They can all go to hell! I don't even hate them, because they are nothing more, than insignificant bureaucrats who spend their intellectual energy the whole livelong day on how they can cheat the government with their expense accounts. Count me out, dear colleagues. Adieu!
Even PHARMAROX has employed them, these bureaucrats. But unlike their governmental counterparts, they have to come up with some good ideas now and then if they don't want to end up on the street one fine day along with their expensive office furniture. Mr. Geibel and Dr. Morf have "donated" the lab to me and granted me funding for a research project for one year. They want to see results by then; otherwise their generosity will end.
I thank the Almighty God.
24 January 1980
The lab is a dream! It has been set up in a three-floor old building and is equipped with the most modern advances of laboratory and medical technology. I still can't believe my good fortune. Besides my monthly salary of ten thousand Swiss francs and this experimenter's paradise, if I am successful I will receive a bonus of one and a half million francs and three percent share of the profits, not to mention income from the patent rights. I'd like to see someone say now that the Swiss are greedy misers!
Sometimes I ask myself how things would look for me now if I hadn't knocked in person on the door of PHARMAROX last winter and asked to speak with Geibel. The old guard in the cathedral-like entrance hall must have thought me insane, but he did bring himself to make the call. Luckily, Geibel had read my article in Scientific American and wanted to see me. The rest, as they say, is history. But what would have happened if everything had turned out differently? I am now fifty-one years old, and not one black hair can be found on my balding scalp. From my childhood on, I wanted to give my life meaning. If I die, I would like to leave something of myself behind in the world, and not simply go out like a tiny flame in a sea of tiny flames. What I leave behind need not be spectacular, but it should be meaningful. But the annoying peddling, the endless correspondence with pharmaceutical firms all around the world, the Sisyphean labor of convincing business boards has pretty much worn out my nerves and strength. To be honest, PHARMAROX was my last resort in my search for a financier.
But why waste time, worrying about a black day that never dawned? My life is no longer a study in black, not even in gray. On the contrary, while, writing down these lines, I look out the window of my second-floor office right at the sun. It is shining clearly and brightly, as if it wanted to congratulate me on my taking up residence here.
To my annoyance, I have to keep in touch with the institute. Knorr and his associates exert a not inconsiderable influence on the veterinary authorities that are responsible for animal-experiment permits. According to my information, some of that bunch even have positions on the boards. Is the nightmare ever going to end?
1 February 1980
The team is finally complete. Ziebold and Gray, the Australian molecular biologists, joined us today, and I fooled around a little with a magnum of champagne. You have to motivate your staff; otherwise you can chuck the whole business right away. This I know from my own miserable experiences.
Apropos miserable: it was; of course, wishful thinking to suppose that PHARMAROX would allow me to tinker around here without supervision. They have infiltrated my operation with a certain Dr. Gabriel, who officially is supposed to act as staff physician, but who, in reality, is a rotten little spy. He knows it, I know it, everyone knows it. I will have to resign myself to being under permanent surveillance.
I "kidnapped" Ziebold from the institute. At first glance he seems to have completely mistaken his profession. His fashionable clothing, changed daily, and his foppish behavior seem more appropriate for a male model than for a scientist But when he works an uncanny transformation overtakes him, because he works like one possessed. Then brilliant ideas simply bubble out of him. A young, imaginative careerist, bold as brass, who would not be without his hundred-dollar after-shave even in the middle of the Gobi desert. This is what the next generation of researchers may well be like.
On the other hand, I dislike Gray completely. Unfortunately I cannot do without him, since he is reputed to be a wizard in his field. He already thinks he knows everything better than I, and criticizes my ideas with such rhetorical subtlety that I myself may soon be persuaded that they are absurd. When will scientists realize that imagination is of the greatest importance in this calling? But I'm not complaining. I thank God for this unparalleled opportunity.
In twelve days, we want to begin mixing the substances. If the first animal experiment succeeds, then I'd like to fly to Rome with Rosalie and live for a whole week on nothing but Chianti Classico. It will be a magnificent celebration!
2 March 1980
The soup is ready!
That's what we humorously call the mixture in the lab: the soup. Actually it consists of seventy-six experimental preparations, each with differing constituents, but the differences are so slight that essentially it's one and the same substance. In a very noisy meeting, we accepted Gray's proposal to prepare bacterial cultures that accelerate the production of coagulating enzymes, and then to integrate them into the soup. As things stand now, we will have to make thousands of experiments. I myself am ready to listen to the craziest ideas of my staff, although I will not deviate from my initial idea of finding a solution primarily along chemical
