A Wonder Drug
A Wonder Drug
Franz never believed in anything until it was tested, not even what his eyes told him. His job as a Health and Safety inspector had taught him long ago not to trust his eyes, but his intuition. Those who wanted to commit fraud -- or more often, just keep a dirty secret -- wanted his eyes to examine every vat, tube, pressure seal, and mixture in their factories. It was what he wasn't seeing that was key, and the only way he knew to find it was to use his intuition.
And what his intuition told him was that something was wrong with Jeffrey. The two of them laid in bed, Franz' nightvision revealing a greyish landscape, through which the spots on his lover's fur were barely distinguishable from the striped sheets encircling them.
It had seemed impossible to sate him lately; it seemed he saved everything for when the fox got home. Three days in a row, now, he had jumped on him with lust in his eyes, and it took quite a good deal of work to satisfy him. It was extremely unusual. He was going to try and blot out these thoughts, when the cheetah beside him woke up, and got up for the bathroom.
When he returned, he wrapped his arms around Jeffrey's shoulders posessively, and whispered, "alright, tell me what's going on."
"What are you talking about?" murmured the voice back, eyes glinting slightly in the dim light.
"How is it you've jumped on me so often lately?"
He smiled mischeviously. "Do you like it?"
"I like it a lot," whispered the fox, with his examiner's glare, "but that's not what I asked."
"Oh don't be like that," he brushed with a kiss on the cheek, "I know you. If you're really curious, fine. It's this stuff called Amoretrophine. Anyone can get it at a clinic for a price, and I can afford it."
"Amor-- what?" he asked quizically.
"Ay-mor-ay-trow-feen," he repeated slowly, "as in 'amore'," he added with a kiss.
"Why have I never heard of it?"
"I suppose because it's so safe, it's outside of your department."
"Fine," he sighed, "good night."
He let Jeffrey return to his pillow, as he slid back down onto his own, but vowed to investigate in the morning.
***
It was in the list of newly approved drugs for over-the-counter use. Franz was surprised, given the fact that the summary indicated it was injected by syringe. But there it was, a proven aphrodesiac; increased heart rate, blood flow, and had a very mild effect on the nervous system. It was from Percy Laboratories, an expert in the field of natrual product chemistry.
After a few phone calls, he found that the local clinic was selling them, at quite a markup indeed. Most of it, the other end of the phone explained, went back to the manufacturer, due to the complex process needed to extract it. But despite the price, the line was out the door; it was the first major, proven, effective aphrodesiac known. And sure enough, when he hung up, Franz's intution told him it was too good to be true.
He knew that he couldn't get an order to have the plant examined, since the chemical had been approved, no one had affected badly by it, and all of the clinical trial data was in order. As an added defense, it was being administered at a hospital by trained nurses, who knew how to evaluate the health of a particular patient before recieving it, which reduced the chance of future harm.
The seemed about as airtight as it could get. He decided to use the only thing he had left: fear. It was truly a dastardly maneuver, but it was one which had more success than anything in ferretting out unpleasant truths than any other. He called the plant, and after saying the magic words -- "I'm from the Health and Safety department" -- he immediately had the secratary's attention.
"I'm afraid I have some bad news," he said in his most stern voice, "my superiors are planning to audit you."
"What?" demanded the female on the other end, more in shock than anger, "everything was in order when we filed."
"I'm not sure. But I don't want to see us go through any un-necessary work either, so I'll make you an offer: let me look around, just unofficially. When the decision comes, I can tell them not to bother."
She sounded almost relieved. "That seems like a good idea," she answered.
It was hard not to let his smile leak into his voice. "My pleasure," he replied, "I don't want to do all that paperwork either."
She chuckled nervously, and after mutual agreement upon the time -- he set the appointment for tomorrow -- he hung up.
There was a lot they could change in a day, he reasoned, but sooner would make it sound too official. He had decided that was the hardest he could press without appearing to.
***
Another day went by, including by another night of wild passions by Jeffrey, and the next day brought him to the rather rural plant, quite far outside the city in a tiny, artificial forest of Kola trees. In the northern climate, he was quite surprised to see them, but assumed that the advanced state of genetic engineering had made their sustained growth possible.
After a long driveway, several storage towers, and a large mass of pipes and storage tanks, he managed to find the office. It was really just an annex to a large building, which was where the material was processed. He walked in the small glass door to find a clean, silent office with three seats for waiting and a secratary behind a rather tall desk made of granite.
"Mr. Kaharin?" the alert terrier asked.
"Yes," he said, recognizing the first voice to answer the phone.
"I'm Sashira Debravine," she introduced.
He bowed briefly, as was customary. "Pleased to meet you," he replied.
He decided to let the pause which followed hang for a moment, to see what she had been told to do. Sure enough, she filled it in. "I presume you would like to see the facility?" she asked quickly.
"Yes, I would," he replied kindly, "preferably with the expertise of one of your chemists."
"I'm afraid that Dr. Syr is in on a confernce call at the moment," was the answer, "but I'll get him as soon as he's off."
Franz didn't want to seem pushy, so accepted that answer, despite his rising suspicions.
The only separation between the front room and tremendous warehous containing the equiment was a short hallway packed with office doors. He did notice that Dr. Syr's was closed, and a soft, but clearly male, voice carried through the wood. But when the steel door at the end of the hallway was opened, an endless humm, buzz, and clatter drowned it out.
The machinery was laid out systematically, but was complicated enough that Franz had to have all of it explained to him anyway. "The kola nuts are gathered and enter here," she began, raising her voice to make it over the racket. The manner which sounded quite scripted. "They are identical to the wild type, except for a few changes in caffeine levels."
"And caffeine is in your product?" he asked, voice low enough it carried easily.
She looked blank a moment. "No, I think it's just an intermediate step," she replied. "When Dr. Syr gets off the phone, he can explain it to you. Anyway, moving on."
She resumed the script, but Franz had what he wanted: the ability to ask her random questions and get answers which were truthful, if inaccurate. He chose to wait to ask his next question until they had moved further down the process. The nuts were ground, the pulp separated, and the caffeine carefully extracted using a large volume chemical process which seemed logical. It was the next step which was mysterious.
"The caffeine is then used as the primary reagent in the product," she explained. "In here the mixture being made."
"In here" was a large vat, at least a hundred gallons, which the caffeine in solution was fed into. It was vibrating, suggesting some kind of spinning action of the mixture, but the other tubes entering it were not explained.
"So those must be other reagents?"
"Correct."
"Are they secret?"
She paused a moment. "I'm not sure, so I'd better not tell you."
Very little else was done, for the mixture was then heated to distil it, and then run through a large pool of saline for preparation into the bottles from which the sterile vials were filled, to be punctured by needles.
It was at this point in the tour that a white tiger in a lab coat appeared quite suddenly behind him and tapped him on the shoulder. Franz was mildly startled. From his first guesses as to what the process was by none other than Dr. Syr himself.
"I will tell you what you are here to know," he said, voice lower than that of Franz.
He took the three of them back into his office, and just before Franz could read a key equation, erased two reagents.
"May I ask why you are here?" he skeptically inquired.
"I'm on an 'unofficial audit' to prevent an official one," he replied.
"And on what grounds would this audit be conducted?" the tiger asked, voice getting no sharper.
Franz decided that he had to come clean, for anything else would mean that his office would get a call, and Dr. Syr would know the number. "False advertising," Franz answered, briefly gritting his teeth, "we find your claims of an aphrodesiac hard to believe."
"And extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence," Dr. Syr mumbled, going toward a bookshelf. "Well, I have it."
He got a binder, 6-inches thick and full, and put it down on his desk between them.
"Here it is," he growled, "45 separate studies."
As Franz leafed through the 1000 pages, seeing the mountain of data they contined, the tiger drove the point home. "Now!" he snapped, voice making the fox flinch, "you have two choices! Either argue with the data, or get out!"
Knowing he would need time, the fox vowed to do both. He just picked up the binder, which Dr. Syr seemed not to mind parting with, and walked out of the office, down the hall, and out the front door -- ignoring the secratary on his way out.
***
"I just can't believe it," he sighed to Jeffrey, as he laid awake in bed skimming the book, "if this thing is real, why didn't the humans figure it out?"
"Maybe they weren't as smart as us," he replied in his fuzzy, sated state.
"But they had better technology than we did; surely they must have come up with the same idea. It even uses caffeine, known for centuries!"
But Jeffrey still did not succumb. "Please don't worry like this," the cheetah purred, "it does you no good. Why are you so focused?"
"Because I don't know what side effects it will have. I don't know what it will do to you," he admitted, petting Jeffrey's head.
"Why can't 'I'm fine' persuade you?" Jeffrey nuzzled.
"Those were the same words used by humans who got hooked on things like Morphine," he retorted. "This drug, which you don't need, could be killing you, and you'd never know it."
Jeffrey smiled. "If you're not going to let it go, at least do me a favor: try it once. Those studies must show that once won't kill you. You can better judge it from its effect on you. If you still don't like it, I'll stop. Okay?"
Franz sighed. "Okay," he answered, and turned off the light to sleep.
And as promised, the next day, he was at the general hospital to get an injection -- which he paid far too much for, in his opinion. The male nurse, a rather tall greyhound, stuck him, and in the medicine went.
"Done," he yapped with satisfaction.
"So can I go?"
"Just stay a moment to check side effects," he answered, looking at his watch, and taking Franz' pulse.
A casual glance showed the dane waiting an entire minute before letting him go. "Okay," he answered, "it will start to work pretty fast, good luck."
Indeed it did; when he stood up, Franz found himself briefly light-headed, a side effect of that different blood pressure mentioned by the reports. But as he walked out the door, he could feel the other effects beginning. His heart seemed to change its pumping pattern, and sure enough, he could feel more blood moving toward his loins. This, of course, got him thinking about Jeffrey, which snowballed quickly into outright desire.
By the time he got home, he pounced on the cheetah, ready to experience ecstacy. He seemed quite willing, to submit to Franz's desires; from empathy, genuine delight, or gloating satisfaction the fox neither knew nor cared. All he wanted was to feel that muzzle all over his most sensitive flesh.
Jumping out of his pants, and rushing the two of them to the bedroom, he dropped onto the bed, as Jeffrey grabbed hold of his rock-hard member. Indeed, he found it to be slightly more sensitive than usual, better able to feel every time the cheetah petted him with his muzzle, stroked him with his tongue, or kissed the head with the biggest bundle of nerves Franz seemed to have in him.
The result, he could not deny, was wonderful; but then, it was very difficult for Jeffrey to provide sex that wasn't. Stroke after stroke of the tongue got him rushing up toward his climax, beginning to pre sooner than he ofter did. Every touch got a twitch or a pant from Franz, but it took an actual squeezing of his orbs to complete.
With a groan, he finally orgasmed, a sensation all too wonderful and familiar, as he felt the love of his life clean him up. When his balls stopped pumping, and he laid back -- that's when many of the side effects hit him.
He felt far more wiped out than usual; slightly dizzy, despite laying down on his back in the bed. Despite the reverberations of orgasm echoing in his head, there was a strange, fuzzy feeling lingering about him. The sense of exhaustion, the desire for not sleep but sloth, mitigated the warmth of his affection and satisfaction.
He found himself too lethargic to bring Jeffrey all the way to his own climax -- the first in a long time. Needless to say, that was something the cheetah noticed when Franz climbed back to his pillow half way through.
"So how was it, love?" he asked, voice now laced with a hint of concern rather than satisfaction.
"Good, I suppose," replied Franz vaguely.
"You sure you're okay?" he asked.
"I'll sleep it off," he replied, despite having the distinct feeling he would fail.
He heard Jeffrey play with himself including the moan of completion as he went to sleep with difficulty.
Franz then noticed another side effect: when he finally did go to sleep, he was woken up several times in the night to go to the bathroom. Only then did he note that Jeffrey seemed to wake up often in the middle of the night as well. Could this be another side effect, undocumented or under-reported? Even if it was so, there was no way to know whether two cases constituted a larger pattern.
The next morning, quite sleep deprived, Franz didn't say much. He didn't even remember asking Jeffrey to make breakfast, but he did. It was a good thing, too, for he barely had time to get ready and go into the office. The cheetah was also kind enough not to ask the obvious question: would the fox risk trying the drug again.
Franz was too blurry to make that kind of decision; he could barely put one foot in front of the other to carry him to the large campus for the Bureau. Once there, he almost walked into a rather short ferret who he didn't see, and made sidestep at the last minute.
He just sat down in his reclining office chair, picked up a blank notepad, and stared at it. He hated being sleep deprived, but was in fact too deprived to think anything of it. He knew he was fuzzy, that he was not very well able to work, and so he shouldn't try too hard, lest he make a very expensive mistake. Instead, he just started drawing random, molecular shapes on the notepad. Steroids, alcaloids, keytones, and aldehides, each with its distinctive structure.
After drawing two pages of shapes, and wasting an hour, Franz felt he really should at least try to work. He decided to see what he could do about caffeine, to make him more alert. He called Sam, and asked what he had.
"You hate coffee, would you take strong tea?"
"I suppose," Franz mumbled into the phone, "just something to wake me up. I had a really bad night last night."
While he waited, he decided to draw caffeine. He had to look up the formula to remind him of the ends of the alkaloid, but managed to find room on his second page to sketch it.
Sam showed up with the tea in about 5 minutes. It was barely drinkable, being so hot, but Franz thanked him anyway.
But before he could get out the door, the fox had a flash of insight. "That's it!" he whispered huskily.
"Sir?" asked the ferret, turning.
"Nothing," he replied, as he took a new page and started drawing.
Sam nodded, Franz having shown this behavior many times before, and walked out.
The process started with caffeine, Franz reasoned. Surely there were a limited number of ways to process caffeine into anything useful that could be done in bulk. The most obvious place to start would be its three metabolites: Paraxanthine, Theobromine, and Theophylline.
The second one, when he looked it up in his medical encyclopedia, sounded a lot like Amoratrophine: a mild stimulant, causing changes in heart rhythm, vascular dialation (the cause of the aphrodesiac effect), and mild diuretic effects.
If only he could remember the one key reaction that had been erased from that board, he was convinced, he could prove it.
He cleaned up his page, drawing the path from caffeine to Theobromine that his medical encyclopedia described, and decided to pay another visit to Percy Laboratories over his lunch hour.
***
When he arrived unannounced, he this time found the secratary much more un-nerved by his appearance.
"I'd like to speak with Dr. Syr," he stated calmly.
"Just a moment," she replied, voice level, but eyes looking back at him in surprise. She called his office, announced that Franz was back, and hung up.
"Right this way," she said, and took him back into the same office.
When Franz arrived, the tiger glared at him. "I thought we had this cleared up," he snarled. "Is this a real audit now?"
"That depends," replied Franz calmly, eyes carefully studying the tiger's face, "on whether you have heard of Theobromine."
He blinked, but showed no sign of distress. "Every organic chemist who studies caffeine has," he replied sharply, his voice seeming to make the room shake.
"So you wouldn't be surprised if I accuse you of repackaging it as a 'miracle drug' in a dose much larger than anyone could get from caffeine?"
"Rediculous! I have documented all the side effects of Amoratrophine, and they don't match" he replied.
"Not all of them," corrected Franz, "it's also a diuretic. Add that, and they match perfectly."
"My studies never found that."
"Which means that if it's nothing more than Theobromine repackaged, you didn't do enough studies, for that effect is well documented. I suppose if you documented that," he remarked caustically, trying to draw the wrath of the chemist, "everyone would know what you were selling: not a great innovation to improve happiness, but just another drug."
But Dr. Syr wouldn't bite. "Are you going to audit me, or not?"
Since he wouldn't, Franz tried the next best thing, a long shot by any standard. "No, but I will give you fair warning: I'm going to give my hypothesis to one of your competitors, say Themaritech? And we'll see how fast they can make Theobromine with their expertise in bacterial gentic engineering. With your patent only on the process, they will surely find a way to --"
"Alright!" roared the tiger, making the fox jump, and stop talking.
The fox was quiet while he watched the tiger pace for almost a minute, kneeding his hands and clenching his teeth. He sighed, and finally asked, "what do you want?"
Franz expected such bargaining, as anyone at the end of his rope was apt to do, but made sure to make the most of it. "Want?" he repeated skeptically.
"You are talking to the manufacturer of the first, major, proven, aphrodesiac," he entoned. "What do you want from him? Money? A lifetime supply? Perhaps," he purred, lowering his voice, "someone to use it on?"
While it was the last offer Franz found even remotely tempting, his job had shown him this performace to monotony. A chance at the world meant nothing to him, having been offered by so many before, and his current lot in life being quite enough.
"My dearest mate is my duty," he replied calmly, doing his best to be reassuring, "but there is one thing I would take."
He paused to let the tiger hang a moment, just to see the look of desperation in his eyes a moment longer.
"Honesty. Do another study, show it's a diruetic. Keep using your method of refining raw material; surely you have invested a great deal into it. And if prices fall from competition, comfort yourself with the knowledge of how many people are paying you anything for the ecstacy you would offer me for free."
Dr. Syr seemed irritated by the outcome, but Franz did not want his anger to rule his decision.
"Otherwise," continued the fox, in the same reassuring tone, "I will get someone else to do the study, you will be audited, and any remaining non-patented trade secrets won't be secret anymore."
The vexed state of the chemist seemed the perfect time to leave, in order that the right decision would be made. "Have a nice day," he pleasantly stated on his way out the door.
The rest of the day, while the caffeine lasted, was drudgery, but drudgery he could handle. Auditing, he was reminded, was not an empty threat; he didn't like it anymore than they did. He did his best to get Sam to dig up the essential research, but that still left him to figure out what was wrong with the process they had implemented to apparently validate their complex conclusions. He managed to only find one -- uncertain of whether it was the caffeine or just the problem -- before he left for home.
Jeffrey, to his pleasant surprise, didn't pounce on him. "How was your day?" he asked.
"Fine, I suppose," sighed Franz, thoughts of the drug bubbling up to the surface of his mind once again, "but I don't want you taking any more of that stuff."
Franz didn't know why this time the words had such a different effect, but they did. "Okay, love, I won't," said Jeffrey, "if you think it's a problem."
"But the good news is," he couldn't help but add, "the price is coming down in the near future."
Jeffrey latached on as Franz hoped he would. "And why is that?"
Franz got to tell him the whole story, particularly the part about how he had denied temptation, and what the drug actually was. Jeffrey listened, and as the fox had hoped, also lost interest in the drug's miraculous properties.
Before the story was over, they were curled up on the couch together, one of Franz's favorite places.
"Just one question," Jeffrey asked at the end. "What did he look like?"
"Oh, he was a very fine looking tiger," smiled Franz, "I bet he would have been great."
"You should have taken him up on it," joked Jeffrey.
Franz laughed. "But then," the fox replied with a kiss, "you'd still be taking that drug, and paying too much for it. I love you too much to do that to you."
That night, the first time in weeks they had sex naturally, Franz decided that he really couldn't tell the difference. And the sleep he managed to find convinced him the next morning that no side effects was worth no drugs at all.
The End.
(version 1.0)