Read Online Placebo by Steven James - Free Book Online Page A

university research center, the building is constructed of beautiful pine logs and, in the trail’s lights, has the look and feel of an Alaskan lodge.
    Charlene looks at me. “So if I’m hearing you right, the particles might be separated by space—could be light-years apart—but somehow they’re still interconnected?”
    â€œPhysicists typically call it nonlocality, or quantum entanglement.”
    â€œAnd that’s what the study tomorrow is about. Only this time involving people.”
    â€œIt looks like it. Yes.”
    â€œTo see if people who are in love are somehow entangled?”
    As we continue down the path, one confound I’d only briefly considered earlier comes to mind: in these studies, the results depend on the subjects being in love, or at least having a deep emotional connection with each other, but Charlene and I were only pretending to be lovers. If there really was anything to the test, that relational dynamic would inevitably affect the results.
    I contemplate how the relationship of the participants to each other could possibly alter the outcome, and decide I’ll try my best tomorrow to follow the test procedures in order to find out.
    We leave the trail, skirt along the edge of the woods, and meet up with the path to the lower level of the research facility’s exit door.
    There are no visible video surveillance cameras, but to be prudent, as we approach the door we keep our heads down, faces hidden.
    The key card reader has a number pad beside it. Serenity hadn’t written down a password, and I’m not sure what I’ll do if there is one.
    I slip the card into the reader, and thankfully, the indicator light immediately switches from red to green. I hear a soft buzz and the door clicks open.
    Nice.
    â€œHere we go,” I tell Charlene.
    Then, snapping on my flashlight, I lead her into the building.

Third Floor
    We find ourselves in a long, windowless hallway. Apart from the soft light emitted by the exit signs at each end, the only light comes from my flashlight.
    In her research, Fionna had discovered that while some of the financial contributions to the LRC came from private donors, Dr. Tanbyrn’s research had received a twenty-million-dollar grant from RixoTray Pharmaceuticals for a “cooperative research initiative.”
    Which seemed like an awful lot of money to me for research that might end up being bogus.
    When we were first exploring this project, to make her poking around legal, Fionna had managed to land a consulting job with RixoTray to test their cybersecurity.
    While she was doing her research, she’d stumbled onto some connections to research into the DNA segments called telomeres (which shorten as cells split, causing aging), and the enzyme telomerase, which seems to stop that process. In fact, in one 2010 Harvard study that appeared in the scientific journal Nature , telomerase was shown to actually reverse the aging process in rats.
    Imagine being the pharmaceutical firm that developed a drug that stopped—or even reversed—the effects of aging in humans.
    The financial rewards would be astronomical.
    Fionna is still working on getting through the firewalls without being detected, and that was about all she’d come up with so far—no clear connection between the telomeres research and the Lawson Center. Last I heard, she had her seventeen-year-old son, Lonnie, working on an algebraic equation to hack the IPSec VPNs (whatever those are) for an extra-credit assignment.
    I sweep the beam of light ahead of us, targeting the end of the hall.
    â€œSo, the Faraday cage?” Charlene whispers.
    â€œYeah, let’s see if it really does block out all electromagnetic signals.”
    â€œYou going to be okay with that?”
    I’d made a decision earlier regarding the chamber. “I don’t need to go inside. You can take care of that.”
    â€œOf course.”
    I see that she’s