With all my efforts to console Neha going in vain, it was time to do something about the situation. I went to my private lab located in the underground. I sat there all night thinking about how to reverse this genetic inclusion. I know its going to be difficult task and hence as a temporary solution, I wanted to stop the expression of the protein necessary to produce the pigment. That should be much easier with the current advancement in gene silencing technology. It is being used to prevent the expression of disease causing proteins and also to understand the role of individual proteins. I drew a logical flow diagram of the steps to be followed to achieve this. The first step was to identify which proteins were being expressed in Payal's body. The previous test at my friend's lab only revealed that one of the markers attached to the proteins was being expressed.
I started looking up my previous project documents and searched for the pigments that I worked upon. As I was going through the papers, I stumbled across a signature at one of the corners. I immedately knew whom it belonged to. How could I ever forget this name? My colleague and best friend at the university. And also my partner in crime. Vincent was such an intelligent guy with a great sense of humor. Though most women wantand to hang out with him, he was rather interested to hangout with science. We spent most of the time at the library or lab; not so interested with the boring lectures. Staying overnight in the lab was something we did frequently since we performed our experiments after college hours ended.We were so close to each other that people got into the suspicion that we were probably gay. It was only after he got married to Theresa that the suspicions disappeared. He now has two kids, a son and a daughter.
He is the best person to assist me with this. It's been quite sometime since we have spoken with both of us being occupied with family and work. The last time I spoke to him, he was in Simla for vacation. As it was midnight already, I decided to call him in the morning. I was also exhausted having been through a long day thinking hard and happy to have made a few steps ahead. I had some food from the refrigerator and went to sleep.
I woke up and looked at the clock, it was 11 am already. I tried reaching to Vincent's phone but he rejected my call with a message stating that he was on a meeting and would call me later. I knew his meetings were usually long, so I went into the shower and was wondering how life has changed in the past few days. Neha usually wakes me up everyday by 8 when she starts to the office. Now that she doesn't speak with me, I've been waking up very late for quite sometime. Though she was angry at me, she never missed preparing food for me or texting the first good morning message to me. I had once told her that looking at her text in the morning made my day bright. Ever since then she kept texting everyday. I felt guilty to have hurt this wonderful woman who cherishes my life everyday with her love. Once done with the shower, I had some food and checked my mobile to see if Vincent had called. As expected, he hadn't called back yet. I went down to the lab and started looking at the papers again.
After a few hours, I heard my phone ring and it was indeed Vincent. I did not want to put him under a shock immediately. Spoke with him for sometime about our usual life and work.He then asked me if there was anything urgent or if he could call back again. I asked him to hang on for some more time as I wanted to discuss something important and also that I needed his help. I told him the whole story that had happened and how much Neha was mad on me. There was utter silence and no reply from him. I asked him if he was still on the call. He immediately shouted with joy and said "I'm so excited, this is amazing!!!". This wasn't the response I was expecting from him. I explained him how much worried I was and that I needed his help to fix this before things turn out to be worse.
"I can understand your pain Raj, but think of the bright side of it. Are you sure you want to do this? This had been your dream. A world were people would no longer die of hunger. Take your time and call me back once you decide on how we can proceed about this. I gotta go for another important meeting now."
To be continued...
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