bothering to knock.
“You were looking for me? At least, I’m pretty sure that’s what the entire facility would say.”
The general stared at him, obviously not amused, and Xavier caring not at all. “As a matter of fact, yes. I wanted to discuss the results for the last few days. I was hoping you could explain to me how we can have so many successful operations and yet the project is still sitting in an at-risk state.”
“As you know, sir,” said with just the right amount of snarkiness, “we have three parallel tracks running in this project. The main track focuses on our prime candidate Gabriel, and the secondary track focuses on our additional subjects. Both of these are critical to the ongoing success of the project. The third track, the Regenesis program, isn’t as impactful since it’s primary focus is, by design, a long-term view. Gabriel is doing well, but the other two tracks are not as positive. Consequently, the project health is brought down.”
Smoke from his cigar curling around his shaved head, General Alexander leaned in closer to his desk, resting his arms on the surface. “Let’s talk about Regenesis for a minute. Gabriel was part of the Genesis program for this project, and it took surprisingly little time and research to come up with this product. So why is it that we are not able to apply the exact same research to replicate it?”
Dr. Martin removed his glasses, rubbing his eyes in a cliche but necessary move. “The basic answer to that question is that we got lucky the first time around, extremely lucky. Once we understood the mechanics and physics behind what we wanted to do, it was a fairly rudimentary process to work out the subjects we would need. Finding them was difficult but not impossible. It wasn’t until we had our first successful candidate in Gabriel that we realized there were other factors that we had not accounted for.”
General Alexander slammed his hand down on his desk. “I don’t care about the details, dammit! I want to see results and I want them now.”
In a slow, practiced move, Dr. Martin folded his glasses and slipped them into his lab coat pocket. “It’s the details that matter, as we’ve discussed many times over. This is like baking a cake, having it be the most perfect cake ever made, and then realizing afterwards that you bumped your spice rack and added five or six things you didn’t know about. For us we have to isolate what the missing factors are before we can replicate it. Even then, it will be at least a decade from inception until development is far enough along to be usable. After all, we’ve had Gabriel from infancy and his full potential wasn’t realized until he was thirteen.”
His irritation obviously growing, General Alexander stood up behind his desk and leaned over it, pushing his face nearly into Xavier’s. Not one to be bullied, Xavier held his ground and waited for the next tirade to erupt. Instead what he got was something far more worrisome.
“I want you to restart the sideline experiments that were part of the original Regenesis program. You have been under my oversight in what has been largely treated as a private enterprise under government contract. However, your little enterprise was just bought out. You are now officially a black government program, which means whether you like it or not you now take direct orders from me. And, because the oversight for this program falls under the directorate of the CIA, you have no choice but to move forward as ordered.”
This did actually cause Xavier to flinch. Losing complete control seemed inevitable; they had worked out a way to keep it from swallowing them up completely. Restarting the experimentation was not something he expected to happen, though.
“You can’t be serious, General”, renewed but false deference in his voice. “The survival rate on those experiments was measured in single digits. We can’t go back to that level again.”
“You can and you will, Dr. Martin. You will have plenty of volunteers; who and from where need not concern you. Believe me, the possibility of this being a success to them will be much better than their other options in life.”