Always/Never

Has the U.S. government actually condoned the implantation of experimental mind-altering brain probes? For what purpose, and under whose authority? Have covert government agencies and their operatives trampled the Constitution into a meaningless piece of parchment in the name of "national security?" Is the very core of democracy threatened by a handful of rogue agents?

While attending the autopsy of patient John Doe, medical record 15-0039678, who died unexpectedly and for no apparent reason, third-year medical student Chauncey Charles Quinton is assaulted and later found unconscious in a hospital stairwell with a minor head injury, while the other medical staff present for the autopsy are suddenly nowhere to be found - one of them reportedly found dead in another country.

Told that no autopsy was ever perfomed, amateur sleuth Quinton undertakes his own investigation and, unknowingly, winds up directly in the path of NSA and CIA undercover operatives surveilling each other. This medical mystery treads into the dark underworld of covert U.S. government surveillance conducted "in the interest of national security." Who authorized the medical procedures that have affected a half-dozen or more individuals with seizure disorders? What purpose does this experiment serve, and to whose benefit?

Following the disappearance of the newfound love of his life, Dr. Barbara Lynn Zachary, the self-styled euro-geneticist Quinton winds up with an unlikely "partner" - the overbearing, onion-eating Dr. Stanley J. Pritcherman, Chief of the University Hospital Neurosurgery Service - in their separate, yet aligned, quests for the truth. What will be the public's reaction when news of the fiasco surfaces? Will there even be a reaction, or will this just be another mind-numbing 30-second soundbite in the second segment of the 11:00 pm news?

Allow your ethics to be challenged by the dilemmas presented in Always/Never. The story is fictional . . . or is it ?