After Alex finally admitted to himself he was in love with Elizabeth he felt guilty for not telling her his reasons for selecting her as his research student.
He had intended to tell her eventually but as time passed disclosing the truth became harder and harder.
He couldn't explain why attempting to decipher a memory trace embedded in brain tissue had resulted in seeing the image of her face.
And not only had he observed it but Len had the same experience as well and that put the two of them in the same position.
They invited her into the project not just to work as a team on decoding embedded memories but to observe her as part of the experiment.
He could only imagine how betrayed she'd feel.
How could he explain that? He couldn't, but at the same time he didn't want to lose her.
What a conundrum!
It was an unsolvable situation that could only result in hurt feelings.
It seemed Alex had no choice but to press on and discover on his own why Elizabeth's face appeared and the only way he could do that was to extend the experiment.
The specimen of brain tissue he used before was very small, measured in microns. He would now use a larger section and see if he could decipher more than a single image.
He would conduct the trial late at night in the lab.
It was risky to go solo but he didn't want to onvolve anyone else, especially Len, who had also become close friends with Elizabeth.
Alex deliberately chose a night when Len was visiting his family out of. town and Elizabeth was tied up with friends.
He didn't want to risk either of them dropping by the lab unannounced.
He knew he was over-reacting in this matter. The way he hired Elizabeth was deceptive and even falling in love with her seemed incredibly self-indulgent.
The rationale Alex was using was sound—by anayzing a larger section of brain tissue from the same region as he obtained his first sample he would tap into something more substantial and hopefully more revelatory.
At first the procedure filled him with fear and guilt, but after ten minutes of obtaining no results his mood changed into anger and frustration.
He expeienced his first failure.
He decided to give it one more try and if nothing occurred he'd declare the attempt futile and pack it in for the night.
Suddenly, as before, a blinding flash occurred, and as if stuck by lightning, Alex lost consciousness.
When his senses began to return, he found himself standing in front of Elizabeth and conversing with her.
The words sounded garbled as if the sound were disrupted by static on a radio band.
But as the static cleared the shock of what he was hearing seared through his mind.
He was expecting fragmented images, not a dynamic re-enactment of reality as if he were viewing a scene from a movie.
