Jimmy

"Hi, Jimmy," she said. "I heard about the bad news. I'm so sorry." "Is that why you came back to Socorro?". "No, I didn't hear until I arrived. But I got the feeling that I must come here, so maybe that was why. I'm hoping I can go and visit Susan tomorrow." "I'm not sure if they're allowing her any visitors other than family as yet. I'll know more when Mom rings me with her latest update in an hour or so's time." "Better tell Melanie," said Stacy. "She was thinking of visiting Susan tomorrow." "OK. I will."

There was an awkward pause. Then Jimmy said: "I was just about to feed the rats. Susan would never have forgiven me if I hadn't taken over looking after them. Actually, I used to help her quite a lot even before. You know, you shouldn't have just gone off to New York like that and never got in touch. Susan couldn't believe that you could just abandon the experiment like that after two years work, and never want to find out how the rats were getting on." "I'm sorry. Um, other things got in the way. So how are the rats getting on?"

"Well, though they're very elderly for rats now, they still show no signs of aging, just as you'd hoped. However, not long after you left, in quick succession they seemed to suddenly lose their memories. They could no longer do the little tricks that Susan had taught them, and they seemed really bewildered. It wasn't their intelligence that was affected, only their memories, for they soon relearnt the tricks.

1. "Susan's notebook is over there, giving more details."
2. "There was one other rather alarming side effect..."
3. "The unfortunate thing is that the memory loss seems to recur every month or so."

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