The Memory Painter

*

Across the street, Linz slammed the door to her car and burst into tears. She knew it made no sense, but she was upset that Bryan had not tried harder to stop her from leaving. But didn’t she want to end it? So why was she crying?

Swiping at her tears, she started the car and pulled out—and then yelped and slammed on the brakes as a hand slapped a piece of paper on her windshield.

Bryan stood next to the car, out of breath. Linz squinted at the paper through the glass. What she saw was not possible: an incredibly complex chemical formula that would have taken her hours to comprehend. At a glance, she could make out various compound molecular formulas, notations for weights, melting points, isomers, and a full breakdown of pharmacokinetic parameters.

She turned off the ignition and got out of the car. “You just wrote this?” She snatched the paper from him. “What is it?”

“Renovo. At least it’s the original formula.” He waited while she studied the page.

Linz hesitated and then reached into the car and pulled the Renovo file from her briefcase. She started rifling through the pages.

Bryan frowned. “What’s that?”

“The project file on Renovo. I haven’t looked at it yet.”

He gave her a quick summary. “It’s an experimental drug designed to generate neurons for a potential cure for Alzheimer’s. They found a way to stimulate the creation of massive amounts of neurons, which in turn formed new pathways for memory retrieval. They succeeded beyond their wildest imagination.”

“And you know this because you created the drug?”

“Just find the formula,” he told her. He had recognized Michael’s writing on several of the pages she had been sifting through. Somehow she had gotten a copy of the original file. He didn’t think it even existed.