Cali sighed and put away her notebook. Her tired eyes focused on her father's comatose body. Determined to be there when he woke up, she remained at his side.

 If he wakes up, her scientific mind corrected.

 “You will return,” she spoke in a hoarse whisper. He must. Everything depends on his returning.

 She stood and stretched her tall slender body. Normally, she was a physically active person. Her body was not accustomed to the constant sitting she had endured these last months.                           

At first, she had been willing to let Hans, her research project manager, supervise the experiment, for he was better at managing the other workers. However, when all the other subjects died, her concern for her father's life overrode her objectivity. Since then, she allowed no one else to stand watch and keep the detailed notes of his physical changes, but herself.

  "I brought you some food."

     Cali jumped at hearing a voice. The research lab had become as silent and foreboding as a tomb the last few months. Even the voice of Hans sounded unnatural and unexpected to her ear.

    "No thanks," Cali said as she brushed her silky blonde hair back away from her face.

—

    Hans studied her with concern. Under the nurture of artificial lights and prepackaged vending machine food, her health was fading. Her skin was so transparent and shallow that he could see the veins running beneath her skin. He suspected she had lost over 20 pounds since her incarceration. Her clothes were ill fitted, and her hipbones jutted out from her baggy slacks.

Yet, still she was lovely. Her dark blue eyes sparkled and flared as she had glanced up at him in annoyance.

  "I've brought you some home-made soup," he continued. He had been Dr. Grey's assistant for over twenty years and had watched Cali grow up. He wasn't about to let the little imp bully him around.

  She inevitably would bully and push the younger assistants until they would quit. She never understood that she couldn't drlve them as hard as she drove herself. The normal person could not the hardships she could.

 "Leave it on the cabinet," Cali snapped with irritation. She picked up her notebook and resumed her observations.

 "The cabinet doesn't need food. You do." Hans took the notes from her hand and replaced them with the soup. "I'll keep watch until you eat that"

—

Cali opened her mouth to argue, but relented. Upon her first bite, her eyes rounded in shock.

"You made this?"

"Yeah, in a test tube on the burner," he sarcastically quipped. He wasn't about to let her know he had spent over three hours preparing his special vegetable soup to entice her into eating.

When she finished the bowl, she exchanged the empty bowl in return for her notebook. Silently dismissing him, she returned to watching her father and making notes,

Han left, unaffected by Cali's cold dismissal. He was accustomed to her scientific manner. Beside he knew what a warm and loving person she had been as a child before the research lab became the only world she knew.    

—

Cali did not notice Han’s departure. She was already engrossed in her desperate work. She was not conscious of the hours and days that passed by, so Hans’ continual intrusions with food annoyed her. How could she eat while her father laid in a coma?

Cali shuddered recalling the panic and fear each time one of the scientists would die. She had never actually believed they would die. She knew the risk, of course; thousands of people were dying everyday from the comas, but thousands of people were not her father and co-workers.

 Somehow she had thought since their actions were so noble that fate would grant them immunity from death. But within minutes of going under Dr. Alan Reager and Dr. Ann Meeks were dead bringing in the crushing reality: everyone, including her father, would probably die from this experiment.

 If Cali could have called off the experiment and brought them back from their comas, she would have. But irretrievable steps had been taken. They were on their own to survive and bring back evidence for their new theory or to die taking all hope with them.

 Each had known before hand the danger of the experiment. Yet each had also known the desperate proof they needed to squelch the "virus" theory and replace it with the truth.

For over ten years, the comas had been occurring. At first just one or two deaths resulted, but each year seemed to produce more and more victims until panic seized the entire world and the search for the unknown "virus" took precedent in every government research lab in the world.

The common theory was that an invisible virus would attack any body not saturated with cell revivers. The evidence for this belief was based on the mysterious infections and wounds that would appear on the comatose body. No medication could help, thus the claim abounded that it was a new virus immune to all known antibiotics and medication

The only consolation that kept the world partially sane was that if they always took their cell revivers and if they never forgot and accidentally fell asleep, they would be safe. The virus only attacked sleeping bodies.

Consequently, consumption of the cell revivers escalated into frightening rates among different countries. Even before the "immunity quality" was discovered 98% of the world's population had adapted to a productive, ‘no-sleep’ life through the consumption of the tiny blue pill that removed the need to sleep or rest.    

 The drug had been developed less than thirty years before for the army. An army that needed no sleep and never tired was as formidable and frightening as the atomic bomb had been for earlier generations. However soon all governments had the drug nullifying any advantage it gave its army. So the governments began to promote the  drug among their populace to increase productivity and generate more tax revenues.

Soon an 80 hour work day became standard. Anyone who wished to remain part of the workforce had no choice but to forfeit their sleep and begin using cell revivers, that  would revive and rejuvenate their cells, just like sleep had done in the past.

But now, with the fear of the virus, consumption of cell revivers was escalating to dangerous levels. Knowing the side effects of the drug, the government began to ration the cell revivers, trying to maintain the consumption level to an average of 16 hours.

 Thus people who in fear of the virus took their cell revivers too often and rap out, or people who lost their supply to thieves and could not afford the black market price  would fall prey to sleep and dreaded virus.

 Not all coma victims died from the virus. About one in two thousand would return to tell horrendous stories about a second world filled with dragons and scorpions.

 The stories were dismissed as hallucinations caused by the virus. But as more and more returned with the same remarkable story, many scientist, including Dr. Grey, began to take credence in their delirious stories.

After thousands of interviews Dr. Grey presented the theory that during the coma the mind returned to a premieval memory stored from our ancestor's past. This memory was  so real that any infliction dreamed would appear on the physical body, and if the coma victim happened to dream his death, then the body would die.

 Never had there been a theory so ridiculed and scorned as Dr. Grey's, when he presented it at the International Convention of Scientist. But between the thousands that laughed, a few believed and came to work with him on this theory.

And now they were all dead. Out of the thirteen to enter the experiment only her father remained alive.