The young man produced the joint and a lighter. He lit up and inhaled deeply. Ben could feel his own nervousness begin to fade and was glad of that. H... finally exhaled and handed the joint to his sister. Ellen accepted it and followed her brother's example.Ben was feeling the buzz a while later and knew Ellen was feeling it too. He snuffed the rest of the joint and took off his jeans. His sister didn't seem to mind and scooted over to make room for him on the bed. Ellen was blissful. She was. I had to sue my former employers for back pay and vacation time. They tried to "cut me off at the knees". (Bad joke, but appropriate.) Cindy got me all my back pay, my vacation pay and a hundred and twenty thousand bucks in penalties. Someone in HR had a shit sandwich for lunch for their little tricks.The university ended up forking over almost two and a half million dollars for loss of income, retraining costs and compensation for my disability. As soon as I paid off Cindy I headed for a local. We managed a decent conversation, too, about what she did for a living versus what I did, as Topic One, then onward towards food, which morphed into childhood, adolescence, then adult life.She watched. Noticed, observed life. "You hold your fork in your left hand when you're eating your steak." I know. You're not the first one to call me on it. I don't like swapping my knife and fork back and forth." Very European," she commented."So I'm told," I countered."Not a criticism," she tossed back.. He hate to admit it toRocky but his first experience as a woman blew his mind away. For thetime being, he was just going to keep that to himself.The ExperimentA thousand, six hundred and thirty one miles away in Southern Texas,Ellie Porter was knocking on the glass door of the CIA laboratory'shighly restricted experiment room. Through the sandy tint of the bulletproof obstacle, she could see the blurry outline of the lead scientist,Ms. Patterson busy working on something inside. Ellie had to.