chapter 2

Heather Pence reported for her first day of work on a Monday morning. Nothing surprising about that. She was assigned to the medical research wing of Diehl's laboratory facility. Nothing especially surprising about that either, considering her title implied that she would have SOME relationship with the nutritional research carried out by Diehl. What DID surprise her was that SHE was the subject of a whole series of medical tests. They did blood work, urinalysis, liver function test, nuclear stress test and a whole host of probes and scans that she had never even heard of before. She had no idea what this was all about, but they paid her enough money to keep her curiosity at bay.

The rest of the week was devoted to learning Diehl's computer system, its data entry procedures, reporting methodologies and a whole battery of technological protocols that taxed even Heather's impressive IQ.

On Friday afternoon, she was called into the office of Dr. Henry Daniell. She recognized his at once. A two-time winner of the Nobel Prize for Medicine DOES earn a certain amount of notoriety. Dr. Daniell greeted her warmly and offered her a seat. He told her that her first assignment for Diehl was going to involve some travel. This didn't phase Heather a bit. She had always wanted to travel, she just hadn't had enough money to do it.

She asked the good doctor just where her first assignment was going to send her, which brought her yet another surprise. She was to spend at least six months on Opoloo Island, part of the Cook Islands in the South Pacific. Ordinarily she'd have asked a plethora of questions about what she was going to do there and why so far away, but she had struggled too long and too hard to get such a good job to throw it all away with a lot of damn fool questions.

Dr. Daniell told her she would be taking the company jet to Hawaii, where she would rest for a week. From there she would be transported by the company yacht to approximately two miles from Opoloo Island where she was to be transferred to an outrigger that would take her to Opoloo Island. Heather listened intently to what Dr. Daniell had to say, smiled rather blankly, shook his hand as he rose to say good-bye, and left his office.

She had no idea what she was getting herself into but at this point it really didn't matter. After all, a starving man doesn't complain that the steak he gets after two weeks without food is not well done enough. She had been trying for years to get a job that challenged her intellect and rewarded her enough so that she could pay off her student loans and start to really live her life instead of merely bumping from one dead end to the other. Heather told herself that she was about to embark on an adventure, quite a contrast with her former humdrum existence. If only Heather had realized just HOW much of an adventure she was about to undertake!