Chapter 7 - Sickness in San Francisco, 1966
Terence holds a syringe in his hand and looks dubiously at the clear solution waiting inside. Has he progressed to addictive narcotics since his baptism in acid? Well, yes. He will experiment with every mind-altering chemical within reach over the next seven years but, on this occasion, he is engaged in an altogether different operation.

"It's the real thing, Terry." His friend Eddie from the biology lab tells him. They are seated in Eddie's Berkeley apartment and posters of Miles Davis and John Coltrane ride the walls with soulful expressions of black man's jazz. There's a bong on the table constructed with professional precision and the water is routinely changed every three hits. Scientific discipline hasn't entirely given way to doper's inertia.

The ashtray is overflowing though and Terry has trouble in finding a ledge on which to rest his half-finished cigarette. He must take partial responsibility for that, however, as at least ten of the butts inside have been laid to waste by him since he arrived two hours before.

"How sick will I be exactly?" He asks with concern that he can't quite hide beneath his grin.

"With rest and the right course of liver treatment it shouldn't be a big deal." Eddie assures him, "But you want to be sure about this because if you succeed in getting out of the nuclear programme then you might get your ass sent to Nam - and I can't see you cutting it in green beret and khaki!" He cackles in a weird falsetto: "Mind you, the dope is suppose to be fucking A-1 and them soldiers are toking it though their fucking guns, man!"

Terry doesn't know why the majority of scientists never seem to quite escape the grip of adolescence. Maybe it's just the social release of the nervous energy built up in the lab. Hunched over precious test-tube experiments with suspended-breath caution with a whole routine of anally-precise measurements to be made. Either way he's leaving that world and can't imagine how he ever got there in the first place.

His superiors were less than sanguine when he approached them about the options of resigning from the missiles program. They Ignored his sported CND badge and pleas of a sudden transformation of the conscience to more humanitarian perspectives. Instead they fired off rounds of questions as to his political sympathies and shone bright lights into his eyes in search of those tell-tale traces of red. Finally satisfied that he was not a potential emigrate to Russia, they told him in no uncertain terms that resignation equalled desertion and merited the according complementary stay in California's finest army penitentiaries.

They had his name signed clearly at the bottom of stern-looking contracts and he had, after all, been given privileged access to high-priority information. Regardless of whether it seemed in the least crucial to him. He was signed up and committed for the duration for which he gave his legal word. Did he think this was just a walk-in counter job at Kentucky Fried Chicken? Had he decided to attend Bible College instead? Would he rather have his genitals shot off by grinning Viet Cong in crotch rot jungles? Did he feel no pride in serving his expertise to the greatest country in the world? Did he not understand that he had pledged himself to the noble and godly struggle to eradicate the insidious evils of Communists, who would like to see us all wearing overalls and speaking Slavic or some other goddamned slaver as we all slave in grey concrete factories to produce radio transmitters for Siberian walruses to listen to their goddamned bathroom gargling sound of Krushchev killing his throat germs with morning vodka and all our Cadillacs and televisions and jukeboxes melted down to produce millions of steel hammers and sickles to be nailed to the door of every god-fearing home in America is that what he wanted is that how he showed his gratitude for all he'd been given by this glorious democracy and what did he mean by letting his hair grow to that unregulation length anyway?

Hence the syringe. One inch from a nervous vein that tries to hide behind a sweating wrist is a thin point of steel. This sharp needle connects to a valve and a transparent cylinder with measurements upon the side. Inside the plastic cylinder can be seen a solution measuring 5cc. Inside the solution are microscopic particles of a rather dangerous nature. Hepatitis. In one motion the cylinder fills up with blushing blood as the syringe is inserted and the piston pulled back. Whoosh! Congratulations, Terence! You have contracted Hepatitis A without the aid of impure sexual intercourse or contamination of food and drink.

Two months later, Terry is discharged from the nuclear missile programme on medical grounds. Not because of the disease charging havoc in the playgrounds of his capillaries but on the basis of his clearly shaky state of mind after the true details of his contraction of hepatitis found their way to the authorities. No one who would voluntarily infect themselves with potentially crippling bacteria could be trusted to investigate the finer workings of nuclear fission - Now get that weirdo out of here!