Chapter 50
After Dave was gone, Michael went to talk with Dr Kavins. The doctor was ecstatic to tell Michael all about the newest people now working at Saint Hernest, about what sort of research they were doing and about how it would help Michael do a lot of good in the world.
When talking to the doctor about recruiting other people, Michael had been worried about unethical research going on under his nose, and had given specific instructions about what could and could not be done. About what sort of people he wanted working for him. No doubt, Old Dave had fleshed out those guidelines even better than he could ever do.
Despite that, however, he had been worried about the doctors and researchers finding ways to go around those restrictions. They were the experts here, and he doubted he could spot many of the technicalities they could theoretically resort to if they wanted to muddy the waters.
He was very relieved to find out that he needn't have worried.
Dr Kavins had proved to be morally decent, at the very least. His eagerness had made Michael doubt his moral integrity at first, but it seemed like the man knew what lines not to cross. Why that was, he wasn't sure. Perhaps it was the threat of retaliation against him or his research, perhaps it had to do with Old Dave or Travis, or perhaps he was simply a decent human being. It didn't matter much at this point, all that mattered was that he knew how to behave and how to make the others behave.
Besides, there was a lot of work to be done even without resorting to strange, morally questionable practices. Right now the main focus of their research was to figure out how magic went about fixing some of the problems that modern medicine did not even know how to address. In some cases, modern medicine did not even know what the cause for the ailment was.
Since Michael was healing people in small increments, the researchers could monitor the changes in each patient and figure out just where, how and why the magic was acting. All this was coupled with Michael's own notes that he provided after each healing session. It cost him some time, but he had people working for him now, and he could simply dictate the notes to his secretary's secretary or something like that and they would end where they were needed. They were especially insightful, claimed Dr Kavins, since he could feel what the magic was doing, and even pointing a finger at a representation of the human body and saying "here is where it focused the most" sometimes shed a lot of light into an otherwise unsolvable problem.
The results were promising, and a lot of papers would discreetly be coming out of the facility sooner or later. The researchers and doctors would have to consult with Old Dave to make sure they didn't attract too much attention, but Michael was willing to compromise if the good this information could do outweighed the risks. Already, some sort of word was spreading, and requests were coming in from all sorts of luminaries and famous doctors, surgeons and researchers who had pioneered their field of research.
"Did you spill secrets, doctor?" Michael asked with a tinge of annoyance.
The doctor, for his part, seemed to shrink on himself. "I didn't," he said quickly, "but they know that something big is going on, and they want in. That's how research and academia works."
"Not yet," replied Michael. "Big names will attract too much attention. And they tend to have too big egos to contain."
Parallel to this investigation in the causes of many ailments, there was a whole other branch of researches who were trying to replicate what magic was doing by using mundane means.
"It's closely tied to the other branch," Dr Kavins said. It was interesting how well Dr Kavins had taken to magic, after being given some time to think about it. "Once we know where the problem is, and how magic goes about fixing it, then we can see if there's a way to replicate it. Observation has shown that magic does not—unlike the name suggests—magic the problems away. It actually tries to heal the damage the natural way first, if it's possible. Only after it's exhausted all avenues does it actually start doing impossible things."
"And you think it can be replicated?" Michael asked.
"Some of it can. We have hit some roadblocks… let's take cancer, for instance. We know that the cancerous cells have to be removed, and your magic seems to do just that. It offers no insight to us. The problem with modern medicine is that we lack a way to target the right cells without killing the healthy ones, not that we don't know what we need to do. Sometimes, however, it seems that your magic is actually healing the damaged cells, and that's very interesting to study."
Michael frowned, deep in thought. The doctor interpreted it as impatience, and waved his hands around nervously.
"Sorry, I was getting to the main point. Let's take something like Alzheimer's disease instead. We have no clue how to treat it, right? Well, guess what. Your magic does. It always seems to know what to do. How? That's your mystery to solve. Or perhaps when you hire some physicists, philosophers, whatever. What was I saying? Right, magic. What we are doing here is watching it in action. A couple of our patients have Alzheimer's. Every day you come here they are a little better, and we record the changes in their brains. Every scan gets us so much closer to figuring out, if not a treatment, at least what the treatment should do to fix the damage and restore them to health. Do you understand the implications?"
"Huh," Michael hummed, ignoring the fact that as he spoke, the doctor seemed to have forgotten who was in charge and was treating him more like a student at class. "I see. It's not making developing a cure easier per se, but at least you now know what direction to take it."
"Then," there was a twinkle to the man's eyes, "once we have some candidates for a cure, we can try them out before you go along with your magical healing. If they work, nice. If they don't work… you were already going to heal them."
Ah, there's the illegal part. Human experiments.
"I'll… think about it," Michael said, having seen the zeal with which Dr Kavins had explained the last part.
Fortunately the doctor did not descend into a sales pitch, although Michael feared it was only because they did not yet have an R&D division, nor a cure ready to be tested. Otherwise it would be a different story.
"I take that everything is going well, then?"
"Yes," Dr Kavins said, somehow reminding Michael of Drullkrin and momentarily making the young man frown. "My old pals from back when we were all doing our doctorate could not believe me when I told them just what we were doing here. They thought I had gone nuts. I think those of them who did not even want to hear about it when I told them they had to sign an NDA…" the doctor laughed, "oh, I bet they are biting their nails now. Or they would be, if they knew."
"That's… good." Michael said. After that, he excused himself and left the weird doctor to his things, wondering just how could a person change so much so quickly. Resolving to make the doctor someone else's problem, either Dave's or his secretary's, or his secretary's secretary, which was apparently a thing, he left.
Later, he met with Old Dave at the temporary office they had somewhere along the road. Having someone drive him around all the time while he read manuals, medical documents he still struggled to understand and investigated the mysteries of his own magic was making it difficult for him to really get a sense of where things were.
I need to rectify that.
He was surprised to see that Travis was there too, wearing a grim face and bringing grim news. There was a laptop on the table, showing a frozen image from one of the trail cams Michael had set up. Michael was still hesitating to absorb the orange skill stone, even though not even he really knew why he was acting like that, and once again the weight of all the power contained within it felt as if it had a life of its own.
Perhaps he was scared. Perhaps he knew that if he absorbed it, then he would want to use it immediately. It was a rare skill, and rare skills were not something he understood. Perhaps that was the real reason. He wanted to study the stone some more, figure out what that energy he couldn't make heads or tails of really was.
After a quick round of greetings, Old Dave said something Michael was not expecting to hear.
"Did you think about a name for your company?"
"No, why? Why would I even want to make a company?"
"Think about it," Travis said, "even taking into account only what you have now, you need an umbrella of sorts to keep it all contained. A company would work well for that. One you fully own and control, of course. It's not like you need to think about profit or anything, not when you can always heal people and generate millions in income out of thin air. Which is another reason to make a company, by the way. Legitimize those payments."
"Yes," Old Dave agreed, "it just doesn't do to let everyone see that you, a supposedly normal guy, own a hospital. It's even stranger to see you lift money out of its account every time you need it, and to do what? Pay for private security? If it was a company doing that, it would be completely fine. Perhaps not even just one, but many different ones all operating under the same management structure. It can do wonders to obfuscate things, let us operate more freely. It will become even more necessary once we move onto the next steps. Remember how hard purchasing the land was for you as an individual? Well, if it was a huge corporation doing that, do you think they would have the same issues you, or rather I, faced? We want you to become that."
"I see." Michael said, still a bit stunned.
"I'd be COO, and Travis would be a consultant. In secret, at first. He's CEO of another company, after all."
Travis hummed, distracted by something. "For now."
"Think about it, then. And while you're at it…" Old Dave turned serious. "The second real reason. It will force you to think about what you want to do with it. With all of this. You have a hospital healing people and trying to cough up miracle drugs. What do you want to do with it? Make money or save the world? What about the rest? Will you allow people to access the dungeon or will you try to remove all influence of magic from the world, keep the population as safe as possible? You can't do that unless you are willing to challenge actual governments, so it might be too early to even entertain the idea. Perhaps something in-between? What's your vision?"
"I know that you want to study magic, gather up scientists like you did with the hospital." Travis interjected. "That's going to generate some pretty dangerous knowledge. Powerful knowledge. Whatever you want to do with it, it's no longer about yourself and yourself alone. It stopped being about you when you started healing people. But you can be proactive rather than reactive. Issue is, to do that you need to know what direction you want to take."
"I'll… think about it," Michael said.