Future of Porn

James and Louisa trod carefully through a dense, heavily wooded buffer zone and emerged onto a breathtaking stretch of white, sandy beach with the shimmering green of the Atlantic Ocean beyond. It looked like paradise.

Apollo Beach, one of the most pristine stretches of oceanfront on Florida’s west coast, was wonderfully isolated and entirely devoid of looming high-rises and tacky boardwalks. The day was bright but brisk, and the ocean breeze was salty and bracing.

“So, where is everybody?” asked Louisa.

“It’s a little chilly today, plus it’s midweek,” James replied. “I understand it gets really crowded on weekends.”

Louisa nodded and pulled her white tank top over her head, exposing her surprisingly large but relentlessly pert breasts. Her rosy pink nipples quickly stiffened, responding to the gentle breeze. She then casually slipped out of her loose-fitting jogging shorts and removed her panties.

James admired Louisa’s body as she gazed toward the horizon while wrapping her long hair into a ponytail. Although she was only five feet tall, Louisa wasn’t particularly dainty. She was round and soft - the way women were supposed to be, in James’ view - and her skin was alabaster white. Other than the incongruously bushy triangle of dark hair at the junction of her thighs, she was baby smooth.

James felt his manhood stir and swell slightly, and tried to concentrate on something else, anything else. It was, after all, considered bad manners to stroll along a clothing-optional beach while sporting a throbbing boner, however unimpressive that boner might be. At forty, he was twenty years Louisa’s senior. Big and sturdy but never particularly buff, he was painfully aware that nothing about his middle-aged physique would evoke admiring glances among the more youthful beach denizens. And his flaccid penis, while respectably thick, was not long enough to swing and dangle when he walked. It’s more of a jiggler, he thought, as he willed his impending erection into retreat.

That was one reason the lack of company came as a relief. James didn’t relish the thought of Louisa, who had been a virgin when they met, viewing herds of lithe, muscular twentysomethings dashing about, their outsized organs arrogantly flopping and flailing as they chased Frisbees along the shore. True, they were soulmates - but James knew Louisa was reveling in her newfound sexuality, and for novelty’s sake, might well be open to a purely physical encounter with a well-endowed stranger.

“Okay, clothes off,” Louisa ordered, a movie-star grin spreading across what James called her apple-pie face. That smile - so perfect, so sweet - was often all it took to bring him to arousal. Now, despite James’s best effort to suppress it, that was exactly what was happening again.

Once, while she had been clandestinely masturbating him as they sat side-by-side in an all but empty art-house cinema, his climax had been unusually slow to build, perhaps as a result of trepidation over being noticed. Just as he was about to touch her wrist and reluctantly advise her to give up, she had turned to him, kissed him gently on the earlobe, and whispered, “I love you.” The combination of her soft whisper and her warm breath was all it took to push him over the edge, and the shattering, unanticipated eruption that followed had soaked her fist and splattered his shirt from stomach to shoulder.

Most of all from that night, however, James remembered Louisa’s smile - wide, white and luminous even in the dark. She had smiled at the first blast of semen, and had continued smiling as she squeezed and coaxed the final drops from his swollen glans. It was a smile that combined delight, arousal and no small degree of smugness at her uncanny ability to force his atypically reluctant penis to do her bidding.

As he relived the so-called “Casablanca Handjob,” James quickly pulled his Sun Records tee-shirt over his head and slid out of his khaki shorts, almost stumbling as his feet became entangled in a stubborn leg hole.

Louisa giggled as she observed James’ misstep before snaking an arm around his waist. If she noticed that he was semi-erect, she chose not to comment as she pulled away and trotted across the sand to the water. She dipped a size-five foot in the frothy surf, then returned. “I’d never stuck a toe in the ocean before,” she explained with a shrug.

“Do you, ah, want to go in?” asked James, knowing the cold water would effectively put a damper on his impending hard-on - or at least hide it from public view.

“We can, but you’d have to save me from drowning, you big, strong man,” Louisa said in a teasing voice. “I never learned to swim.”

“Oh. Well then, we can just take a walk.”

The pair strolled along in silence for a few minutes before she poked James in the ribs. “I’ve got a question. How on earth do people go to nude beaches and not get mind-numbingly horny?”

James chuckled and bid Louisa to look ahead and to the right. “That’s why.”

In the distance, an elderly couple ambled toward them, naked but for tennis shoes and baseball caps. As they neared, James noted that the man sported a massive beer gut and his torso, front and back, was matted with steel gray hair. His donkeyesque penis was marred by a withered foreskin that encased the head and formed a puckered, discolored tip, not unlike that of an ill-used funnel. The woman’s pendulous breasts lolled over her own grotesque belly, which sagged so badly that her womanhood was entirely concealed. Just as well, James mused.

“Well, I guess not everybody who goes to nude beaches is hot,” Louisa said as the couple passed them by, nodding a greeting.

“True, but the old guy had a big dick,” James replied.

“It was big,” Louisa agreed, “but can it do this?” She reached for James’s own organ, which had diminished at the sight of too much grandmotherly flesh, and gave it a squeeze and a tug. Within seconds, he was rigid.

“Jesus, if anybody sees us, we’ll get thrown out!”

Louisa put on a face of chagrin. “I’m sorry - I’ll be good,” she promised, but James skimmed a hand over her rear and said,

“Don’t be too good.”

A few more yards further down the coast, they approached a second couple, both muscular and tan, who were the antithesis of the Ma and Pa Kettle lookalikes. Glancing at the woman, a lithe blonde who appeared to be in her twenties, Louisa was instantly aware of each and every one of her own body’s flaws, and pawed through her tote bag to avoid meeting her eyes when they passed. Though she knew she wasn’t overweight, she felt her curves were better suited to centuries gone by, and was not yet accustomed to having them on display.

James reacted similarly when he caught sight of the man, whose body was smooth, bronze and, chiseled. He was hairless - a body wax, James speculated - except for a neatly trimmed tuft above the base of his penis, which dangled heavily and swung lake an elephant’s trunk with every step. James held a folded towel in front of his erection as they approached.

“His thing was impressive,” he remarked when they were out of earshot, certain that Louisa had noticed.

“Then his girlfriend should be very happy.? But she can’t be as happy as me.”? Again, Louisa took hold of James’ manhood and rubbed her thumb over its tip. But this time, she did not heed his protests, which were short-lived anyway. “It’s getting cloudy and everybody’s heading for home. Come on!” She grabbed him by the arm and they hurried to the woods’ edge, James’s erection bobbing uncomfortably as they jogged.

Traversing a dune, they knelt side-by-side and kissed furiously while running their hands over each others’ smooth, sun-warmed skin. Louisa inched lower, towards the straining, frustrated hard-on that she had so effortlessly caused, and gave it just a whisper of a touch, causing it to twitch in anticipation.

Then, with a carefree flippancy, she turned her attentions north, licking a trail from James’s navel to his sternum, and dotting the rest of the path to his mouth with kisses. He gave a muffled groan, then broke the kiss to push Louisa onto the ground with exciting and uncharacteristic aggression.

With a firm hand, he cupped her, and then slipped a finger between the rosy folds to find her hidden skin, already glossy with wetness. Good, he thought, and began to stroke her firmly; she ground against his hand in response.

Then, abruptly, James ceased direct stimulation and lowered his head to kiss Louisa’s creamy inner thighs, carefully avoiding contact with her pubic mound. After a moment, he moved to her lush womanhood and drew his tongue from her heavily lubricated opening to her little bud so lightly that she couldn’t tell if the sensation was caused by his touch or by a teasing, if well-directed, breeze.? After gently, briefly kissing her engorged clit, James sat back in the sun and grinned at his little trick. Wild-eyed, Louisa groggily raised her head and begged him, “No, don’t stop!”

“Why shouldn’t I?? Tit for tat, after all.”

“I’m sorry, James. Please, please make me come.”

He appeared to ponder the matter for a moment before replying, “All right, but you have to promise to finish what you started when I’m done.”

Her agreement faded into a low moan as James covered her womanhood with his mouth and began to swirl his tongue over her. It only took a few moments of such activity before her body began to tremble and stiffen with impending release. As she clutched at fistfuls of sand, she came with a gasp and a cry. Her legs gently falling closed, she lay still with her eyes shut for several moments, a soft smile on her parted lips.

Gradually, her breathing returned to normal and her heart rate slowed. The feverish orgasmic flush that covered her body faded, and her rock-hard nipples softened, then retreated. Post-climax spasms sent small electric surges through her loins, causing her to unconsciously slide a hand across her belly and gently place a calming finger on her still-quivering clit.

Sitting beside her, James stroked Louisa’s hair and waited for her to recover from what had been, in their lexicon, a “screamer.” With his free hand he touched his thickening glans, feeling the lubricated tip and spreading the seepage. God, he was ready for her.

Leaning down, he lightly kissed her.? “Are you okay?” he asked, fully realizing that it was a rhetorical question.

“Jesus, that was huge,” she replied, opening her eyes and moving her hand from her moist slit to her right breast, where it rested for a moment before she sat up and brushed her hair from her face. James took the beach towel he had carried with them and unrolled it beside her.

“Here, lie down on this,” he said. “It’ll be a lot more comfortable than the sand.”

“I could have been lying on a bed of nails and not noticed during all that,” she replied, smiling and reaching for his raging erection.? “Now, I wouldn’t want you to get burned down there,” she said, squeezing and then releasing him. She fumbled through her canvas bag, removed a tube of sunscreen and squirted the oily, coconut-scented liquid liberally on her palms. “Now, it’s your turn.”

James stretched out on his back, his member pointing backward toward his navel and casting a deceptively long shadow across his belly.

Sitting cross-legged beside him, Louisa gripped him with both hands, one atop the other, and slowly, excruciatingly began to pump up and down, the oil allowing her palms to slide easily across the shaft and the head.

“Tell me before you come,” she whispered as her grip tightened. “I want to feel you shoot it inside of me.”

“I’ll try,” he replied, the words seeming to stick in his throat. Louisa then changed her stroke, interlocking her fingers and quickening her pace. “I can’t last long when you’re doing that.”

As he felt the inevitable explosion approach, James turned his head and looked beyond Louisa, who was clearly enjoying the sight of her dainty fists pistoning his thick, six-inch hard-on.

There, standing on a dune behind Louisa and slightly to the left, was a woman. At a glance, James could see that she was long and lanky, with small breasts and short, fire-engine red hair. Her hands were on her slender hips, and she was smiling.

“Louisa! Quit it!” he gasped, reaching for her arm and gripping it in an effort to end her ministrations before it was too late.

“What’s wrong?” she asked, stopping abruptly. James gestured over her shoulder and Louisa turned to look. But he had passed the point of no return; as Louisa realized they had company, she gasped and released him. But he had already begun to blast streams of hot jism, ribbons of which found their mark on her stomach and breasts.

Without thinking, and desperate to finish his interrupted orgasm, James’s own huge hand replaced Louisa’s and he pumped crudely and frantically, causing another shot of semen to spurt forth, this time with only enough trajectory to form a milky pool in his navel.

“It’s perverts like you two who spoil places like this for the rest of us,” the woman said as James squeezed and tugged. Her tone was jovial, but her presence was unwanted. James, now spent, looked shamefaced, while Louisa glowered at the intruder, seemingly unfazed by the splashes of come that now formed rivulets and slowly trickled down her body.

“The place seemed deserted. It’s not as if there’s a Kindergarten class building sandcastles three feet away.”

Smirking, the redhead turned on her heel, picked up a green, neatly-folded beach towel and began to walk away. Then, having provided them with a clear view of her small, firm rear end, she made an about-face and addressed Louisa in a businesslike tone.

“You should reverse that move of yours; instead of starting at the base of his cock and moving up to the head, you should grab him at the top, then slam your hand down. You should hear the guys moan when I pull that one!”

“Thanks for the tip,” she replied crisply, then reached over to tuck the sunscreen back in her tote bag.

The redhead edged closer and said insistently, “No, try it now. I had fun watching you guys and didn’t mean to interrupt.”

“We certainly couldn’t with you standing there and looking at us.” Louisa waited for James to add his outraged voice to the exchange, but he was silent. She turned and looked at him, her eyebrows raised quizzically. But, having recovered from the initial surprise and having assessed the potential of their situation, he only smiled and shrugged. She also noticed that his organ had lost none of its rigidity, despite having just emptied what seemed to be a gallon of semen.

“He really made a mess on you, didn’t he?” the redhead asked with a grin. “Too bad you weren’t a little faster. You could have caught it in your mouth. But in your defense, I think you got a little distracted when I showed up.”

Louisa didn’t answer as she fished a handful of tissues from her bag and began wiping away James’s sticky emission.

“Yeah, I’m sorry about that, babe,” James said, knowing full well that Louisa enjoyed watching him ejaculate and feeling his come on her body. “I was about to warn you so you could climb on, and then our friend here showed up.”

The redhead walked from her perch on the nearby dune to where they sat. She kneeled by Louisa and stuck out her hand, which was distinguished by long, thin fingers and bright red nails.

“I’m Nikkie,” she said as Louisa instinctively offered her tiny hand in return. Then, realizing her palms were still slick with semen and lotion, she withdrew and muttered an apology.

“Hey, no problem,” Nikkie insisted. “Come and coconut is my favorite combination. It’s the kind of perfume I wear.”

Louisa couldn’t help but smile at this odd, sprite-like character, who seemed to find nothing untoward about barging in on an oceanside sexual encounter. She could have been a teenager, judging from her taut physique, pert breasts and gangly demeanor. But a few barely noticeable laugh lines around her bright green eyes indicated that she was older; perhaps thirty. It was impossible to tell for sure.

But she was certainly cute, Louise had to admit. Her smile was huge and friendly and her slightly upturned nose was dotted with freckles. Her complexion was fair, although her shoulders were reddened from the sun. Was she a natural redhead? Louisa couldn’t tell, since her pubic area was as smooth as the rest of her body.

“I’m Louisa, and this is James,” she finally said, as politely and nonchalantly as possible under the decidedly awkward circumstances.

“It’s a pleasure,” Nikkie replied. “But I was serious about what I said before. I want you guys to keep on doing what you were doing. I was getting pretty worked up watching you. After you’re done, Louisa, maybe you’ll share your guy with me. Or maybe you and I could put on a show for him.”

“Well, I don’t know about any of that…” Louisa hadn’t finished her sentence when James got to his feet, his glistening hard-on still jutting outward.

“Louisa, you and I have talked about this kind of thing before, and you said you’d be willing,” James reminded her.

They had, in fact, speculated about a threesome with Louisa’s friend, Sarah, a six-foot-tall bisexual who had, only half-jokingly, dared them to join her in bed. They had declined at the time, but both were intrigued and vowed to give it serious consideration if the opportunity again presented itself.

“That’s true,” replied Louisa, whose own trepidation was being replaced by arousal. “Maybe we could start out slowly and see what happens.”

“Fair enough,” said Nikkie. “First, I think you should suck him off. He’s got a nice cock for oral; circumcised and not too long. I’ll bet I could deep throat him.”

Louisa bristled a bit at the comment. James had never complained about her oral technique, but that was something she’d never been able to accomplish. “I think he likes it the way I do it,” she replied.

Kneeling in the sand, she found herself eye-level with James’s manhood. Gripping the base with her hand, she leaned forward and gently kissed the tip, sending shivers throughout his body. She began slowly, pumping steadily with her hand while her lips firmly encircled the glans. Uncertain of working before an audience, her eyes darted to Nikkie, who was watching with a poker face, and then to James, whose expression was far more pleasing. Encouraged, she increased her speed and adjusted her grip to allow herself to take another inch, and then one more, into her mouth.

After a few more moments, she removed her hand and slid her lips toward his pulsing base. James moaned, but a crack of thunder surprised them both and his manhood dislodged from her mouth before she could, for the first time, navigate its length and engulf it completely.

Nikkie giggled as Louisa resumed jerking him off, nervously assessed the darkening sky. “Maybe we ought to call it a day,” she suggested, but their companion shook her head.

“You look pretty sweet, but I don’t think you’ll melt. There’s a covered pavilion just a little ways down. Come on!”

The raging elements always brought out Louisa’s wild side, and perhaps a little driving rain and lightening were all she needed to let herself go and have some fun. Ultimately, she had nixed the idea of a threesome with Sarah because, if it didn’t all proceed with the precise choreography of a Busby Berkley number, she could never face her friend again. But she would never have to see this redheaded stranger after today - unless she wanted to.

They hurried down the shore to the pavilion, where James sat atop a picnic table. Expecting Louisa to regain her perch between his knees, he looked at her with curiosity when she instead sat beside him and rested her arm over his shoulder. “Suck him off,” she instructed Nikkie with unusual authority. “I couldn’t have done it much longer anyway, and he deserves a good time.”

Gustafson turned his back on the boy and I could tell he was pleased with the results of his interrogation. Craig was lying and he was doing a poor job of it. I saw him look at me, his eyes full of trepidation.

“Your honor,” the prosecutor began, “I should now like the court to view a videotape which will refute the testimony of this witness.”

“Proceed counselor,” the judge said.

Gustafson instructed the attendant to start the video. Once again the lights dimmed and in a few seconds the monitor was alive with moving images.

“I don’t know if you were aware of this Mr. Lundquist, but your kindly doctor Swensen was thoughtful enough to have the so-called ‘follow-up’ test videotaped.” He pointed to an image of a naked man lying on a table. “I believe that person is you, is it not?”

It was indeed Craig.

“Oh, fuck!” I said under my breath. “I forgot all about the god-damned video!”

Rebecca moaned. “Jesus Christ! I can’t believe the cops got their fucking hands on it!”

Stephan looked anxious. “You make videos of all your experiments?”

“It’s standard procedure,” Rebecca said.

“Why the hell didn’t you tell me?”

“I’m sorry Stephan,” I replied. “With all the shit we’ve been through lately it went completely unnoticed.”

“The judge, Gustafson, and I had access to all the videos. But I don’t remember seeing this. I must have missed something.”

His face grew dark, but he said nothing further.

Bonnie and Philip looked tense. However, that did not stop them from shifting their chairs around for a better view of the monitor, which was now displaying a close-up image of Craig’s ever-expanding prick. The young man looked on in horror as the image of his stiff penis grew from its normal nine inches to nineteen inches in less than several minutes’ time. It was like witnessing the sped up growth of a flower utilizing the photographic technique of time-lapse photography.

The audience reacted with gasps of astonishment. Even my own subjects, including Craig himself, watched the unprecedented transformation with mouths agape. The volume on the video had been turned up so that all the people in the audience could now hear the shocked comments of myself and my colleagues as we beheld the startling transfiguration. The girls from St. Bridget’s were completely spellbound by the monstrous, growing cock, giggling and nudging each other, unable to take their eyes off the screen.

And then, played out before the entire audience, was the image of Craig tearing himself free of his restraints, looking every bit like a modern-day Frankenstein as he pushed Jeffrey, Barney, and all the other men aside and ran from them in stark terror. Seeing it now for the first time on video, I had no idea how fast the sequence of events had transpired, and how ineffectually my staff and I had handled the crisis. By the time the video came to the part where Craig was submitting to the involuntary ejaculation response, I had begun to feel a sinking feeling in my heart. Mercifully, the tape was stopped at that point.

The attendant increased the illumination in the room even as Gustafson, with a satisfied grin, turned to Craig.

“Is your penis back to normal size now, Mr. Lundquist?”

Craig looked at the sanctimonious creature standing before him and for the first time I saw actual hatred in his eyes. “Yes.”

“And do you suffer from involuntary ejaculation any longer?”

“No.”

“Then you must be relieved to say the least. It must have been a terrible ordeal for you to have suffered the effects of another person’s incompetence.”

“Your honor.” Stephan said, rising. “Counsel is expressing an opinion.”

“Which he is entitled to do under these circumstances, Mr. Ambrose,” the judge said, tersely.

Stephan sat back down with a grunt.

“That kid should have told the truth. What the hell was he thinking?”

“He was trying to protect me,” I said, feeling empathy for the kind-hearted boy.

“Well he’s only succeeded in making things more difficult for us,” he replied with frustration. “Christ! I wish I knew why I’m having so much difficulty remembering that tape!”

The judge dismissed Craig. As he slowly walked down the aisle toward Cheryl, who sat with a pained expression on her face, hundreds of eyes traced his forlorn and arduous journey with a silence that was oppressive. Only the giddy schoolgirls could bring themselves to speak, hurling lewd epithets at him with unabashed audacity as he fell into his seat beside Cheryl looking tired and defeated.

“Shut the fuck up!” Cheryl screamed at the brunette, whom I had earlier heard called ‘Bridget.’

The judge immediately intervened. “Another outburst like that and you will be removed young lady. And that goes for the rest of you too!” he said, addressing the schoolgirls.

Bridget fell silent as a general hush came over the entire audience.

“Mr. Ambrose. Call your next witness.”

Stephan tapped Philip on the shoulder. “Your honor, I should like to call Philip Olmstead to the stand.”

Bonnie laid her hand on Philip’s arm and smiled at him as he slowly got up and headed toward the witness chair. Whatever hope he had held out for an easy victory was now dispelled with Craig’s fateful decision to lie in my defense, and as such, he began to feel that his own chances of surviving his own trial, only a few months away, were becoming bleak. I was grateful to him for not dragging me into the gaping pit toward which he was now so carelessly headed by reason of his treachery, but I did not want to see him suffer needlessly either. As he sat down before Stephan, his body hunched forward and his eyes full of anxiety, I felt pity for him and hoped that his interrogation would be brief.

“Mr. Olmstead,” Stephan began, “you have pleaded guilty to stealing doctor Swensen’s fertility drug, EJAX-472. May I ask you why you stole it?”

“What man wouldn’t want to have orgasms like that?” Philip replied. “I thought if I could steal a sample of the drug I could then have it replicated at another lab. I’d make a fortune.”

“And you had no qualms about stealing from your own sister-in-law?”

“Of course I did. Christiana is one of the finest people I know. But the lure of the drug was overwhelming. When my wife told me what she had seen during the first experiment with the drug, I knew I had to have it.”

“Even knowing that your actions could possibly lead to both of your downfalls?”

“Yes, I’m sorry to say.”

I could sense the profound regret in Philip’s voice and it I found it painful to look at him as his gaze shifted errantly from me to the prosecutor.

“My poor husband,” Bonnie said, softly to herself.

“Who performed the theft?” Stephan inquired.

“That man right there,” Philip said, pointing to Luis. “I hired him to do it.”

“For the benefit of those that don’t know,” Stephan said, addressing the audience, “the man Mr. Olmstead is referring to is Luis Ramon Hernandez, a convicted drug trafficker who has a long criminal history in this country.”

I watched Luis’ face grow sullen as his sin was made public, and enjoyed seeing him shift uncomfortably in his chair.

“How was the theft accomplished?”

“By using my political influence, I paid some people to get Hernandez into the Clinic as a patient. Once he was in there, it was a simple matter for him to break into the safe and steal the drug.”

“How much of the drug did he steal?”

“I don’t know exactly,” Philip replied. “Several hundred tablets or so.”

“Were all these tablets in the safe?”

“Knowing how fastidious and conscientious my sister-in-law is, they wouldn’t be anyplace else.”

“Is this what Mr. Hernandez told you?”

“Yes.”

“Did you believe him?”

“He had no reason to lie about something like that.”

“Once Mr. Hernandez delivered the drug to you, what did you do at that point?”

“I let some of it out of my hands to repay favors, and some I gave away to people just for the hell of it.”

“What favors are you referring to?”

“Political favors and such.”

“And you also gave some away?”

“At the party. I guess I was drunk.”

“In your statement you said that doctor Swensen discovered that you were behind the theft of her drug during your wife’s birthday party. Explain that.”

“I had no idea what the hell I was dealing with. Before I knew it, I began jerking…I mean, masturbating, like crazy. And all the guys I had given the drug to were masturbating themselves like crazy too. It got to the point where you just couldn’t help yourself. So there was really no hiding the fact after that.”

“You’re referring to the involuntary ejaculation response are you not?”

“That’s right.”

“When doctor Swensen confronted you and accused you of the theft, what did you do?”

Philip looked at me and then hung his head. “I told her the truth,” he said plaintively. “I mean, after all, it was either that or lose my wife.”

Bonnie took hold of my hand and squeezed hard.

“She threatened to leave you didn’t she?”

“Yes,” he said, looking directly at Bonnie. “And I wouldn’t have blamed her.”

As she watched her husband’s head sink onto his chest, Bonnie heaved a great sigh of compassion for the fallen man, the look of sorrow in her eyes reflecting the image of disillusionment sitting astride the witness chair. I felt her grip on my hand grow tighter.

“Mr. Olmstead,” Stephan said. “Do you believe that doctor Swensen has acted responsibly in regard to the use of EJAX-472? And that if it were not due to your misuse of political power and the elaborate methods used to confiscate the drug, that this entire incident would never have occurred?”

“Yes,” Philip replied, barely getting the word out. “If it weren’t for my stupidity and short-sightedness, none of us would be here now.”

“Thank you Mr. Olmstead. I have no further questions your honor.”

“Does the prosecution care to cross-examine the witness?” the judge asked, turning to Gustafson.

“I do your honor,” he replied, as he hastily wrote something on a pad of paper.

Stephan resumed his seat next to me but I could sense that he was uneasy.

“Mr. Olmstead,” Gustafson said, rising from his seat. “How did you first come to learn about EJAX-472?”

“My wife Bonnie told me about it years ago when Christiana, doctor Swensen, first came up with the idea.”

“Being doctor Swensen’s sister, your wife must have had access to much of the research that was being conducted.”

“I know Bonnie used to hang around the Clinic from time to time. But I don’t think she really understood what was going on. Not in a technical sense anyway.”

“Nevertheless, everything you learned about EJAX-472, you learned through her. Correct?”

“Primarily. And once in a while Christiana would talk about it. You know, in casual conversation.”

Stephan was drumming his fingers on the table, his gaze intently focused on Gustafson.

“How would you define your relationship to your sister-in-law?”

“I’d say it was a good relationship.”

“You mentioned earlier that you found her to be both conscientious and fastidious.”

“For the most part, yes.”

“Yet she allowed a convicted felon, this Mr. Hernandez, to infiltrate her Clinic and steal her life’s work right from under her nose.”

“Christiana is not a suspicious person by nature,” Philip said quickly. “And I had the benefit of having some very powerful people on my side who managed to pull all the right strings.”

“Well, your efforts to conceal the true identity of this hoodlum must have cost you very handsomely Mr. Olmstead because you succeeded in pulling the wool over her eyes and those of her staff most effectively. Could it be that the background checks she carried out on all these subjects were not done as conscientiously as you would have us believe?”

“I don’t know how she conducted her background checks,” Philip said flatly. “But I do know that if she had perceived any real danger to herself or anyone else, she would have dismissed Luis immediately. She’s a very intuitive person.”

“Not intuitive enough to recognize a criminal in her midst however. In fact I would go so far as to say that she has shown a great degree of naiveté during the selection of her test subjects.” He turned to the judge. “I refer your honor to the case of John Cardelli whose trial is still pending. It was discovered recently that he has a history of flagrant acts of exhibitionism. Yet this disorder was not apparent to doctor Swensen.”

Stephan stood up, his fists tightly clenched.

“Your honor,” he said, “I would remind the court that the charge of exhibitionism brought against Mr. Cardelli is based upon hearsay and cannot be used as evidence by the prosecution.”

“Counselor,” the judge said to Gustafson. “You will restrict yourself to the facts.”

“Yes, your honor,” he replied, giving Stephan a nasty look.

I knew that Gustafson was trying to paint a picture of me as an incompetent person; that was the only tack he could follow. It may have seemed to some that he was grabbing at straws but Stephan knew better than to give the wily man too much ground. Already I could sense that some of the people in the courtroom were beginning to be swayed by his arguments, including the judge.

“Let’s get back to Mr. Hernandez,” Gustafson continued. “After the altercation at the Clinic in which he was literally thrown out of the building, did doctor Swensen report him to the police?”

“Not to my knowledge.”

“Does that not seem strange to you?”

“I think she felt pity for him.”

“Pity?” he asked. “After he employed physical violence on some of her staff and threatened her with physical harm, you’re telling me that she felt pity?”

“Maybe she figured that he had suffered enough. I don’t know”

“But we do know what form that suffering took, don’t we? The female members of doctor Swensen’s staff stripped Mr. Hernandez naked, humiliated him, and forced him to undergo prolonged masturbation while under the influence of the drug. Is that not true?”

“You have the tape, you saw it for yourself.”

“And do you think this is the proper way for a conscientious and responsible doctor to behave?”

“I guess not.”

“You guess not.” Gustafson said, the words falling like a ton of bricks upon my head. “I don’t know of any medical professional who would have done what doctor Swensen did to that man, irregardless of the fact that he may have deserved it. But maybe you are right. Maybe she felt that after she had punished him, that he was somehow deserving of her pity. But that was another big mistake on her part. Had she reported him to the police, you would have never been able to enlist his aid in the robbery of the drug from the Clinic. And if the drug had not been stolen, the subsequent problems relating to the side effects of EJAX-472 would have been confined to the test subjects themselves instead of filtering down into the general population.”

“Objection your honor,” Stephan said. “Counselor is stating a supposition.”

“Sustained,” the judge said.

Philip shook his head. “That was my fault. You can’t blame her.”

“But I do blame her. And this is not a supposition on my part Counselor,” he said to Stephan, “because I know for a fact that doctor Swensen did indeed ignore warnings raised by at least one member of the Pharmaceutical Association which called into question the safety of EJAX-472.” He picked up a document from the table and read from it. “I quote: ‘It has been decided by a vote of six to one that the drug known as EJAX-472 has been granted provisional status by the Pharmaceutical Association of Sweden under the laws governing the use of such drug in its application to human testing. The one dissenting vote reflects the need for further research to be conducted in light of the possibility that certain, possibly harmful, anomalies may exist now, or at some future time, within the drug.’” He thrust the document out in front of him at arm’s length toward Stephan. “She knew about this warning but she chose to ignore it.”

“Your honor,” Stephan said. “May I address Counselor’s remark?”

“Make it brief.”

“That fact that the vote was six to one shows that doctor Swensen had the majority of physicians on her side. The one dissenting vote was cast by some cautious fellow who, I am told, makes it a regular habit to vote nay in almost every application for a pharmaceutical patent. Why he does this is known only to him, but I don’t believe that it can be used as an argument against doctor Swensen’s decision to use the drug, which she believed was perfectly safe for human consumption.”

“Even one vote against should have raised a red flag,” Gustafson replied, throwing the paper down on the table. “After all, people’s health and safety were at stake here. I say her decision to go ahead and use the drug indicates that she acted irresponsibly and the charge of ‘reckless endangerment’ should stick.”

Despite Gustafson’s claim that I had paid little heed to the one dissenting vote, I did in fact contact the doctors at the Association and was given permission to proceed with my experiments as planned. Both the physicians and I felt that the potential benefits of EJAX-472 far outweighed any perceivable risk. I knew full well that every untried drug had its potential dangers, and despite my best efforts I could not hope to protect people from side effects that may or may not be revealed at some later time as a result of its use. Such is the nature of the unknown.

The prosecutor turned to Philip. “Your criminal involvement and doctor Swensen’s negligence have caused a great deal of anguish for many people who believed in this drug called EJAX-472. Based upon what you have heard here today, do you still think she is a woman of conscience?”

Philip, who had been holding his head down, now raised it up slowly and cast his gaze over the courtroom as if seeking help from some unknown agency.

“I only know she meant to do right,” he said, unable to look at anyone.

“No further questions your honor.”

Philip returned to his seat beside Bonnie looking drained.

“Thank you Philip,” I said, trying to cheer him. “I know it was very difficult for you.”

“Don’t thank me yet,” he said, failing to meet my eyes.

Bonnie said some consoling words to him, but he paid her little attention. Finally, seeing she was getting nowhere, she left him alone with his thoughts.

Both Stephan and Gustafson examined and cross-examined some of the girls from St. Bridget’s, including Ms. Stedman, and the scenario they described made it appear that my drug had unleashed a ferocious sexual beast in the form of John Cardelli. I watched his face register shock and ultimately bitter disappointment at the girls’ testimony, none of which could be said to have vindicated him in even the slightest way. Knowing John as I did, I found it nearly impossible to picture him as the wanton, lecherous, madman the girls portrayed, but as their own academic futures were on the line, he was treated no more than as a scapegoat.

It soon became obvious that Bridget Veerhoft and Helga Nelson had been the architects of the sexual soirée, and the most vocal in his condemnation. Though quite beautiful, Bridget came across as cold and calculating, and her ally Helga much the same. Although the girls’ testimonies had matched more or less, there were discrepancies that were left unresolved, and I knew this was extremely upsetting to Stephan, who wanted desperately to see John absolved of the crime. It was not difficult to see that the girls had formed a pact and were protecting each other, and, in so doing, had become indifferent to the fate of their once beloved teacher.

After the girls had offered their testimony, Stephan called John to the stand, anxious to get his own version of the events on that fateful day.

“Mr. Cardelli, you have heard the testimony of your students just now. Is it true, as they all claim, that you threatened them with violence unless they complied with your demands to have sex with you?”