He camped in Yosemite National Park, then Sequoia, and hiked through Death Valley. He read at night. And he thought long and hard about his next move. Each day, the solution became clearer. If he couldn’t save himself, he would save others. That was a goal he could get excited about. That was worth living for. Before, his idea of setting up a nonprofit or focusing on child welfare had been the right idea—but on the wrong scale. He wanted to do something big. He wanted to change the world—to help create a world where no one grew up the way he had.
He set up shop on Sand Hill Road. Rents there had once been the most expensive in the world. Now the former offices of a dozen recently closed venture capital firms sat empty. They were all decorated lavishly. Desmond negotiated as hard as he had with the pawnbroker for the bike so many years ago. He moved in the following week and began making calls, putting the word out that he had a new investment firm with a new focus. Thanks to the soaring stock market, he had eighty million dollars to spend. Capital was in short supply in the Valley. His inbox filled. The phone rang off the hook. But nothing was quite what he was looking for.
He named his firm Icarus Capital. In Greek mythology, Icarus was the son of Daedalus, the craftsman who built the Labyrinth. In order to escape the island of Crete, Daedalus created wings of feathers and wax for his son. He warned Icarus: If you fly too high, the sun will melt your wings. If you fly too low, the sea’s dampness will weigh you down. The story rang true to Desmond. The market’s exuberance and implosion were in league with the allegory of Icarus, but so was life. People who flew too high—who lived beyond their means and ability—were bound for failure. As were those who never took a chance.
Despite his belief that his emotional growth had plateaued indefinitely, Desmond interviewed several psychotherapists. One suggested he talk to a firm that was developing a novel therapy. It was experimental, he said, but worth checking out. The company was called Rapture Therapeutics.
Desmond was stunned when he heard the name. He still remembered it from SciNet; it was one of the three mysterious companies that had been funded by Citium Holdings and Invisible Sun Securities.
A week later, he sat in Rapture’s office in San Francisco. The company’s chief scientist held up a pill.
“This is a fifty-milligram antidepressant. You and I could both take the same fifty-milligram pill, and you might have four times the physiological reaction that I do. What’s the difference? It’s the way your body metabolizes the drug. How it processes it. For doctors, and for patients, that’s a problem.”
“What’s the solution?”
“Bypassing medicine altogether. At Rapture, we’ve built an implant that’s placed inside the brain. It monitors brain chemistry and releases chemicals the brain needs—when it needs them. Imagine a world without schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, or depression—just to name a few. The market potential is nearly unlimited.”
“I’m interested. I’ve tried medication, but it hasn’t worked for me. What I’m most interested in is memory alteration.”
The scientist scrutinized him. “What do you mean?”
“I’m interested in erasing painful memories. Starting over, if you will.”
A pause.
“We don’t currently have a technology or procedure to do that, Mr. Hughes.”
“But you’re working on something.”
“Nothing we’re ready to discuss at this time.”
Desmond underwent the implant procedure. He kept his expectations low. Almost immediately, however, he felt results. The depression lifted. He was more excited about work. He looked forward to things. And he feared that it would all go away if the implant failed or if Rapture as a company folded. He became obsessed with the organization. He made calls, requested company filings that weren’t public. He got nowhere.
Finally, he requested a meeting with the CEO and CFO.
“I want to invest,” he said.
The CEO’s voice was flat. “We’re very well funded.”
“By whom?”
“Our investors prefer to remain anonymous.”
“Citium Holdings? Invisible Sun Securities?”
He could have heard a pin drop in the room. Both executives excused themselves. They were scared.
Desmond researched Citium and Invisible Sun endlessly. Some of their corporate filings were public by necessity. They owned shares in a dozen companies—and they had donated millions to nonprofits and foundations he had never heard of. The nonprofits were funneling all that money into research at government and private organizations. They were funding projects in genetics and medical science, advanced energy technologies, and supercomputing. What did it mean? And why were they so secretive?
Increasingly, Desmond became consumed with unraveling the Citium mystery. But try as he might, he couldn’t connect the dots. Every avenue led to a dead end.
For the most part, he lived a solitary life. He owned a small house in Menlo Park, rode his bike to work every day, and occasionally had lunch with an old colleague. He watched his investments grow and the seasons change like a time-lapse photograph, his own life in fast forward, slipping away.
He thought about Peyton almost every day. He had set up a web search alert for her name. He opened the emails instantly whenever something popped up. She graduated from medical school. Began her residency. Was accepted to the CDC’s EIS program. That made him happy. She had kept her promise: to move on with her life.
Like Desmond, she had lost many of the people she had come to love: her father, brother, and now him. He hoped she wouldn’t suffer his fate. He wanted to see her fall in love, get married, have children. He knew that was what she wanted, deep down, no matter what she said.
To him, the most terrifying possibility was that her time with him had made her unable to love; that by being with her, he had infected her with the fear of commitment that lay deep inside him.
On a cool November morning, a man pushed open the glass door to Desmond’s office and strode inside. He was in his sixties or seventies, if Desmond had to guess, with short white hair and a pale face. His eyes were blank, unmoving, as if he were holding still for a medical procedure.
Desmond hadn’t bothered to hire an assistant—there wasn’t enough work for one.
He didn’t have anything scheduled for that day.
“NextGen Capital is across the hall.”