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you? Forst felt like a tight band was around his head and knew that his blood pressure was up again. Dans was coming over and they were going to have to have a serious talk!
    Albert knocked on Forst’s office door, hoping that Forst had finally been able to produce a prototype that could generate the funny twisting electric field effects that he’d measured around Allie’s ports. Forst had been getting really uptight and demanding though. Albert had begun strongly consider ing a different collaborator. Nonetheless, h e was genuinely surprised to see the bright red look of fury on Forst’s face when he stepped into the room . “What’s the matter?” he began.
    Forst exploded. “What’s the mat ter? What’s the matter! For C hrissakes! You’ve got me wasting hundreds of thousands of dollars on an important project with both of my hands tied behind my back! That’s what’s the matter! What’s the matter is that you need to tell me how your first goddamned machine worked! I’m not spending another dime on this piece of shit project while you pretend you don’t ‘have any idea’ how the original device was constructed.”
    Dans rocked back in astonishment. He’d seen Forst get pretty irritated when devices didn’t work as expected back when he’d been a grad student, but Dans had never seen this kind of rage before. And never directed at him self !  He swallowed and shrugged, “We ll OK, let’s just give up on it then.” He thought to himself that he certainly didn’t want to continue work ing with someone who had this kind of temper. H e’d just have to go ahead and find some other collaborator.
    Forst’s eyebrows shot up his crimson forehead . “Give up? Give up! I’m the one with hundreds of thousands invested! We are not giving up! You are going to tell me how the first damned model worked!”
    Dans made placating motions with his hands, “Randy, I’ve told you, I don’t know how it worked.”
    “ That’s a load of crap !” Forst hurled a vase off his desk and it exploded against the wall behind Dans. “You are going to tell me! And you’re go nna to tell me now!”
    Flinching in startlement from the vase, Dans turned quickly to the door but to his surprise found it blocked by a large man with a goatee. He turned back to Forst, “Let’s talk about this some more when you’ve calmed down.”
    His face dark, Forst ground out, “I am not going to calm down. YOU , on the other hand , are going to provide some answers today . NOT after I’ve calmed down. Today , d amnit all !”
     
                  After signing autographs until their fingers ached , Eve of Destruction stumbled out to their tour bus. Allie turned on her phone and plugged it in. It immediately started chirping. She pulled off her shirt and peered blearily at the screen. It listed scores of calls from her mother. T here were almost always a few , but this was way more than usual. She v irtually never listened to any of them , though recently the cold attitude she’d held toward her parents had started to melt . Then she saw there was a text from her little brother Stephen. That was unusual. Her heart skipped a beat as she touched the icon. “Sis, pls call home. Dad missing for three days. Mom going crazy.” A chill ran down her spine. She leaned her head back against the wall. Missing!? C ould he have a girlfriend? Somehow she knew that wasn’t true . It just didn’t fit with his dreamy eyed focus on physics . Damn ! It was the middle of the night. S he’d call in the morning and he’d probably be home by then – save a lot of trouble. She pulled off her jeans and crawled under the sheet but then lay staring at the roof of the bus. Finally, with a sigh, she got up, hit the shower and started washing the black crap out of her hair . They didn’t have another concert for four days and it was only a two hour drive home from here .
     
                  The doorbell rang and Sarah Dans nearly