The Miller Reaction

The Miller Reaction

It was bread in the form of a shoe. He pondered it despondently. There was so much he didn’t know about bread, it turned out. He wondered if it was actually more of a cake. The word treacle came to mind, but then he remembered that that’s more of a syrupy, soupy thing, and he grimaced painfully. He could imagine a shoe shaped cake pan. He guessed a person would have to flip the cake after baking it. An upside down shoe cake. The crust would be on the bottom then? The sole? What a thoughtful way to say, “You’re a horrible screw up.” He understood that he was supposed to put the shoe, the foot, in his mouth because a note said, “Because you like bread and you like to put your foot in your mouth.” The bread was on his doorstep. A loud knock brought him to the door, but nobody was around. He looked fearfully at his neighbors windows. Nothing stirred. Was it from a colleague? An investor? A family member of one of the patients? Was it poisoned? Why make such an elaborate gesture otherwise? It could definitely be poisoned.

It was supposed to be his moment. The speech was a victory lap. But somehow it ruined everything for him. As a PR guy, he should have had solutions. But it still seemed too ridiculous. He also understood scapegoating. 

The speech followed Dr. Klubboch’s introduction. It was the perfect setup. He’d mentioned the rolls. 

“Jim Miller - or should we call him Flash? - was the guy who secured the funding for this research with lightning speed. Jim was the guy who lobbied on our behalf with the FDA. He lobbied for approval with the insurance carriers. And he cleared those hurdles astonishingly quickly. He’s been indispensable in making this technology available to everyone who needs it, and profitable for NewEquilibro Inc. And not a moment too soon for our company. When you looked at those eye popping financials from this last quarter in Dr. Keeslow’s presentation, you can thank Jim for that. In many ways, this is Jim’s project.

All of you know Jim, but I’ll still take this opportunity to introduce him. His background wasn’t pharmaceuticals. He came to us a few years ago, from American Hospital and Healthcare. Would you say we headhunted you, Jim? Or did you headhunt us?”

“It was a mutual interest, I think,” Jim said it pleasantly, and with a little extra volume so that hopefully everyone would hear. 

“That’s history anyways,” Dr. Klubboch continued. “Jim immediately proved his worth with us, and he’s been instrumental in NewEquilibro, Inc.’s growth and successes from day one. His commitment to the work is unbreakable. Jim loves golf. Perhaps you’ve shared time on the links with him… He’s better at his job.” 

There was obligatory laughter.

“He also loves to spoil us at the office with his baking endeavors. You all know Jim loves to bring sourdough bread rolls in on Fridays to ingratiate himself with us. He’s a PR guy for sure.”

Chuckles rippled around the room.

“We always look forward to the bread and whatever accouterments he’s picked out when we know he’s in town on a Friday. I love the rolls. You know, I think I love Jim. Jim, your plan is working.”

There was another round of obligatory laughter. 

“Fortunately for us, but unfortunately for our stomachs, he’s often out fighting the good fight for NewEquilibro. We don’t get enough opportunities to say thanks, Jim. Jim, we want to say thanks for all that you’ve done and all that you do. Come on up here, Jim.” 

The full banquet hall clapped agreeably. Jim’s colleagues lifted wine glasses towards him. Forks and knives were set down momentarily while soft hands gently patted together. 

Jim approached the stage confidently. His million dollar smile flashed around the room. He shook hands with Dr. Klubboch at the podium, and Dr. Klubboch ushered Jim towards the microphone with both hands. This was his speech. 

“Thanks, Dr. Klubboch. I have a golf lesson this Tuesday evening, so look out. 

“I’m glad you like my rolls, and I’m glad you mentioned them too. The rolls have a symbolic significance to me. The rolls were an epiphany for me. When I was a kid, my mom always insisted my brothers and I eat our bread crusts. We preferred the softer bread guts to the crust, and we tried to get away with removing the crust and discarding it. She would stress to us that the crust was the most nutritious part of the bread. That we were wasting the most important part. 

“Well, I heard those lines so many times growing up that I took that as God’s truth. I dutifully ate my crusts. Even as an adult when making myself a sandwich, I often hear my mother’s voice in my own head restating this claim that the crust is more nutritious. It wasn’t until I became interested in baking sourdoughs, and sourdough rolls for all of you, that I had an epiphany. 

“As the creator of breads, and not just the consumer, for the first time in my life, I realized that the crust is made up of the exact same ingredients as the bread guts. Duh. It’s okay, y’all can laugh. There is no difference. It was such an obvious fact, I laughed out loud to myself for several minutes, then called my brother and had a laugh with him. This truth of my upbringing: the crust is the most nutritious part of the bread, was so obviously false, yet I’d never questioned it. 

“Now I enjoy the crust just because I enjoy contemplating that epiphany - not just that crust is just bread dough that has toasted a bit more, but that we can accept things to be truth so readily and then never have reason or opportunity to reexamine those truths. 

“What our scientists, our team, you all, have performed with NewEquilibro, Inc. is an epiphany of science. And it’s beautifully analogous to my bread epiphany. That’s partially why I find joy in bringing rolls in to work on Fridays. Finding this new drug delivery method to cross the cell membrane is a breakthrough of science, and we’re seeing it rapidly adopted because it’s so groundbreaking. It’s almost as if we’ve been given permission to remove the crust from the rolls and go straight for those delicious bread guts. It’s like we can bake bread without crust. 

“I have every confidence in this company and feel blessed to be part of this mission. The industry is looking to us because we’re the smartest folks in the room. I can’t wait to see what our next epiphany will be. Let’s keep this thing rolling! Thanks, Dr. Klubboch.”

Jim returned to his seat through more pleasant applause. Throughout the evening he drank four and a half glasses of bourbon. He ate three quarters of a ribeye steak, two bread rolls (with the crusts and butter), a side salad, and a crème brûlée. He shook twenty-two hands, was involved in five selfies with colleagues, and took three restroom breaks to pee.  

In the late morning, he checked his social media and found that his speech had been recorded and posted online. He watched himself with smug satisfaction. A colleague posted the video of Jim’s speech along with a snapshot of one of the graphics that depicted NewEquilibro, Inc.’s rocketing earnings, and a caption that said, “Got to get that bread!” The post was liked and reshared by many of Jim’s colleagues. A few of the scientist’s from the company had a light banter of humorous comments on the original thread. The first said, “Nobody tell Jim about the Maillard Reaction. Ignorance is bliss.” Another responded with a laughy face and, “Try not to blow his mind. It seems dangerously easy.” Another read, “Slow down, Flash, you’re moving too fast.” Jim had smiled to himself too as he read this back and forth. He was fine with good-natured jokes at his expense. His people skills were why the company was finally finding the big successes he imagined it could. His speech was well received at the moment and now it was getting a second round of attention. He liked that. He’d ask the scientists about the Maillard Reaction on Monday, it would be a fun way to extend his victory lap.

But Monday was a bad day. 

On Monday Dr. Keeslow received an email and a phone call from a hospital in Baltimore that was running one of their trials. A patient died. The presentation of symptoms had been perplexing. The person became mushy and wet. It seemed as if all of their organs had failed. Their body was giving out. The hospital’s pathologists were investigating. 

Then another hospital reported a death later that same day. The patient died in a similarly horrific state of disintegration. There was not an opportunity for Jim to rub elbows with the scientists and jokingly inquire about the Maillard Reaction. The company was trying to get information. The trials were diverse, and NewEquilibro’s new drug delivery method was being used to deliver different medicines for different reasons in different hospitals. Perhaps these deaths were unavoidable and unrelated to their product.  

By Thursday it was clear that NewEquilibro, Inc. had a role to play in the deaths. There were now thirteen recorded patient deaths across four independent trials. All of NewEquilibro’s trials were suspended indefinitely. 

The results from the first autopsies were back. They were gruesome. The membrane translocation mechanism responsible for the new efficiencies in drug deliveries was causing cell membranes to systemically collapse. For several weeks, the mechanism would perform as expected, but then a shift would occur and instead of allowing biomolecules to permeate through the membranes benignly, the mechanism was causing perforations. Whole chunks of the patients were dissolving into cytoplasmic wet ooze. The outcome wasn’t universal, and genetic testing on cadavers would be necessary to draw further conclusions. NewEquilibro, Inc. had not seen anything remotely like this in their animal trials. 

NewEquilibro, Inc. exploded into the news. Nighttime news hosts ran investigative specials detailing the macabre tragedy.  Jim’s speech resurfaced immediately, along with his boss’s introduction. They were readily available. He, even more than he already was, became the face for this project. The speeches were cut, cherry-picked, to assign him responsibility and to make him look cavalier and unintelligent. 

The innocuous jokes he’d made now looked cruel, ironic, and nauseating. 

The news anchors asked whether or not a guy who works for a pharmaceuticals and chemistry solutions manufacturer should be familiar with a simple chemical cooking process like the Maillard Reaction. 

“The crust is actually the healthiest part of the bread. According to our sources, it can contain eight times as many antioxidants as the ‘guts,’ as Miller has coarsely called them,” one host said during one of the many examinations of the tragedy on a nightly news program. They played a snippet of the speech with one of his remarkably stupid jokes. He felt dead inside. He was disgusted.

Overnight, memes proliferated the internet with Jim Miller looking like a comic-book-style, evil version of the Flash with bread dough dripping between the fingers of his outstretched hands. Electricity and smoke swirled around him. It gave the impression that he’d conjured the bread dough through a combination of sorcery and mad science. A speech bubble over his head said, “I’ll call it… the Miller Reaction!” Each one Jim saw cut him in half. He was shrinking on an infinite exponential curve. Contrary to public opinion, he was not a cutthroat person, and this tragedy was more than he could carry. 

NewEquilibro, Inc. was doomed. A group of the scientists resigned in what felt to Jim like theatrical, farcical even, mass protest. Two of them had appeared on the news and skewered the company and Jim. They were saving themselves. They pointed to the social media comments they’d posted on his speech prior to the tragic deaths as evidence of their discomfort with the speed of the project. 

“We were never aware of the potential for what we’ve seen in the last few weeks. This systemic collapse of cell membranes across whole sections of the body was not something we could have ever anticipated. But that’s the catch, we didn’t have the time to find out. Some of us asked for more time, but our voices weren’t listened to.” 

Ultimately, a family member of one of the victims emailed Jim videos from the final day of that patient’s life. 

The email said, “Jim Miller, I need you to see what you did to my wife. I doubt you’ll have the courage to watch these, but you owe it to the people you’ve tortured to see this as close to firsthand as possible. I hope you give yourself a dose of your own medicine.”

Jim didn’t open the videos immediately. He was already sick beyond anything he could have imagined. He’d read the first autopsy reports.

He opened the first video at 3:41 AM. He had been staring at his ceiling for close to four hours. His sheets were a puddle of sweat. Every few minutes, a few tears trickled from his eyes. The world wanted retribution. He sat up, zombie walked to his breakfast bar in the kitchen, opened his laptop and found the email. He played the first video.

A woman was moaning in a hospital bed. Her leg was uncovered and the video focused on the leg. She attempted to lift her leg but the lower portion of it responded like gelatin. It was shiny with moisture. Medical staff were talking about supplies and a transfer. 

The second video showed the same woman in a different setting. She’d been moved to an ICU bed. Medical staff surrounded her. Her leg was in a tray. It filled the tray like a shimmering, tapioca pudding. The staff were talking quickly, softly, and urgently about the state of her organs. 

He did not open another video. He poured himself a glass of cold water, but gagged as the glass filled. He had to turn away from the glass. 

At 3:47 AM Jim Miller ate the shoe cake while he drove to the NewEquilibro, Inc. laboratory. He was not conscious of its taste as a thing of pleasure, though he hoped to get a hint of cyanide or strychnine. That would be merciful.