Professor Lockwood walked numbly through the gray afternoon, his eyes on his shoes and his mind nowhere near the Second Avenue intersection that he crossed without slowing. The sounds of screeching brakes and angry drivers fell upon deaf ears as he walked, aimlessly, pointlessly. If it hadn't been for the brown leather briefcase and the somewhat ratty, but somehow respectable, brown tweed suit that he wore, he might have been taken for just another homeless lunatic wandering the streets of the city. Most people walking near him on the sidewalks gave him a wide berth anyway (you can't be too careful), but a couple of people recognized him from the pictures peering out of the newspaper stands, and turned to give him a quizzical look as he stumbled past, wondering what was the matter. Nobody cared enough to ask, but if they had, Lockwood probably wouldn't have heard them anyway.

The day had started out like any other day, except for the fact that he'd canceled all his afternoon ethics classes at Georgetown in order to further prepare for the speech he was to give tonight. Entitled 'The killer cure: why we won the fight against stem cells'�, it was going to be his crowning achievement. For years he'd fought tooth and nail to have stem cell research banned, outlawed like the moral and religious obscenity it was. He was part of the President's special advisory council on the matter, and it seemed that they'd finally won. Just a week ago the last vestiges of opposition to what the President's critics called 'the Lockwood law' were defeated, and stem cell research had now been officially forbidden all across the country. Today should have been a pinnacle in the career of a smart, distinguished man, but right after he taught his first class of the morning he got the phone call that changed everything.

The doctor's office was small and immaculately clean, and he couldn't help being a little nervous as he walked in. On the phone Doctor Susa had sounded cryptic; there had been some tests that she needed to discuss with him in person. No, it couldn't wait, and no, she didn't want to discuss it over the phone. Could he come? Of course he said that he could, when a doctor calls and says something like that it normally wasn't wise to put it on the back burner. The short, slightly overweight receptionist peered at him through glasses that magnified her eyes at least two times. When he told her his name, those eyes softened slightly. She had told him to go right in.

Now the streets went by in a blur, the looks and the comments unnoticed. At one point Lockwood must have run into someone because he found himself being picked up off the ground by a complete stranger. The man, lean and tall, was asking him if he was alright. Lockwood heard himself say that no, he wasn't alright. He was dying, he had a month at the outside. The stranger muttered a hurried apology and left him to walk alone, as if he might be catching. As he continued his long journey through the city, a newspaper blowing in the wind caught on his left leg and stuck as if glued. Looking down, he saw his own face, beaming victory at the camera, above a headline proclaiming that Lockwood's law was now in effect.

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